Waterways (32 page)

“I’m glad someone is.” Kory grabbed another slice, feeling better and hungrier.

“Not just me,” Nick said.

“I know. Samaki is too.”

Nick pointed up. “And Him.”

“Yeah.” Kory let the taste of tomatoes and anchovy roll around in his mouth. “I hope so.”

The next day, after the next to last meeting of the college prep class, Kory followed Perry out and caught up to him, despite the wolf’s quick pace. When it became impossible for Perry to ignore Kory without being overt about it, he sighed, ears back and tail down. “Hi.”

Kory was in no mood for pleasantries. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” The wolf’s eyes darted back and forth.

“You’ve been acting weird around me the last couple days.”

Perry refused to look directly at Kory. “I’m just busy, ya know. Essays and… and applications…”

“Right,” Kory said. “And listening to rumors about me?”

Now Perry stopped, looked furtively around, and lowered his voice. “Is it true?”

Kory wanted to shake him. “Is what true? Who told you?”

Perry looked at his paws, twisting his fingers around and around. “I heard Dilly Carlisle say that you and Sal are gay but you broke up recently. But then Flora McGuister said that Sal wasn’t gay, that it was just you and he kicked you out.”

“So, what? You afraid of gay people?” Kory took a step forward.

Perry cringed. “No, no,” he said. “They’re fine! Only I can’t… I mean, they already call me loser, bitch, p-pawfu…” His ears were flat back now.

“Other stuff. I can’t hang out with you. It’ll just make it all worse. They’ll call us butt-buddies, or c-cocksuckers.” He whispered the last word.

Kory’s stomach lurched. He waved a paw at the cowering thing. “Fine,” he said. “Go. Don’t be seen with me.”

“I’m sorry,” Perry said. “I’m just not strong like you.” He scuttled to the door, and out.

Strong? At the moment, the otter felt anything but. The prospect of going from that conversation to facing the silent car ride home with Sal depressed him. Kory leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

Clicks of claws on the tile floor echoed through the hallways, receding. It wasn’t that Perry had been a particularly good friend. It was just that the school year wasn’t even half over, and already he’d lost most of the people he’d spent time with at school. There were casual friends, more like acquaintances, and none of them had acted any differently toward him this week, but they weren’t the kind of friends he could talk to about college, or relationships, or life. When he’d broken up with Jenny, he’d stopped going to parties and movies, stopped hanging out with them Friday nights at the Big Boy, stopped talking about TV shows. Odd, indeed, that it was the conversation with his newest “friend,” Perry, that had brought home how far he’d drifted from his older ones.

He opened his eyes and looked back down the long, empty hallway. Outside the glass doors, across the parking lot, Sal sat in his car, waiting. Walking across the bus lanes, the feeling in Kory’s stomach was the same feeling he’d gotten going back to his room to get his winter clothes. He was in a place that had once been a part of his life, where he no longer belonged, an archaeological curiosity, a legacy of a past civilization that had crumbled and died. He wondered, fleetingly, whether Had Seldon could have predicted how fast his life would have changed.

Dreading the conversation that would ensue, he hadn’t told Samaki about leaving Sal’s, but on their nightly call, he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer.

“Why do you have to leave?” Samaki sounded angrier than Kory’d ever heard him.

“I guess I just overstayed my welcome here. I knew it couldn’t be forever.”

“No, but they could give you more warning than a week. Did something happen?”

He drew his legs tighter against his chest, sitting on the bed. “No,” he said, and then the wave of guilt over the first lie he’d told Samaki forced him to take it back. “I mean, yeah, kind of, but it’s a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

Kory sighed. “Can I tell you Saturday? I don’t want to go into it now.”

A short pause greeted that remark. “Okay.” Samaki sounded gentler. “I’m just worried for you. So did you want to move over here?”

That was the question Kory was dreading. “I want to,” he said, stumbling, “but I talked to Margo and she said they have room. I thought it would be less trouble.”

“It’s no trouble.”

“I know, but…” Kory sighed. “It’s just easier. They don’t have a lot of people there. I don’t want to be a burden.”

When Samaki spoke again, his voice sounded tight and pained. “All right. I’ll see you there Saturday and we can talk about it.”

