Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) (6 page)

She held up her skirts and skipped from one side of the stage to the other, lifting one knee, kicking the leg, lifting the other knee, twirling the foot in a circle, and so on. The nearer patrons half-rose from their seats looking for a glimpse of underclothes, but all observed the etiquette of the club and none rose further than that.

Thierry’s breath came warm on my cheek. “Quite something, eh?” he breathed.

“Yes.” I could barely form the word. I could not look at him because to do so would have been to look away from her.

He gave a long, deep chuckle. “She’s only the third best of the dancers here. And she’s not the one I brought you to see.”

Sol awoke in his shirt, his muzzle open and pressed to the pillow. His tongue had soaked the fabric, and his mouth was full of rough cotton fabric and the taste of his sour morning breath. Reflexively, he smacked his alarm off and then fell to the side of the bed. For a moment, he had the impression that he’d been somewhere else. Gold patterns floated just outside the haze of his recollection, jazzy music played, but as soon as he concentrated on the tune, it fled.

He pushed himself out of bed and his phone fell to the floor. He’d forgotten to charge it overnight. He sighed and plugged it in, then stumbled to the shower.

The one good thing about Natty being gone was that there were no more fights over getting to the shower first. He could take his time and still not have to worry that there would be no hot water left, or that Natty would have saved up a good smell to leave in there for him. But even that, he missed. The bathroom was always just as he’d left it, the small reminders of another presence gone except for Natty’s old toothbrush, and the cream he’d used on the rough paw pads his football career had left him with.

Sol made it through breakfast without his father bringing up his meat-eating, because fortunately, there was no meat in grits. His mother usually made bacon and sausage on the weekend, but he would cross that bridge when it was set down on a plate in front of him. His father grumbled his way through the usual morning pleasantries and raised a paw as Sol went out to the bus. His mother gave him a kiss on either side of his muzzle and wished him a good day.

Fat chance, Sol thought. He was going to have to go back and face his teammates today.

The size of the school meant that there wasn’t a great deal of competition, especially at the unglamorous position of second base. Sol hadn’t doubted that Taric would take his position after this year. Then the coyote had grown from a lanky sophomore into a muscular junior, and had worked relentlessly at practice, talking to the starters, listening to the coaches. And still, Sol realized, somehow he hadn’t believed Mr. Zerling would let Taric take his spot. Maybe that was his father’s fault; the older wolf didn’t think a coyote could take Sol’s spot, and Sol had perhaps absorbed that belief, relied on it too much.

Two opossum cousins and a muskrat caught the bus at Sol’s stop. None of them had much to do with him; they weren’t on any sports teams, and they had long since passed the point where they said more than “Hey” at the bus stop in the morning. This morning was no different, standing in the welcome chill of the humid morning, the opossum cousins talking low over the purr of farm machinery in the distance and the scattered rings and slamming doors that signaled the slow waking up of the long row of ranch-style houses. Then the arthritic clanking Sol had heard every year for the last twelve clattered into earshot. The yellow school bus rounded the corner, lurched to a stop in front of them, and threw its doors open with the smell of overnight sanitizer, signaling—to Sol, at least—the official beginning of another school day.

Sol didn’t talk to any of the other kids on the bus, but he couldn’t help glancing at each one of them walking onto the bus. A few of them met his eyes, among the shuffling, tired crowd, but none of those looked like they knew about his demotion. A tenth-grade swift fox who lived down the street in a big extended family sat next to him at the stop after his, but opened her English book right away. For the next five stops, nobody said a word to him as he sat with his face pressed to the window, watching the tidy streets roll by, houses full of people whose sons were starting on baseball teams and football teams and basketball teams and even soccer teams.

By the time they stopped by the lake and Meg slouched onto the bus, Sol had allowed himself to relax. Meg gave Sol a nod of her head on her way to the back of the bus. He flicked his ears and nodded back. There was no real reason for him to remain at the front of the bus except habit, and the fact that the smoke that often filled the back few rows stung his nose. He would have endured worse to talk to Meg, but she did not talk on the school bus; it interfered with her strict regimen of being annoyed at The System.

