"What about the ending?" Jeanette, both hands on her coffee. "Can you say mindfuck?"

Simon adjusts his glasses, smirking, "I'd rather not," then he snatches a bite off his frosted butter rum muffin.

"I just keep picturing the judge," sip, "with his parasol made of bones and dead animal flesh," sip, "and the naked fool on a leash," gulp, "wandering frail and wraithlike through the desert…"

"The judge, I think, is my new favorite," air quotes, "Faustian bargain character."

Alvin rolls his eyes, annoyed. Geekiest of the Week material, that's what this conversation is, outclassing even Thursday's debate over creature types in Magic: The Gathering. Not that he's listening.

"Miss!" waggling two fingers at the chunky so-called barista bussing tables nearby. "Miss, I'll take another latte, please! Two shots! Cinnamon syrup! Thank youuuuu!"

"More coffee?" Simon, bemused. "How many is that?"

Alvin turns out his palms. "I dunno. Three? Four?" Under the table his feet are tapdancing in midair. "Helps me relax."

When his cup arrives he pops the top and, with the back of Jeanette's spoon, immediately begins smashing all the syrup and whipped cream down into the coffee proper, then he gives it a quick yet strangely violent stir, drops the spoon and, floating the cup to his lips, slurps a big wad of foam off the top.

"Something wrong, Alvie?"

"I know what it iiiiisssss," Jeanette slyly removing her glasses. "It's Brittany, innit?"

"No!" Of course it is.

"Hot date tonight?"

Alvin bites his teeth together. His pearly whites. "She was, er, noncommittal…"

"Meaning?"

"No specifics," one hand chopping sideways, like an axe into a tree. "Said yes, tonight, but no specifics. S'posed to text me later. After class. Or something."

"Mmkay," Jeanette nodding, simpatico, "that's a start."

"What if she doesn't, though? What if I never hear from her?"

Simon shrugs, then with his thumb and his pinky, wrist jiggling, mimes picking up a phone.

"Are you nuts?" Alvin wide-eyed. "I can't call her!"

"Why not?"

"Because, Simon. Phone calls are creepy. Too much texting is creepy. Facebook comments, especially on pictures: creepy. These are the unwritten rules of courtship."

"Uh, professor?" suddenly cocky, draping an arm around Jeanette's bony shoulders: Who do you think you're talking to?

Alvin ignores him. "Girls are like… like wild horses. You don't just walk up and slap a friggin bridle on em. Ya gotta play it cool. Earn their trust. Talk reeeeeal soft and reeeeeal sweet." He clicks his tongue, hand poised, pretending to stroke a horse's mane. "Phone call equals desperate and desperate equals creepy. I don't wanna make any big sudden movements," flinging his arms up, "or I'll scare her away."

Simon shakes his head disapprovingly. "A bridle, seriously? No saddle? Who are you and what've you done with my brother?"

Grrrrr… "Help me out here, J."

Jeanette looks unsure, eyebrows askew, like she's still deciding whether or not to be offended.

"Just tell me I'm paranoid. Tell me I'm being, uh… over-anna-lit-tickle?"

Simon frowns. "What're you worried about?"

"He's worried," Jeanette, as a matter of fact, "that Brittany's leading him on, and that later—i.e. tonight—she'll flip and blow him off. Same way she does every guy."

"She does that?"

"Welllll…" Alvin, head tilted, grinning nervously, "other guys, yeah. Losers. But she wouldn't do that to moi, right?"

"What makes you so special?"

"Zuh?" Alvin slaps one tiny paw to his chest. "We're all special in our own way, brosef. Me, I'm smar—uh…" (Simon eyeing him suspiciously) "I'm funny? Sometimes? I'm good-looking… y'know, like, when I take the time to…" (Simon still waiting) "Look, side issue! Point is, she obviously likes something about me or she wouldn't've said yes."

"Eh…" Jeanette staring wearily at her coffee. At the little clump of sugar that's surfaced in her coffee. "Not necessarily…"

Alvin groans.

Fueling his anxieties, that's what they're doing. His brain, which labored all week retconning Brittany's weird shoegaze reaction to the question "Ya wanna, like, hang out Saturday night?" now double-retconning, backtracking, replaying the entire scene in super-slow motion. When she said yes, did she hesitate? And for how long? Did she touch her face? Is that a tell? Was he supposed to pick up on that? Would Simon have picked up on that? Why don't they teach this crap in school?