Kory sat on the bed after they hung up, just staring at his cell phone. It had never occurred to him that he might lose the one person he’d lost everything else in his life for, but he’d never heard that tone in Samaki’s voice. His refusal to move in there was obviously hurting the fox. Why couldn’t he understand what Kory was going through and respect that? He couldn’t believe that would be enough to drive them apart, but hadn’t he and Jenny also changed and broken up? Hadn’t there been a time when he’d believed they’d be happy forever? No, he thought. Not like with Samaki. Never like that.

But if Samaki needed him to move into the Rodens’ house to save their relationship, then what?

Packing didn’t take long, so even though he’d left most of it until Friday night, he was done within an hour after dinner. When he went across the hall to see if Sal would give him a ride, he found his friend’s door open and his room dark.

“I think he went out, dear,” Sal’s mother said, coming upstairs as Kory was staring into the empty room.

“I guess so.” Kory turned around and looked at the five boxes in his room, plus the computer. All his life fit in such a small space.

Sal’s mother glided down the hall. Her paw rested on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry you have to move on. We’ve enjoyed having you here. Even if Sal hasn’t quite picked up your dedication to education.”

“I really appreciate you having me here for so long,” he said, aware that he could mess up Sal’s scheme by confessing that he didn’t really want to leave. If he did, though, Sal might refuse to drive him to school, and he’d certainly be unpleasant. Anyway, Kory
was
anxious to leave at this point, as bad as this last week had been.

She had applied perfume today. “It was no trouble,” she said, the pine scent wafting over him in waves as she spoke. “Do you have a ride to where you’re going?”

“No,” he said. “I was thinking of just calling a taxi.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said. “We’ll drive you over. Joey!”

Sal’s father called from downstairs. “What?”

“Come help Kory load his things into the car.”

“You don’t have to…” Kory began, worrying about them seeing the Rainbow Center, but it was too late. Sal’s father was already on the stairs.

“It’s no trouble,” Sal’s mother said. “And until things are better with your mother, you call on us if you need anything.”

He was too startled to answer that, too startled to do anything but watch as Sal’s father hefted a box of books and carried it down the stairs. He hadn’t realized that they knew that much. Either Sal had told them or they had called and asked of their own accord. Really, how naive would he have to be to believe that they wouldn’t realize something was wrong when their son’s best friend moved into their spare room for over a month? That they hadn’t asked him questions had been a mark of tact, not of indifference, he realized guiltily.

“Did you talk to her?” he asked, picking up his computer while Sal’s mother took a light box of clothes.

She shook her head. “Sal told us you were having a fight over some family business. It’s for you to work out. We don’t want to intrude.”

In his experience, she didn’t intrude much in matters that concerned her own family, either. Whether Sal’s father felt the same, he didn’t know, even after the twenty-minute ride to Badger Square. He tried to get them to leave him there, but they insisted on driving him to the door of the house, and because he couldn’t figure out how to carry five boxes and his computer down a block and a half, he finally directed them to Rainbow Center.

Margo flung the door open and embraced Kory. “You poor thing,” she said. “Stay as long as you need to.” To Sal’s parents, she said, “I’m Margo Cinturis. I…”

“Margo lives here.” Kory jumped in. “I met her over the summer and she, um, has a little kind of hotel here, I called her this week and she said she can keep me here for a while.”

“Joe DiAngelo, and my wife Alia.” Sal’s father extended a paw, which Margo shook, turning her attention away from Kory.

“Thank you for bringing Kory over,” she said. “I’ll take care of him here.”

“I like your plaque,” Sal’s mother said, brushing a finger over it.

Her husband glanced at the burnished bronze, then back at Margo. “Do you have a phone number here?”

“You can call my cell phone,” Kory said quickly, but Margo had already disappeared back into the house. She emerged a moment later with a scrap of paper, which she handed to Sal’s father. It wasn’t her business card, Kory saw with some relief, even though the business cards were very plain.

They helped him move the boxes inside and then left, after asking him one more time whether he’d be okay. He and Margo moved the boxes down to the aquatic room, where the bed had been freshly made and the water lightly scented. Kory looked down at it. “Can’t wait to get in there,” he sighed.

“Malaya’s very excited that you’ll be living here,” Margo told him, piling his clothes on the bed.

