The Two of Us

Prilosec

"Why do you insist upon torturing me?" Blair asked as she looked down at the Twizzler that had just been placed into her salad. "And just how many of these do you have exactly?"

We managed to make it to the cafeteria after Freddy spotted Fallon leaving their German class, bolted down the hallway, and nearly tackled them into a water fountain in an effort to get their attention.

"I can't disclose that info, dude. Sorry."

"You make it sound like getting a free Twizzler is a bad thing," I said.

"It is. Twizzlers are bad."

I put on an expression of shock and disgust and scooted away from her a bit. "Wow, okay. I'm sorry Blair, but I don't think that this relationship is going to work out."

She laughed and rolled her eyes before pulling me back over to her. "Oh brother. I don't understand what the big deal is. When Freddy first found out, he acted like I had just made a nice end table out of somebody's bones."

Freddy slammed his hands down on the table, causing Bon-Bon (who had been sitting there) to fall to the lunchroom floor. "Fuck!"

"TH-THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S A CR-CRIME, BLAIR!"

Bon-Bon made some comment from the floor about how Freddy's face was a crime.

Freddy gasped, "TH-THAT'S NOT TRUE! LESLIE SAID TH-THAT IT'S NOT AND SH-SHE'S RIGHT ABOUT MOST THINGS!"

"I'd actually argue that I'm not, but I'm definitely not wrong about that. Suck a carrot, man. Fred's handsome as hell."

"I will not⁠—" Before Bon-Bon could finish, somebody ran past and accidentally kicked him all the way over to one of the sets of double doors.

"UH OH! BON-BON, THIS IS WHY YOU C-CAN'T LAY ON THE FLOOR IN A B-BUSY SPACE!" Freddy stood up, climbed over Fallon to get out of the booth, and ran after his puppet.

"Okay then," Fallon blinked, pushed the sleeves of their pink baseball jacket up their arms, and smoothed out their skirt, "moving on, did you manage to get your, uh, your thing back from your brother?"

It took me a moment to process that they were talking to me. "Oh, my RAT? Yeah, I still don't know why he had it, but I found it with his collection of Doodlebops CDs and cans of baked beans."

Blair frowned. "Wait, I'm sorry, your rat?"

"Oh no, not like...an actual rat. It's a guitar pedal."

In the morning, I was texting Fal and decided to tell them about how my attempt to locate the things I'd need for band practice turned into an episode of Inch High, Private Eye.

That's another Scooby-Doo clone if you're wondering.

"Ah. That makes more sense. It's also a relief because I like rats about as much as I like Twizzlers."

"Really? I don't mind rats. Ed used to have one when we were younger. His name was Butter."

"Butter?" she repeated.

"Yeah, he also considered naming him Eggs Benedict."

"Y'know dude, I don't understand how you think the eight-legged beast that you keep as a pet is cute but find rats scary."

Blair poked Leslie with the Twizzler that had previously been in her lunch. "Excuse you, Mr. Stubbs is not a beast. He's a handsome, charming young man that owes me five dollars."

"Five dollars? Why does he owe you five dollars?" I asked.

"It's what he pays me every month in exchange for keeping the secrets that he whispers into the darkness of my bedroom in the dead of night to myself," she explained in a purposefully tremulous voice.

"Okay man, that's fucking horrifying."

"Thank you."

Freddy and Bon-Bon reappeared.

"What took you two so long?" Fallon questioned.

"I DECIDED TO G-GO TO THE VENDING MACHINE." He produced a giant bag of coins from behind his back. "HOW MANY D-DIMES MAKES $2.45?"

"Nickels," Bon-Bon corrected.

"HOW M-MANY NICKELS MAKES $2.45?"

"49," Leslie answered instantly.

"OKAY, THANKS." 

And then Freddy ran off again.

"That was fast." Fallon put on an impression of Leslie's voice. "Asuh, dude? I'm Leslie and I'm not a nerd, but watch me instantly answer your math questions and spend my free time in the morning doing whiteboard coding."

Before first hour, the twins were having another one of those "I'm not a nerd, you are" conversations. I guess it still wasn't over yet.

Leslie just frowned. "Okay, like, it wasn't even a hard question, whiteboard coding is fun, and I have never said, 'asuh dude' even once in my entire life."

"What do you mean? You said it just now," Blair pointed out.

"That doesn't— that's not— shit, you're right!"

"Okay, but is nobody going to acknowledge how fucking flawless that impression was?" I asked. "Are we just gonna brush past that?"

"Oh, that's right," Fallon said. "I've never done something like in front of you, have I?"

"Man, Fal's like, greatest talent is impressions. I'm surprised you haven't heard them do one before."

"Yeah, me too. What the hell? That was awesome."

"Thank you." They grinned, now doing a flawless impression of my voice.

"Wow...also great, but I kind of hate that."

"Yo, say Prilosec in her voice. For some reason, I've always wanted to hear Baby say Prilosec."

"Prilosec."

I gave Leslie a look. "Y'know, if you wanted to hear me say that, you could've just asked me to."

"Yeah, but it's fuckin' weird to be all like, 'Hey, man, can you just say Prilosec for me real quick?'"

"But it's not weird to ask your sibling, who's doing an impression of me, to say it right in front of me?"

"No."

"Okay then."

"Hey, I think Freddy has his arm stuck in the vending machine."

All of us followed Blair's gaze over to the vending machine, which Freddy appeared to have the entirety of his arm in.

"Yeah, I think you're right," I said. "We should probably help him out."

We then proceeded to dump all of our garbage into a nearby trashcan, collect our bags, and spend most of the rest of the lunch period trying to free him while Bon-Bon complained.

Once Freddy had his arm back, we realized that whatever the hell he had bought with his surplus of nickels was still stuck in the machine.

And as though they could see the cogs turning in her head, Blair and Fallon both started to say something about how Leslie shouldn't ram herself into it to loosen the snack.

But of course, before either of them could finish, she was already in the process of doing that.

She did manage to get it loose, but Principal Afton rounded the corner and saw her, spent a good five minutes chewing her out, and another ten going off about something one of her stepbrothers had done last week while we all awkwardly stood there and waited for him to finish.