I want to forget the drama, move on to find out more about the people I’m with. I’d like to ask what their stories are, and it would be great if I could find out why they and all the other half-breeds—with the exception of Morgan and me—feel the need to hide their animal traits. Besides the obvious reason of hiding out, that is…it’s not like half-breeds to be so submissive. Ivar is lucky with that goal: his grand size, his bear ears, and certain blunt features of his face give away his
mixed DNA, but all of that is concealable. Shelby has a poodle tail—not ridiculously trimmed like a retro human pet—but she’s masked it well so only someone looking for signs would see it. Lyle has already proved himself an expert at human camouflage.
As I open my mouth to ask about the concealment, I notice another group of high school
seniors exiting the building. Judging from the size and gender diversity of the group, as well as the well-dressed appearance of the clique, I assume these are the popular kids.
“Oh great, feels like I’m in junior high again,” Shelby mutters, shoveling a bite of salad into her petite mouth and scooting closer to her boyfriend. Our conversation falls into a temporary lull as the group approaches; I don’t want to stare, but I do.
I’m the only one in my group that appreciates the irony of glimpsing my “monitor” latched onto the arm of the ocean-cologne boy. Of course they would be together, I muse with a little bitterness. Of course someone like her would be in a relationship while I'm still single and besieged by the establishment.
“Just in case you wanted to know who my monitor was, look at the girl with the big glasses hanging off the athletic looking kid,” I tell Morgan. She frowns and makes a very immature face in Katrina's direction, which tugs a smile out of me.
“I would like to inform you all that the dude next to Sierra’s monitor was my monitor,” Lyle says, flipping the bird in their general direction and flashing me a sharp-
toothed grin. “Note the past tense.”
“Isn’t that the jerk who bothered you earlier?” Ivar asks.
“Yeah,” I reply, resigned to the fact the whole school knows all the details to that scene by now.
“Let’s hope they decide to be adults and move on without bothering us,” Morgan says, dismissing the
popular clique with ease. “My monitor is in that group too, but she kind of—”
“—took one look at you and ran,” Shelby says. “I saw that little episode in the hall before our first class.”
“It’s the antlers…they scare humans sometimes,” Morgan admits self-consciously as she lifts her delicate hands to smooth down her dark hair. “It’s not my fault my hormones made the mutation unbalanced,” she mutters as a barely audible after thought. Her words set off Ivar’s head shaking again.
“Little antlers aren’t scary. My monitor…well, they assigned me someone a lot smaller. He bailed too,” he says. I'm enjoying the conversation a little more, enjoying hating on the people who don’t give a damn about us.
“So essentially the monitors are just people who signed up for the chance to bully half-breeds?” Morgan asks. She’s finished her food now and is watching Lyle fidget with the brim of his baseball cap.
“I guess so,” I tell her. My eyes linger helplessly on Katrina and the group of people she’s with. They’re all laughing and joking, which is surprising because my former monitor came across as more of an over-
achieving nerd than anything else. I watch as their group converges on another, a small group of senior guys lounging more in the sun than the rest of the people who are opting for more shade. I catch a glimpse of red-hair on one of the guys…
“Who are you looking at, Sierra?” Shelby asks me curiously. I return my gaze to the people with me, my
fox ears pricking up.
“No one,” I say. I don’t turn my eyes back in the direction of the humans.
6
By the time school is over I’m almost ready to sprint all the way home to burn off the frustration I’ve accumulated over the afternoon. I’m trying to be positive about the year ahead, but it’s very difficult to maintain optimism. Thankfully Eisen is waiting to pick me up as soon as I gather my belongings from my locker and exit the building.
“How’d it go?” Eisen asks as I slide into the passenger seat. The fabric seats of the car have picked up his scent of coffee and the flavor oils baristas use to spice up the beverages they serve.
He looks about as tired as I feel.
“Where do I start?” I reply, crumpling into a slouch. “The teachers were either rude or inattentive, no one wants me there, and half-breeds are treated like a
public nuisance to everyone."
“As I expected, then,” Eisen mutters to himself as he drives. “It’s reverting back to a pre-war atmosphere around here.” I don’t know what to say to that so I change the subject.
“How was your day? Was the beanery busy?” I ask.
Eisen’s shoulders hunch up closer to his ears and I see his eyes narrow. He looks like a fox now: un-
mistakably up to something.
“What happened?” I ask, suspicious.
“Well…an, ah, incident took place today,” he tells me, selecting his words with obvious care. My anxiety returns with a side order of exasperation.
“What happened, Eisen?” I ask again. “Please don’t say you got fired.” My brother’s eyes watch me from their corners, and I see his ears droop a little.
“I didn’t get fired. It’s about Wade.” He sighs heavily.
“Wade?” As children, Wade and I were polar opposites: Eisen and I were the ones who were stealthy about getting into trouble. My mother had a handful dealing with us growing up because it was hard to catch us doing wrong until the last minute; this pattern of behavior did not change when Harold shouldered responsibility for the family. Wade always liked to show off his ability to get into a spectacular amount of trouble, so while he always got caught first, Eisen and I were the most devious.
