Waterways (45 page)

Nick handed him two pieces of paper, tickets to Kory’s graduation ceremony. “Here. You got four, but I’m only allowed to give you two. She wants to come to your graduation.”

This made Kory sit up straight. “What? Why?”

Nick scowled. “Said something about a public event and I wasn’t to say anything to anyone about our situation.” He snorted. “Like there’s anyone who doesn’t already know.”

“Great.” Kory rubbed his eyes. “That’s just what I need. Do I have to talk to her?”

Nick spread his paws. “I hope not. I don’t wanna be around if you do.”

“No reason you should be,” Kory said, “because there’s no reason I need to talk to her.”

Nick rested his head on his folded arms, eyes down, ears flat, and his voice when he spoke was unusually soft. “Don’t make a scene,” he said. “Is Samaki gonna be there?”

“Yeah,” Kory said, and then, “Maybe. I think he will.”

Nick peered up, lifting his round ears. “You think? Is that what’s going on? You guys broke up?”

“No. I mean…” He sighed. “I did some stupid things.”

“So apologize.”

Kory shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s that easy. When you do the same stupid things over and over, it doesn’t work when you apologize any more. You know?”

“No,” Nick said, “but okay.”

“You never did the same stupid thing twice?”

Nick grinned. “No. But tell me what you did so I can avoid it.”

Kory leaned back and closed his eyes. The smell of the fishy pizza and the pizza joint itself had taken on a familiar, comfortable air over the past year. It wasn’t quite like popping up in the pool of their house to talk to Nick, but at least it was close. If there were people at the other tables, their conversations were drowned out by the music, so Kory assumed his own were likewise private to him and Nick. “Just… be sure that if you’re going out with someone, you really let them know how important they are,” he said.

Nick was quiet for so long that Kory cracked one eye open to look at him. Nick noticed, and smiled. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t let him know that, the way you talked about him here.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Kory said.

Nick shrugged. “If you don’t want to, that’s cool. So anyway, I guess I won’t come over to ride to graduation with you. She wants me to go with her.” He lifted his head. “Is Malaya coming?”

“I doubt it.” Picturing Malaya dressed up and sitting through a graduation ceremony brought Kory closer to laughing than anything else in the past week and a half had. “It’s not really her thing.”

“Yeah, I guess not.” Nick pushed his chair back. “Well, I oughta go study. See you Saturday, then?”

“See you Saturday,” Kory said. “I can’t wait for Sunday.”

He felt obliged to invite Malaya, who masked her disdainful look a second after Kory had already seen it. And that night on the phone, he had to beg Samaki to come before the fox promised he would, so that when Kory hung up, he was very close to calling Samaki back and saying, “Look, if I have to beg, it’s not worth it.” But he wanted the fox there, especially if his mother were going to be there too. So he chewed his lip and studied for his tests and went to sleep.

Everything he did that week had been done under the stress of fighting back his fears about his relationship, but he felt he’d done well enough on his exams. The fear remained after the last “pencils down,” all through the year-end assembly where various school officials blathered on about something pointless. Finally, at two, high school was over for the year, over forever.

Kory took the bus back to downtown, but didn’t want to go back to his apartment. His bedroom had begun to feel suffocating, with all the reminders of Samaki around to feed his worry. He cast around for something else to do, and realized that it had been a while since he’d had a swim.

The municipal pool was empty enough that he was able to close his eyes and float in the warm water without too much disturbance. To his dismay, even the water wasn’t able to calm him enough to make him forget about the possibility that Samaki would go to college at State, that Kory would lose the fox for good. He knew he didn’t want that, but he couldn’t convince himself that he was strong enough to deserve him, let alone keep him. Face your fears, he told himself again, and again he couldn’t think of how to do that.

After graduation, he thought, then what? Would Samaki still be moving in? He certainly hadn’t mentioned it since their argument on the porch of the Rainbow Center. Kory found that he’d stopped expecting it, and that realization weighed him down even more heavily. But it might be for the best. Would Samaki want to hold paws on the way to the Starbucks? At the little cafe where Kory and Malaya sometimes ate? On the bus? He closed his eyes, tired just thinking about it.

