Mousefix
Pairing: S/K
Rating: PG
I'm trying to write more short, fast, crappy stories.
It was the night before Christmas, and Kyle was spending it standing on Stan’s desk chair clutching the seatback with his ass in the air, screaming, “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ!”
“Calm down, dude,” Stan was saying. “It’s just a fucking mouse.”
“Yeah! Those things are fucking disgusting! What if it’s not a mouse, what if it’s a rat! What if it’s got a disease! What if it gives me tapeworms!” Kyle stopped short of pointing out that Stan’s feet hadn’t touched the floor since they saw the mouse scurry across the top of Stan’s dresser, either.
Stan rolled his eyes. “Okay, look. He’s not going to give you tapeworms. Not unless you make out with him.” Stan and Kyle had been making out when the mouse interrupted them and sent Kyle shrieking for the chair. “Come down from there before you fall.”
“I’m not going to fall! And I’m not coming down until you get rid of the rat!”
“It’s a mouse. And there’s nothing I can do. Look, he’s probably in the walls, he’s probably gone.”
This was of course when the mouse made his second appearance, running to Stan’s closet from underneath his bed.
Kyle shrieked and almost fell off the chair.
“Aw. Look, dude, he’s pretty cute. He’s got big eyes.” Stan crawled over to the edge of his mattress. Kyle kindly did not point out that Stan’s pajama pants and boxers were still around his knees, and that Kyle could see Stan’s butt crack. Kyle’s briefs were wadded up on the floor, and he was thankful for the two fresh pairs in his overnight bag, because anything on the carpet that mouse had just run across was never going to touch his body again. “I like this mouse,” Stan decided.
“Get rid of him! Get rid of him or I am never coming to your house again!”
“I bet your house is full of mice.”
“I assure you, it is not.”
“Colorado in the winter? I’m sure it is, yeah, where do you think the mice go when it freezes? Inside.”
“Yeah, to Kenny’s house,” Kyle said. “Rodents live in crack shacks. I didn’t realize you lived in a crack shack!”
“It’s just one mouse.” Stan wisely did not note that often if you saw one mouse, there wan an entire army somewhere, hiding away, nesting in bits of old shoelace and fluffy insulation.
“I want it dead,” said Kyle. “It’s unsanitary, it’s disgusting. I’m not coming back until you hire an exterminator. Get your dad to get it. Do anything. But I’m not getting off this chair until the mouse is dead.”
“Okay.” Stan didn’t want the mouse dead; Stan liked mice. He liked all kinds of animals, still liked to go digging in the mud on his hands and knees for salamanders and newts in the summer. Stan did not get up and change seats if the squirrels got too close to his table at lunch in the warm months, and he did not flick ladybugs and grasshoppers off of him at picnics; he let them crawl up his arms, not minding. “Listen,” Stan said. “I’m not going to get my dad.” Mr. Marsh had gotten drunk at dinner and passed out in Christmas mass, snoring through the sermon. “And it’s the holidays, dude, I really don’t think exterminators are open for business.”
“What? What kind of society are we living in? Okay, fine. Get your dog, we’ll feed him to your dog.”
Stan’s old mutt was sleeping under the tree downstairs; he was not the type to chase sticks, let alone some mouse. “Kyle, just get down from that chair and put your underwear back on.”
“Sorry, I forgot you were the modern-day Snow White, with your army of big-eyed forest creatures!”
Stan laughed. If Kyle thought that was an insult, he was going to be proven wrong. “So I like animals,” he said. “Whatever. You’re into nerdy shit, too.” Kyle was majoring in something called ‘family and consumer sciences.’ He was always making charts, often with a protractor. “I’ve never known you to be so afraid of mice before.”
“I’ve never had a live one close enough to pee on my face before.”
“All right.” Stan readjusted his boxers. Just as he was getting up to physically carry Kyle from the chair back to bed, the mouse made another appearance, running over Stan’s feet.
“Jesus! Jesus!”
“Shhh, calm down.”
“It touched you!”
“Yeah, I bet I’m diseased now.”
“Oh lord!” Kyle buried his face in Stan’s neck, just in time to be deposited on the bed.
