Waterways (27 page)

Saturday morning, he walked down to the bus stop. Sal had offered to drive, if he were awake, and Kory, knowing he wouldn’t be, had accepted with a grin. His friend hadn’t been back at one a.m., when Kory had enforced his own bedtime, and there was no movement from his room at seven a.m., when Kory’s computer beeped to wake him up.

Once he got to his accustomed transfer point on the bus, he got to the Rainbow Center as easily as ever, enjoying the familiarity of those surroundings. Margo, it turned out, had been to visit Malaya the previous day, and planned to go again in the afternoon. She invited Kory to come along, which he gladly accepted. Samaki arrived just in time to hear an update on Jeremy’s situation: the skunk was doing much better and had told Margo that he wanted to go live with his aunt and uncle in the northeast. “It helped,” she said, “that his aunt and his mother had a falling-out. I could just hear her thinking about boasting that she could take better care of Jeremy than his mother could. It’s not the healthiest environment for a boy, but it isn’t for long, and he did used to live in that town anyway.” She shook her head. “Sometimes it takes a little crisis for a boy to come to a decision. How are you doing, Kory?”

“Oh,” he said, “fine.” He started to tell her about his own crisis, but he was too familiar with the questions that would raise, and he was tired of them already. He just wanted this day to be normal.

Kory couldn’t wait until their first hug was done to ask Samaki not to mention his situation. “Sure,” Samaki said, arms still around the otter. “It’s your business. How are you doing?”

“Fine.” Kory looked up and nuzzled his shoulder. “Sal’s place is nice and I’m all set up there.”

“How long do you think you’ll stay?”

Kory shrugged. “I really don’t know. I just don’t want to think about that.”

Samaki released him, stepping back. “Because you know, you could stay in our basement. Mom said she’d love to have you there.”

Kory nodded. “I know. I just… Sal has pools, and his parents are…” Well-off, he started to say, but snapped his mouth shut before the words escaped. He didn’t want Samaki to think it was all about the money. “… they’re cool with it. And it’s closer to school and stuff.”

“Yeah, okay.” Samaki’s tail dipped, but his smile didn’t fade too much. “Oh, I didn’t tell you last night. When you were talking to me on Thursday, your mom called my mom.”

Kory felt his fur prickle. “Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“Oh, we were talking about school, and I kinda forgot,” Samaki said. “It wasn’t a big deal. My mom hung up on her after about fifteen minutes.”

Kory groaned. “What’d she say?”

“Mom wouldn’t tell me. But I heard Mom saying ‘we know, and we love our son’.”

“Tell your mom I’m sorry.”

Samaki squeezed Kory’s arm. “Why? Not your fault.”

“I know, but…”

Samaki kissed his nose. “She knows you’re going through a rough time. She can’t wait to see you tonight. Be warned,” he grinned, “she’s feeling really sorry for you. You may have to eat two desserts.”

“I think I can manage.” Kory smiled.

Delicate fingers caressed one of his ears. “You doing okay?”

“I guess.” Kory closed his eyes.

He heard toeclaws clicking on the floor as someone walked by. “Get a room, you two,” Jeremy said lightly, pushing open the door to the back yard.

“We’ll be out in a second,” Samaki called. “I can’t imagine getting kicked out of my house,” he said, more softly.

“Well, you like your parents.” Kory opened his eyes, resting his chin on the fox’s shoulder. On the opposite wall, a small rack of brochures for the kids hung. He could read the big black text on one: “YOU’RE OKAY.” Next to it was a space that he knew was waiting for a new shipment of “YOUR PARENTS LOVE YOU.”

“We always talked about your mother freaking out,” Samaki said. “Was it bad?”

“It was a scene. Poor Nick was caught in the middle.”

“What did she say, besides the camps?”

Kory shrugged. “The usual stuff about homos being evil. She wanted to protect me from them.”

“I still can’t believe she mentioned those camps.” Kory felt rather than heard Samaki’s low growl.

“Don’t worry,” Kory said. “I’d run away before I ended up in one of those.”

“You already did.” Samaki leaned back to look him in the eyes. “Anything you want to talk about while we have time here?”

Kory smiled and touched his nose to the fox’s. “I don’t want to ruin today. Let’s work on the yard while the weather holds. We’re going to go see Malaya this afternoon.”

