None the Worse ✓

9) Befriending A Thief And Other Things You Never Thought Anyone Outside Of...

It smelled of Thijmen.

It didn't even smell bad. It was fresh and kind of... homely? There wasn't even the smell of cigarettes on the pillow.

Benjamin shrugged to himself and took the pillow to his room with a victorious smirk on his face. If Thijmen wanted an extra pillow, he was just gonna have to ask Ben's parents for one. He couldn't just steal one. Benjamin sniffed it all the way to his bed, and it only dawned on him how absolutely weird that was a whole while later, during breakfast, when his parents spoke about a completely irrelevant subject and he said, without thinking, "Is it normal to sniff people's things?"

Benjamin's mother spat her coffee.

"Define 'things'," replied his father, calmly wiping the mess.

That reaction had been self-explanatory. Benjamin glanced at Thijmen, who had apparently decided being a silent spectator was better than instructing people on how to drink soup. "I just, uh, I saw it on a movie."

His mother panicked. "Bennie, no, don't do that. Are you talking about butts?"

Benjamin's father spat his coffee.

"Could you please stop doing that?" spoke out Thijmen.

Benjamin II wiped the coffee from his chin, before sputtering, "m-me? I didn't do it on purpose. Eleanor, why on earth would he be talking about butts?"

"I don't know how the minds of teenage boys work."

"We're not dogs, Ma," Ben gasped.

"Then why did you ask that question?" asked his mother.

Note to self: think before you speak.

It'd be nice if he could follow through with it.

"I saw it in a movie," he whined, "Really. And those weren't butts, just uh... pillows?"

For shit's sake.

Thijmen glanced at him.

"Pillows?" his mother sounded relieved, "Oh, I see. Then it's normal."

"Mr. Emsworth, don't spit your coffee," said Thijmen.

Benjamin's father cleared his throat. "No, no, I know better than to drink when these two get like this."

Just your everyday Emsworth conversation.

It was probably a good idea to cut it short, though, before Benjamin said something stupid. Something even more stupid, that is. He'd already embarrassed himself enough for that day.

But then, to Benjamin's dismay, his mother asked him, "what movie were you watching?"

"Uh, s-some movie with... a guy. You know, he was— He thought the pillow smelled nice."

Fudgecakes... Why did he say that?

Thijmen stood up all of a sudden, which made Benjamin's parents jump. Without bothering to say where he was going—even though Benjamin knew, to his horror, where he was going—he left the table and headed to the bedrooms. To his own room. To look for The Missing Pillow.

That did it.

Benjamin inhaled his breakfast, stomped to the bathroom and took a very angry shower, they way protagonists did in those 80's mafia movies. He even hummed angry soundtracks under his breath. Okay. No more Thijmen. He'd burn the pillow. He'd send the pillow's ashes on a boat to Spinkywinky (or whatever that town's name was) and asked for it to be burned again and sent to the moon on a rocket. And then, three hundred thousand years from now, once the humans had conquered the solar system, Benjamin Emsworth The Millionth would nuke the moon and send its ashes to intergalactic space, and then ask for an alien civilization to teleport it to a black hole for it to disappear forever.