Christmas, Pursued by a Bear

by Ryann Fletcher

  “There aren’t any dens around here, Nita. We’d have heard if someone went missing.”

  “At least the boys are of age now. No one can claim them, either.”

  “I’m not sure their parents even cared. Ours didn’t.”

  “Hi.” A girl, probably about fourteen years old, stood in the doorway of the kitchen, wrapped in the blanket from the couch.

  Cat looked at Anita. “Shit.”

  * * *

  Andie laid on her rumpled bed and stared at the ceiling. She hadn’t slept, even after the previous night’s overwhelm. Cat was a Bear. Werebears were real, and apparently, so were Werewolves. What else was real? Vampires? Ghosts? Mermaids?

  Daisy was asleep in her cage, nestled into the soft bedding. She hadn’t been pleased that Andie came home so late, and ate her dinner as sullenly as a chinchilla could. Were there Werechinchillas, too? Weredolphins? Were… beetles? Andie shook her head. This was all too much. She wished she could go back to yesterday afternoon, before she learned that the woman she’d been crushing on turned into a three-hundred pound grizzly a few times a month. Sometimes, dating was like trying to fish in a lake of piranhas. If they weren’t secret republicans, they were secret cryptids, apparently.

  She checked her phone again, hoping for a message from Cat, despite everything. No messages. The sun was already starting to set, and she’d been awake well over twenty-four hours. She blinked furiously, trying to clear the sleep shadows in her peripheral view. Maybe a cup of tea would help. If she didn’t get some sleep, then work tomorrow was going to suck even more than it was already going to, having to explain why she’d have to sign out equipment before every shift now, taking access away from the desk clerks who sometimes needed the cameras to document progress for the investors.

  Her broken camera was still spread out on the table where she’d left it, and now the shattered lens glimmered in the golden hour light. It was poetic, and if she had another camera, she’d take a picture. But she didn’t. Even the storage card was broken, having been snapped in half. There was no record of the poachers, or of Cat turning into a huge bear. The camera repair store confirmed her worst fears that morning when she called the store to explain. Her camera was too old, and the parts and labor too expensive, to merit a repair. They unhelpfully recommended a refurbished camera from their stocks. A maxed out credit card and an empty bank account weren’t going to pay the hundreds it would cost for a replacement.

  The blankets tangled around her legs, and she kicked them off onto the threadbare rug on the floor. She was too restless. The kitchen in her studio apartment was small, but functional, as long as you weren’t trying to make anything too fancy. Andie filled the kettle and set it on top of the electric burner, and leaned against the narrow counter top, waiting for the shrill whistle to indicate the water had boiled. She held an empty mug in her hands as though it was full, the flimsy tea bag string draped over the side. Chamomile would help her relax, it always did. But then, she’d never seen a Werebear before, either.

  Water poured into the mug and tinged yellow, the steam floating up to the ceiling in delicate curls. She set the mug on the table and deposited fresh hay into Daisy’s cage. “Do you want to have some playtime?” she asked, almost expecting the chinchilla to answer. After last night, nothing would surprise her. Daisy continued to sleep, not ready to wake up yet. “Lazy Daisy,” Andie said with a smirk.

  She shoved her feet into a pair of boots by the door and ran down to the ground floor to check the mail, finding two ominous looking FINAL NOTICE letters inside her box. One from the credit card company, and one from the electric company, threatening to turn off her lights if she didn’t pay up by the end of the week.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Andie muttered, trudging back up the stairs. “What next?”

  * * *

  “Okay, let’s lay this all out on the line,” Cat said to the girl, who was now freshly showered and squeezed into one of the boys’ tracksuits. They’d have to get her something else. “Start at the beginning.”

  The girl took a deep breath. “My name is Delilah. I went to the park to find something to eat. I thought I smelled something familiar. I guess maybe I did.”

  “Who sent you?” Anita asked, a hard edge to her tone.

  “No one sent me.”

  “Then how do you know who we are?”

