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Derek felt Dylan’s absence beside him and turned around. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s s-stupid. It’s all just a joke.” Even in the firelight Derek could see that Dylan’s ears had turned red.
“What’s a joke?”
Brooks brandished a bizarre-looking sculpture thing like a Sizzler waiter with a dessert tray. “The Pickle Award,” he said, in an affected voice that was obviously trying to imitate a radio announcer.
Abrupt, excited shouts erupted from all around them, making Derek jump. Everyone saying the same two words: “Pickle Award.”
“What the hell is that thing?” Derek asked Dylan, but Dylan was biting the inside of his cheek and only shrugged. He kept adjusting his glasses on his nose.
Dylan shook out his head and then forced a smile that was so unlike Dylan’s actual smile that it looked like some failed Madame Tussaud’s version of his face. It was all wrong. He was breathing too fast. Derek had seen Olive have a panic attack, and hers were much more obvious, but if that’s what this was, it was like Dylan was sucking the panic inside himself where no one could see it.
But Derek could.
“The year was 1998,” said Brooks. “The first year of the Gallagher Grill-Out. And our sweet, young, eleven-year-old Dilly had been asked by our father to do a very specific job.”
His tone was halfway between smarmy preacher and stand-up comedian. Derek did not like where this was going, but when Derek opened his mouth to say something, Dylan shook his head. He didn’t want to be rude and cut into some kind of Gallagher family ritual, so Derek moved a little closer to Dylan. The weird phallic sculpture in Brooks’s hands was supposed to resemble a giant pickle?
Anderson took the sculpture from Brooks. “It was a windy day, and young Dylan, we must admit, was great at tying knots.”
“An expert at knotting, one would say,” Brooks added in a reverent tone.
“Definitely the best knotter in the family.” Dylan’s dad nodded.
Felicity choked on her cider. She had clearly waited for this moment to imbibe in her single alcoholic beverage of the day. She leaned over to Dylan and spoke under her breath. “If any of them ever read books, I would think they were doing this on purpose, but—”
“You don’t think your dad is well-versed in Omegaverse werewolf sex tropes?” Derek said dryly. At Felicity and Dylan’s shocked expressions, Derek winked at Dylan. “I once took a little journey around the basics of smutty fanfic. As one does.”
Derek almost had coaxed a smile out of Dylan. At least until the asshats started speaking again. Derek’s patience with Dylan’s two oldest brothers was waning. Rapidly.
“A-hhhem,” said Brooks, clearly annoyed Derek wasn’t hanging on his every word. The rest of the assembled guests were rapt as if watching a well-choreographed stage show. “Diligent little Dilly boy went out to the table with his small thing of twine. He managed to tie one corner. Two corners. Three corners.”
“It’s a little like David Foster Wallace wrote this, isn’t it?” Felicity sighed.
Derek hid a smile behind his fist. “It never really occurred to me until this moment that the title Infinite Jest could be a pun on a melodramatic, long-winded, unfunny joke that never ends.” Derek matched Felicity’s volume. “Can’t imagine why.”
That earned a laugh from Dylan.
“It wasn’t until that fourth corner that things went so very, very wrong. He’d used his wrist to hold down the tablecloth, and the twine got twisted in little Dilly’s watch. And when Mom called him into the house, he ran off, right away.”
“Always was a fast little sucker,” Dylan’s dad said.
“Not realizing that the knot in his watch was stronger than the one tying the string to the table.”
“Oh shit.” Derek grimaced at Dylan.
“He pulled every single thing off the table.”
“And the only thing that survived was—”
A chorus of extended family voices joined in. “A jar of pickles.”
“And so, our little brother Dilly inspired the Pickle Award.” He held it up. “It’s gotten a little discolored over the years, but it was green when we first made it.”
Felicity held her cider bottle upside down to make sure she had sucked every last drop.
“Every year it goes to the person who did the most clumsy or absentminded thing of the day.” Anderson grinned and gripped Dylan in a side-armed embrace turned headlock. “Dylan all over it, amirite?”