"Okay, Alvin," Simon, elbows on table, interrupting his train of thought, "what do you wanna hear?" Engage sarcasm: "Not only are you brilliant, you're hilarious, and when it comes to girls," mwah, blowing a kiss, "you're simply irresistible. A regular Don Juan. Brittany, she'd have to be crazy or stupid or gay—or some combination thereof—to snub a hotdog like you."

"Good take," Alvin, equally sarcastic. "Now one more time," clap, "with feeling."

Before Simon can oblige, Jeanette elbows him in the ribs. "What your brother's trying to say, Alvin, is that you'd make a great catch for any girl, Brittany included. If she doesn't text you, that's her fault. Could be she's just nervous."

"Nervous?" Alvin blurts out. "It's a date, not a proposal!"

"I knooow, I knooow," speaking now to the ceiling, "but women, we're always thinking long-term. Always thinking two, three months down the road."

"Which means?"

"She's a freshman, duh. Probably worried about getting tied down."

Tied down?

Alvin doesn't know what to do or think or say about that one. Just another thing to deliberate. Another thing floating around in the ether of things to deliberate.

"Well, Romeo," Simon interjecting, "love to split another cup with you," indicating his nonexistent watch, "but Jeanette and I are late for think tank, sooooo…" He shoulders his backpack.

"What?" Jeanette, confused. "We're not late."

"I mean, we could be. If we don't hurry."

Sighs all around.

Simon shimmies out of his chair and hops down to the floor, then very daintily raises one hand as if to assist Jeanette in that same maneuver. But Jeanette's still staring at Alvin, a sort of regret in the purse of her lips, like she wishes she could say more, nothing good coming to mind.

"Uh, Jen?"

"You'll do fine, Alvin," she says suddenly. "Date or no date, when you wake up tomorrow morning, you'll still be the same chipmunk you always were."

"Scary thought," Simon, snickering.

Alvin pops his eyebrows, "Thanks, I guess," and he tries to smile at her, but it's a weak, stupid-looking smile.

Secretly he's thinking: Please, please, just shut the fuck up.

Later he's sitting in the registrar's office wondering how, exactly, he wound up sitting in the registrar's office. So antsy and unmotivated today… after coffee he should've just gone home—back to his and Theodore's dinky townhouse apartment—where for the next several hours he could've melted coolly into the couch, mostly undressed, practicing Akuma combos in AE or clicking intermittently between Spike and Discovery while nursing a bag of Jays Hot Stuff.

But he made it to the registrar's office (somehow) like he'd been planning to do (sort of) since registration closed last week, and now a tall, stiff-looking guy with gray hair and unusually symmetrical face, purple dress shirt and matching tie stands frowningly over him, looking already irritated, as if to him student correspondence is akin to jury duty… or having your teeth pulled… or being told you've developed rectal cancer.

"Alvin? Daryl." Handshake's way too big and squeezy, not safe for little chipmunk paws. "Got a problem with your registration?"

"Uh, yeah…" Alvin wrings his newly cramped wrist. "I got, like, bumped out of COM 200," withdrawing a sheath of paper from the front pocket of his hoodie, "and, like, the way my major is, if I don't take it this semester—"

"C'mon, let's," Daryl cuts him off, beckoning curtly toward his office.

Kinda rude.

People forget: for someone Alvin's size, getting in and out of chairs requires actual effort. Requires jumping and climbing and balancing on things. Doesn't help that the guest chair in Daryl's office is an old, slightly crooked swivel that keeps spinning away from the desk every time he gets settled.

"So…" Daryl, oblivious, fingers on keyboard, "COM 200, you said?"

Alvin's still trying to steady his chair, riding it like a surfboard, hips jerking back and forth. "Y-yeah," he stammers, "Intro to Media Psychology? I… I signed up for it, but I didn't get it."

Clickety-clack. "Looks like it's closed. All four this semester, full up."

"I know. That's what I said."

"I'll add you to the waitlist." Clackety-clackety-clack.

"Well, but," again reaching for those papers, "the way my major is…" It's a wordy pink printout titled Communications: Core Requirements, and stapled to it is a list in roadmap form detailing each class, its purpose and all corresponding prerequisites. "Everything runs through COM 200, see? If I don't take it this semester I'll be, like, way behind."

"And…?" Daryl scratches his head, eyebrows bunched in the middle of his face, as if being swallowed by some invisible vortex. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"Wait, what?"

"I said," heavily, "what do you want me to do about it?"

