December 3

Brittany was waiting outside for Pete when he left for school.  She stood there on the sidewalk, wearing a Hello Kitty backpack, and what Pete considered practical jeans (translation: not tight, or showing her underwear, or otherwise uncomfortable – just normal jeans).  Her hair was tied back in a ponytail.  Not the kind of pony tail that stuck out from the side of her face like a wannabe tween fashionista, or the kind that came out of the top of her head like Barbara Eden on the I Dream of Jeannie reruns, but the kind of ponytail where the elastic was right at the back of her neck – a ponytail whose only purpose was to keep the hair out of her face.   Pete liked the way her bright yellow hoodie stood out against the green of the sports field.

         “OK.  I believe you,” she announced through the chocolate pop tart she was chewing.

         “How can your parents not let you drink soda, but let you eat pop tarts?” Pete asked.

         “Mom thinks chocolate is a health food.  It’s chock full of antioxidants.”

         “Right.”  Pete shook his head.  It sure looked a lot more satisfying than the bowl of off-brand oat cereal rings he had eaten for breakfast.

         Brittany held out his notebook, open to December 3.  “It was just there when I got up this morning.”

         “Open like this?”

         “No, I had to open it.  But it was there when I opened it.”

         Pete glanced at the open notebook.  It was the same precise, blocky handwriting.  It was dated December third.  Pete’s legs began to tingle; the way they did when he was looking down from somewhere really high.  The back of his scalp joined in.  The freakiness of the whole thing had somehow ratcheted up a notch now that it was happening to someone else, too.

         Brittany, however, didn’t seem particularly freaked by what was happening.  In fact, she seemed positively exhilarated.  Pete swallowed his own discomfort, not wanting to look like a wimp in front of a little kid.  Then again, maybe she was too young to get it that stuff didn’t just appear out of thin air.  Maybe he was smart to be freaked out, and she was the space case.  It was all too much to think about, especially so early in the morning.

         They agreed that Pete would keep the notebook, since it was his English notebook after all, with all his class notes in it, and he would read it during the day, and that they would meet at the bench after school, unless, of course, George was back in commission, in which case they both knew that Pete would walk home with George and forget that he and Brittany had ever had a serious conversation.  Pete took the notebook with him to homeroom.  He examined the handwriting more carefully before actually reading the story, sort of like dipping a toe into the water before actually plunging into the potentially cold swimming pool.  The writing did look just like the last two installments. 

Could Brittany have done it?  She had been worried that he was playing a trick on her.  Could she be turning the tables?  Playing a trick on him?  Striking first before she got burned?  That must be it.  It would explain her suspicious enthusiasm.  The blocky letters wouldn’t be that difficult to imitate, would they?  Then he read:

        

December 3

"What is everyone doing in the woods?"  Fred had come to join the basketball practice after finishing his morning espresso con panna and online management of his stock portfolio.  In down market or up, Fred seemed able to skim a regular profit.  "Oh, hello.  Who is this?"

"This is Chloe the doe.  She's very upset, and says there won't be any Christmas this year," said Malchisedech.

"Do you know anything about this water trough?  It wasn't here yesterday,” said Akelmeyer.

"Chloe, this is Fred, my older brother.  Oh, I guess we have not introduced ourselves, yet, either.  Sorry about that.  I'm Malchisedech, and this is Akelmeyer.  We are the Three Wiener Dogs Gruff."

"Mom, those pigs said they couldn't help.  They don't even celebrate Christmas.  They gave me this top with letters on it, though.  They're very nice.  It's a droodle."  An adolescent deer was trotting towards them from the direction of the brick house of the Littels.  Like the wiener dogs, the three pigs were brothers living together.  They were also skilled three-on-three basketball players, and vied annually with the Gruffs for the top ranking and championship title.  It was a good-natured rivalry, and the six often practiced together.

"Actually, it's called a dreidel, and is an important symbol associated with the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah."  Fred's voice had that tone that often predicated one of his lengthy pontifications. 

"This is Fawn, my daughter," said Chloe.  "Fawn, these are the Three Wiener Dogs Gruff.”  Chloe had regained her composure, and spoke before Fred could continue.

"Pleased to meet you," said Fawn.

