The first time Nile played Scrabble with the others also ended up being the last.
“Scrabble?” Joe repeated, when Nile asked. “Are you sure you want to go there?”
Nile squinted. “It’s just Scrabble.”
“Oh, it’s never just Scrabble,” Joe muttered, which explained nothing. “But you know what? It’s been a while since we last played, I think it’s time.”
“Time for what?” Andy peered over his shoulder and let out an actual cackle when she caught sight of the box. “Oh boy. Someone call Nicky.”
“Um,” Nile said, just as Nicky came in. Booker slumped in a moment later, clearly nursing several choice bruises received during training. When his eyes landed on the box, he groaned aloud.
“Why are we playing Scrabble again?” he said plaintively. “I thought we banned it in the sixties.”
“Nile wants to play,” Joe said significantly. “So we’re all going to be very civil and humane about this.” He said this mock-pointedly at Nicky, who sniffed.
“As if you were much better,” he said.
“My love, we agreed that we wouldn’t use words from before the turn of the century.”
“Nicky has a great memory,” Andy confided to Nile as Joe and Nicky bickered, leaning back with the amused air of a cat who had found its favourite playtoy. “I’m pretty sure he still remembers every word he’s ever learnt.”‘
“And he uses them in Scrabble?”
“Oh yeah,” Booker said grimly. “With great impunity.”
“Let’s play already!” Andy said loudly, downing a glass of something that was hopefully water, given that she’d reached her alcohol quota for the day.
“Can we please stick to modern-day English,” Nile begged.
“Define ‘modern day’,” Nicky said, just as Booker said loudly, “Yes, seconded.”
“Do not bet anything,” Joe advised her in an aside, just as Nicky said to Booker, “Takeaway privileges for a year.”
“You’re on,” Booker said, looking significantly more enthused than he had a moment ago. “Get ready to eat pizza for one whole year, Nicky.”
“This one time, Booker was in charge of takeout dinners and we ate shitty pizza for a whole week,” Joe supplied to Nile. “Nicky never forgave him for it.”
“Oh boy, Nicky’s really playing to win this time,” Andy muttered.
And really, it all went downhill from there.
Two spilt beers later, one disagreement about the definition of ‘modern-day’ that had gone to verbally sparring, and one disagreement about slang that had to be taken outside, Nile thoroughly regretted her decision.
“What the fuck is ‘YOLO’,” Andy demanded, actually shaking her fist a little at Joe. “That isn’t a word, Joe.”
“Yes it is,” he argued, waggling his phone. “The Internet says ‘yes’.”
Everyone looked at Nile, who had somehow become the adjudicator and arbiter of justice.
“It’s a word,” she decided. Chaos erupted at the table, as it had for the past half hour.
“See?” Joe crowed loudly. Andy skulled the rest of her not-water and scowled.
“Hmm,” was all Nicky said. The hairs on the back of Nile’s neck stood up slightly, which was vindicated when he considered the tiles in front of him. Several tiles clacked into place on the board. When Nicky sat back, it was with a flourish, that said: Go on. I’ll wait.
Booker leaned over to look, and promptly spluttered in outrage. “That is not a word. Nile, tell him!”
THOT, read the tiles. Nile choked on air.
“My love, are you sure that’s a word?” Joe said, already reaching for his phone.
Andy snorted. “That cannot be a word.”
Nile winced. “It…is? Only in the loosest of senses.” Nile stared at Nicky, who smiled back innocently. “How do you even know this word?”
Nicky shrugged. “When we researching for that job in the nightclub, in Madrid, Booker and I split up the sites we searched for intel.”
“Are you telling me while I had to read ten million dusty newspapers, you were learning young people slang on the Internet?” Booker said incredulously. “Nicky!”
“The intel was good, was it not?”
“Yes, yes, yes but what does it even mean?” Andy groused. “I stopped keeping up to date after the mortals came up with ‘fuck’.”
Everyone looked at Nile. She groaned, but there was no escaping it.
“No modern day slang,” Andy ground out, while Nile patiently typed up the new rules. “If the word can’t be found in an official dictionary, it’s not going in.”
“Just so you know, some of the slang terms still make it into the official dictionaries,” Nile said.
“I fucking hate modern day words.”
dededos
theartofmadeline
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn
annaxmalina
vaporwave