If he hadn’t been given a social studies project with her two years ago, he would never have discovered how funny and smart she was. It had taken him a while to convince her that a jock could be as smart and sarcastic (sometimes) as a disaffected goth, but it had been worth it. He’d never seen anyone else from their class over at her house, and at school they rarely talked. Meg and the other goths sat in the back of the bus and at the same silent table at lunch, content to leave high school alone as long as it returned the favor. In private, Meg confided in him that she couldn’t stand the other goths, and suspected that each of them hated the group just as much, which was why they all kept quiet.

Not that Sol had many friends himself, anymore. In his two-bus, two-hundred-student school, the senior class knew each other well, but Sol’s best friends had always been on the baseball team, not in classes, and this past year he’d let even them drift away. For the last six years in homeroom, he’d been seated between a goat named Cheffy and a boar named Polly, neither of which he’d said more than a couple words to in years. The seat in front of him was now occupied by a short red fox, a foreign exchange student who’d moved into the area only the previous year. Like the goths, he kept to himself, though more likely it was out of shyness and lack of comfort with the language.

And the seat behind him was occupied by Taric’s older sister Tanny, which Sol knew was going to be trouble. Even when Taric and Sol had been workout partners, she had ignored him, but as he plopped himself down this morning, the pink-ribboned coyote gave a high laugh. “I heard you finally got knocked down to the bench where you belong,” she crowed.

Sol ignored her. She leaned forward so he could smell her sour breath. “It’s about time, too. If Mr. Zerling Fathead wasn’t a wolf, you’da been off the team a month ago. Finally Taric gets to be where he deserves. And so do you.”

Cheffy and Polly turned, then met each other’s eyes across Sol’s desk. They each gave a little sniff and turned back to their own work. Sol kept his eyes forward and pretended to be going over his math homework.

Tanny leaned back and said, louder, “I guess you’ll like it better. That way you can watch all the pretty boys, right?”

Sol’s tail curled under his chair. “Shut up,” he growled.

“Which one do you like? Is it Xavy? He’s cute.”

“Shut up.” His fur was rising on the back of his neck. Fear and anger tightened his paw around his pencil.

Cheffy gave him a curious look and then went back to drawing guitars on his biology textbook. Sol picked up his pencil and traced over the numbers he’d already written on his paper, hard. The angles of the mechanical pencil dug into his pawpads and he almost tore the paper. It was going to be like last December all over again, only this time it wouldn’t stop with Christmas break. This time it would go on ’til the end of school.

Tanny taunted him once more. “Can you still shower with the starters?”

Sol dug the point of his mechanical pencil into his paper and snapped it off. Before he could vent the terrified fury building inside him, the bell rang, and the old bear, Mr. Fortune, called the class to order.

The classes were okay. It was in the sanitizer-scented tiled hallways in between and in the chaotic crowds at lunch that the bad things happened. Taric had a little coyote gang he ran with in the junior class: one scrawny ’yote who was famous in the school for being able to get any drug you wanted, and one who was a backup on the football team. Until yesterday, the football player had been the leader of the gang, but now when they sauntered down the halls, it was Taric in the lead.

Meg wouldn’t be much help to him in school, so Sol tried to stick with the other senior wolf jocks. They didn’t object to his presence, but he had to keep dodging through other groups because they also didn’t make an effort to make sure he stayed with them. Normally they wouldn’t acknowledge the ’yotes, but today they actually greeted Taric, just a quick hi, but the coyote stopped and told them how excited he was to start. So the wolves had to tell him that they were, too. Sol was about to chime in, to be conciliatory and congratulate Taric on winning the starting job, but the coyote spoke first. Even his voice was deeper and more impressive than Sol’s, though there was a harsh, gravelly quality to it.

“Good thing we don’t have to count on that weak sauce no more,” Taric said, as if Sol weren’t standing five feet from him, ears flat against his head. He mimed swinging a bat. “You guys are gonna have some production from the 2-B spot now. And maybe you’ll actually turn a double play.”

