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If Sam never sees another catfish ever again, that'll be perfectly fine with him.

Perhaps especially not a giant spinning catfish -- which, as it turns out, isn't actually supposed to be spinning.

This would be why Sam is currently hunched over a table, poring over a collection of books, notes, his laptop, and John Winchester's journal, trying to figure out how on earth to exorcise a possessed statue of a fish.

As far as he knows, Dean's still back in the hotel room, laughing himself sick.

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"Oh, there's recipes," he informs her. Mournfully.

"There's an entire festival. With fried catfish. And a rodeo. And a catfish fair. And a parade, with a Catfish Princess."

A beat.

"And a giant statue of a catfish, mounted on a pole in the middle of town, spinning like a top. That'd be where we come in."

Give Mac a second: she's still stuck on the mental image of a catfish rodeo. And of Madison Sinclair as a Catfish Princess.

It's an oddly cheering mental image. Some of it might involve a Carrie-like dumping of fish guts over her head.

That done, she pulls out the chair across from him and takes a seat, trying very hard to keep her laughter under control. "Yeah? Doing what?"

"Well, it's not supposed to spin."

Sam's tone is more than a little dry.

"And we've got to stop it."

Beat.

A long beat.

"Is there...anything you can lodge in it?" Mac finally suggests weakly, staring at him. "You know, like sticking a crowbar in a fan?"

Please don't tell me you've gone crazy, says her confused and slightly wary look.

"I did mention the pole in the center of town?"

Sam slumps down in his chair and buries his face in his hands.

Muffled,

"I can't believe this. I'm talking about catfish."

"It could be worse."

Still eyeing Sam with a general air of bzuh?

"Could be oysters. Or clams."

"I don't even want to think about how that would work."

It's still a little muffled, but then Sam raises his head again and gives her a hopeful look.

"You know what, let's talk about something else. What's new with you?"

She snickers, then lets it fade, lifting one shoulder in an awkward half-shrug.

Last month kind of sucked -- like she'd been expecting it to -- and not in a way Mac wants to share with the class all over again. Or guys she's just getting to know.

"Not a lot. My summer vacation can be summed up in five phrases so far: non-boring American literature, Colbert Report, coveting an iPhone, cursing my bank account, and sleeping. I think it's a well-rounded mix," she deadpans.

"So business as usual?"

Sam grins at her.

"In all its awesome and boring glory," she answers, returning the grin. Mac folds her arms and leans them on the table.

"Hey, it could be worse," Sam points out.

"Are you taking any summer classes, or?"

"I'd say 'catfish worse,' but that violates our conversational agreement." Serenely smug.

And dropping the aforementioned smug, "Nah. There wasn't anything that interesting, and I got A's and B-pluses in all my classes anyway." A pause, and her smile gets a little smaller, a little more hesitant. "I'm sort of looking at scholarships and fellowships for places out east, though."

He groans, and gives her a look, but then admits,

"I wish I could argue the point. And hey, that's awesome news--"

Sam brightens, looking interested.

"Anywhere in particular?"

A little sheepish, "I've still got my eye on MIT, even if they didn't think I was cool enough for them last year. But maybe Cornell or Carnegie Mellon, too. Or Austin, if I can suck it up to living in Texas.

"I'm just looking," she adds, a little hastily. "Nothing major yet."

"Texas is hot, but you already know that," Sam reminds her. "I hear good things about Cornell and Carnegie Mellon both -- I never was much interested in MIT myself, though."

"How come? Just not as much into the computer stuff as...other stuff?"

She sneaks a quickly assessing glance at his laptop.

There's a picture up on screen, along with various windows of notes and cached web pages.

"Don't get me wrong, I like computers," he assures her hastily. "It's just they weren't my field of study, you know? I'm better with using them for research."

...that is one very big catfish.

And this is maybe one of the three times in Mac's life where she's glad she lives in Neptune. It's a very weird feeling.

"Hey, as long as you know enough about them to not ask me where the 'any key' is, we're cool," she remarks with dry humor, continuing to eye the catfish. "Even if you are a Windows heathen."

Idly, she keeps skimming over the open windows, and --

"Ohhh." The relief in her voice is audible.

"I can promise you I'm not going to do that," Sam says. Dryly. "And I even know a few things about Apple stuff--"

It's only then he realizes what all he has open on the screen.

Shit.

"... everything okay?"

"Oh, yeah."

She's snickering a little, reading a few more notes.

"Dude, you could have just said it was possessed. I was starting to think you were in a weird cult of weather vane vandalizers or something."

In contrast, Sam looks as though someone's just hit him across the back of the head with a board.

"... wait, you know about that sort of thing?"

There's a disbelieving smile starting to appear, too.

"Not a whole lot," she admits with a shrug, glancing at Sam. "But there's this guy I know here -- Andrew Wells? -- and he's pretty into it." Matter-of-fact, "I've been his willing research lackey a couple times."

"I know Andrew."

Sam's smile is growing.

"We're friends. We've got -- a lot of the same interests, I guess you'd say."

"Yeah." So's Mac's. "He's pretty awesome. And like the first friend I made here."

(Which says a lot, none of which Mac's going to say out loud.)

"So you do the vampire- and demon-hunting stuff for a living, too?"

"Yeah, he is. And yeah, we do --"

To his credit, Sam doesn't even twitch at the word 'demon,' although there's a flicker in his eyes for a second.

"-- I guess you could call it the family business."