Page 2 of The Amazing Alpha Tau Fratmas Experience
So yeah, Scout acting ugly to Squirrel wasunprecedented.
Legal words FTW. My internship with Cal Fisher in town was really starting to pay off. I was going to be the lawyeriest lawyer to ever law.
“Bro?” Casey asked me.
“Huh?” I looked down to where my finger was stuck in the jar of Nutella. “Oh, my bad.” I took my finger out, sucked it, and put the lid back on the jar. “There you go.”
Casey stared. “I don’t want it back.”
“Can I have it?”
“I thought I was buying you a bear claw.”
“Okay. But I can still have this too, right?” DonutsandNutella? This morning was starting right!
I thought about asking Scout if he wanted donuts too. They always cheered me up. But then I decided against it. I didn’t want to be responsible for the psychological impact on Squirrel if Scout shut the door in his face again, and dog therapists were expensive.
“Yeah, you can have that too,” Casey said, and I slipped the Nutella into the pouch of my hoodie before he could change his mind.
“Let’s go get breakfast!”
Isort of forgot about the Scout thing for most of the rest of the day, mostly because I got busy doing other stuff. I had to pack, which meant that first I had to do laundry, which meant that first I had to get quarters for the machine, which meant that first I had to get change. Anyway, long story short, I ended up at Walmart with Charlie, looking at dog costumes. Squirrel was hard to buy for. Like, not to body shame other dogs, but the sizes in Walmart definitely favored your pitties over your whippets.
“I thought we were here to get change,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, we’re gonna get it by buying something,” I said. “And Squirrel needs a Christmas costume.”
Charlie let out a sigh. “I’m gonna go look at backpacks.”
I ended up with a dog sweater and two different costumes—one was a reindeer and the other one was Santa—and forgot to ask the cashier for quarters in my change. So when we got back to campus, I had to go around asking the brothers if they had any. Which I probably could have done in the first place, except then I wouldn’t have three new Christmas outfits for Squirrel, so I was still winning.
Point was, it was almost dinnertime when I remembered how weird Scout was acting.
Dinner wasn’t great. Our housekeeper had been off since Sunday because everyone was leaving this week for the break, and there were no groceries in the house, so everyone who was still at Alpha Tau had contributed to a kind of potluck. Casey ordered pizzas, Archer also ordered pizzas and—everything was pizza, basically. We all fought over the ones from the best place, like lions in a wildlife documentary growling at each other over who got the tastiest part of the antelope and who got the grossbits. Did lions eat all the bits of the antelope? When I was a kid, we had a cat that would eat all the bits of a mouse except for some unidentifiable organ that he’d leave lying on the carpet. Were the African savannahs littered with discarded bits of antelope?
Casey sat down beside me on the couch. “What are you looking up?”
“Antelope organs,” I said, showing him my phone.
He gave me a weird look, then got distracted when Briar came and sat on his lap. And things weren’t crowded enough in the big living room that there was a lack of seats. It was cute, though, because Casey was such a sap for Briar and vice versa.
A bunch of guys had already left as soon as their exams were done, but there were still a lot of us hanging around, leaving in dribs and drabs the week before Christmas. I was super excited for Christmas at Harrisonburg and for spending it with Dalton, of course. I couldn’t wait. And how cute would Squirrel look, running in the snow in his reindeer costume? I could probably take pictures and use them on Christmas cards next year.
“So, when do you head out, Marty?” Archer asked me around a mouthful of pizza.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Scout entering the room. He sneered at the pizza—again, totally usual for Scout—and picked up a slice like he thought it might poison him.
“Dalton gets here tomorrow,” I said, “and then we’re going to Harrisonburg on Thursday. It’s gonna beawesome!”
Archer laughed. “That’s great, bro. I mean, it’s noVienna…” He cast a teasing look in Scout’s direction.
Scout stared back at him like he was plotting three hundred different ways to kill him and dispose of his body.
Archer just laughed again, because yeah, that was Scout.
Except he was off.
I mean, I’d be off too if I was spending Christmas in Vienna with my family, but mostly that was because I’d have to put Squirrel in a kennel, which was never gonna happen. But Christmas in Vienna was very on-brand for the Talbot-Smiths, and you’d think Scout would be happy about it. Well, not happy, since Scout hated being happy, but at least not be so weird about it.