“Knock it off!” Stan admonished. “It’s 3 a.m. My whole family is sleeping.” Stan’s whole family comprised his parents, his 116-year-old grandfather, the oldest man in Colorado according to a recent feature in Parade Magazine, his older sister, and her fiancé, a guy with dreadlocks who went by the name Bash!0; he was a professional gamer, and had recently taken runner-up at the Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament at SuperPlayGameSuperCon in Colorado Springs. “Stop yelling. I’ll take care of the mouse, all right?” Stan tossed Kyle’s underwear at his face.
“I’m not going to wear these; they’ve been on your floor.”
“Fine, don’t wear anything.” Stan was pulling on his pants. “That’ll make things easiest when I get back.”
“How can you think of sex at a time like this?”
“Because it takes more than a mouse to kill my libido,” Stan said, although he had definitely lost his erection around the time Kyle crawled onto that chair.
“I’m going to stay here.” Kyle buried himself under the covers. “Let me know when the mouse is dead.”
“I’m not going to kill it.”
“Dead, gone, out of my life - get rid of it, okay? That’s all I ask.”
Stan left without kissing Kyle goodbye like he wanted; he returned carrying a big plastic tub with high walls.
“What is that?” Kyle asked when the door was shut; he had spent the past 10 minutes pulling Stan’s duvet around his shoulders tighter when he heard the mouse scurry over Stan’s books and history notes on loose-leaf.
“This is what I bathe my dog in,” Stan said. He put the tub in the middle of the room. “I’m going to use it to catch the mouse.”
“So great, either your dog is going to get tapeworm from that mouse, or that mouse is going to get ringworm from your dog and then when he crawls into bed and bites me I’ll have both tapeworm and ringworm.”
“What’s with you and worms?” Stan was removing different things from the tub, a long poster tube and a roll of packing tape, a scissors and a bowl, some cardboard and twist ties.
“What are you doing?” Kyle inched forward. “That mouse is going to crawl all over you.”
“I don’t mind. I like him.”
“You keep saying you like him!”
“Yeah, he’s cute.” Stan was taping the tube to his desk chair and the tub so that one end of the tube was on the seat, the other hanging over the tub. “So the mouse is going to climb into this tube. He’s going to fall into the tub and we’re going to catch him humanely and let him go.”
“Oh, all right. How’s he going to get into the tube?”
“He’ll climb in there voluntarily, mice like to climb.”
“But how’s he gonna get into the tube? Like, it’s all the way up there-”
“Simple,” said Stan, “that’s what this cardboard’s for.” He began to tape together a ramp up to the chair. “And there’s bait in the tub, there’s a piece of pineapple. He’ll like it and he’ll climb in there.”
“Won’t he poop in the tub?”
“Maybe?” Stan pulled a piece of packing tape from his roll, shrugging. “I can wash it out. With a hose or something.”
“I can’t wait to go back to school,” Kyle groaned, “where the halls are full of poison and all the pests die.”
“Breathing that shit in is horrible for you, though.” Stan climbed back into bed, having finished putting the final touches on his mousetrap. He and Kyle did not room together, although they often talked about getting an off-campus apartment for their senior year. Stan was not sure they’d be able to afford something guaranteed not to have mice, though. Maybe it was best to stay in the dorms, where Kyle could stay over almost every night anyway.
Kyle wrapped Stan up in the duvet, and they pulled together. “I’m not worried about it.” He yawned.
“You tired?” Stan asked. They were back where they’d left off, under the covers together, Stan’s hands on Kyle’s behind, light and reverent.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, you should go to sleep.” Stan kissed Kyle on the temple.
“You’re not going to sleep?”
“No,” said Stan. “I want to watch what happens with the mouse.”
“He’s a stupid mouse, he’s going to fall into your trap.”
“But I want to see him do it! Regardless.”
“Well, I’m going to sleep.”
“ ’Kay. You do that.”
Kyle did; he fell asleep with his arms tucked under Stan’s chest, and his nose in Stan’s shoulder.
