Vixen (The Fox and Hound Book 1)

by Catherine Labadie

  “I’m Sierra. And the antlers do look good. I bet all

  the humans are jealous.” Lyle chuckles—probably because I’m an uneasy conversationalist—but doe-girl blushes and looks down. Her antlers give her a unique grace, and I feel a little shame for thinking my fox ears were so conspicuous.

  “Thanks. I’m Morgan, and since Lyle was the one who went upstairs to find you, I’m sure you guys know each other by now,” she says. I nod again.

  “Are you in our homeroom, Morgan?” Lyle asks politely, easing the silence into a more comfortable arena.

  “Yes! I think we’re all in the same one...It’s ridiculous how they keep trying to separate us from the humans. Cramming thirty half-breeds with different grade levels into one room for half an hour isn’t smart,” Morgan says, rolling her eyes as she leads the way to our homeroom. “I’m glad I'm a senior and only have to put up with this for a year.”

  I follow her and Lyle, assuming they know where they're going.

  “Is it really legal to separate us from the human students like this? I thought the whole point of forcing us to go to school with humans was to accomplish desegregation,” I say, looking around the dull place where I'm supposed to attend classes for a year.

  “That may be the point some of the senators were trying to make, but I don’t think it’ll work like they planned. Or maybe it will…this school is prestigious, supposedly ‘above reproach,’ so the administration can get away with more,” Lyle informs me as he

  surveys everyone in the hall with his lion eyes from under his red baseball cap. “That's just fine though;

  we’re a tough group.”

  As he finishes speaking I realize what I was missing and what seemed wrong with this whole scene. I’m really looking now, confirming what I’m thinking.

  Most of the concealable aspects that we half-breed students possess have been hidden. Tails tucked into pants—which can work surprisingly well, although I’ve rarely bothered with the effort—ears covered by

  scarves and hats, paws and talons covered by gloves, and wings covered by jackets.

  Only Morgan and I haven’t bothered to conceal anything, she because her antlers defy any type of secrecy, and me because apparently I didn’t get the memo for concealment. Even Lyle, bold enough to break the rules and venture upstairs to save the ignorant vixen M-DNA student, has hidden some of his animal features as well. But perhaps that’s because he enjoys wearing a baseball cap, if he even has animal ears at all.

  Why are we hiding? I think, confused. Since when have we hidden from humans?

  “What room are we supposed to be heading to? I forgot to download the file on my SMARTpad last night,” Morgan rifles through her small leather handbag as the one minute bell rings. “We need to hurry!”

  “It’s okay, I wrote my information down since I didn’t get my SMARTpad until just now,” I say. “Since we’re both seniors, and since we all apparently have the same room at the start of the day, I think you won’t need your information sheet as much if we share. Maybe you can read the catalog names better anyway.” She gives me a grateful smile, and I’m glad

  that she didn’t try to hide what she was. Maybe this was what Harold was keeping from me...Eisen too, I think,

  Abruptly, an androgynous voice sounds over the intercom, cool and crisp. The sound is scratchy and distorted but still clear enough to convey information. ALL STUDENTS PLEASE REPORT TO THE ASSEMBLY HALL FOR ORIENTATION. As the voice is

  speaking I wonder if the intercom system upstairs sounds as desperately worn as this one.

  “Okay then. Was that in the SMARTnote?” I ask Lyle as the crowd of students like me looks up at the ceiling towards the dusty intercom speakers.

  “No, it wasn’t. The number for the assembly room wasn’t given on our information sheets, and orientation wasn’t announced.” He doesn’t seem pleased with the new development.

  “I assumed our teachers would keep track of our attendance and report it to the office?’ Morgan says, forming her words like a question. “It is the first day of school, orientation is normal.” The three of us are nudged along by our fellow students as they mutter and begin heading for the stairs as a nearly solid unit.

  “We’ll find out, I guess.” I shrug, trying to keep my cool. The day has barely begun, and I’m already exhausted from the tension cascading in waves through the entire school.

  3

  The bell for class has already rung by the time we get upstairs. We are a gaggle of half-breed teenagers spilling into the hallway with no idea where the assembly room is or how to get there. There aren’t even any signs up on this floor, aside from numbered plates on the classroom doors. Ordinarily, any one of us might have taken this opportunity to explore the place without supervision, but the oppressive atmosphere is too intimidating for games.

  Also, we are a gaggle of late half-breed teenagers. Lyle and Morgan stand beside me, him with a frown and her with a politely confused look on her sweet doe face.

  “They probably won’t count us all late,” I reason, “We were all here on time, we just didn’t know where we were supposed to go.” The students around me are noticing what I perceived earlier when I first came in through the front doors: the remodeled part of the building was made for the human students, not the M-DNA ones. Some scan the area with mild interest, mostly the younger ones that look like underclassmen. Morgan and others of the older students look as

  disgusted as I was when I had to go downstairs to find my locker.

  “Or maybe that’s what they want,” Lyle says in a stage whisper that sets the entire group buzzing. He reminds me of Wade as he continues; opinionated, clever, a born instigator. “What better way to show our differences than to make us walk in late like we’re too dumb to watch the time!” I nod along with some of the others. I don’t want to be a mindless sheep following a leader, but what Lyle is saying does make sense. Desegregation is a fairytale if this is how they treat us, I think.