Running through the list of activities that made up his life brought the realization that it wasn’t so bad. He enjoyed Malaya’s company, he really did. He had finished well in school, after that rough stretch where he’d bounced from Sal’s place to the Center to his own apartment. He’d gotten into Forester with enough financial aid to afford it. He wanted badly, very badly, for Samaki to be part of that world, but as the water relaxed his muscles, calmer thoughts crept in to dull the tension. Maybe, Kory thought, maybe I should be thankful for this time I’ve had, for all that Samaki’s shown me about myself. If I can’t be part of his world, I can go out and find my own now. Like… like a tugboat pulls a ship out to the ocean, then has to let it go.

He laughed at himself. What a stupid analogy. The unexpected, spontaneous laughter lightened his spirit. He and Samaki would always be friends, he knew that with a certainty as warm and buoyant as the water around him. Could he get by without Samaki as a boyfriend? Tension fought back against the calming water. He wouldn’t like it, but yes, he could, if he had to. His world wouldn’t end. He’d given up his home and most of his friends, and he’d clung to Samaki because the fox was the reason he’d given it all up. Did that mean he couldn’t also give up the fox? Malaya always said that there were other boys out there, and even though Kory knew there wouldn’t be any as special as the black fox, there was probably one who was a better match for him.

In the locker room, he looked at himself in the mirror, picturing another shy otter standing next to him, the two of them content to keep their relationship behind closed doors. The hum of the dryer distracted him from his reverie, calling back the memory of Samaki standing there, warm air blowing through his fur, that first time, over a year ago. Sadness blurred his sight and the memory, and drove him out into the warm almost-summer air.

Face your fears, he thought again.

Haven’t you just done that?

He stopped on the street, so suddenly that the person behind him grazed his elbow pushing past. Was he still afraid? Of losing Samaki, yes, but mostly, he now felt sad. He’d played out the worst-case scenario and emerged on the other side, bruised but whole. There were plenty of people online who’d lost their lovers—true loves, first loves, best loves, all sorts of loves—and they’d survived. If necessary, so would he.

These thoughts remained with him as he moved through the sea of people flooding the downtown on Friday afternoon. He saw families, couples, friends, and loners like himself; foxes, otters, skunks, bats, lions, wolves, several kinds of antlers visible blocks away, bobbing above the crowd, raccoons, armadillos, and more species too numerous to count. None of them took much notice of him as he slid through them, just another face, a young otter moving along his own currents back to his home.

“You feeling better?” Malaya asked when he walked in and poured himself a glass of water instead of going back to his room immediately. She was curled up on a chair by the open window, resting her cigarette in one hand on the sill and blowing smoke through the screen.

“A little.” Kory sat on the sofa, leaned back, and looked around the small place. “This is our place,” he said.

“My bedroom.” She grinned at him. “You just figuring that out?”

He shrugged. “I’m figuring a couple things out.” He told her about the argument, and his thoughts on Samaki.

She took a long drag on the cigarette, exhaling the smoke in a slow stream. “That’s pretty smart,” she said. “Level-headed. I was wondering if you’d get there.”

“You were trying to tell me,” he said.

She nodded, but didn’t say anything else. He watched her, curled dramatically across the chair arm like a film noir heroine, trickles of smoke rising from the cigarette. “What?” he said, finally.

She shrugged. “I hope it doesn’t come to that. But it’s good you’ll be okay if it does.”

“You hope it doesn’t?”

She shook her head. “I like him. You guys seem to work well together. Look out for each other, you know? But if he wants to march in pride parades and you don’t, then I dunno, maybe you’re better off just being friends.”

“Thanks,” Kory said. “I thought you’d have something wiser to say.”

“Me?” She snorted smoke. “I’m the one who went back to live with my father and ended up in the hospital, remember? Whose entire experience of relationships reads like an episode of ‘COPS,’ who’s working a dumb job in a bookstore rather than go to high school. You think I know how things work?”

Kory shook his head. “You know at least as well as I do.”

She waved a hand, scattering smoke. “I’m just better at faking it. That’s something you suck at.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

She arched one eyebrow. “You’re gettin’ better.”