~
When Kyle woke up the sun was in his eyes, and he rolled over to grapple with the alarm. He then realized that he was in Stan’s bed, it was Christmas, there was no alarm, and that the sun had woken him up. He blinked away the dryness of his contacts, stiff in his eyes, and finally spied Stan sitting on the desk chair, arms and legs crossed, peering down into a giant tub.
“Oh, hey,” Stan said, looking up. “Happy Christmas.”
“You too.” Yawning, Kyle emerged from the covers, and was about to step onto the floor when he remembered that was where the mouse was.
“It’s okay.” Stan pointed into the tub. “I got him.”
“You got him? What, did you sit up all night with that mouse?”
“Yeah, no, I fell asleep. But I had to wake up a while back to let Sparky out, and. Here he is.” Stan got up. “You want to see him?”
“What! Ew, no.”
“Kyle, he’s really cute.”
“I don’t understand,” Kyle said. “I don’t understand why you like filthy little animals-”
“You mean, like you? You’re a filthy little animal.”
“I’m not! I mean - shut up!”
“Here.” Stan stooped down and reached into the tub. “Are you sure you don’t want to come see him? He’s really great, he’s eating some pineapple.”
“I don’t care,” said Kyle. “I want you to get rid of him!”
“Okay.” Stan stood up, frowning.
“And please wash your hands!”
“I’ll get rid of him after Christmas.”
“No, now!”
“Kyle.”
“I’m not getting out of bed until you get rid of that mouse.”
Stan rolled his eyes. He was exasperated. “Fine. But, on one condition. You have to come with me.”
“Um.” Kyle pulled the duvet up over his lap. “I dunno, it’s pretty cold out.”
“Yeah, I know, he’ll probably die out there.” Stan glanced down into the tub. “So are you sure you don’t want to just look at him? Once? I know you’re not afraid of mice, Kyle, really-”
Knocking came to the doorframe. “Boys!” Stan’s mother shouted through the wall. “Are you both decent?”
Stan smiled to himself. “Yeah.” He got up to open the door for his mother.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, kissing his face. “We’re going to open gifts now, if you’re ready.”
“I was born ready,” Stan said. It made Kyle roll his eyes.
There were always presents under the tree for Kyle, a gesture of support he found impossible to interpret. He thanked them profusely for his gifts, a nice sweater vest he’d exchange later for one in a more neutral color, and a $25 gift card to Barnes & Noble. There were a number of paperbacks on his shortlist and when he told Stan’s mother he appreciated it, he was being very sincere. Kyle trudged back upstairs after a breakfast of fat pancakes and sausages with his sweater in his arms. Stan hadn’t given him anything, but they never exchanged gifts. There was too much margin for disappointment, and they shared everything anyhow.
Kyle fled back under the covers, waiting for Stan to come in.
“You know,” he said when he did, “you said you’d go down to the pond to get rid of the mouse with me.”
Kyle peeked out from under the duvet, first his eyes and then his nose. “I’m cold,” he said. “And it’s snowing. Besides, I never said anything about going to the pond.”
“I want to leave him somewhere he’s got a good chance to surviving. He’ll get hit in the street, or a cat’ll get him.”
Ready to say no, Kyle opened his mouth. But then he saw the look of loss on Stan’s face, a sort of grim resolve, and said, “Okay.”
~
They tended to walk arm-in-arm, but Kyle didn’t want to with Stan cupping the mouse in his hands. In his heavy brown boots and down parka to his knees, Kyle felt imperious, somehow bigger than the little town they’d almost left behind. They walked by his own house, a different shade of green paint; Kyle’s parents were miserly beyond reason, and they didn’t have up any Christmas lights, of course, with Hanukkah having ended just a week before.
“We could stop and say hi to your parents,” Stan suggested. He was making a faithful effort to keep the mouse obscured from Kyle’s view.
“Forget it.” Kyle’s hands clenched in his pockets. “We’ll have to see them tomorrow.”
They passed other houses, Clyde’s and Butters’, and Butters waved to them from the bay window, where he was sitting with a book. Stan couldn’t wave with his hands full, so Kyle waved for them both.
At the pond, Stan knelt beside a Douglas fir and said, “Well, it’s goodbye for now.”
“I hope we never see him again.”
