Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) (28 page)

Tsarev scratched the side of his muzzle, and frowned as though he’d never thought about the question before. “Graduating? Diploma is the point, no?”

Sol felt wonderfully rebellious. “I can take an exam if I need to. I don’t know what I want to do yet, so I’ll take a year and figure it out. I don’t need to go to college right away.”

“What will your girlfriend do?”

“She’s coming with me.” Too late, he thought that maybe he shouldn’t have given away Meg’s plans, but Tsarev didn’t seem likely to run and tell tales.

The fox just nodded. “I hope you will be happy,” he said.

“Thanks.” Sol wagged his tail slowly.

Tsarev’s musky scent had sharpened, as though he were afraid of or nervous about something. The fox fidgeted from one foot to the other, but all he said was, “I would like to have talked to you some more. I am sorry there was not more time.”

“Well,” Sol said, “We can stay in touch. If you come up to Millenport I’ll show you around.”

“All right.” Tsarev brightened, bringing his phone out. The sharpness eased from his scent and he relaxed, his long bushy tail swinging easily behind him. He and Sol exchanged their e-mail addresses and then the fox bid him good night. “My host family is strict with time of dinner,” he said.

“So’s mine.” Sol watched the fox walk off and then leaned back against the bricks, closed his eyes, and waited for six-thirty.

The first thing his father asked him when he got in the car was, “How was practice?” and Sol didn’t have the energy or desire to soften the blow.

“I got suspended from the team,” he said. “For two weeks, including the Lakeside game.”

His father didn’t respond until they were stopped at a red light, and then he turned on Sol. “Suspended? What did you do?”

Sol looked straight ahead, holding the end of his tail in his paw, rubbing the back of that paw with the other. Tension coiled tight in his chest. “Got in a fight. With Taric.”

His father examined him. “You picked a fight with another player.”

The light turned green. They drove on, and when Sol didn’t say anything, his father kept going. “You remember that movie, where the guy told the pitcher he always, always had to be thinking about what arm he was using even when he got emotional? You remember that, Sol?”

A variation on the “what do you think” game. Sol ground out, “Sure,” between clenched teeth.

“You need to think like that when you’re on a team. Always, always, think about what your actions mean to the rest of the team. Did Taric get suspended too?”

“No.”

“So Mr. Zerling thought it was your fault. So you’ve become the kind of player who’s so destructive to the team that he’d rather you just go away than give you another chance.”

He’ll get his wish, Sol thought. “Guess so,” he muttered.

“I can’t begin to express how disappointed I am in you.” His father slammed a fist into the steering wheel. “Eleven years of team sports, and you haven’t learned a thing.”

“No,” Sol said, turning to stare out his window.

“Dammit!” His father’s yell made him jump. “Don’t you even care?”

“I care,” Sol said.
Just about a lot of things you don’t understand.

What was surprising was that he did not get in trouble for fighting. Even his mother, when told the whole story, said that as long as he was defending someone else, he was in the right. “Not that we want you to make a habit of it.”

And his father mostly sounded upset that he hadn’t finished the job. “You let him get you in the muzzle? You didn’t try to bite him, did you?”

After Sol had assured his parents that he knew better than to bite in a fight and that he would not be making a habit of it, the fight was not mentioned again. But the suspension, that was brought up over and over again, until Sol was released upstairs to do homework.

There he texted Carcy.
Did you get a day yet? I can’t wait.

He tried to do homework while waiting for the ram’s reply, but found himself working the same math problem out over and over again. Finally, his phone beeped, and he grabbed it before the third beep had even sounded.

How’s Tuesday?

Works great
, he typed, relieved.
Thanks.

He sent two e-mails right away, one to Carcy with his address, the other to Meg. She texted him right away to talk details, and they agreed to pack the night before and go to school in the morning; if they didn’t show up in homeroom, their parents might be called to see if they were ill. They’d duck out over lunch and take the city bus back home. Carcy would arrive at Sol’s place around one, they’d load the car, and then drive over to Meg’s to load her stuff. If there was room, Meg would come with them; if not, they could get her to the bus station somehow.