  Cat pushed the leftover burgers at Delilah. “Eat, I know you’re probably feeling as crappy as I am right now.”

  “I grew up in the foster system,” she said between bites. “Last year, I—”

  “You shifted for the first time, didn’t you?” Anita prompted.

  Delilah nodded. “Yeah. Except I didn’t know what was happening, and my foster parents saw. They freaked out. Said I was some kind of demon come to punish them, they kicked me out that same night.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cat said.

  “I jumped on a freight car headed east, stealing what I could. Ended up in New England.”

  The tension in Cat’s muscles eased, and she sat back in her chair. “And then what?”

  “I tried to find work. Couldn’t. Too young, they said. I kept trying to refuse to shift, it hurt. I thought I was some kind of freak. I was scared.”

  “I don’t like this,” Anita announced. “This could be some kind of a ploy. She could be a spy, leading some kind of secret agents straight to us.”

  “No, I’m not a spy! I was hopping the freight trains, I stopped off nearby to try and scavenge some food, I—I felt drawn to the woods, like I’d find answers there.”

  “You’ve never met another Bear?” Cat demanded. “You don’t know anything about what you are?”

  Delilah shook her head. “No. I spent months looking, in every park that had bear sightings. I ran into some Wolves in Yellowstone, they said no Bears were allowed in the park.”

  “Unsurprising,” Anita muttered. “Bunch of elitist rednecks.”

  “I just kept looking, and I ended up here.”

  “Pretty convenient that I found you at exactly the right moment. You’d be in some lab by now, being poked and prodded.”

  “Are you working for them?” Anita asked. “Syndicorp, or… you know. The government?”

  “Nita, she’s like, thirteen.”

  “I’m fourteen,” Delilah announced proudly. “And I’m not working for anyone, I just—I didn’t know where else to go. I’ve been spending every moon hiding in abandoned farm buildings, or empty parking garages. Last time was the first time I spent one in a forest, and… well, you can see how that turned out.”

  “When did you shift? Before or after they found you?”

  “After. I was sleeping in an old tent I found, and I heard them creeping around. I ran out, hid my stuff in a cache as soon as I felt the shift coming. I was so scared, I couldn’t stop it.

  “Control will come, in time,” Cat explained. “With practice.”

  “Catriona, you’re not seriously letting her stay here, are you?”

  “Well, we can’t just throw her out on the street, can we?”

  Anita scoffed. “Why not? She could be reporting everything back to them.”

  “I don’t even have a phone,” Delilah shot back.

  Cat closed her eyes against the painful, pulsating light of day. “Let’s all just take a breath, shall we? Two out of the three of us aren’t exactly in good form today. My patience is paper thin right now, and I’m not in the mood to argue.”

  Delilah’s eyes filled with tears and spilled out onto her adolescent chubby cheeks. “Please let me stay. I don’t have anywhere else to go.” She looked at the last burger hungrily. “I haven’t eaten in days.”

  “Have it,” Cat said, nudging it towards her. “It’s obvious you haven’t been eating enough, your Bear looks like she’s starving. Our forms are related more to nourishment, rather than our size as humans. What have you been doing, foraging?”

  “Dumpster diving.”

  “Gross,” Anita piped in, setting two
slices of bread into the rusted toaster. “We’ll feed you, at least.” She gave Cat a withering glare. “I don’t even know where we’d put you. The boys are already sharing, and I’m not about to share with a teenager.”

  “I can sleep in the living room! I promise I won’t be a pain, and—”

  “We should talk to the boys about this first,” Cat said. “They live here, too.”

  “But what are we going to do with her?” Anita hissed, giving the toast a thick spread of butter and jelly. “We aren’t her legal guardians, it’s not like we can enroll her in the local high school.”

  “We’ll worry about that when we get there. For now, let’s just make sure she’s fed and safe.”

  “Check her clothes from last night, make sure there aren’t any trackers.”

  “I told you, I’m not a spy!” Delilah countered.

