My Friend, the Squid

"Oswald?"

"Yeah?"

"What do you think my parents are up to?"

"I have no idea."

"I'm going to go check. I'll be back soon."

I opened the closet door and stepped out to my relatively roomy bedroom. The door shut behind me. I headed to the living room. It seemed like a living room kind of time right now. The hallway there was long and straight and I soon saw them sitting on the couch. I snuck up behind them and climbed over the couch.

"Hey, what's on the TV?"

"PRINCESS TAPDANCING LUNA!"

"What?" I looked at the TV. It was a documentary on dolphins, not the moon princess dancing about. "That's not right dad." Mom shuffled away and went down the hall to the kitchen. "Those are dolphins."

"Yes. I'm sorry. You just scared me."

Dad's kind of jumpy. So is mom. Maybe that's why they love each other. "Sorry."

We watched the dolphin documentary together. The dolphins were playing together with a ball, striped red and white. It felt much like a less extreme game of tennis or volleyball, one neither side of dolphins seemed to be winning. A breeze blew in through the window and blew my hair into my face.

I was slumped to one side, propping my head up with a hoof. "How long have they been doing this?"

"About an hour. The documentary guys said they ran out of money so most of the movie's been this. I'm having fun. Kind of."

"Me too." We kept watching the hypnotic bouncing of the ball from one side of the screen to the other. Footsteps came from down the hall. It was my mom followed by my little sister, Banana Bread. Our whole familed is named like that, a combination of the parents' names, except for me. I'm just Lisbon, a titilur link to my father. and about the only link we shared.

"NACHOS! NACHOS!" Banana Bread bounced behind my mom, who was, in fact, carrying a huge plate of nachos. The melted cheese, the diced veggies looked phenomenal. Banana Bread was still bouncing when she and mom reached the table. Then she bounced up on the couch next to me. "HI!"

"Hi." I was.. strange to some people for sure, but Banana Bread seemed like she was always bouncing off the walls.

"Guess what else we got? CATAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN!"

I cringed and covered my ears. Loud noises were bad, and Banana Bread was very fond of them.

Catan was okay. All four of us were used to bigger games, but Banana Bread liked it so our board still got a lot of use. Dad was doing horribly. His army was weak, his towns were weak, and his road was weak. The robber practically lived on his tiles.

"Dad, you're throwing the game." I stuffed a ball of nacho into my mouth.

"I'll make up the slack soon. The dice have been mean to me all game, and that ends with this roll." He tossed the dice and they stopped on tile numbers he didn't even own.

"You're doing this on purpose."

"What? No. Why do you think that?"

"You're better with numbers than this."

Mom had resorted to staring at her resource cards. Dad looked from me to Banana Bread and back to me. For a moment I was stuck between continuing or not.

"You're letting me and Banana Bread win, aren't you?" Banana Bread looked up from the board, holding a mouthful of nachos mid-bite.

"Yes. Look, it was Wacky's idea!" Everyone looked to mom; me expectant, dad despondent, Banana Bread confused.

Mom slumped back into her seat. "I thought it was a good idea. I didn't want him beating you two, at least not by a lot."

"That kind of ruins the whole idea of a game, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

"These nachos are great!" Banana Bread's face was covered with cheese.

"Were great," I said. "You ate them all."

"Finally dad spoke. "We're not done the game, are we?"

"No, but I'd like a more legitimate rematch."

"Okay."