He lay on his side on his bed, and his eyes came to rest on the rolled-up painting in the corner of his room. When he’d come home to his room, he’d walked over and touched it, to make sure it was still real. And now, preparing for sleep, feeling on the edge of a grand adventure, he regarded it with a smile. It would come with him for sure. He’d take it along, and he and Meg would look at it and it would remind them of the project and the absinthe during the hot summer nights in Millenport.

The rain still had not come, but the clouds continued to crowd the sky. Sol felt his dream strongly when he looked out at them, so much that he could smell the oily paint, the rancid smell of Henri’s self-imposed starvation. When he closed his eyes, he could see the old, smelly room where the rat painted his pictures, the bed where rat (and fox?) slept. He could feel Niki’s longer, flowing tail behind him; the aches and pains in his lip, cheek and side mirrored the fox’s in his dream. But he, like Niki, was leaving, was taking the rat’s painting and moving on to a better life.

For the rest of the week and most of the weekend, he packed as stealthily as he could. There was very little he was going to take, so mostly he sorted through his things and decided which were necessary and which weren’t. He had never really wanted to keep many things from his childhood; his trophies from competitions in younger days didn’t have much meaning to him, and he had all his photos and music on his computer. What’s more, he was hoping he could pack lightly enough that there would be room for Meg on the trip. He hated to think of her taking the bus alone.

At school, Taric ignored him, both in the cafeteria and sitting across the room in the silent detention period. Tanny didn’t, but her taunts didn’t bother Sol as much when he could picture himself slugging her brother every time she talked to him. And he had the unexpected pleasure of eating lunches with Tsarev.

They didn’t talk about Sol’s leaving, only about baseball and soccer. Sol was surprised to find out how ignorant he was of international soccer, but the fox didn’t seem to mind; he was happy to tell Sol about the various teams and players in exchange for the old baseball and football stories Sol had grown up on.

Sol hadn’t expected to use the fox’s e-mail address until after he’d left, but on the weekend, he read a story about a baseball player who had hit a home run in his first at-bat back after two years, a player everyone had said would never play again. Sol sent Tsarev an e-mail with a link to the story, and got an enthusiastic response about how wonderful life could be sometimes. It was nice, amid the upcoming uncertainty, to look forward to exchanging e-mails, to having a virtual friend when the real-life world had shrunk to just him, Meg, and Carcy in Millenport. He didn’t think he would be having many conversations with his parents, nor with Xavy or any of the baseball team, once he left.

All day Monday, the feeling of being watched returned in force. His ears flicked around as if he could catch people talking about his imminent departure, and his tail twitched constantly. Every time he walked into a class, he thought, this is the last time I’ll be walking into this classroom. This is the last time I’ll be sitting in math, in physics, in history. But nobody treated him differently, nobody said anything, even though he felt sure they all knew. It was exciting, and scary at the same time.

Niki, in his dream, had loved parts of the Moulin Rouge, and though his home hadn’t been comfortable, he had a friend there. Sol had a comfortable home, a routine at the school that he was used to, even if he didn’t like it, and a group of people whom he could call friends, if perhaps not close friends.

But he also had a boyfriend and a new, exciting life to look forward to: exploring the big city, living on his own, finding a job, and doing something he was interested in. Even if he didn’t quite know what that was, yet, he was much more certain to find it there than here.

He thought he might dream about Niki Monday night, but his dreams were gone the moment he woke, leaving only an uneasy residue in his muzzle that he tried to erase with toothpaste. Walking down through the cloudy morning to the bus stop, Sol had to force himself to breathe normally. Talking to Meg might calm him, so he sat by himself, but Meg didn’t slide in next to him when she got on, just walked right to the back. Sol’s tail kept twitching against the seat, until the possum who did sit next to him looked down at it for the fourth time. The black wolf held his tail in his lap after that, though it wriggled against his fingers with all his nervous energy.