“You haven’t seen him in the first place.” In his ear muffs and puffy jacket, Stan seemed almost boyish in his disappointment.
“All right.” Kyle sighed, kicking at the snow. “If either of us is getting tapeworms, I bet we’ve got it by now. So let’s see.”
Stan opened his hands to reveal a round, gray little thing with black eyes, trembling in his hands.
“Oh my god,” Kyle gasped.
“What?”
“That’s a field mouse.”
“Great, he’ll be happy in this field here.”
“No, I mean.” Kyle drew in closer. “That looks like a kind of mouse from Europe, like, a little wood mouse. We don’t have them around here. Generally.”
“How do you know that?” Stan asked.
“Well, I suppose we had a unit on mice in one of those veterinary sciences classes I took. We, um, dissected little mice.”
“I remember that. This one reminds you of the one you dissected?”
“No,” said Kyle. “I mean, yes, well - only in that he’s different-looking, he’s cuter.”
“I’ve been saying he’s pretty cute.”
“But he’s still dirty!”
“Well, good bye,” Stan said to the mouse, kneeling down again to let him go.
“Wait!”
Stan looked up. “Yes?”
“You can’t.” Kyle bit his lip. He sighed. “You can’t leave him here.”
Stan stared up at Kyle for a moment. “Why not?”
“He’s not indigenous.” Kyle crossed his arms. “He’s probably someone’s little pet, he’s not from around here. So you don’t want to just let him go like this.”
“I don’t? Why not?”
“He’ll probably breed or something-”
“There’s only one of him.”
“How do you know it’s not a she and she’s not pregnant?”
“Guess we don’t,” said Stan. “Did you learn at school? Wanna check?”
“No!”
“Then what do you propose I do?”
Kyle uncrossed his arms. “I think you’ll have to take him to a pet shop,” he said. “Or at least put up some ‘missing mouse’ signs. But since it’s Christmas and nothing’s open … well, we’ll just have to take him home. You know. For now.”
Stan stood, grinning. “All right,” he said, pecking Kyle on the neck, but mostly getting Kyle’s soft alpaca scarf. “That’ll do.”
They walked home.
Rating: PG
I'm trying to write more short, fast, crappy stories.
It was the night before Christmas, and Kyle was spending it standing on Stan’s desk chair clutching the seatback with his ass in the air, screaming, “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ!”
“Calm down, dude,” Stan was saying. “It’s just a fucking mouse.”
“Yeah! Those things are fucking disgusting! What if it’s not a mouse, what if it’s a rat! What if it’s got a disease! What if it gives me tapeworms!” Kyle stopped short of pointing out that Stan’s feet hadn’t touched the floor since they saw the mouse scurry across the top of Stan’s dresser, either.
Stan rolled his eyes. “Okay, look. He’s not going to give you tapeworms. Not unless you make out with him.” Stan and Kyle had been making out when the mouse interrupted them and sent Kyle shrieking for the chair. “Come down from there before you fall.”
“I’m not going to fall! And I’m not coming down until you get rid of the rat!”
“It’s a mouse. And there’s nothing I can do. Look, he’s probably in the walls, he’s probably gone.”
This was of course when the mouse made his second appearance, running to Stan’s closet from underneath his bed.
Kyle shrieked and almost fell off the chair.
“Aw. Look, dude, he’s pretty cute. He’s got big eyes.” Stan crawled over to the edge of his mattress. Kyle kindly did not point out that Stan’s pajama pants and boxers were still around his knees, and that Kyle could see Stan’s butt crack. Kyle’s briefs were wadded up on the floor, and he was thankful for the two fresh pairs in his overnight bag, because anything on the carpet that mouse had just run across was never going to touch his body again. “I like this mouse,” Stan decided.
“Get rid of him! Get rid of him or I am never coming to your house again!”
“I bet your house is full of mice.”
“I assure you, it is not.”
“Colorado in the winter? I’m sure it is, yeah, where do you think the mice go when it freezes? Inside.”
“Yeah, to Kenny’s house,” Kyle said. “Rodents live in crack shacks. I didn’t realize you lived in a crack shack!”