“Okay, lead on,” Samaki said. “Oh, I filled out my application for State last night. It felt just like applying for a job at the supermarket.”

“I haven’t looked at mine,” Kory said as they walked to the back, where the boys were already working on laying some paving stones. Kory could see that while the porcupine, Jano, was just laying the closest stones within his reach, Jeremy was trying to sort them by size and color. The stones had been donated, so this was not a simple task. “I don’t even know if I can go to college now. Who’s going to pay for it?”

“Your mom will. She has to.” Samaki bent to lift a stone.

Kory paused, staring beyond the fence. “I don’t know if I want to take her money.”

The fox placed the stone down for the boys to tamp into place. He turned to look at Kory. “If it’s a choice between going to college and not?”

Kory shrugged. “I can work for a year. Earn money. Maybe I’ll join the Army or something, get them to pay for school.”

Samaki giggled. “I can just see you in the Army.”

Vic, the weasel, looked up. “I thought gays couldn’t join the Army.”

“I wouldn’t
tell
them,” Kory said. They stared at him until he pinned his ears back and reached for the tamper, pressing the stone Samaki had just laid into the sand.

Vic shrugged. “Who wants to go to college anyway? I’ve had enough school already.”

Jano said, “You’ve gotta go to college. That’s where you start the rest of your life.”

“I’m ready now,” Vic said. “Starting here.” He fitted a stone next to two others and eyed it. “What do you think? Does that work like that?”

They all looked it over. He’d placed a reddish clay stone in between two slate-blue ones. “Looks great,” Samaki said, and Kory nodded his agreement.

At the hospital, they found Malaya alert enough to roll her eyes as Margo, Kory, Samaki, and the boys trooped into her room. “They said I need peace and quiet,” she grumbled, but Kory saw the hints of a smile under the bandaged ear.

She told them the story again, more coherently: her father, seeing her leafing through Vogue while talking on the phone about how pretty some of the models were, had assumed she was talking to a girlfriend, which she didn’t deny because it was, in fact, true. “And maybe I was talking about how much I’d like to do some of those models,” she said, “but it was just talk, that was all.”

They laughed with her for a while, and she pretended to hate it. When Margo announced it was time to return to the Center, they all said their goodbyes, and she waved at them and told them to get out. Kory and Samaki, planning to take a bus, started out to walk down with the rest of the group, until Malaya called, “Kory?”

He turned and saw her beckoning. “Go ahead,” he said to Samaki. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

When the others had gone, he sat by Malaya’s bed again. “What’s up?”

She shook her head. “Remember what I told you about hope?” He nodded. She waved toward her smokeless muzzle with one hand. “See? Given it up.”

Her eyes defied him to contradict her. Normally he would have skirted around the issue, but his own recent wounds were too fresh. “I got kicked out of my house,” he said.

“For a night?”

“I’m not going back.”

He hadn’t expected her to be shocked or impressed. If she was either, she didn’t show it. “Seems like we’re in the same boat. You staying at the Center?”

He shook his head. “With a friend.”

“Well, hey,” she said, “good for you. I don’t know anyone I can stay with.”

“Go back to the Center. That’s what it’s there for.”

She coughed. “It’s too much sunshine and brightness. Life sucks, and I’m okay with that, but it’s bad enough without people pretending it’s all gonna work out okay. I’ll probably end up there for a little while, but as soon as I can find somewhere else to go, I’m gone.”

“The Center’s not so bad,” Kory said.

She nodded at him. “What’d you do to get kicked out?”

“Blew up at my mom after we left here.” He looked at the window, at the bright day outside, away from Malaya. It was hard, realizing he’d told personal details of her life to someone she didn’t even know, but he owed her that explanation. She listened calmly as he gave it, and then nodded.

“She’s probably a closet dyke,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s the closet cases that are really homophobic like that,” Malaya said. “I read about it. They’ve got all this self-hatred going on and they take it out on other people. Kinda sucks for you, though.”

“I don’t really think… she’s just really into religion, is all.”

Malaya nodded sagely. “A lot of ’em do turn to religion. It helps ’em overcome their horrible urges.”

Kory stood up. “I gotta get going. Glad you’re feeling better. Uh, see you next Saturday.”

“Sure.” She waved a hand and gave him the ghost of a smile.