In between his first and second classes, right around nine, he got a text from Carcy.
Leaving now. Seeya soon
. The reality of the words stopped him cold. A raccoon bumped into him from behind, and he shut the phone off and put it away quickly, paws shaking. By the time Sol got to class, he was sure the raccoon had seen the message, was sure everyone in class was staring at him and that they knew they wouldn’t see him again after today. The morning felt like a dream to him, as though he were already lying in a bed in Millenport, dreaming of the Sol he used to be. Would it be like this for Niki, he wondered, leaving the Moulin Rouge? If the fox had the strength to change his life, then Sol could too.

At lunch, he hesitated at the doorway to the cafeteria, then broke away from the crowd of students. Alone, he walked down the hallway to the school’s entrance, and there he stopped dead. Mr. Fortune stood in front of the wide glass doors, his bear’s bulk imposing against the grey light of the afternoon. He peered in Sol’s direction over his wire spectacles. “Something I can do for you, Mister Wrightson?”

Meg came up behind him.“We’re going to meet my mom for lunch. We’ve got a note.”

She walked past and handed a folded paper to Mr. Fortune, who examined it, looked up at Meg, examined the note again, and finally said, “All right.”

“You brought a note?” Sol hissed to her once the door had closed behind them.

“You didn’t?” She rolled her eyes. “They always keep a teacher by the front doors. How long have you been going to this school?”

“Almost four years.” He looked back over his shoulder, at the long, low, golden bricks. “Almost.” The rain had finally come, a light sprinkle. The clouds promised more soon, but for now it wasn’t even enough to notice.

“Good riddance.” Meg hitched her bag over her shoulder.

They caught the bus back to their neighborhood and parted with a hurried wave. “See you in about an hour,” Meg said, and Sol, increasingly nervous, nodded quickly.

He let himself in and ran up the stairs quickly, putting aside the thought that this would be the last time he would be in his house for who knew how long. The house’s silence unnerved him. He wanted music.

His iPod lay where his father always stashed it when it was confiscated, right in the top drawer of his dresser. Next to it were six pairs of t-shirts, neatly folded. The scent of his father came strongly, not from the clean shirts, but from the room itself. Sol paused to look around. There were photos in the room: a picture of his mother and father from their wedding, years ago; pictures of Sol and Natty as cubs, individually and together; a family picture from three years ago, on vacation to the amusement park outside of town. The smiles, the love and happiness in the pictures, stopped Sol and fed the butterflies in his stomach.

He was doing the right thing, the best thing for himself. He weighed the iPod in his paw.
They still treat me like a cub. They won’t let me be myself. I’d be leaving in five months anyway, and I didn’t even pick out the college. I need to get away.

Anyway, there was nothing he could do about it now. Carcy was on his way, almost here, and when he got here, he would be taking Sol away. Nervous jitters were perfectly normal. Sol took the iPod back to his room and put on some hard rock while he finished getting everything into bags.

At five to one, he ran downstairs and paced by the front door. He didn’t quite want to bring his bags downstairs, because what if his parents came home unexpectedly? What if Carcy didn’t show up? As the clock ticked over the hour, his worries multiplied.

At five after, he became convinced that Carcy had brought Bucky with him, that that was what had delayed him.

At ten after, he knew the ram had decided he was too much trouble. Probably Bucky had told him not to bother with the high school wolf, had called him a whiny, weak cub. Without even knowing him. Sol imagined Bucky as a coyote, telling Carcy that they didn’t need another roommate in their place, that Sol would just screw everything up. He imagined Bucky telling Carcy how weak a vegetarian wolf was, not caring how much effort and strength it had taken for Sol to make that change and stick to it. Sol’s fists clenched. He’d gotten Taric good; he’d get Bucky, too, if the coyote—or whatever he was—made any trouble for him and his ram.

