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This is the second time Chowder’s had braces. He had to get them in second grade because one of his teeth had come in directly behind another– he and his friends had thought it was super cool because it was like a shark tooth! But Chowder’s parents and dentist didn’t think it was super cool.
Thus, he got braces. And then got them off. And now he has them again, has had them for a few years now. Having done the whole braces routine before has kind of taken the glamor out of getting them off for him, but not for the rest of the team.
“Bitty?”
Bitty clearly doesn’t have music playing, but he ignores Chowder as he continues to walk down the aisle of Murder Stop ‘n’ Shop.
“Bitty?”
Bitty scoops bags of microwave popcorn into the shopping basket.
“Bitty.”
Bitty tries to reach a box of toffees on the top shelf, but fails. “Chowder, honey, can you reach that?”
“Don’t you think we have enough stuff?” The basket is almost overflowing with braces-unfriendly food, all of which Chowder has eaten whether or not he had braces at the time. “I can eat this stuff whenever I want, it’s not all that special.”
“Getting your braces off is an event. I cannot let it slide. Oh, pralines.”
And with that, the conversation is basically over, not counting Bitty’s chatting about how he’s going to try out a new recipe that somehow combines pralines and pie and how it didn’t work out precisely how he wanted the first time but he thinks now that he’s had a practice round he can do it properly for tomorrow.
Chowder sighs internally.
“They’re all more excited than I am! I honestly don’t know why, it’s not like any of them still have their braces or anything.”
“Most people only get their braces off once,” Cait says once she swallows a mouthful of Cheetos. “The novelty hasn’t worn off for them yet.”
“You’re probably right, hand me the Cheetos?”
“Probably the last food you’re going to get that isn’t sticky or hard for a full week!”
Chowder wakes up the next morning to the sound of someone hammering on his door. Purely judging by the hammering, it’s probably Ransom and Holster.
“IT’S THE BIG DAY!” Holster bellows through the door. “YOU CAN WALK THROUGH METAL DETECTORS ONCE MORE!”
“I can walk through metal detectors right now!” Chowder shouts back without getting out of the bed.
“Yeah, that’s true, bro,” Ransom says. “He can walk through them no matter what, he’s just less likely to set them off.”
Downstairs, Chowder can hear the front door to the Haus opening and Tango saying, “Wow!”
“CHRIS CHOWDER CHOW,” Holster continues at top volume from outside his room, “IT IS NOW OH-EIGHT-HUNDRED HOURS. YOUR APPOINTMENT IS AT OH-ELEVEN-HUNDRED HOURS.”
“That’s not how military time works, bro.”
“It’s the aesthetic . BITTY IS MAKING PANCAKES ALSO. COME DOWNSTAIRS AND EAT THEM.”
Chowder rolls out of bed and opens the door. Thankfully, Ransom and Holster aren’t crowding into the doorway and making it impossible for him to get out, they’ve… formed an honor guard.
“Guys! Seriously?”
“You can’t deny that you’re even a little bit excited,” Ransom says as he and Holster fall into step behind Chowder.
“I am excited, just not as much as all of you! You’d think none of you ever had braces!”
“I have Invisalign,” Holster offers. “And Whiskey’s never had braces.”
“I’m pretty sure Whiskey wasn’t the one who flooded my inbox with ‘Congratulations!’ E-cards.”
“He wasn’t.”
Thankfully, breakfast is only partially dominated by the topic of Chowder’s braces, since people are too busy stuffing their mouths with pancakes to get away with talking with their mouths full. Bitty watches like a hawk for activities likely to spew chewed-up pancake all over the table.
At ten-thirty Lardo appears with car keys and says “Let’s go, Chow.”
“Why are you driving me again?”
“I need some new markers and I have a car and you don’t.”
Chowder’s appointment is over fairly quickly– quick enough that he has to wait for Lardo to get back to the orthodontist’s office, since she has the keys. Lardo usually doesn’t take long buying art supplies– usually she’s just re-stocking on something. The store is probably out of whatever she needs and she has to get a substitute.
His teeth feel weird, way too smooth. The retainer feels weird too, the way it presses up against the roof of his mouth. Chowder was worried he was putting the retainer on wrong when it felt like after getting his braces tightened, but no, that’s supposed to happen.
“I’m back,” Lardo says, walking up to him. “Sorry about that, they didn’t have the brand I wanted.”
“That’s what I thought! Okay, let’s go.”
Chowder only starts suspecting that Lardo may have been intentionally making her errand last longer when he walks into the Haus. If it wasn’t the middle of the day, he would suspect the living room had been turned into a kegster.
Bitty’s there, organizing a fold-out table laden with various braces-unfriendly foods, and Lardo walks straight in and takes control of the remote, plopping herself down on the couch in between Cait and Shitty, who are watching ESPN highlights. Shitty doesn’t even go here anymore. Whiskey and Tango are carrying in a cooler– probably not full of alcohol even though it’s the Haus, it is eight o’clock in the morning. Nursey is making conversation with someone whose face Chowder can’t see, but he doesn’t recognize them, and Dex is nowhere to be seen. Jack has arrived for some reason as well and is talking with another unfamiliar guy and Ransom and Holster, the former of which looks like he’s one step away from fainting.
Holster is the first to notice that Chowder’s back, and shouts, “HEY, HE’S HERE.”
Everyone turns simultaneously to look at him and Chowder?
Well. Chowder does not know what the fuck is going on.
“Hi?”
That’s all the prompting they need to burst into a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday,’ only they’ve replaced the words ‘happy birthday’ with ‘congratulations,’ which doesn’t fit the tune quite as well.
Dex emerges from the kitchen just then and coughs something to Chowder that sounds a lot like “Holster” before taking his place with everyone else, who’s all turned around to face him while they sing and–
“YOU’RE SNOW!” Chowder bursts out as he recognizes the man Nursey was talking to.
The Falcs goalie nods. “’Sup, Chowder? Call me Snowy, and that tall-ass Russian over there is Tater.” Tater, who looks an awful lot like Alexei Mashkov, waves and grins at Chowder before turning back and asking Ransom a question.
Everyone else returns to their respective conversations, and Lardo un-mutes the TV, and Nursey vanishes, probably to go bother Dex, as Snowy asks Chowder how he “ever got past Zimmboni, that glorious fucker.”
“You’ve been talking to Shitty!” Chowder says.
“Sure have, but seriously, how? ”
The living room is packed with Chowder’s friends and NHL players and he can smell pie and popcorn and if all of this is just because he got his braces off, it’s definitely better than last time.