“It’s just one mouse.” Stan wisely did not note that often if you saw one mouse, there wan an entire army somewhere, hiding away, nesting in bits of old shoelace and fluffy insulation.
“I want it dead,” said Kyle. “It’s unsanitary, it’s disgusting. I’m not coming back until you hire an exterminator. Get your dad to get it. Do anything. But I’m not getting off this chair until the mouse is dead.”
“Okay.” Stan didn’t want the mouse dead; Stan liked mice. He liked all kinds of animals, still liked to go digging in the mud on his hands and knees for salamanders and newts in the summer. Stan did not get up and change seats if the squirrels got too close to his table at lunch in the warm months, and he did not flick ladybugs and grasshoppers off of him at picnics; he let them crawl up his arms, not minding. “Listen,” Stan said. “I’m not going to get my dad.” Mr. Marsh had gotten drunk at dinner and passed out in Christmas mass, snoring through the sermon. “And it’s the holidays, dude, I really don’t think exterminators are open for business.”
“What? What kind of society are we living in? Okay, fine. Get your dog, we’ll feed him to your dog.”
Stan’s old mutt was sleeping under the tree downstairs; he was not the type to chase sticks, let alone some mouse. “Kyle, just get down from that chair and put your underwear back on.”
“Sorry, I forgot you were the modern-day Snow White, with your army of big-eyed forest creatures!”
Stan laughed. If Kyle thought that was an insult, he was going to be proven wrong. “So I like animals,” he said. “Whatever. You’re into nerdy shit, too.” Kyle was majoring in something called ‘family and consumer sciences.’ He was always making charts, often with a protractor. “I’ve never known you to be so afraid of mice before.”
“I’ve never had a live one close enough to pee on my face before.”
“All right.” Stan readjusted his boxers. Just as he was getting up to physically carry Kyle from the chair back to bed, the mouse made another appearance, running over Stan’s feet.
“Jesus! Jesus!”
“Shhh, calm down.”
“It touched you!”
“Yeah, I bet I’m diseased now.”
“Oh lord!” Kyle buried his face in Stan’s neck, just in time to be deposited on the bed.
“Knock it off!” Stan admonished. “It’s 3 a.m. My whole family is sleeping.” Stan’s whole family comprised his parents, his 116-year-old grandfather, the oldest man in Colorado according to a recent feature in Parade Magazine, his older sister, and her fiancé, a guy with dreadlocks who went by the name Bash!0; he was a professional gamer, and had recently taken runner-up at the Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament at SuperPlayGameSuperCon in Colorado Springs. “Stop yelling. I’ll take care of the mouse, all right?” Stan tossed Kyle’s underwear at his face.
“I’m not going to wear these; they’ve been on your floor.”
“Fine, don’t wear anything.” Stan was pulling on his pants. “That’ll make things easiest when I get back.”
“How can you think of sex at a time like this?”
“Because it takes more than a mouse to kill my libido,” Stan said, although he had definitely lost his erection around the time Kyle crawled onto that chair.
“I’m going to stay here.” Kyle buried himself under the covers. “Let me know when the mouse is dead.”
“I’m not going to kill it.”
“Dead, gone, out of my life - get rid of it, okay? That’s all I ask.”
Stan left without kissing Kyle goodbye like he wanted; he returned carrying a big plastic tub with high walls.
“What is that?” Kyle asked when the door was shut; he had spent the past 10 minutes pulling Stan’s duvet around his shoulders tighter when he heard the mouse scurry over Stan’s books and history notes on loose-leaf.
“This is what I bathe my dog in,” Stan said. He put the tub in the middle of the room. “I’m going to use it to catch the mouse.”
“So great, either your dog is going to get tapeworm from that mouse, or that mouse is going to get ringworm from your dog and then when he crawls into bed and bites me I’ll have both tapeworm and ringworm.”
“What’s with you and worms?” Stan was removing different things from the tub, a long poster tube and a roll of packing tape, a scissors and a bowl, some cardboard and twist ties.
“What are you doing?” Kyle inched forward. “That mouse is going to crawl all over you.”
“I don’t mind. I like him.”
“You keep saying you like him!”
