Accounting

The warm white lamps and the glow of the television illuminated their gourmet spread: a half-and-half pizza, one house salad, one two liter, and a drained container of marinara into which a breadstick bag had been crumpled up and entombed. The television was on mostly for background noise. Meyer figured Arnaud must've flipped through the entire channel guide twice before settling on some program about ancient Egypt; he hadn't paid much attention to it, focused instead on his salad. Arnaud took that moment to break his concentration.

"So," the aardwolf muttered through a mouthful of double pepperoni pizza, "what was Maryland like?"

Meyer pushed some lettuce around in his salad, digging for carrot strips. Rowan's never did make a good to-go bowl of greens. "People really like crab, I guess. I don't know. It was Maryland."

"You got out on the weekends, right?"

"I, yeah. I mean, when I could. I guess. I was busy a lot." He took a few pensive thrusts at some roughage and shoved a forkload in his mouth. "Between fencing, and running, and college coursework, and my improv class, and the pep band, and labs, and studying, there was a lot going on."

"Improv?"

"Yeah, you know. Comedy n' shit. That stuff where the audience yells three things and you just sort of" – the hare pantomimed being in a box – "act it out."

Arnaud laughed, a kind of lilting giggle that, for a moment, made Meyer's expression break the barrier between frown and smile. "Wow! Really? I cannot fathom it."

"What?" Meyer tilted his head.

He wiped his chin. "You, doing improv. You're just so..."

Realizing that any word at the end of that sentence adds no value to the conversation and that the hare was probably feeling a bit raw right now after already having been vulnerable, he changed the subject. "N-never mind," he said, and then, after a pause: "Do you remember Cliff?"

"Cliff...wait, Clifton? They were the, uh...the lemur, right? In guitar tech class? With the 'runny nose?'" Meyer stopped digging through his salad, shoved it away. He grabbed the last slice of supreme from the pizza box. "Hmm."

"Yeah, yeah! They lead the house band down at D'artagnan's now."

"Wild. Are they still, like...you know," Meyer said, making a very exaggerated sniffing noise. He coughed a little.

Arnaud frowned. "No, thank goodness, they've actually been clean for a while now. Well, at least, not coke. I think. I don't know. I usually don't go down there except for trivia nights. Cliff's not around for those. But they seem like they're a lot better off. I hear they're well!"

"That's good," the hare said. He stopped for a moment to swallow. "Wait, you still keep up with people from high school?"

"Yeah, occasionally! Some of us went to PCTC together. Remember Paula, from band? The macaw?"

"No."

"She had the, uh," Arnaud started snapping his fingers. "Oh, oh oh! The, uh. Hmm. She played tuba, you know? And she had the funk machine cat tattooed on her neck?"

"Ohhhhhhh, yeah. Now I remember her. And she was the one that had the, like, the really huge crest?"

"Yeah, yeah! She and I went through the education program together. She's a science teacher now! She moved a few months ago, to Pittsburgh."

"Crazy," Meyer said. "Absolutely bonkers. Never would have figured her for that. Didn't she used to cut class practically all the time?"

"When wasn't she cutting class?" Arnaud laughed. "She used to joke that teaching was her penance. But she's great at it! And her students love her, too."

The hare raised an eyebrow. "Hold, hold on. Does she still have the tattoo?"

"You better believe it!"

The floodgates were open. They chatted for a while more while they ate, mostly about people they knew in their teenage years and how they changed; reminisced about their mutual friend Toby who died trying to beat a train crossing; surprise that Arnaud's older sister July had moved to Portugal a year ago to study cooking in Lisbon.

Meyer threw himself back against the couch, triumphant in his victory against dinner. "God I had honestly forgotten how good Rowan's is."

Arnaud groaned contentedly, slumping in his chair. "Did they not have good pizza in Baltimore?"

"I mean, yeah," Meyer chuckled, "but a taste of the familiar is nice."

The television had changed subjects now. Arnaud did, too.

"Hey, My? I'm curious."

"Yeah?"

"Why did you come back?"

Meyer sighed. "You know why."

"Well, I mean. I don't know know, but, that's not what I mean. You could have gone anywhere. I know about your...situation. It's not like people don't know about the Hasenkamps around town." Meyer winced; Arnaud continued. "Why come back here instead of, I don't know, Seattle or Anchorage or London?"

"I don't know anyone there, Arnaud."

"But it's not Hollyhawk. You always said you hated it here."

Meyer only now realized he'd never really interrogated that choice.

The moment he found himself standing outside his residence hall, bags slung over his shoulder and box of tchotchkes in his hands, his prey brain kicked in, flight-or-fight response gearing up full throttle to flight mode. His brain had made a checklist whose only item was "escape" repeated into infinity. Hollyhawk was the only place he'd ever known, the Hasenkamp estate his only home, but he knew he couldn't go back there – his parents had made that very clear the first time he lost athletic eligibility.