Sol bit his lip, but there was nothing he could do. If he left the group now, he would be calling attention to himself, isolated and alone in the thinning sea of students. If he spoke up, he would be inviting vicious attacks, and he was far from certain that his fellow wolves would stand up for him. Where was his Thierry? In Millenport, he remembered, and fought the urge to take his phone out and text Carcy right then and there for help.

“Hey,” Xavy, the third baseman, said. “You’re doing good and we’re all on the same team. Leave Sol alone.”

But he didn’t contradict Taric. I wasn’t that bad, Sol wanted to say. I got two hits in the last game. We had three double plays this year. Of course, pleading his own case would make him even weaker. “Oh,” Taric said, “I know you gotta stick up for him and all. Sorry, man. So hey, you catch the Typhoons game last night?”

Two of the wolves were happy to talk about the game, while the others moved on. Sol tagged along behind them, hunched over. The scrawny ’yote was the only one who looked at Sol, and he did so with a giggle and a long, long smirk that curled into the ragged ruff of fur on his cheek. When he saw Sol looking back at him, he blew him a kiss and waggled his tongue around in his mouth.

“Jesus, Mox,” Taric said, elbowing his friend. “Don’t fuckin’ turn him on here in the hall.” They laughed as they walked on to their class.

The wolves looked after them. “We gotta play with him,” one of them, a pitcher, said.

“He’s just a prick. His friends are hinky.”

“They’re ’yotes.”

Xavy shoved the wolf who’d said that. “Don’t be an ass. They aren’t all like that.”

“Hey,” the other wolf protested. “Why d’you think stereotypes happen, huh?”

“At least he can play,” Xavy said.

“Yeah.” And then the tallest wolf, the smooth-hitting first baseman, looked at Sol. “Why couldn’t you’ve kept it up for just two more months, huh?”

“He kept it up okay back in December,” the pitcher murmured. He chuckled, but none of the others did.

Awkward silences were rapidly becoming part of Sol’s life. The other wolves, even Xavy, looked down and away. Sol flattened his ears and walked quickly on, leaving them behind. He hated walking to class alone, but it was better than having that brought up again. That was all he needed, on top of everything else.

A moment later, he was wishing he were more alone. Tanny ran up behind him, pink ribbons bouncing. “Hey, backup,” she said.

Sol just walked faster, but Tanny kept pace with him. “I bet you’re happier
riding
the
pine
,” she said. “Y’oughta thank my brother. C’mon. I wanna see a wolf thank a coyote.”

Don’t react, don’t give her the satisfaction. He managed to keep his muzzle shut and get into the classroom, where she had to shut up. After class, he grabbed his books and ran to the cafeteria, and she didn’t follow him.

After lunch, though, as he left the cafeteria, she sprang from the hallway to his side. “Hey,” she said in a venomous whisper, “was it my brother you were thinking of in the shower?”

He walked faster, but she kept pace. “I bet it was. I bet you want him to fuck you good.”

The twisting in his gut was too much. He snapped back at her. “What, like he does you?”

“Shut up, fag.”

“You still sleep in the same bed, right?”

“Shut
up
!”

“Does your mom—”

He didn’t know what he was going to say about their mom, and he never got the chance to find out, because Tanny smacked him hard across the muzzle, blunt claws dragging across the thin fur. “Shut up!” she shrieked.

She stomped away, and even though Sol had gotten her to leave him alone, he felt no sense of pride or victory. He felt dirty, ashamed, because he’d sunk to her level, he’d made himself no better than she was. He slunk into his math class with his tail curled around one leg and slouched at his desk, wishing he could take it back, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. Brooding over it, he took no notes for the first fifteen minutes of the class and spent the rest of it trying to catch up.

Tanny didn’t bother him for the rest of the day, but once he’d shoved his books into his locker and walked to the gym’s locker room, he had to deal with her brother. “What’d you say to my sister?” Taric demanded the moment Sol entered.

Here, Sol could no longer simply ignore the coyote. “She was giving me—calling me names,” he said.

Taric stood no taller than Sol, and weighed ten pounds less, but he seemed to loom over the wolf. He poked Sol in the chest with a finger as hard as his expression, as rough and dirty as his scent. “Tanny can call you whatever name she wants. You get it?”