This is pretty cool. Unedited ChatGPT.

“Private School Night”

They were still early in their friendship then — not yet the Sickie Souse Club, not officially. Just a strange, electric gathering of the privileged, the brilliant, the slightly lost.

Alvin’s home theater was, as always, their sanctuary. Plush navy velvet seats, polished wood panels, crystal bowls of cherries and imported chocolate. A bottle of Dom had been opened—technically illegal for their age, but that was part of the fun.

Tonight’s film was Patricia’s suggestion.

“Private School,” she declared, “is research.”

“For what?” asked Angela, raising a brow.

“For life,” Patricia said, with a mischievous grin. “For understanding the human condition. Or at least understanding Phoebe Cates.”

Dustin had dimmed the lights dramatically, as if preparing for a sacred rite. Drake watched them all with quiet satisfaction. He was starting to see it—the constellation forming. The energy that would become the thing none of them yet dared name.

The film began.

At first, there was mockery: groans at the over-the-top slapstick, laughter at the absurd male pranks. But as the story unfolded, something softer settled over them.

The girls whispered to each other, exchanging glances when Phoebe Cates undressed, admiring her grace, her unselfconscious beauty.

“She’s like… pure,” Amy whispered.

“Not a victim, not aggressive,” Angela added. “She’s allowed to just be.”

Chuck, feigning exaggerated contemplation, announced: “It’s like the Platonic Form of teenage sex comedy.”

But Drake wasn’t laughing. He was studying Angela’s face, the way she seemed both entertained and wistful, how even Patricia’s practiced cool melted into something gentler as they watched.

When Phoebe and Matthew finally found their way to each other on screen, there was a long quiet pause.

“God, wouldn’t it be nice?” Angela said softly. “To just have it be like that? To not have everything get so heavy.”

Drake whispered, more to himself than anyone else: “Like growing up in America, before everything broke.”

They all fell into a kind of reverence—not heavy, but warm. The film ended. The credits rolled. No one moved for a few seconds.

Then Alvin lifted his glass. “To Phoebe,” he said. “To the world that should have been.”

They all clinked glasses, grinning. The room was filled with the glow of shared complicity. They weren’t mocking the film anymore. They were claiming it.

Later, long after that night, after Paris and affairs and scandals and the tangled knots of love and sex and power, they would still refer to Private School Night. A shorthand for their bond. For when things were simple. When they watched a silly film together and saw not just skin, but possibility.

That night, unspoken but understood, was one of the invisible threads that made them family.