On January 1st, 1986, Fitch Thomas goes to his favorite place, the local arcade, happy to find it mostly deserted. His twin sister, Bird, wakes up in the middle of the afternoon, having stayed up until the early hours of the morning to assemble her new desk. She eats her breakfast while her parents, Tammy and Mike, bicker over their new VCR, trading sarcastic insults about one another’s intelligence. Fitch and Bird’s older brother Cash meets up with his friends Brant and Kenny to resume usual game of running and jumping against an exterior wall to see who can touch the highest spot. Brant and Kenny tease Cash for showing up last, relating his late arrival to the fact that Cash is currently repeating seventh grade.

Fitch is absorbed in his favorite arcade game, the space themed Major Havoc, when Bird bursts into the arcade to tell him that Cash is hurt, and they need to leave. Fitch is irritated at the interruption and challenges the idea that what happened to Cash is serious.

In the car, when he sees Cash’s swollen wrist, Fitch calls him an idiot and asks how he plans to pass seventh grade now.