He left his box of stuff with a friend in town that said they'd hold onto it for a little while until he knew where he was going. He'd stayed in a hotel room for about a week while he'd laid out his plans. The hare knew damn well he only had one place he could go, really, but even when he got there he didn't know where he'd end up. All he knew is that all roads led to Home, to Hollyhawk.

He'd fished his phone out of his pocket and did a quick internet search for 12 oaks hollyhawk. "Rooms by the week or by the month," the website's banner read, "No questions asked!" Using the online form, he'd put down a fake name and a $1200 refundable deposit on a studio with a murphy bed. That would, at the very least, prevent anyone back home from asking about his return in advance, he figured.

Later that night, when the adrenaline had worn off and he'd realized he was now in an unwinnable situation, he opened his social media app and started doomscrolling. For a while, he felt "better." At least I'm not the only one with problems, he figured. He decided he'd post something to let people who may (or may not) have been listening know what was going on:

wellp, heading home. guess college isnt for me lol

He hit send. He opened and pounded a bottle of wine he spotted in the hotel minibar to "clear his head" which only lead to more posting:

do you kknow how bad u have to fuck up to get expelled. its bad

And more posting.

done with baltimore. done with a lot of shit. i need a reset.

Drunk Meyer did a lot more posting that night, it turned out, and Sober Meyer had to go back and clean up the mess. But they were up long enough for at least one person to have spotted them.

"I don't know," Meyer said. "I'm not really sure of anything. I just felt like...I knew after what happened I couldn't stay in town, and I didn't want to be there after all that. But I didn't want to start over."

"So...what, is this like, 'atonement' for you then?"

"Atone–what? No. You grew up in, like, Fargo, right?. Didn't you ever go back there to see family?"

Surprised he remembered, Arnaud paused. "I mean. Only when I was about this tall," he said, laying his palm flat in the air about two feet off the ground. I grew up here, for the most part. Hollyhawk is home to me."

"And you couldn't ever imagine leaving it, right?"

"Not really."

"Agh, dammit, I'm not, that's the wrong thing. I can't really...ugh, how do I explain this," the hare groaned. "I feel drawn here. Like, I wanted to get away so bad. I went and did everything I was told. I climbed the ladder, right?" He started to angle his hand, gesturing upwards like a plane taking off from a really short runway. "Then I got out into the world and found out that my best wasn't good enough so I tried even harder. But that didn't work either. I wasn't good enough. I'll never be good enough unless I'm the absolute best. So, I took some shortcuts and I got caught," he said, angling his hand so it crashed into his other hand and making an explosion noise with his mouth. "So now I'm here."

"That doesn't really explain–"

"I'm here because I don't want it to happen again, okay? This...this is the safe bet for me, Arnaud."

"Oh," Arnaud said. He frowned.

The silence felt pregnant. "What?"

"Safe how?"

Meyer sighed, loudly. "I guess, because, like. I can try and find something to do in town. Settle down a little, you know. Un-rattle my head. Find an apartment, maybe a job. The mill's always hiring, maybe someth–"

"You gotta be kidding!" Arnaud exclaimed, "You are not working at the mill! You wanna lose a hand?"

"Shit, man, what the hell else is there to do around here?"

"Lots," the aardwolf started, "I don't know, My. I mean," he gestured towards Meyer's fencing bag, "you were, like, the Fencing Prodigy of Plymouth County. Maybe you could teach–"

The hare scowled. Arnaud could hear his teeth grinding. "Absolutely not. No fencing." And drop the prodigy shit while you're at it, he thought.

"Okay, well. What about flute? Didn't you win a competition or something?"

"I had an audition lined up at Berklee but I, uh." Meyer closed his eyes and sighed. He could hear his father screaming at him somewhere in the back of his brain. He flinched. "Wasn't gonna happen."

"Something I'm sure you can build off of, at least." The aardwolf leaned forward as excitedly as he could for a person halfway in a food coma. "Got an idea. Let's go down to D'artagnan's tomorrow and see if Cliff's there. Maybe they know someone!"

"'Know someone?' What am I gonna do, play flute for 'Clifton and the Four Toes'?"

"That is not the name of their band. It's...it's...I think it's called 'Pinebark Extract'. And, anyway, no, I was thinking maybe they know if The Fifth Measure is hiring."

Meyer groaned internally and rolled his eyes externally. The thought of pushing Hal Leonard method books and getting yelled at by soccer moms over instrument rental charges wasn't the most appealing thing in the world, but it wasn't the lumber mill, and it was in a part of town his parents wouldn't be caught in. A drink might take the sting out of being back, though. "All right, sure. Fine."

"Sssssssweet!" Arnaud pumped his fist excitedly. "It's a date, then. C'mon, help me get this cleaned up."

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