“Yeah, he’s cute.” Stan was taping the tube to his desk chair and the tub so that one end of the tube was on the seat, the other hanging over the tub. “So the mouse is going to climb into this tube. He’s going to fall into the tub and we’re going to catch him humanely and let him go.”
“Oh, all right. How’s he going to get into the tube?”
“He’ll climb in there voluntarily, mice like to climb.”
“But how’s he gonna get into the tube? Like, it’s all the way up there-”
“Simple,” said Stan, “that’s what this cardboard’s for.” He began to tape together a ramp up to the chair. “And there’s bait in the tub, there’s a piece of pineapple. He’ll like it and he’ll climb in there.”
“Won’t he poop in the tub?”
“Maybe?” Stan pulled a piece of packing tape from his roll, shrugging. “I can wash it out. With a hose or something.”
“I can’t wait to go back to school,” Kyle groaned, “where the halls are full of poison and all the pests die.”
“Breathing that shit in is horrible for you, though.” Stan climbed back into bed, having finished putting the final touches on his mousetrap. He and Kyle did not room together, although they often talked about getting an off-campus apartment for their senior year. Stan was not sure they’d be able to afford something guaranteed not to have mice, though. Maybe it was best to stay in the dorms, where Kyle could stay over almost every night anyway.
Kyle wrapped Stan up in the duvet, and they pulled together. “I’m not worried about it.” He yawned.
“You tired?” Stan asked. They were back where they’d left off, under the covers together, Stan’s hands on Kyle’s behind, light and reverent.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, you should go to sleep.” Stan kissed Kyle on the temple.
“You’re not going to sleep?”
“No,” said Stan. “I want to watch what happens with the mouse.”
“He’s a stupid mouse, he’s going to fall into your trap.”
“But I want to see him do it! Regardless.”
“Well, I’m going to sleep.”
“ ’Kay. You do that.”
Kyle did; he fell asleep with his arms tucked under Stan’s chest, and his nose in Stan’s shoulder.
~
When Kyle woke up the sun was in his eyes, and he rolled over to grapple with the alarm. He then realized that he was in Stan’s bed, it was Christmas, there was no alarm, and that the sun had woken him up. He blinked away the dryness of his contacts, stiff in his eyes, and finally spied Stan sitting on the desk chair, arms and legs crossed, peering down into a giant tub.
“Oh, hey,” Stan said, looking up. “Happy Christmas.”
“You too.” Yawning, Kyle emerged from the covers, and was about to step onto the floor when he remembered that was where the mouse was.
“It’s okay.” Stan pointed into the tub. “I got him.”
“You got him? What, did you sit up all night with that mouse?”
“Yeah, no, I fell asleep. But I had to wake up a while back to let Sparky out, and. Here he is.” Stan got up. “You want to see him?”
“What! Ew, no.”
“Kyle, he’s really cute.”
“I don’t understand,” Kyle said. “I don’t understand why you like filthy little animals-”
“You mean, like you? You’re a filthy little animal.”
“I’m not! I mean - shut up!”
“Here.” Stan stooped down and reached into the tub. “Are you sure you don’t want to come see him? He’s really great, he’s eating some pineapple.”
“I don’t care,” said Kyle. “I want you to get rid of him!”
“Okay.” Stan stood up, frowning.
“And please wash your hands!”
“I’ll get rid of him after Christmas.”
“No, now!”
“Kyle.”
“I’m not getting out of bed until you get rid of that mouse.”
Stan rolled his eyes. He was exasperated. “Fine. But, on one condition. You have to come with me.”
“Um.” Kyle pulled the duvet up over his lap. “I dunno, it’s pretty cold out.”
“Yeah, I know, he’ll probably die out there.” Stan glanced down into the tub. “So are you sure you don’t want to just look at him? Once? I know you’re not afraid of mice, Kyle, really-”
Knocking came to the doorframe. “Boys!” Stan’s mother shouted through the wall. “Are you both decent?”
Stan smiled to himself. “Yeah.” He got up to open the door for his mother.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, kissing his face. “We’re going to open gifts now, if you’re ready.”
“I was born ready,” Stan said. It made Kyle roll his eyes.
