but I’d never seen one of their games.
“Yeah.” Tray stared down at his very stylish sneakers. “I guess news of the bet’s already making its way around the campus. I think PJ’s planning on setting up a betting booth to bilk freshmen out of their hard-earned milk money.”
I snorted and shook my head. PJ might need more of a good influence than I could provide.
Setting the book on my desk, I unfolded from the chair and walked to my single bed on my side of the room. Of course, PJ’s side was chaos. Mine was neat, a fact appreciated by Brett, our giant sand-colored cat named for Brett Favre, arguably the best player ever on the Green Bay Packers. Brett favored my bed over most of the others in the house. Hell, it was one way I could get a guy between the sheets.
I scooped him up. “Come on, buddy. If I’ve got to endure this, so do you.”
Mrowr.
I slung him over my shoulder and walked out of the room with Tray.
In the big living room, the gang was all there. The space had been expanded years before I got there to accommodate chapter life, and most of our thirty-one guys crowded onto the couches and chairs and some on the floor. Of course, only twelve of us got to live in the house, and I was one of the lucky ones. Freshman members were automatically excluded since they lived in the freshman dorms or off campus. The frat-house residents were chosen by application, and the alumni advisers had a lot to say about it. How the hell PJ got in, I never asked, but the fact that his dad was a big-name alumnus probably had something to do with it.
We didn’t usually get so many guys for chapter meetings, so word must have spread that something big was up. The room still smelled vaguely of smoke from the kitchen fire even though they’d brought in those big fans and run them all of the previous night and most of the day. At least the odor was starting to be replaced by the more familiar scent of sweat socks.
As I walked in, Bubba Merkofsky, second-string middle linebacker for the Badgers who was very big, very fast, very lovable, and occasionally two slices short of a full pizza pie, stretched out his massive arms. “Give me a pet of the Brett.” Most of the guys liked Brett, the cat, a fair amount as long as he didn’t leave dead birds on their beds, but Bubba had decided that petting Brett was good luck. In his position on the Badgers, one of the toughest in football, he needed all the luck he could get.
I passed the twenty-pound Brett to Tray who handed him to Rand who passed him to Sharky and so on. The big, furry idiot just flopped and purred as he got manhandled around the room.
When the cat arrived at his destination, Bubba gave the furry beast a big snuggle, pressing his scraggly beard into Brett’s face, and I cringed. Brett was chill for just so long and snuggling him was akin to kissing a tiger. He might or might not ignore you. Still, Bubba knew that.
When Brett yowled and slashed Bubba’s arm with razor claws, Bubba just laughed and licked off the blood. Brett ran back up the stairs, probably for my bed.
Rand sat down in a straight-backed dining room chair, looking serious. He hadn’t said anything yet, but the whole noisy crew got quiet. Rand was just that charismatic. Finally, he said, “Most of you’ve probably heard some version of what happened.”
DeWan Hamilton, one of the best flag players, snarled, “Fucking Poindexters.”
Rand nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s easy to feel that way, but we have to take this whole thing seriously.”
Picford “Pizzaz” Trask, our resident party animal, sipped a beer even though there was no drinking at chapter meetings and whined, “What’d I hear about flag? There’s not seriously going to be a Poin on our frickin’ team?”
A couple guys looked shocked at that, and Rand said, “Look, I’m going to start from the beginning, so we’re all in the same playbook, got it?”
He told the whole story, starting at the fire and Rex seeing the two nerds escaping from our house, which had everybody yelling and threatening. They all got quiet when he ended with Robberts’s ultimatum.
Bubba whispered, “No shit?”
Rand nodded. “Yeah. They’re over there at SMT figuring out which two of their brainiacs to send to play