“Really? Hey, you don’t have to do that.”

She waved away his objection and continued emptying his boxes and bags, her tail flicking. “Well, as excited as Malaya gets. I don’t know what to do with that girl sometimes, but I’m happier to have her back here than with her father. She absolutely won’t go to her grandmother’s and I don’t know what else to do. She can’t stay here for another year and a half.”

Kory started putting the clothes away in the worn dresser. “Well, when I figure out what I’m doing, maybe she can come with me.”

Margo chuckled, making Kory want to smile back at her, despite his mood. Her beaming smile radiated genuine warmth, making him think of Mrs. Roden. “I think she’d like that, I really do. Do you want me to tell her you’re here?”

He thought about that. “I think I just want to go to sleep. I’ll see her tomorrow.”

But when he thought about tomorrow, he thought first about Samaki. He hoped the fox would understand his decision. More than that, he hoped he himself would understand it.

He didn’t sleep well that night for any length of time. When Samaki arrived the next day, Kory was lying in the water, paws linked behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He heard the door open, and smelled fox.

“Hi,” he said, not moving.

The door closed. Blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and a beige jacket moved into his vision, surmounted by a white under-muzzle and violet eyes, looking down. Two large black ears cupped down. “Hi,” Samaki said. “How you doing?” He placed a Starbucks cup on the floor near Kory and sipped from another one as he sat on the floor.

Kory flipped over and crawled out of the water, sitting upright on the floor. Samaki sat a foot away from him, keeping his clothes dry. “I’m okay,” Kory said, smiling with a little relief at the fox’s calm demeanor. Samaki would understand. He always did. “It’s been a hard week. Thanks.” He raised the Starbucks and took a drink.

Samaki nodded. “So what happened with you and Sal?”

Kory closed his eyes. The warm latte filled his muzzle with coffee smell and milk sweetness. “He wasn’t as okay with our relationship as he thought he was.”

“Asshole,” Samaki growled.

“I mean our relationship, me and him. Well, it was more that he wasn’t okay with thinking that he might be gay.”

“And that’s your fault? He can’t be a good friend, because you’re gay?”

Kory shook his head. “It’s… there was some stuff.” He didn’t want to tell anyone about the previous Friday night. He wanted to put it out of his mind. It was Sal’s secret, and whether he thought he was gay or whether he just wanted to experiment was his business and nobody else’s.

“What stuff?” When Kory didn’t answer, Samaki leaned forward. “Did he come on to you?”

Kory looked back at the fox’s eyes. Was it that obvious? “Uh, well…”

Samaki shook his head. “I’ve had three of my straight friends try to experiment with me in the last two years. It always ends badly. They think, I don’t know, they think being gay means you’ll do anyone. They think it won’t change anything.” He growled the words. “I’d think he would know better, though. Wasn’t he your best friend?”

“Yeah.” Kory shrugged. “He was drunk, he’d been dancing with this girl the whole evening, and she got him all worked up.”

“Still.” They sat and contemplated Sal and other “curious” straight friends, until Kory sensed that the currents of Samaki’s thoughts were drifting in a new direction. The black fox’s tail was curled up tightly around his legs, his tail twitching. “So,” Samaki said. “Margo set up this room pretty nice.”

Kory took another sip of the lukewarm latte and set it aside. “Yeah.”

“How long you figure to stay here?”

He inhaled, exhaled. “I don’t know.”

“If it’s the water, you know, we can get Mariatu’s kiddie pool and put it in the basement.”

Samaki was smiling, his ears perked. “It’s not the water,” Kory said.

“Then what?” The smile faded, slowly. “Mom said you can stay. I want you to stay. Don’t you want to?”

“It’s not that simple.” He cutled his tail up around his body and rested his head on his knees.

“Then tell me why it’s complicated.”

“I don’t know!”

Samaki sat, watching him. Kory avoided looking at those violet eyes because he knew the hurt in them would make him want to cry, and he didn’t want to cry. “Is it getting to school? We can work out something where I could—”

“It’s not that.” He kept his voice flat.

“Is it me?”

Kory couldn’t stand the twisting in his heart. He stared at the water. “I don’t want to take your family’s money. You need it to go to college.”