Wave, and then back to her room.

The afternoon and evening continue as usual.

She gets her homework done, tells Mal about her day - Mal's a bit weirded out by the whole cookie incident, but she's been on way too high of an alert lately - and for once gets to bed at a reasonable hour.

On Tuesday morning, Tess and Mal are BCC'd in an email from Ava, informing that they are invited to a pet-funeral and celebration of life of a pet that definitely lived off-campus followed by a barbecue, 8 PM Friday evening at the quad. Punch, soda, marshmallows, and buns will be provided. There is an attempt at solemn HTML-styling, complete with grey-on-black cursive text and a sparkling flower header.

Awww, did something happen to Zebra? It sounds like it.

She wheedles Mal into going - they should be there for Ava, she's kinda a friend - replies (just to Ava) that they're going, and when Friday evening rolls around head over.

There are between twenty and thirty people milling around the grills, coming and going; quite a few seem to think this is just a random barbecue rather than a specific event. There's a little plastic folding table with bags of marshmallows, hotdog buns, and metal skewers, and another, further from the grills, with a large bowl of pink fluid, two giant bottles of off-brand grape soda, and a stack of plastic cups.

A group of students still wearing backpacks are sitting on the ground, complaining about a math test and eating uncooked marshmallows. One of them grabs a handful of charcoal from the bag and pops a piece into his mouth. A handful of people look like they hastily pulled black jackets or shirts on over casual clothing, and a few of them are even wearing clip-on bow-ties. Two girls wearing friendship bracelets are eating hotdog-bun s'mores and might be arguing about the ethics of animal domestication, but they keep interrupting each other, so it's hard to tell.

Ava's standing next to a grill, with a double-layered zipper bag tucked under one arm, talking to an incredibly uncomfortable looking guy wearing a button-down shirt, tie, and drawstring backpack, who nods along and clasps a little book while she talks. Her eyes are red and puffy, and she looks a little angry.

She walks over to Ava, and says quietly, "Hey."

(A fist-sized ball of aluminum foil coated with grease is visible inside the Ziplocs.)

"Hey Tess," says Ava, "Zebra died. This is, um, Harry?"

"Harold," the guy in the button-down corrects, holding out a hand, "Goodman. Nice to meet you."

Shake. "Same. Tess Lowell."

His hand is a little sweaty, but it is otherwise a good handshake. He smiles at Tess, then tries to smile at Ava. "Well. I'm going to go mingle and meet people. Have f– take care?" He half-waves, then flees at a walking pace.

She does not smile because that would be Bad, even though she's feeling really awkward and her usual reflex is smiling. Instead she kind of stands there. Awkwardly.

"How're you holding up?" she asks after a way too long moment.

Ava shrugs. "Not great. He was pretty old for a rat, but that's still really young. And some jerk invited some religious guy or something and told him it was for a person, and I was wrong about how flammable he'd be and now I need to figure out what to do instead, and everyone's like 'well at least he wasn't human' like that makes it better?"

She scowls at her bag. "But this is pretty good turnout for a funeral on short notice, and the event itself is going fine."

"That's tough. Back home we have a little pet cemetery on the property, can't really do anything like that here though, yeah."

"Yeah. Ugh. I bet nobody actually digs up weird lumps in the ground if they're not in the way or in grass? I'd need to see if Walmart has shovels even, though."

"Wild animals sometimes do, though, it's a problem we used to have back when it was too cold to dig properly if something died."

She shrugs again. "I'll figure something out. Maybe I can mail him to someone? I'll have to do something, anyway. I'll figure it out."

"Alright. I - don't have a car. Uh. I know someone who does, we go hiking, maybe we could find somewhere in the woods?" Body will still probably get dug up but it's less gross if it's in the woods, animals eating things is normal.

She brightens. "That'd be great, thanks! Assuming I haven't figured something else out by then– I probably don't have time to do anything this weekend after this evening until Sunday?"

"Sunday works for me!"

"Great! Thank you so much! I'll- go put him in the fridge for now, be back in a bit?"

"Uh, alright."

"Thanks! See you later!" Ava says, taking her bag off in the direction of the dorms.

"See you," she says, then kind of awkwardly nods her head and wanders off.

She doesn't feel like going back to the dorms quite yet, though, so she hovers between trying to stay at the - party? not really, 'gathering' might be better - and going for a walk. (Ugh, she'll have to try getting into the woods soon, being around this many people's becoming increasingly grating, and her skin's been itching lately like it doesn't fit the way it wants to).

The gathering is starting to get louder and more active, even though people have started to leave:

The girls with friendship bracelets have escalated their argument to a duel with marshmallow skewers, with buns still impaled on the ends. The one in boots stage-yells for the one with glasses to take back her words, and is laughingly refused.

Harold is watching in vague disapproval as a group, made up mostly of people in makeshift funeral clothes holding cups of punch, cheers on a freshman as he stuffs what must at least be the fourth marshmallow into his mouth.

Some students are quickly tossing pieces of charcoal back and forth; from their yelps, one or two pieces were recently in the grills.

One of the math students is refilling the nearly-empty punch bowl with the remaining bottle of soda while her friend loudly complains that it will ruin the flavor. The other bottle, empty, sits on the ground next to a full trash can.

....Yeah, nope.

She starts awkwardly sidling out.