But at twelve past one, a small car pulled up outside. Sol hurried to the window in time to see a big, muscular ram get out and stretch, alone, then check the number on the house before walking up to the door. It had to be Carcy, though it didn’t look exactly like his picture. So he opened the door and stood there grinning, tail twitching.

The ram’s face broke into a smile. “Hey, Solly,” he said, in a familiar, deep voice. He wore a t-shirt of the band Def Match and an earring in his right ear, below the majestic, curling horns atop his head. His fur was white and thick, in waves along his head and tight curls at his chest, poking out over the top of the t-shirt.

“Hi,” Sol said. “Uh, come on in.”

Carcy walked through the door, and after Sol had closed it, wrapped his arms around the wolf. “Good to see you,” he breathed against Sol’s ear, which flicked ticklishly.

“Mm, you too.” Sol hadn’t hugged a non-family member in a long time. Carcy was warm and solid in his arms, and he relaxed for the first time that day. He pressed up against the ram, and then Carcy shifted to press his groin firmly into Sol’s leg. Sol let him, then felt weird about it and tried to shift himself away, without much success. “Uh,” he said, heart pounding, “did you have a good drive?”

“Rained for the first half of it. Seems to be all to the north, though.” Carcy finally let Sol disengage from the hug, and they stood and looked each other over. Carcy in person loomed over the ram of Sol’s imagination, a few inches taller and broader in the shoulders than Sol was. He smelled of sweat and beer, and when he talked, cheese and oil on his breath. He’d told Sol he was twenty-two, but there were creases in the short fur around his eyes that made him look older. “I tell you, if I didn’t know which town was yours I’d still be drivin’ around. All these little backwoods bumfuck towns look exactly the same. Don’t blame you for bein’ anxious to get out.”

“You want something to drink?” Sol took a step toward the kitchen. “We got milk, um. And beer.”

“Are we gonna be here a while?” Carcy grinned. Before Sol could answer, the ram said, “Sure, a beer would be great.”

Sol hurried to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer—one of the cheap ones, for company. He reached in to get one for himself, then changed his mind and grabbed a can of Coke instead.

When he came back out to the living room, Carcy had dropped himself onto the sofa. It was weird seeing him there; heck, it was weird seeing him, period. Sol was still reconciling this large ram with his boyfriend, whom he knew mostly across a phone. So he handed Carcy the beer and then sat on the edge of his dad’s recliner, tail flicking nervously, looking down at his Coke.

“Don’t wanna sit next to me, Solly?”

“Um…” Sol pressed his tongue to his sore lip. “I’ll be sitting next to you all the way back.”

“Yeah, but there’s a lot we can’t do then. I’ll be driving.”

Sol gulped down his Coke and then burped. “Excuse me,” he said.

Carcy laughed, downed a good third of his beer, and let loose a belch that dwarfed Sol’s. “No ’scusin’ necessary,” he said. “Come on, sit over here, relax.”

On the family couch where he and Natty had tussled? Where he and his parents had watched TV, played games? But Carcy was staring at him, waiting, and Sol didn’t feel able to come up with any more excuses to stay away. He got up and walked past Carcy, then sat himself on the sofa with about a foot between them. The thought of the Moulin Rouge dancers keeping a distance between themselves and their patrons made him relax a little, then tense up again when Carcy slid over, closing the distance between them.

“You’re cuter in person,” the ram murmured. His weight pressed in on Sol’s shoulder.

“Th-thanks.” Sol took another drink.

“Got those cute ears. God, I love wolf ears. They’re so…” Carcy’s breath warmed Sol’s ears, ruffling the little hairs in them until they flicked around, out of Sol’s control. The ram chuckled softly and brushed his nose into Sol’s left ear.

Sol jumped, then forced himself to sit still. He was trembling, nerves and arousal warring in him. In their texting sessions, Carcy always played with Sol’s ear, and that was awesome to imagine. And now the ram did it for real: he closed his lips around Sol’s ear and tugged.

