Waterways (41 page)

“Oh, I’d forget my homework all the time if my mom didn’t give me a PDA. I have to enter all my homework and it syncs with a website and she checks it every night and sends me e-mail to make sure I’m working on it.” She chattered on all the way to the school, while Kory replayed his conversation with Sal in his head, desperately searching for an admission of guilt. The words of several months ago, fluid and slippery, refused to accommodate his need.

As usual, Sal ignored him in homeroom, but this time Kory didn’t let it go. The effort it took to break the months of silence surprised and saddened him. “I want to talk to you after school,” he said.

“Ooh la la,” Geoff Hill said behind them.

Sal turned to the raccoon. “Shut the fuck up,” he hissed, and then looked at Kory. “Both of you.”

“Mr. Lafferty,” Geoff called, raising a paw. “Sal used the f-word.”

The bear looked up from his desk and sighed. “I didn’t hear it.”

“I did,” Geoff said.

Mr. Lafferty looked at Sal. “Did you curse at Mr. Hill?”

Sal folded his arms. “Yeah,” he said. “He was asking for it.”

With another sigh, the bear pulled a paper from his desk. “All right, that’s one detention. Come to this room after final period to serve it.”

Kory had a flash of inspiration. He turned to Geoff Hill. “You’re a fucking asshole,” he said.

The raccoon raised his paw again, and Kory sat back in his seat, grinning at Sal.

Detention was served in their homeroom, but without assigned seats, so Sal sat on the opposite side of the classroom from Kory. After an hour of quiet study time, Sal sat and waited for Kory to leave until Mr. Lafferty told them both to get out. Kory got up at the same time so Sal couldn’t avoid him as they left. “I’m sorry,” Kory said.

“You think I care?” Sal said.

“I don’t know,” Kory said. “I just don’t want to be mad at you if you didn’t do what I’m mad about.”

Sal turned, one paw on the outer door. “Didn’t seem to matter to you before.”

“You never told me otherwise!”

Sal just looked at him and walked out towards the parking lot. After a moment, Kory followed.

“I apologized! What’s the problem?”

Sal didn’t even turn, just waved a paw back at him. “Forget it.”

Frustration mounting, Kory almost turned around right then. He’d been mad at Sal for so long that it would be easy just to go back to that, to let everything settle back where it had been. But the uneasy nagging feeling that had started that morning in the car with Flora had been growing all through the day, and he knew himself well enough to know that it wouldn’t just go away, that he would feel it every time he looked at Sal. “Stop being such a fucking asshole!” he yelled.

Sal turned and looked coolly at him. “Shut up.”

“Then stop being a self-righteous prick.” Kory had intended to stand his ground, but the next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground, gasping for breath, clutching his stomach where Sal had punched him.

“Stay the hell away from me,” Sal said, standing over him and pointing a finger down at him. “It’s bad enough I get in fights about you every week, I don’t want to have to listen to your fucking apologies. You had your chance, you knew what had happened without even asking me. Well, fine. I told everyone, you happy now?” He lifted his head. “Hey, everyone!” he yelled to the empty parking lot. “Come look at the faggot!”

“Fights?” Kory gasped.

“Go home,” Sal said. “Stop trying to be friends again. It ain’t gonna happen.”

Kory struggled to get up, but by the time he got to his feet, Sal’s car was peeling out of the parking lot.

He didn’t tell anyone about what had happened. Nick and Samaki had long since given up asking if he and Sal would make up, and Malaya had never asked to begin with, so nobody Kory talked to was likely to ask. The punch in the stomach left no physical damage, not like he’d seen on Sal’s muzzle.

What he did do was ask Flora, when he saw her in the hallway, whether she knew of any fights Sal had been in. Her odor got stronger, or maybe it was just the ventilation in the hallway bringing it to his nose. “Look,” she said, “it’s nothing to do with you anyway. It’s just the way those kids are.”

“What kids?”

“Oh, come on.” She motioned for him to walk with her. “I can’t believe that we can see ‘Queer Eye’ on TV—I used to love those guys—and there are still people who think that—well, I don’t know what they think. It’s stupid. They’re stupid.” She looked sideways at him. “Nobody really cares, you know that, right?”

Kory shook his head. “I care.”

“Well, of course, but I mean, it doesn’t make any difference. I mean, to most of the kids. I mean, to the ones who really know what’s what. You know, like me and Vera and Marci, and Rick Novis and Chris Carkus…”

“Chris Carkus knows who I am?” Kory snorted.

