He glanced down at it, then back up at me, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Why?” he asked. “Worried the soul of that cow you consumed last night won’t allow you to reach your full potential?” He looked over at Otter and reached out to pat his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “You must be so bored by now. You know. In the bedroom.” This last part came out as a whisper.
“Hey! He eats meat too,” I reminded the both of them angrily, as Otter looked like he had just been given the Nobel Prize for Awesomeness.
“He does,” the Kid agreed. “But he at least has the common sense to feel guilty about it afterwards.”
“I do,” Otter whispered. “Sometimes, it’s hard for me to get to sleep at night, knowing the next morning I’ll be eating a big pile of bacon while I cry.”
“Oh, Otter,” the Kid sighed greatly, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “If only there was a vegetarian church where you could go confess and be absolved of your meat sins.”
“Like the Church of Edamame?”
“Church of Tofu?”
“Church of—”
“So help me God, I will punish the both of you,” I growled, ignoring the smirk in the Kid’s eyes and the flare of lust in Otter’s.
?
??What is your major malfunction?” the Kid asked. He and Otter had recently watched Full Metal Jacket, and Tyson had thought Gunnery Sergeant Hartman was God. He asked me that question at least six times a day now. I told Otter he was never allowed to pick out movies ever again.
Otter had just grinned and told me to shut up.
“You can’t wear a shirt that talks about sex!”
“Who says?”
“I do! You’re nine years old!”
“Oh, please. I’m not wearing it because I have sex. I’m wearing it because it’s a proven fact. And I’m nine and one-quarter. That’s practically ten. Double digits, Papa Bear.”
“Proven by who?” I asked suspiciously.
He looked at me as if I was stupid. “PETA.”
I was incredulous. “PETA said that? PETA? Tyson, that’s like the NRA saying guns don’t kill people, that people kill people. Of course they say that!”
“I think both guns and people kill people,” Otter said, obviously contributing to the conversation.
The Kid looked at me with some newfound respect. “That was a highly intelligent observation, Bear,” he told me. “Color me surprised.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, blushing.
“No, seriously. It sounds like you may have actually read something.”
“Well, there was this thing online. You know. It just kind of caught my eye.”
“Good for you. It’s awesome to see you are broadening your horizons.”
“Yeah. And there was this other thing? On, like, how there’s all these uprisings? You know, in like Egypt and Syria and stuff like that? That looked… bad… for all those people.”
He nodded gravely. “A lot of suffering going on across the pond. I hope one day they can find peace and all the citizens can be free.”
I felt relieved. “Me too.”
He clapped his hands together. “Well,” he said. “This has been a most interesting breakfast. I really feel that we all learned something today. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some… things… I need to do online.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling at him. “Just remember, you need to start packing up your books this morning too.”