It’s just past eleven, and the pub is emptying out around us. Dan and Priya left twenty minutes ago. Billy’s gone to the bar for a final round. Jaymee’s mid-sentence about something to do with her sister’s upcoming wedding, when my phone buzzes.
My heart lurches at the idea that it could be from Leo. My stupid, treacherous heart has done this every time my phone goes off. Pavlov’s dog had more dignity.
But when I look at my phone, the name on the screen makes my stomach drop through the floor.
Vaughn.
I stare at it. Jaymee is still talking, but I can’t hear a word she’s saying.
Vaughn hasn’t texted me in three years. The last message in our thread is from me—a birthday text I’d sent. The kind of careful, brief message you send when you’re not sure if someone wants to hear from you, but you can’t quite bring yourself to stop trying. He never replied.
I open the message.
It’s a meme of a squirrel. A fat, outraged-looking squirrel clinging to the side of a bird feeder that’s clearly not designed for squirrels, cheeks stuffed to capacity, staring directly at the camera with an expression of absolute defiance. Underneath, in block capitals:CAUGHT. NOT SORRY.
My heart stops.
Because this isn’t just any squirrel meme.
When I was about five, a squirrel got into our kitchen through a window someone had left open. Vaughn and I came downstairs for breakfast and found it sitting on the counter, surrounded by the wreckage of a box of cereal it had torn open,cheeks bulging, staring at us with zero guilt. Zero fear. Just pure, brazen, Cheerio-fueled defiance.
Vaughn had wanted to chase it out, but I’d wanted to keep it. We’d compromised by naming it—Dr. Nutsworth, Professor of Cereal Studies—and watching it eat for another ten minutes before Mom came downstairs and screamed loud enough to send it back out the window and halfway across the yard.
For years after, squirrels had been our thing. Vaughn gave me a stuffed squirrel for my birthday. At our grandparents’ lake house, we’d spent an entire afternoon trying to lure the squirrels closer using a trail of crackers, narrating their movements using nature documentary voice-overs. When I was ten and having problems at school, Vaughn hid peanuts in my backpack every day for a week and told me Dr. Nutsworth was leaving me care packages. Then, when Vaughn went off to college, we started exchanging the most ridiculous squirrel memes and photos. It escalated to the point that Vaughn once interrupted a family dinner to show me a squirrel waterskiing.
“Archie?” Jaymee’s voice sounds far away. “You’ve gone white. What is it?”
“My brother just texted me.”
“Your brother? The one you don’t talk to?”
“That’s the one.”
I stare at the screen. I shouldn’t read into this. He probably sent it to the wrong person. He was scrolling through his contacts and hit my name by accident.
But this isn’t just any meme. This is a meme that only someone who remembers Dr. Nutsworth would find funny.
My fingers are already moving, finding a picture that I saved years ago and never deleted. It’s of a squirrel in a tiny knitted hat, looking profoundly smug. I caption it:Dr. Nutsworth finally got his tenure!
I send it before I can talk myself out of it.
Then I put my phone face-down on the table and try to remember how to breathe.
“What just happened?” Jaymee asks.
“I don’t know yet.”
My phone buzzes.
Dr. Nutsworth never did give back our Cheerios.
I choke on something between a laugh and a sob.
He ate an entire box. I respected his commitment.
You wanted to adopt him.
I maintain that was a reasonable position.