He grinned, briefly. “Not enough to help.”

“Do you want to go march in parades and do all that?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed. “I want to be with him, that’s all.”

“So be with him. Who cares if you hold hands or not?”

“He does.”

She sucked on the cigarette, but held the smoke in her mouth, letting bits of it escape as she talked. “I mean, the great unwashed, the drones, the… what did you call them, muggles.”

He laughed. “You work in a bookstore and you still haven’t read Harry Potter.”

“Optimist bullshit.” She waved out to the street. “Anyway, whatever you call them, out there. Who the fuck cares what they think?”

“Tell it to Brian Dallas.”

Malaya frowned, and stubbed out her cigarette. “Who’s that?”

“Skunk who got beat up at Forester by a couple football players. Because he was gay.”

She rolled her eyes. “I bet he was a flamer. I’m sick of those assholes ruining it for the rest of us.”

Kory folded his arms, settling back into the corner of the couch. “So because he was a little out there, he deserved to get beat up?”

“Sure.” Without the cigarette, she seemed to go limp, as though she’d been flung across the chair and left there, but her voice was as sharp as ever. “Flame on in front of football players all you want, but it’s like going into a church and yelling that there is no god, or going into Finster’s Cafe and asking for a venti mocha frappucino. You got the right to do it, but you gotta choose your spots and be prepared to deal with the blowback.”

“So you are on my side.”

One eye regarded him fixedly. “I’m always on your side, Kory. Except when you’re being a mo’.”

“You think Samaki’s being unreasonable.”

“Sure. But so are you.”

“Me?” He curled his tail around the leg of the sofa, anchoring himself to it.

She nodded. “You want him to change, he wants you to change. Just like Jen wanted me to change.”

“And that didn’t work out.”

“Well, I didn’t really want Jen to change and I wasn’t interested in changing for her, so no. Plus she wanted me to change into someone who was okay with cheating and gettin’ knocked around. I spent years trying not to change into that, so no dice.”

Kory loosened his arms and tail, shifting uncomfortably. “Yeah, I guess not. So who’s right?”

“Right? Hell if I know. You both are.”

“But you just said…”

“Look, he didn’t ask you to come to a track meet and kiss him in the locker room, did he? It’s just that you guys are comfortable in different ways.” She glared at him. “And don’t start that crap about maybe not being gay. I can hear through walls, you know.”

Kory’s ears flushed. He turned his suddenly warm face down to the floor. “I wasn’t gonna,” he said. “I think I’m over
that,
anyway.”

She grinned at him. “That’ll make it easier for you to get another boyfriend. If you want one.”

“Yeah.” He stared at his feet and rubbed the webbing between his fingers.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’re cute. You’ll find someone.”

“I’m what?” He lifted his head to stare at her.

She pointed a bony finger at him. “Tell anyone else I said that, I’ll put spiders in your bed.”

The next time he talked to Samaki, though, he felt his peaceful resolve melt away.

“I really want you to be there,” he said.

Samaki sounded tired. “I already said I’d come.”

“I know,” Kory didn’t know why he was pressing the point. “I just wanted to make sure you know I’m really looking forward to you being there.”

“I know,” Samaki said softly, and then, a moment later, “I’m really looking forward to it too.”

Kory hung up unconvinced that he’d gotten his point across, but unsure how to proceed without annoying the fox. After all, he’d agreed to come, he’d acknowledged Kory’s plea of affection; what else could Kory do?

The following night, Samaki sounded more animated, telling Kory about his own graduation, scheduled for the Sunday afternoon after Kory’s, and one of his classmates’ plans to wear nothing under his graduation robes. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?” he asked.

“Would you?” Kory asked.

“I will if you will.”

“It’s almost worth it,” Kory said. “But what if I start thinking about you up on stage and everyone, y’know, sees it?”

“I’d be the only one looking at you. There’s going to be, what, a hundred kids on the stage?”

“A hundred forty-eight,” Kory said. “But my mom’ll be looking at me too.”

“We don’t even get to go on stage. All four hundred of us have to just sit in the audience. Then we go up row by row as our names are called.”