Page 39

“Sorry,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

He put his hand on my lower back, steadying me. I met his eyes, which were crinkled at the corners with his smile. My breath caught.

“You want to see the posters?” he asked.

“What?”

“In my room?”

“Oh, right.” I placed Buffy on the floor and followed Asher in as he flipped on the light.

I walked to his desk to get a closer look. One of the posters was of three old ladies, one of whom was screaming into a corded phone. Big yellow words above their heads read:Where’s the beef?Another poster had a woman with a milk mustache and the wordsGot milk?next to her.

“What in the…?” I asked, finally turning around.

“Remember all the old memes I used to DM you?”

I coughed a little. My body apparently hated telling lies. “Yeah, of course.”

“I like to study patterns in media and why popular advertisingworked in its respective era.” Asher shrugged. “I told you I’m a marketing nerd.”

“Wow,” I said. “I had no idea how deep you’d fallen into the marketing hole.”

“Tell me you’ve heard of these ad campaigns. I mean…” He pointed to the Nike swoosh with the wordsJust Do Itbeneath it. “This started in 1988! And it’s still going strong. Why? Because it’s catchy, it’s memorable.”

I nodded slowly.

“Speaking of: the Bean Games!”

“What?”

“Last night at Olive Garden I was trying to tell you that I thought up a campaign for Bean that might generate some buzz.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “This buzz we need generated. What are the Bean Games?”

“We recruit people to participate in different events. Their competitor? Bean.”

“Like what? Fetch?”

“Sure, or a puppuccino drinking contest. Who can drink it the fastest?”

“You’re going to make humans drink one of those dog coffees?” I asked.

“They’re mostly just whipped cream, right? It would be funny. And it would…”

I smiled. “Generate buzz?”

“Exactly! We’ll do one competition a week and have sign-ups on Instagram to be a future participant.”

My mind spun as I thought about the idea. It was somethingwe hadn’t tried before. It would get people interacting with Bean. And if he wasn’t a jerk, it could work. “Hey, you should go into marketing when you grow up.”

“My parents would be so proud.”

“I have a feeling your parents would be proud no matter what you did. They seem aggressively proud.”

“They are. They really are.”