  “We should at least try to get to the assembly room, though,” Morgan points out, frowning. She’s the least angry-looking person present. I see the bewildered half-breed freshmen glancing around and making noises of assent with everyone else in an attempt to blend in. Isn’t high school complicated enough without adding petty humans to the list? I think.

  “So what if they think we’re different?” I find myself saying, latching onto the tail end of Morgan’s statement. “We are: we’re mature enough to not play

  silly games like this. We shouldn’t give them the satisfaction of making us feel like freaks. We belong here as much as they do now, so shouldn’t we act like today is normal?”

  Most of these students probably grew up in more human environments than I did, so they would know more about how to behave around purists. The only

  two people in this group I know, Lyle and Morgan, have a distinct inner-city feel about them as well as a more industrial smell. Yet people agree with my words too, thoughtful frowns becoming wry grins.

  “Should piss them off at least,” a boy with some definite bear DNA speaks up, pulling off a wool beanie to scratch one of the black bear ears perched comically atop his large head. “Good idea, Vixen,” he adds politely.

  “Sierra,” I correct him. I’m too anxious to smile, but I try to form my face into a friendly expression anyway.

  “Then I guess we’d better look around,” Lyle says, his contribution adding solidity to the idea. He grins at me, curiosity all over his face. I sort of smile back, wondering if this is a friendship building experience.

  Suddenly I hear the sound of someone awkwardly clearing his throat, and the hall quiets as we turn to the source of the noise.

  “Hey,” It was a human boy who coughed to get our attention; he stands in the entrance to the administration hallway with an uncomfortable expression. I don’t blame him; the tension is so thick a

  butter knife could slice it.

  “The orientation meeting is about to start, and they’re wait
ing for all of you.”

  His eyes scan the group of us, every eye staring at him. Well, I’m staring anyway. He’s tall, almost as tall as the bear boy, with ginger hair and pale skin adorned with a jamboree of freckles. Light green eyes shine above a long, faintly crooked nose, and he has a

  surprising but acceptable amount of red stubble along his jaw; I didn’t think young humans could grow a good amount of facial hair this young, but it suits him and makes him look more like a man instead of a student boy. I try to calculate why he's here: he must be an upperclassman in a leadership program, trying to do the right thing by showing us where to go. Or maybe he was sent here to make sure all the half-breeds found the right room…eventually.

  Something about his voice makes me think he’s the one who called the boy bothering me a dick, though. I’m good with voice recognition, enough to nearly always know which voice belongs to whom. I hope this boy is my monitor if I have to have one, even if I doubt the likelihood of such a coincidence.

  “Let’s go then,” Lyle says, a bit pompously. The human boy’s eyes drift over me once before he turns and leads the way to the assembly room, and I wonder if he’ll remember me again after today. We all file down the hallway in small groups, muttering to one another.

  “I’m glad someone thought to come get us,”

  Morgan says to me, her voice low and her eyes on the

  back of Lyle’s and the human boy’s heads. “That will make it less awkward, hopefully.”

  “Yeah,” I agree with her. “But I wonder if he came to get us on his own?” Normally only my brothers can make me feel suspicion, but the events of this morning have already made me question the general trust in people I maintained while growing up in an M-DNA

  community.

  We’re not far from the assembly room now; I hear the chatter and noise from where I am as Morgan speaks again. “I’ve known Duncan for a few years now, not well of course, but enough to know that he’s not one of the purist bigots we normally have to put up with.”

  “Duncan?” I repeat his name to her and save it in my new mental bank of information. “How do you know him?” My eyes scan his wide shoulders as she answers.

  “He lives in my neighborhood a few houses down, in the human section. I’ve seen him sometimes and exchanged greetings. He doesn’t mind talking to us, which is surprising considering the attitudes of the rest of my neighbors.” She shrugs as we enter. “Lyle lives in the same neighborhood as well, so we’ve known each other for a while,” she adds. I’m not surprised; she and Lyle did seem to have previous knowledge of each other.

  The assembly room appears as white and pristine as the rest of the upper wing. A steel minimalist podium has been erected on the modest stage at the front of the room, and lines of white plastic benches—pews, really—are filled with the Hostetler student body. I expected a section of seats would be reserved for us at the very front so we could awkwardly file in and make our way forward, but that’s not what I see. I spot several empty seats dispersed throughout the room, always near the middle of the rows so people needing

  to get to the seats have to clamber over other students in a way that is unavoidably disruptive.

  “Come in and join the rest of the students!” the figure at the podium, a woman dressed in a muted plum pantsuit with dark hair curling around a startlingly pretty face, calls to us.

  Duncan leaves our group and strides over to the left corner of the room to sit with a group of people I assume are his friends. My face is hot, and I feel the stares focused on me since I’m at the very front of the half-breed group. Many of these students witnessed the debacle of my entrance earlier.