"I mean—" Aren't these administrator types supposed to be helpful? Or, like, at least falsely sympathetic?

"According to my records," clack-clack, "you declared during the second semester of your freshman year. Were you unaware then of even the most basic requirements of your chosen course of study?"

"No, I—"

"What can I do for you, Alvin?" He knits his fingers, leaning smugly back in his chair. "I already know the answer, but just for fun I'd like to hear you say it."

Alvin blinks. "C-can we, like, start over?"

Daryl doesn't laugh. He probably never really laughs. "You want me to punch your ticket, right? Doesn't matter who's in line ahead of you, doesn't matter how long they've been waiting, you want me to sit here and," pretending to type, but with the sort of nimbleness reserved for puppeteers, "sign you up, like magic, correct?"

Alvin remains stupefied.

"Let me explain something to you," pointing now, scoldingly. "Life isn't fair. Sometimes we don't get what we want, even when we deserve it. You're no more exceptional than anyone else on that list; what gives you the right to cut in line? Because you're you? Because your parents, your teachers, your childhood playmates, everyone who had a hand in raising you, they all made believe you were special? That the world would one day bend according to your whims?" He shakes his head. With pity he shakes his head. "You're not special, Alvin. You're a twenty-year-old communications major with no job, no money and very little hope of acquiring either. What do you want to be when you graduate? A deejay? A talk show host? A film critic? Do you even know? Have you even thought about it?"

Alvin's sweatshirt has two drawstrings, and like a cat with a ball of yarn he's now hopelessly playing with them, knotting both around one finger, then flexing his finger until the knot unfurls and starting over, starting over, starting over.

"Lazy is too plain a word," Daryl explains. "It's immaturity. A profound misunderstanding of how the world works and who it works for. How do you expect to survive in the real world when you can't even plan out a four year degree?"

"I, er…" Alvin swallows. "So, like, I'm guessing that's a no?"

Suddenly he's back in the waiting room, hands shoved in his pockets. Left his papers behind, but who cares. If Daryl said anything in the interim, he hadn't noticed. Hadn't registered.

Two girls sit texting by the door, and they both sort of politely glance up from their phones as he enters. The one closest to the door, he clears his throat to get her attention. Very delicately clears his throat.

"Uh, 'scuse me," mumbling, "could you, like…" He nods at the door, whose handle, like most handles, is well beyond his reach.

"Oh, sure," she says, and her friend goes: "Awwwww…"

Not-so-secretly he's thinking: Please, please, just shut the fuck up.

"Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!"

Theodore's home—upstairs on his laptop, Doritos everywhere, re-watching old episodes of The Venture Bros., which to him is a substitute for normal weekend activity—and every few seconds a string of squeaky rapid-fire giggles rings out all over the apartment, perfectly spaced and perfectly, consistently loud, as if part of some weird mechanism.

It's fucking annoying.

Alvin stands barefoot on the kitchen counter, coffee pot slowly replenishing, and on the couch in the other room his phone's recharging, waiting for Brittany's much-hyped post-class text. Her theoretical text, which already has a sense of lateness to it.

But we won't speak of such things.

Before he can fill his cup an alarm goes off. One of those low, reverberant, Soviet-style alarms. He knows immediately what it is and that it's got nothing to do with Brittany, but his heart still blows up when he hears it.

Explanation: Last night he forgot to kill his alarm and, in scrambling half-asleep to kill it this morning, he accidentally switched the clock from AM to PM, then promptly rolled over and forgot about it again. Nice and easy.

Now it's seven at night and the alarm's going off and as he stabs wildly at his phone, which is not much smaller than him, with his thumb and his index finger, he realizes quite sourly that it's getting late and his chances of ever convening with Brittany slimming by the minute.

"Heh-heh-heh… heh-heh-heh…" Theo thumping down the stairs, green teeshirt and basketball shorts, same clothes he woke up in. "Oh, uh, hey Alvin," freezing when he sees him. "S-sorry, I didn't hear the door." That bad habit of apologizing for nothing. Preemptively apologizing for nothing.

Theodore, it's worth noting, suffers from a rare birth defect called agenesis of the corpus callosum, which means the two hemispheres of his brain don't connect and, as Alvin understands it, that's at least partially responsible for his being… well… fat, socially awkward and uncoordinated.

"Thought you'd be out for a while," he says, "with Brit. Er, I-I mean Brittany. Sorry."

Alvin sinks miserably into the couch, coffee cup between spread legs. "Yeah, you'd think so."