As if he needed one more thing to think about. His mom? He brooded over it all the way back to the Rodens’ house, until Samaki asked him what was wrong. He said he was just thinking about Malaya, and they talked about the fruit bat and her family trouble, and he put the conversation about his mother out of his mind.

Mrs. Roden fussed over him without ever directly mentioning his situation, until Kory came in to help her do the dishes while Samaki was still talking to his father. The slender vixen put an arm around his shoulder then, her ears cupped toward him. “Kory,” she said, “you know that whatever happens, you’re always welcome here.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Roden,” he said. “I’m okay where I am right now.”

“I know.” Her voice cracked a little. “I just don’t want you to think you have nowhere to go. We’re an independent family, you know. Everyone makes their own way. So even if we don’t offer help out loud, it’s always here for you. You’ve been really good for Sammy, and we’d like to—we do consider you part of our family.”

The last bit came out rather defiantly. Kory stood awkwardly, looking at her, and because he knew he was expected to, he said, “Thanks. That means a lot.”

He didn’t tell Samaki about it, but the brief exchange left an uneasy feeling in his stomach for the remainder of the night. He couldn’t say why Mrs. Roden’s kindness seemed unnerving. Perhaps it had gone too far, or perhaps he couldn’t stop thinking about his own mother and the contrast between her and Mrs. Roden. He looked around at the house and tried to imagine himself living there, but it would never feel like home, he thought, and he still felt like an outsider in this family of foxes.

They lounged on Samaki’s loft while Ajani and Kasim played some card game over on Kasim’s desk. Samaki had propped up some pillows against the wall and was leaning on them, his tail draped over the otter’s hip as Kory lay on his side, propped up on an elbow. He rested one paw on the fox’s foot, rubbing the fur gently while Samaki trailed his fingers up and down Kory’s calf. They had gotten out the applications to State, and Kory was filling out his in between conversations about school and science fiction books and anything but his living situation.

They finished the form in forty-five minutes. “This kinda sucks,” Kory said. “I mean, not that I want to write those essays for Whitford and Gulliston, but at least it felt like they weren’t going to let anyone in who can spell his name.”

“It’s a place to get an education,” Samaki said. “It is what we make it. There’s resources there we can use.”

“At least I can afford the tuition,” Kory said. For in-state students, the amount was ridiculously low compared to the other schools he’d looked at, something he could pay with his savings the first year, and a part-time job the rest of the time. Looking at the numbers made him realize for the first time how poor Samaki’s family must be, if they couldn’t spare the amount of money he had just in his savings.

That thought led him to wondering how much of his savings would be used up paying for food and clothes now that he was on his own. He had many years of birthday checks and a small inheritance from his grandfather, but he wasn’t sure it was enough to last a year. He shook that thought aside and returned to the applications.

“You know,” he said, “Mr. Pena’s an ass, but he did say that there were lots of scholarships available out there. Some for ethnic minorities, but some just for talent. We should look around for some. Not for Whitford, or anything like that, but at least for something…” Other than State, he started to say, and then stopped himself, “… different.”

Samaki chuckled. “Okay, I’m game. I think the computer’s free. Want to go look now?”

An hour and a half later, they had a list of six nearby universities with likely scholarships, and a pile of applications. “Great,” Kory moaned, “more paperwork.”

“A few hours now could save us hundreds of dollars.” Samaki pointed dramatically to the Esther J. Dobson Grant For Aquatic Writers, which awarded $250 per year to students at tiny Haverlawn College in the south of the state.

“Haverlawn’s cool,” Kory said. “They have a self-grading policy.”

“They’re cool, but they’re also ten grand a year. Two-fifty isn’t going to make much of a dent in that.”

Kory rummaged through the printouts. “That’s why you also go for the, um, Tilford Times Journalism Award. That’s a thousand.”

“Still not beating a free ride to State.”

Kory shrugged. “This Drew Fortunas one for foxes looks good. Full tuition to Forester, and all you have to do is mentoring your junior and senior years.”

“Thought you didn’t want to go to Forester.” Samaki held the paper as he said that, scanning it.

“You said it was getting more progressive.”

“I said it might.” He flipped to the second page. “’Submit essays on previous mentoring experience.’ Hey, I could actually do this one.” His ears perked as he looked down at Kory. “Is there a way you could afford Forester?”