“Sure. Now he does. Anyway, just because these kids are acting like grade-A dipwads doesn’t mean anything.”

“What kids?”

“The tech kids,” Flora said. She’d stopped at a classroom. “This is my class. Look, if you want to talk about it, let’s meet downtown this weekend, okay? I’ll come down to your area if you want.”

Kory was slated to go to the Rainbow Center Saturday morning. He gave Flora his cell phone number and told her to text or call him Saturday afternoon. “Promise,” she said, and dove into her class as he scurried to get to his on time.

He and Samaki were just propping up the new set of bookshelves they’d been varnishing to dry, while the kids washed the brushes, when Flora called. Kory fumbled for his phone, leaving Samaki holding the shelves, and arranged to meet Flora at the Starbucks by the thrift store.

“I thought that was our place,” Samaki said teasingly as they got the last piece of scrap wood under the shelves. “Now you’re meeting strange women there?”

“I told you, it’s just something from school.” Kory forced a grin.

“Can I meet her?”

“What,” Kory said, “don’t you trust me?”

Samaki glanced at the kids, whose backs were turned, and then brushed a finger along Kory’s stomach. “I trust you,” he said. “Just thought I could tag along, but it’s okay, I can go home.”

They were outside the center and walking toward Samaki’s car before Kory managed to resolve the struggle in his mind. Samaki had turned to say good-bye to him, but he said, “You really want to come along?”

The fox considered this question, or at least appeared to. “Yeah, sure. If you’re okay, I mean. I don’t want to force you…”

Kory shook his head. “She already knows, and she saw you once.”

“So the secret’s out.”

They’d started walking through the slushy snow toward the thrift store. “Actually,” Kory said, “I think she’s the one who outed me at school.”

“I thought Sal did that.”

“Me too. But he… I don’t know now. I don’t know whether he did or not.

“But you think this girl—Flora?—might have?”

Kory nodded, slowly. “She said she saw us here, getting on a bus. And she talks a lot. I’m sure she didn’t think about it.”

Flora sat at a table in the corner, alone. Kory suspected that the rest of the patrons were avoiding sitting near her in the close and stuffy Starbucks, because it didn’t seem likely that Flora would have chosen to be so isolated. If it bothered her, though, it didn’t show; she greeted them with a cheery wave and beamed at Samaki.

“So nice to finally meet you,” she said when he introduced himself. “I’m Flora, Flora McGuister, I saw you once from a ways away. You’re even cuter in person. Kory’s very lucky.”

“Thanks.” Samaki grinned, and even Kory couldn’t help a smile. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“You guys want to get drinks?”

“I’ll go.” Samaki stood. “Your usual?”

Kory nodded. Flora reached over and patted his arm as the black fox walked toward the counter. “He knows your usual. That’s so nice.”

“Yeah.” Kory glanced around the coffee shop.

“Oh, nobody’s watching,” Flora said. “Nobody cares, not down here. That’s why I love this area. It’s so
diverse,
you know?”

Privately, Kory thought that Flora probably wasn’t a great judge of what people cared about, and people certainly seemed to care about her scent down here. “So, what did you want to tell me?”

Her muzzle twisted into a grimace. She took a sip of her drink, which Kory couldn’t identify over the strong musteline scent, and set it down. “People are stupid,” she said. “You just shouldn’t pay any attention to them.”

“I know that already,” Kory said. “But Sal’s my friend—he used to be, anyway—and I want to know what’s going on with him. And he won’t tell me.

She sighed. “I guess from what I heard… now, keep in mind this is from Gregory Barton, and I don’t know him all that well, only his brother is one of the vo-tech kids. They don’t get along great together, but his brother did tell him a couple things, and then I had to ask him one more and I’m not sure he got it right, but…” She took a breath. “Anyway.”

Samaki walked back to them with two steaming cups. “Hot chocolate, full fat,” he said as he placed one in front of Kory, “and nonfat hazelnut latte,” as he sniffed the other and sat down, cupping it in his paws. He looked from Flora to Kory. “Sorry, go ahead.”

Flora played with her own cup, sipping and then moving it from paw to paw. “I was just telling Kory about the vo-tech kids. I guess when they found out about Kory being gay, they started giving Sal a hard time. And it stopped for a little while, but then one of them… Bobby something… started making these photoshopped pics of Sal’s head on naked guys. And he’s in graphic design, so they were pretty good. And then lately he got hold of some of your pictures, too, Kory, so he’s been making pictures of you and Sal in porn and passing them around.”