There were always presents under the tree for Kyle, a gesture of support he found impossible to interpret. He thanked them profusely for his gifts, a nice sweater vest he’d exchange later for one in a more neutral color, and a $25 gift card to Barnes & Noble. There were a number of paperbacks on his shortlist and when he told Stan’s mother he appreciated it, he was being very sincere. Kyle trudged back upstairs after a breakfast of fat pancakes and sausages with his sweater in his arms. Stan hadn’t given him anything, but they never exchanged gifts. There was too much margin for disappointment, and they shared everything anyhow.
Kyle fled back under the covers, waiting for Stan to come in.
“You know,” he said when he did, “you said you’d go down to the pond to get rid of the mouse with me.”
Kyle peeked out from under the duvet, first his eyes and then his nose. “I’m cold,” he said. “And it’s snowing. Besides, I never said anything about going to the pond.”
“I want to leave him somewhere he’s got a good chance to surviving. He’ll get hit in the street, or a cat’ll get him.”
Ready to say no, Kyle opened his mouth. But then he saw the look of loss on Stan’s face, a sort of grim resolve, and said, “Okay.”
~
They tended to walk arm-in-arm, but Kyle didn’t want to with Stan cupping the mouse in his hands. In his heavy brown boots and down parka to his knees, Kyle felt imperious, somehow bigger than the little town they’d almost left behind. They walked by his own house, a different shade of green paint; Kyle’s parents were miserly beyond reason, and they didn’t have up any Christmas lights, of course, with Hanukkah having ended just a week before.
“We could stop and say hi to your parents,” Stan suggested. He was making a faithful effort to keep the mouse obscured from Kyle’s view.
“Forget it.” Kyle’s hands clenched in his pockets. “We’ll have to see them tomorrow.”
They passed other houses, Clyde’s and Butters’, and Butters waved to them from the bay window, where he was sitting with a book. Stan couldn’t wave with his hands full, so Kyle waved for them both.
At the pond, Stan knelt beside a Douglas fir and said, “Well, it’s goodbye for now.”
“I hope we never see him again.”
“You haven’t seen him in the first place.” In his ear muffs and puffy jacket, Stan seemed almost boyish in his disappointment.
“All right.” Kyle sighed, kicking at the snow. “If either of us is getting tapeworms, I bet we’ve got it by now. So let’s see.”
Stan opened his hands to reveal a round, gray little thing with black eyes, trembling in his hands.
“Oh my god,” Kyle gasped.
“What?”
“That’s a field mouse.”
“Great, he’ll be happy in this field here.”
“No, I mean.” Kyle drew in closer. “That looks like a kind of mouse from Europe, like, a little wood mouse. We don’t have them around here. Generally.”
“How do you know that?” Stan asked.
“Well, I suppose we had a unit on mice in one of those veterinary sciences classes I took. We, um, dissected little mice.”
“I remember that. This one reminds you of the one you dissected?”
“No,” said Kyle. “I mean, yes, well - only in that he’s different-looking, he’s cuter.”
“I’ve been saying he’s pretty cute.”
“But he’s still dirty!”
“Well, good bye,” Stan said to the mouse, kneeling down again to let him go.
“Wait!”
Stan looked up. “Yes?”
“You can’t.” Kyle bit his lip. He sighed. “You can’t leave him here.”
Stan stared up at Kyle for a moment. “Why not?”
“He’s not indigenous.” Kyle crossed his arms. “He’s probably someone’s little pet, he’s not from around here. So you don’t want to just let him go like this.”
“I don’t? Why not?”
“He’ll probably breed or something-”
“There’s only one of him.”
“How do you know it’s not a she and she’s not pregnant?”
“Guess we don’t,” said Stan. “Did you learn at school? Wanna check?”
“No!”
“Then what do you propose I do?”
Kyle uncrossed his arms. “I think you’ll have to take him to a pet shop,” he said. “Or at least put up some ‘missing mouse’ signs. But since it’s Christmas and nothing’s open … well, we’ll just have to take him home. You know. For now.”
Stan stood, grinning. “All right,” he said, pecking Kyle on the neck, but mostly getting Kyle’s soft alpaca scarf. “That’ll do.”
They walked home.