"She call it off?"

Alvin shakes his head. "She didn't call. Like, at all."

"Sh-shit, bro…" Whenever Theo swears it always sounds so forced, like he's trying shyly to pronounce some unknown foreign word. "Didn't she say she'd—"

"Text me? Yeah. After class."

Theo cocks his head to one side. "C-class on Saturday? That's funny…"

Wah-wah…

"It is fucking Saturday, isn't it?"

Hits him like a sucker punch. That same stupid feeling you get when you push the pull door and crash awkwardly into the glass, or when you trip over your own feet while walking normally, the realization that everyone's silently snickering at you (even those unseen), and you think: If I just don't look… If I play it off just right…

He sips his coffee and, for a moment, holds it in his mouth, washing it around like Listerine.

Theo clambers up onto the couch next to him. Takes a couple tries, but eventually he gets it.

"Y-you okay, Alvin?"

Anything but okay. More like sick. Shoulders tight, and for some reason he can't stop clenching his stomach. Then he spits his coffee back into his cup, sploosh, and he murmurs: "She's not gonna call, is she?"

Theo looks worried. "I mean, uh, she might?"

"Yeah, sure."

Kinda late to be making dinner plans, Alvin thinks. And with zero contact all day…

But she said yes, goddamn it. When he asked her out, she said yes. That's gotta mean something, right? A hint? A window slightly cracked? Mild interest?

Not necessarily, according to Jeanette. That whole "flighty, free-spirited freshman" thing. Brittany, she's way out there, enjoying her independence, doesn't want to get tied down. Much easier to say nothing than to say no. Much less scary.

"What do you think she's doing?"

"Right now?" Theo hesitates, as if it's a personal question. "I-I don't know. What do girls do on the weekend?"

"They don't fucking go to class, that's for sure."

"S-sorry. I thought you—"

"Jesus, Theo…" Alvin sucks a deep breath and lets it out through his teeth. He can feel his cheeks getting hot, his heart throttling his ribs, and it's not even the coffee.

He knows where she lives too. Cook Hall, room 301. Her and her sister Eleanor. The newest, plushest dorms on campus. Suite formation: two rooms linked by shower and bathroom. Long, quiet, air-conditioned corridors, everyone with their doors shut.

Maybe he'd find her there, or at least some clue as to where she really was. The shadow/echo of whatever stupid, fleeting, annoyingly impulsive, dime-a-dozen activity she'd chosen to replace him with. Cold Stone date with the girls? Channing Tatum Netflix marathon? In the mirror snapping visibly staged profile pictures and selfies? Aimlessly browsing Pinterest for exotic brownie recipes?

"Maybe she's, uh, g-got lots of homework or something?" Theo stammers, as if that's somehow better.

But Alvin's already daydreaming, already way past the point of rationalization.

Imagine what would happen if he did just show up at her door. Imagine the twisted look on her face, the redness, the foot-shuffling, the excuses, the "Oh, I, er, well…"

Imagine all the wonderful guilt-stirring possibilities: "Hey Brit, I think something's wrong with your phone, I never got your text," like he's some fragile, woefully naïve little boy, hanging on her every word, the cruel temptress.

"A-Alvin?" Theo waving a hand in front of his face. "What's going on in there?"

Big smile. First one all day. "How's about a field trip, little bro?"

"A f-field trip?"

"So to speak." He sits sharply forward, as if only now tapping into that reservoir of coffee. "Since neither of us knows, apparently, what girls do on the weekend, let's go find out!"

Theo looks scared. "C-c'mon, Alvin. It's only seven. G-give her some time…" and he goes on rambling. Something about feelings and patience and restraint, about how Dad once likened Alvin's personality to a rollercoaster, a continuous loop of highest highs and lowest lows (which is accurate), but coming from Theo it sounds more like stupid, impotent whining.

"Please, please, just shut the fuck up."

"S-sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Alvin at the door tying his shoes. "Just get over here." Between laces he grabs hold of Theo's shoes and, one by one, chucks them like shot-puts into the living room, thunk thunk. "I'll need a witness."

Theo peers nervously over the seat of the couch. "I-I don't get it. What's your plan?"

It's not a plan, it's a compulsion, a calling. Class-action retribution for every guy who's ever been stood up, blown off, led on or otherwise emasculated by a pretty girl…

"Seriously, Theo, do I ever fucking have a plan?"

… but he won't bother his brother with that interpretation.