  Cat’s head was pounding. “Can you just humor my sister, please? She’s clearly not going to let this go.”

  “Sure. I guess.” Delilah crumpled the empty food packages. “Thanks for the food.”

  “Listen, kid, I know we’re not the Bears you dreamed of, but we’re going to try to do our best. You don’t understand what it was like when we left the coast. We were totally on our own, for years. We didn’t have anyone looking out for us.”

  Anita snorted. “Remember when we pulled that bait and switch at that gas station?”

  “It was some true genius on your part,” Cat said with a laugh, and then sobered. “I don’t want to think about what would happen if we’d been caught.”

  “What was it like on the west coast?” Delilah asked.

  “Our parents took us out there when we were young. We grew up in a Bear compound, it was kind of messy. Lots of angry Bears that never learned how to control themselves. Addiction. Lots of them running from the law after beating the hell out of some Normie at a bar.”

  “Oh,” Delilah said quietly.

  “We got some supplies together, we stole some money from the community fund, just enough to get us a bus ticket each, when the boys found out. We were so afraid they were going to rat us out, but they wanted to come with, even though they were underage. They didn’t like the ‘community,’ either. Too much emphasis on isolation, on toeing the line and not asking any questions. We didn’t want to let them come with us, they were too young. We were worried enough they’d chase us down, much less if we took two Cubs with us.”

  Delilah bit the corner of a piece of toast. “So you left?”

  “Yeah. The compound wasn’t for us, but some are happy there, I guess. It’s safer, in a lot of ways. Those Bears wouldn’t be caught dead in a public park reserve.”

  “I’m sorry, I just… I didn’t know where else to go. I don’t know anything about being a Bear, not really.”

  “Our history isn’t very well known outside compounds like the one we grew up in. It’s secretive, protective.” Cat sighed and closed her eyes. “You can stay, for now. But you’ll need some new clothes. The boys are like string beans, their stuff is much too small.”

  “Catriona…” Anita said in a warning tone.

  “I know. But if something had happened to me when we first left, I’d want some Bears to take you three in, to give you a chance. Even if it seemed shady as hell. I’ll talk to the boys about something more permanent, but we’re going to need some cash to keep her fed.”

  “We should keep our ears to the ground, then. Reach out to the Bears in Missouri, see if they’ve heard anything.”

  Cat shook her head. “I don’t want anyone else to know about this. The Missouri Bears would want her down with them, and I’m not so sure that’s best for her. This stays with us.”

  “This is risky as hell, Cat.”

  We’ll just have to make sure we’re as careful as we can be.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  It had been three days since Andie heard from Cat, and even then, it had been a very cursory text, telling her that she was busy. Maybe she had misread something. Maybe Cat wasn’t interested at all. She sipped on her coffee, sitting at the edge of her bed. She hadn’t been back to Jazzy Java, either, ashamed to admit to Mara that her camera was irreparably broken, and thus she had nothing to barter for a bear claw with. Her stomach growled at the thought of the soft, fluffy, glazed pastry.

  Nope. It was going to have to be bulk brand bran flakes, without milk, again. Outside, the sky was grey, and the air was crisp, frosting the corners of her poorly insulated window frames. It always felt strange in a season of such excess to be so painfully broke. She was glad she’d stocked up on Daisy’s hay and food on her last paycheck. At least one of them was eating well.

  Andie stabbed a spoon into the dry cereal and shoved it into her mouth. She’d been up half the night applying to any job she could find within a twenty-mile radius, from casual reception work, to working as a stocker at the local grocery store, to shift work as a line cook, which she definitely wasn’t qualified for. Hours spent filling in her job history, only to be asked to attach her resume at the end. It was like a job in itself. There were no unemployment payments for the underemployed.

  She sighed angrily and pushed the bowl away. She was sick of the taste, sick of struggling, and heartbroken over the loss of her camera, her one chance at becoming something that had a slightly better bottom line. Her phone stayed silent, but she checked it again. No messages. “No one loves me but you, Daisy,” she said to the sleeping chinchilla.