Kory felt a moment’s uneasiness at the thought of his face on pictures, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be. He saw Samaki watching him. “That seems pretty tame.”

Flora nodded. “But from what Greg said, they’re just not letting up. And Sal isn’t helping; he keeps reacting to it and getting in fights. I guess even the guys who used to be his friends pretty much leave him alone now.”

“Poor guy,” Kory said. Samaki sipped his latte and said nothing.

“It’s just stupid,” Flora said again. “Nobody in the rest of the school is giving you a hard time.”

“I was always pretty much alone,” Kory said. It occurred to him that what Sal was apparently now living was Kory’s own nightmare, as if he’d left it behind in Sal’s house when he moved out and it had fastened itself to the other otter. He thought about Sal saying that they wouldn’t be friends again, and thought he felt echoes of that same fear Perry had shown. Since Christmas, the wolf had approached him once or twice, but Kory couldn’t shake the memory of the cringing, whining conversation they’d had, so he hadn’t encouraged the wolf’s efforts.

She turned to Samaki. “Are you out at your school?”

The fox tilted his paw from side to side. “I don’t wear pride jewelry, but my friends know.”

“And they don’t care, right? They don’t start fights and make nasty pictures?”

Samaki shook his head. “They’re cool.”

“I thought you were, like, out out,” Kory said.

Samaki shrugged. “I don’t make a big secret of it.”

“Didn’t you date a guy in your class for a while?”

The fox’s ears flicked. He glanced at Flora. “We didn’t walk down the hall holding paws.”

“Okay,” Kory said. “Sorry.”

Now Samaki smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”

Flora changed the subject to their driving experience, and soon they were comparing notes on the various cars they’d driven and Kory was teasing Flora about how long it had taken her to drive into school. It was only because Samaki had to leave to get home for dinner that they managed to stop Flora’s happy chatter before the store closed.

Samaki walked Kory back to his apartment on his way back to the car. They were a few doors away when they ran into Nani Ki-Yo, struggling with two large grocery bags.

“Let me take one of those,” Kory said, taking the closest one from the little mongoose.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, adjusting her glasses and seating the other bag more comfortably. “I am lucky to have run into you! It’s been a little while since we’ve seen each other.” She wagged a finger. “You still have not come over for dinner.”

“I’m sorry,” Kory said. “With school and everything, it’s been busy.”

She peered at Samaki. “This is your friend who helped you move in, I think.”

“Yes, Samaki,” Kory said. “We were just getting coffee, and he was walking me home.”

“A pleasure to see you again, Samaki,” she said.

Kory saw Samaki looking at him, but couldn’t figure out from the fox’s neutral expression what he was thinking. He tried to brush his tail against the fox’s, out of sight behind them, but the fluffy black tail swung away. “Good to see you again, too,” the fox said. “How is your family?”

“Oh, fine, fine. Thank you for asking.” She opened the door to the building and walked inside.

Kory stood awkwardly for a moment. “Well, I’ll see you next weekend,” he said. “For our tuxes, right?”

“Yeah.” Samaki smiled at him, but the violet eyes didn’t light up with the smile. “Looking forward to it.”

The only thing Kory could think of was that Samaki was upset about having spent so much time with Flora, but that didn’t make any sense. He mentioned it on the phone the next night, but Samaki said he’d just been tired, and he did cheer up over the course of the week. When they met the following Saturday at the Rainbow Center, he smiled and joked with Kory, and everything was fine until they went to the tuxedo rental store.

The store had mannequins for only two body types: short and tall. Kory got fitted with a standard black tux that was tight across the stomach but fit well in the sleeves, while Samaki opted for an all-white tux. They got matching violet cummerbunds, at Kory’s insistence that Samaki’s eyes were prettier than his and deserved to be matched.

Standing in their tuxes while the ferret salesman scurried between them, checking the fit of each suit, Kory looked in the mirror and saw the two of them standing together. It might have been the first time he’d seen them in that way, the tuxedos matching them so that they really looked like a couple. He saw Samaki look into the mirror as well, and in the mirror their eyes met, Samaki looking at Kory’s reflection while Kory looked at the fox’s. Samaki smiled, tracing a paw down the elegant line of his white jacket, the black fur stark and beautiful against the white cloth.