"Nice boots," said Malchisedech.  Fawn was wearing knee-high leather boots that rather flattered her slender legs.  Malchisedech had an eye for such things.

"Thanks.  They're neat because they have lots of storage room inside."  Fawn put the dreidel in her front left boot.

"Where did this trough come from?" Fred addressed the entire assembly.

"I've never seen it before," said Akelmeyer.

"It wasn't there yesterday," said Malchisedech.

"Why, there always seems to be a trough around when I'm feeling thirsty," said Chloe.

"Yeah, they're everywhere," added Fawn.

Fred's eyes narrowed slightly.  He looked keenly at the trough, and at the two deer.  "Why don't the two of you come inside," said Fred, gesturing to the big house, "and tell us about this Christmas thing.  Akey and Deck, see if you can get that trough into the lab so we can run some tests.  There is something peculiar about it.

To Be Continued . . .

         It turned out that George was indeed still out of commission after school.  He had gone to school, but he might as well not have.  He just sat through his classes staring blankly into the distance, as if he didn’t see what was going on around him.  He had sat with his friends at lunch, but he hadn’t talked to, or even really looked at any of them.  He had just sat there tearing his salami sandwich into smaller and smaller pieces.  He had gone straight home after school, leaving Pete and Brittany free to meet at the bench.

Pete was really worried about him.  George was usually the outgoing one, between the two of them anyway.  None of their friends were the type who would ever be asked to host a talent show, or head a committee, but George was the one who tended to know peoples’ names, and who liked to talk.  The staring into space behavior was definitely not normal, but Pete decided to worry about it later.  The distant, zombie-George wasn’t so bad for right now, really, because he was bound to snap out of it eventually, and it was a lot easier to talk about this sort of thing to Brittany than to George anyway, now that Pete was starting to give up on logical explanations.  After reading today’s installment, he had abandoned the idea that Brittany might be playing a joke on him.  This was not the work of a twelve year old.  No, Brittany was his ally, not his enemy.  He wasn’t completely sure what he meant by “this sort of thing” except that it was definitely not logical.  It was so far from logical, in fact, that Pete decided it officially qualified as mysterious, and George wasn’t all that good at handling mysterious.  He could talk about football, and baseball (both sports that it was impossible to play here in Hong Kong), he had his favorite college teams, and he could tell you which professional players were over rated, and why.  He knew a lot about movies, and he could talk about people at school, and even about what was going on in class, and he was a really good friend, always there when you needed him, (or at least he had been before he started acting like a zombie) but he just wasn’t real good at mysterious.

         Brittany and Pete both agreed that the wiener dog story was mysterious.

         Brittany, who was studying scientific inquiry, suggested that they begin by asking questions.

         Pete couldn’t argue with that.  “OK, why am I getting these things?”  That seemed to him to be the most pertinent question.  Maybe even the only question.

         Brittany took out her own notebook and began to take notes.  She wrote the question down, but suggested that they might answer that question more easily if they asked more direct questions about the story itself.

         “OK, why wiener dogs?”

         She wrote it down, but suggested that it would make more sense to ask questions that they could hope to answer.  “How about, what do we know about wiener dogs?”

         Pete shrugged to indicate approval, or at least indifference, and they began at the beginning, looking closely at the story.  When they were done, they had the following list:

• Why is Pete getting these stories?
•  Why wiener dogs?
•  What do we know about wiener dogs?
•  What is espresso con panna?
•  Is there any significance to the names Malchisedech and Akelmeyer?
•  Is there a connection between Catholicism and Zen?
•  How can a wiener dog play basketball?
• What actually happened to the NASDAQ in the late nineties?
•  What is the difference between a down market and an up market?
• We know Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that always happens near Christmas, but what is it really?

They thought they could probably ask some question about time, just in case that was important, but the babbling of the wiener dog, Akelmeyer seemed so mudded that they couldn’t figure out what to ask.  They agreed that it would be like trying to make sense out of George’s story about what had happened that Sunday he had gone missing and not come back until ten o’clock.  They did know that they didn’t really know what the space/time continuum was, even though it sounded familiar, probably from Star Trek.

         Brittany tore the list in half, and handed Pete the bottom half.  They agreed that he should take the last four questions, because his mom was the one who taught economics, and they agreed to meet the next day.