  Her coffee was already cold. She set it on the table and flipped through an old photography magazine. Even thinking about it made her feel sick, though, so she shoved it into her nightstand and slammed the drawer shut. She opened her laptop, and it struggled to boot up, hanging on the loading screen for several minutes. Andie opened a notebook and sat it beside her, and began to apply for more shitty, dead-end jobs. The rent had to get paid somehow, no one else was going to do it for her, and not even her parents could help, being broke themselves after their car’s transmission blew last month, followed by the boiler. She didn’t want to worry them, so as far as they knew, she was doing just fine on her own.

  Anything would be a welcome distraction from the endless stream of applications for jobs she’d never even get an interview for. A shop floor assistant job at the department store in the next town already had six hundred and thirty-two applicants. Strange how the news would boast of a growing economy, when people kept losing their jobs. Once the new development broke ground, it would breathe new life into the town, provide desperately needed jobs for people who were barely making rent. She clicked on a job listed fifteen miles away as a cleaner in an office building: three hundred and seventy-eight applicants. Snapping the laptop shut in frustration, she climbed off the bed and lingered by the fridge, wishing something good would magically appear within. She opened it and found the same crap as before. Half a bottle of ketchup, an onion that had started to sprout, and one beer leftover from her weekend with just her and Daisy. Too early to drink, not that one beer was even worth it.

  A knock at the door startled her out of her hungry stupor. She padded to the door in her thick socks and yanked it open. “Sorry, I’m not interes—” she cut herself off. “Cat! What are you doing here?” She sounded too enthusiastic, even to herself.

  “Finally managed to sneak out from under Anita’s thumb,” Cat answered with a grin.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  “Much.”

  “Did you want to…” Andie trailed off. “I mean, uh—”

  “Oh God, I’m sorry, I should have called first. I just thought—”

  “No, it’s fine!”

  Cat shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I just thought maybe, if you weren’t busy, we could try for that date. If you want. If you’re not busy. You’re probably busy, aren’t you?”

  “No. Shockingly, there’s not a lot of work for a photographer without a camera.” She grimaced. “Not a lot of work, period.”

  “Well, I might know a place, if you want
to go. If you still wanted to have that date, I mean.”

  “Yes!” Andie shouted, and then chewed the inside of her cheek. Don’t seem so eager, you loser, she thought. “Uh, yeah, that could be fun. Let me just get my coat.” She turned to grab her parka from the hook, feeling the silent blush creep up her neck and flood into her cheeks. “Where are we headed?”

  “It’s a surprise. But, uh, bring your boots.”

  “Sure thing.” She shoved her feet into her warm winter boots she’d gotten half price at the thrift store last year, and snatched her scarf from the back of the door. “I’m ready.”

  “We’ll have to take your car, I hope that’s okay. Nita needed the truck.”

  Panic crawled up Andie’s spine. Her car was a disgusting mess. “Can you just give me a minute? I have to, uh… I have to get some work stuff out of there.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “No!” she shouted. “I mean, uh, it’s fine, it will just be a minute. Wait here.”

  “What, are you hiding a dead body in the trunk, or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s fine.”

  “Please just wait here?”

  Cat furrowed her brow in concern. “Okay.”

  “Excellent. Meet me out front in like five minutes.” Andie ran down the stairs and out the front door to her car, and started to pull the crap out of her car, mostly empty coffee cups from Jazzy Java and candy wrappers, and the garbage from her late night run for burgers the other night after leaving Cat’s house. She’d been so hungry, she hadn’t even made it home with them, scarfing them at red lights and stop signs instead. She tipped it all into the building’s dumpster and unlocked the passenger side door for Cat, who was now waiting there for her.

  “My truck gets messy too, you know.”

  “Probably not that messy.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Andie put the key into the ignition. “Right. Where to?”

  “North on the highway.”

  “Hmm.” Andie checked her gas gauge, which was hovering at a quarter of a tank.