  I don’t want to loiter here any longer; Lyle has begun hunting down a seat, so I follow his lead and somehow manage to snag a chair only five seats into a row. Of course, the five students I have to squeeze past grumble and almost trip me, but I manage to sit without drawing extra attention to myself. Eventually, everyone else has found a seat and they look towards the podium with some interest.

  “Welcome, students!” The woman at the front hasn’t broken the tense silence since her first welcome,

  but the delighted tone of her voice and the sparkle in

  her dark eyes almost makes me feel like she’s sincerely glad to have all of us at her school. “For those of you who don’t know, I am the principal of Hostetler High. I was hired to replace Dr. Bell after his early retirement, so I am new here as well. My name is Belinda Harper.” She smiles like her name is a gift we are lucky to have received.

  It’s news to me that the principal is new to this establishment as well, which makes me wish I’d read the introductory brochure even more. I look around at everyone else to gauge their reactions: half the humans aren’t listening, and my kind is too flustered to pay attention.

  “I’ll keep this brief because you all have classes to attend and check-in to focus on. A check-in station has been set up in each of your homerooms. After this assembly you will go to your homeroom to key in your identification code before your first class,” Belinda says, still smiling. “I wanted to address a few matters with you this morning instead of homeroom today. Sometimes we will have meetings like this throughout the year. ‘Family’ meetings, if you would like to call them that,” she chortles.

  I’m listening and her friendliness becomes an increasing irritation. She thinks with a few smiles and soft words we can all be friends? I think incredulously. Someone in the back graces the room with a ridiculously loud snort and I have to stifle a stress-induced giggle.

  “First, I would like to welcome our newest students to this school. We are all glad to have you here with the rest of us. Let’s give them a proper welcome, shall we?” Belinda begins to clap and I cringe for her and for my comrades. One or two people clap politely, perhaps missing the memo that the only new students here are half-breeds like me. Everyone else sits in apparent disbelief without moving their hands at all. My tail

  curves around to rest in my lap so no one can mess with it, and I smooth down the bristled fur. I keep my gaze fixed ahead as the human students on either side of me give me dark looks. Finally the room falls totally silent again.

  “Our next matter of business is orienting the new students to the Hostetler way of life. All of you more experienced students have been informed of the helpful measures regarding our special new students, but I’d like to refresh everyone else on the rules and standards we are adopting in compliance with the desegregation laws,” the principal says. It just keeps getting worse, I think despairingly, wanting to melt into my chair as Belinda makes my kind seem incredibly stupid with her motherly voice. I’m not sure if she’s doing this on purpose, but I know my brothers would assume her offensiveness was deliberate, and I’m beginning to agree.

  The principal continues her speech. “There are about thirty M-DNA students attending Hostetler High this academic year. While this is a small figure in comparison to the rest of the student body, this number

  makes us the only school in this city with this quantity of

  alternate students.”

  “Like they could choose whether or not they’re animals,” the boy student on my right snorts. I take a deep breath to keep from “accidentally” stomping on his foot.

  “Since these students are a mix of all high school ages, the school board and I decided they—that is,

  those of you who are in this M-DNA type—could use mentoring and leadership from the most experienced students present: the senior class. Will all of the seniors rise, please?” Belinda beams as the human seniors stand. I don’t make a motion to stand because I know she didn’t mean an “alternate” senior.

  "Thank you! These students have been entrusted with the task of assisting the acclimation of our M-DNA students into the student body. This means escorting the students to classes and making sure they don’t lose their way this week, as well as being a role model and an available ally so they can inform the school board if any monitored student is hav
ing difficulties.”

  Spies. The word hits me in a flash. Judging by the expressions—ranging from displeased to furious—on my comrades’ faces, I’m not the only one. I don’t know why I’m surprised, but I know I’m disappointed. Why did I expect better?

  I see Lyle’s face in the crowd; he slouches with his hat low on his head, shielding his glare from all but those looking for one. From this distance I see his lips pressed so tightly together that they’re white. Morgan

  sits near his general area, and the determinedly

  pleasant look on her doe-like features has become rather pasty and fixed. I observe the standing students now, dispersed as they are amongst the huge room. More than thirty are standing, so I can’t tell who among the group will be the monitors.

  “The students among the senior class who volunteered will remain anonymous until after check-in,

  but they will receive extra credit for their efforts. For those of you who were not selected for this program, I’m sure all of the monitors will welcome any help you are willing to offer,” Belinda says, and I can hear in her voice that this meeting is nearly done. The seniors sit and she goes on to mention a few more standard rules about dress code—blessedly, they don’t require uniforms—and minor things that no one pays attention to. I tune her out while other students carry on their own conversations and the general attention span minimizes to individual interactions.

  “Who would want to volunteer for something like that?” someone near me whispers, and I cringe again.

  “Don’t know, probably a mutt lover,” a girl answers, and some snickering—accompanied by a distasteful innuendo or two—spreads through my section of the room. I stare determinedly ahead, willing the principal to speak faster.

  Perhaps it was friendly, non-racist people who signed up, or simple overachievers who would do anything for extra credit, I think. My gaze falls on the back of a boy’s head, the boy who harassed me earlier. Eisen’s warning about them trying to get me to