Frankentown Read Free Page A

is a very important thing. Perhaps even a frightening thing.
    That evening, the fall air around the University campus was uncharacteristically heavy and humid.
Leaves fell from the trees simply out of thirst.
    On this atypical warm fall Friday night,
    not a Thursday night for student’s sake,
    (though it would’ve been timelier)
         the three friends went out to celebrate.
Allen Page was a year older than Frank. They’d known each other since high school, and never really got along with Steve Fassen.
Perhaps it was because Allen kept writing Steve’s last name with a sharp ß , despite being told about it several times over, or that both Frank and Allen made fun of him for no other reason than his German accent, which to them was un-admittedly endearing.
    Steve busied himself with algae and underwater flora. He might’ve been three years younger than either of them as far as Allen and Frank guessed. They never failed to cut through the ‘niceties’. As someone who busied himself with studying algae and underwater flora,
Steve was a guy who didn’t need to be told twice.
And he never minded any of the abuse.
He was never able to take it seriously from either of them. Frank was a drunk and Allen was a guzzled mumbling fool.
  But they were good people.
Friends on a leash.
Like-it-or-not co-workers.
The first attempt that night took them to their go-to bar, Jack’s, but it was overcrowded. They looked into several other still bars on Telegraph avenue before settling on buying a bottle of scotch and some weird looking bourbon and hiding on the University campus to conduct their festivities. Even though drinking on campus was strictly forbidden, it was one of those rules that was enforced by teachers, aimed at students and disrespected by everyone.
    Sipping from brown paper bags along the way, the three went up the stairs of the north biology building up to Frank’s office. After viewing Frank’s new certificate and deciding they can barely stand in place among the towering paper stacks, the room being far too crowded with numerous books and documents, they proceeded to classroom B and sat on counters.
    The plan was simply to loiter.
    “There are no cameras here, right?” Allen queried, taking the small pint bottle out of the brown paper bag to raise a toast; asking a little late.
Frank shot him a befuddled look, which may have come off to them both as jovially devil-may-care. Drinking commenced in full swing.   Within twenty minutes the alcohol ate at their empty stomachs. Soon they laughed at the rather large specimen of a Humboldt squid pickled in formaldehyde in a large jar with a rounded top. Its appendages were swirled in their final position and looked like folded arms, as though the squid has been anxiously attempting to get out. Frank was suddenly overcome with a brilliant excuse to prolong their celebration.
    “What are you guys doin’ this weekend?”
Allen and Steve talked over him, so he continued conversing about the rum they were drinking.
Come out with me to check out the squids. It’s on Monterey’s tab now, and this time of year there’s going to be hundreds of them floating around.
His words slurred.
This was the excuse both Frank and Allen were looking for and they didn’t need to stop to think about it. They would keep the weekend afloat, both figuratively and literally and go on a first Monterey-sponsored expedition. Steve, the youngest of the three and the one not attached to that special someone joined in. “I’ll bring some of this brew I got last time I was coming up here from Europe. The bottles are over three liters and they’re 85 proof.”
    Both Frank and Allen always pegged Steve for having a knack for exaggeration on anything he’d say. To them, he was younger, therefore he must have never learned responsibility, nor has he ever had any interest or need for doing so. A rebel without a cause.
      He was a loyal friend, and his search for common ground with them usually