Sol squirmed back against him, a little embarrassed at how quickly he was responding. The ram’s arms held him tightly, one hand sliding down his back towards his tail. “Uh,” Sol said, “I’m not eighteen for a month yet, I mean, we could, you could get in trouble…”

Carcy licked his ear as he let it go. “Nah,” he said. “I’m only nineteen. Two years difference isn’t illegal.”

“Didn’t…” Sol licked his lips. Carcy’s eyes met his. “I thought you said you’re twenty-two.”

He thought Carcy might get angry, might ask if Sol was implying he was a liar. But the ram just laughed. “Aw, Sol, I guess if I said that, I thought you wanted someone older to look up to. What’s the matter? You didn’t seem too worried about age last week.”

“Oh.” Sol swallowed. He put the Coke can down on the coffee table, now aware of a more urgent scent from the ram. “Um. We should get my stuff.”

“We got time. I wanna relax a little.” The ram stretched an arm back across the couch, right where Sol would be sitting if he leaned back now. “Y’know, I thought drivin’ four hours would be better than standing behind the counter, but it’s exhausting. Your folks ain’t comin’ home ’til five, right?”

“Yeah, but…” He cleared his throat, trying to keep his voice from breaking. “It’s…it’s just up in my bedroom. It’ll take a minute.”

“Oh, okay.” Carcy grinned. “I’m cool with going upstairs.”

“I can get it.” Sol stood. “It’s not a problem.”

The ram’s grin widened a bit. “I’m here to help, Solly. Besides, I wanna see your bedroom.”

Sol walked up the stairs slowly, giving his heart—and other parts of him—time to settle down, though his whiskers twitched with the ram’s movement behind him. He was painfully aware of what Carcy expected of him; that made it difficult for his heart to slow. He wanted what Carcy wanted, so why was he being such a baby about it? The ram wasn’t going to hurt him. He touched the side of his muzzle, where his lip was sore.

At the top of the stairs, Carcy said, “You have a really cute tail,” and brushed it. Sol curled it away, around his hip. He hurried to his room, where he paused to inhale his brother’s scent.

He only got a sniff of it before Carcy pushed his way past. The reassuring stability of Natty gave way to the beer and increasing arousal of the ram. “Nice place. Cool tunes,” Carcy said, because the iPod was still going.

Sol walked over and shut it off, tossing it into the nearest bag on the bed. “We don’t have to bring the player if there’s not room.”

“I got one,” Carcy said. He sniffed around the room, then stopped at the small pile of three bags on the bed. “This everything?”

“That and the…” Sol waved a paw toward the rolled-up painting. “Poster.”

“Cool.” The ram hefted the two largest bags.

Sol felt a wash of relief. They were just going to go to the car, they would get Meg and be on their way. He picked up the painting. “You think there’ll be room for Meg? My friend?”

“Depends what she’s got.” Carcy set the bags on the floor by the door, picked up the third one, and set it beside them. He pulled the iPod out of the bag and set it back in the player. “Got any Trisha on here?”

Sol shifted his weight. The poster tingled in his paws, just for a moment, like the jolt he got from licking a battery. He jumped and nearly dropped it. “Shouldn’t we, uh, get going?”

“Look, I know you’re real anxious to get out of here. Trust me, we got plenty of time, and I don’t wanna get right back in the car. You seem real tense, anyway, and I can help relax you a bit. Haven’t you been looking forward to this?” Carcy found a soft rock album and backed up to sit on the bed. He patted his lap and raised an eyebrow.

“Sure,” Sol said. He didn’t move, but he couldn’t look Carcy in the eye. “I just…”

“Just what?” The ram’s tone grew darker. “Look at me, Sol. What, don’t like the look of me in RL?”

“No, no!” Sol took a step closer. “You look great. I mean, really awesome.”

“You do too. So c’mon, let me see the rest of you.” Carcy reached down to his own waist and pulled his shirt off in one fluid motion, revealing a nicely shaped chest and thick, muscular arms. His scent crowded its way into Sol’s nose, thick and forward. He grinned at Sol. “Your turn.”