“Did you know the neighbours are
having a barbecue?!”
Charlie looks up from playing a game on
her phone, stares at me. “Jay. We are staying in a cabin because
the wandering magician asked it to let us in, and it did because the
owners aren’t here and it is lonely. The neighbours likely would
not understand that, given they probably know the owners. Nor would
they invite us to a barbecue.”
“Oh. But I maybe kinda invited
myself,” I boast, because I am pretty jaysome at a lot of things.
Charlie blinks. “You invited
yourself?”
“Well, I asked the barbecue and it
said yes since it will have lots and lots of food on it, and a Jay
can eat a lot so I’d be doing a big helping. Also, the barbecue
doesn’t like that they’re called Barbies because he thinks he’s
more a Ken. Which was a joking!”
“Barbecues make puns. Of course they
do.” Charlie puts her phone away and stands. “And you want my
help making sure the people invite us, too?”
I nod. “Cuz if I ask, I might use
bindings and that would be mean and not a proper asking and I am
pretty hungry like a Jay.”
“So, what happens if I say no?”
“Charlie!”
She laughs at that and ruffles my hair
as we depart. “For a kid from far Outside the universe, you’re
really ease to tease.”
“That’s just because I’m hungry.”
“You had breakfast an hour ago, Jay.”
“But that was only my first one,” I
explainify, because Charlie sometimes forgets.
And the neighbours do have a hugey
barbecue and Charlie talks to them all charliesome so we get to eat
and it’s entirely okay and they’re not cooking a Bigfoot or gods
or even people, all of which Charlie suggestified on the way because
sometimes we have a lot of adventures even when we don’t mean to.
But this one is just eating food, and I am pretty jaysome at that so
I impress lots of people and make Ken the barbecue happy and even
take extras for Honcho to eat when he comes back from the deep part
of the woods.
“We didn’t have to do anything
appalling, or stop anything that was even worse.” Charlie glances
over at me. “Which, given how you find adventures, is rather
astonishing.”
And she says it with this really
waiting pause after. “Well, maybe there was one person who kinda
wanted to do not-nice things with Ken but I did some bindings and
fixed it all up so you didn’t have to.”
Charlie stares at me. “What qualifies
as ‘not nice’ to a barbecue, just out of morbid curiosity.”
“A lot of cleaning and painting Ken
pink,” I explain, “which I said was weird because pink is a
really jaysome colour but sometimes people cook food pink too and Ken
gets really sad over that so I can kinda understand it.”
“Ah. Well, we got invited to dinner
as well. I think Mr. Chow was rather impressed at how much you ate.”
“Uh-huh. I even didn’t eat too much
so they wouldn’t be suspious of us!”
Charlie blinks. “Three chickens in
under ten minutes,” she says, but to herself and not to me at all,
so maybe she just wishes she’d had more chicken too :D
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