“Tales of the Wing”

Every child in the family got a key to the door of the North Wing when they turned eighteen. My roommate and I were almost seventeen when the grandparents invited us to visit over spring break. Every night for weeks he described the depravity of the North Wing with such effect that I was ready to split town, steal the key, and not look back. The night before spring break, just hours before the bus left for the airport, I knocked his tooth out in a fight over whether he should bring aftershave.