“Is he okay? Was he hurt at the factory?” I interrogate. My fingers clench into a fist, wrapped around the strap of my bag like it’s a life preserver. Eisen shakes his head as we come to a red light, and I
take a moment to appreciate the growing distance between me and the school.
“He’s fine…he just did something wild. Again,” Eisen says, tapping his long fingers on the steering wheel with an air of impatience. I groan, sinking further into my seat.
“How illegal was it? Is there a cop at our house this time?” I ask.
“Not when I left, but there might be at some point. The dudes we beat up might involve the law if we didn’t scare them enough, plus the neighbors did see a lot of the fight—”
“We? You’re in trouble too?” My voice rises in pitch as we speak.
“Some humans—older ones, not idiot teenagers like last time—were hanging around our part of the neighborhood and harassing Mrs. Chirza and her granddaughter. They must’ve celebrated happy hour early, since they don’t seem the type to be caught sober in a half-breed area,” Eisen mutters; none of my brothers like when I get upset. Mrs. Chirza is an elderly woman with a mix of canine DNA who lives a house or two down from us with her young, pretty granddaughter.
“This is the granddaughter Wade…” I leave the sentence be, knowing Eisen understands what I’m saying.
“Yeah, his crush. He was furious about what they were saying to her: even if her DNA literally makes her a mutt, the humans weren’t calling her that in a scientific sense,” he says. “Emilee was very grateful for the rescue and will be announcing her undying love for our
brother any day now.”
“Damn, that’s the last thing we need: Wade in a relationship,” I snort. Eisen chuckles; his laugh is one of my favorite sounds.
“Poor kid needs to get a girl sometime. As you know, our kind marry young…look at our parents, wedded and bouncing little Harry around before
they were twenty-one.”
“What about you, then? Where’s your girl?” I ask, joking. Eisen waggles his eyebrows devilishly at me, but doesn’t say anything else; then he’s back to being more serious.
“He was doing pretty well on his own in the fight, but I saw one of the human guys had a knife,
and I had to get in there and help him out.” He's explaining himself even though he doesn’t need to. I’ve been a part of this family long enough to know
that my brothers will always help each other in fights.
“It’s fine. I’m glad you both are okay,” I say. I hope no legal trouble comes from this situation, but I keep that train of thought to myself. Harold probably has or probably will lecture Wade and Eisen about the fight.
“Harold is home, right?” I ask.
“He will be soon. I made Wade call him after he managed to tear himself away from Emilee, so he knows already,” Eisen says. He looks a little troubled still, but apparently he’s at ease: he rolls down the window, and I notice his smile as the breeze ruffles his hair and fur. I try to relax too, also ignoring the approaching heated lecture Harold is going to give my brothers when he gets home.
“How was today, S? Really,” Eisen asks after a few
minutes. We’re almost home now and the combination of the afternoon sun and the breeze flowing in through the partially opened windows has lulled me into the lightest of cat naps.
“It…it’s nothing I can’t handle, Eisen,” I respond carefully as my body tenses up again.
“Sure, it was peachy, wasn’t it?” he scoffs. “I’m driving slow, so if you start spilling the story now you
can finish before I get home.”
“Normally it’s my girl friends who insist on details,” I grumble, and he laughs. The mood sufficiently lightened, I summarize the events of my
day for my brother. For some reason, however, I exclude Duncan Ledford from my monologue. I don’t know how Eisen would respond to that part of the story and right now I don’t particularly want to find out.
By the time I finish, we’ve pulled into the small, narrow driveway outside of our grim little townhouse. One of the reasons I love my brother is for his silence whenever I have something serious to tell him. Wade always interrupts with bizarre questions, and it’s hard to get Harold to focus on the broader picture instead of little details. My golden fox brother has remained silent, but not un-reactive. His fingers are white on the steering wheel, and his blank face is one that used to make me shut up when we were kids.
“It could be worse,” I conclude my tale, feeling my ears begin to droop from his lack of response. “Eisen?”
The silence lingers for two or three seconds, then he shakes his head as if distracted. “I’m just glad you’re okay,” he says anticlimactically.
“That’s it?” I ask, surprised. It’s not like Eisen to be
quiet once I finish telling a story, even if he usually pays me the courtesy of silence while I’m talking.
“Nothing else to add,” he says as he exits the car. I also get out, observing him warily.
“All of that and you don’t have anything to say?” I ask again.
“Yeah, S. Go call Hayley if you want more,” he says, blithely mentioning my best friend in his comment.
He sounds annoyed, and it dawns on me what must be going through his head.
He’s waiting to tell Harold what went on, I realize. He’s planning something. My brother has always been quick on his feet, so hatching devious plans is one of his fortes. I’m curious about what he might be planning—maybe another “secret” conference with Harold, trying to find a way to get me transferred out of my school situation last minute—but I decide not to ask. It won’t do much good anyway.
Just when we’re about to reach the door, Eisen taps my shoulder. “Wade got Emilees’s number, by the way. It won’t do any good to lecture him about fighting with humans…he won’t hear you,” he says.
“His ears are too full of Emilee’s gratitude, most likely,” I reply.
“Pity he only has fox ears: if he had human ears too, he might actually catch a word or two,” Eisen says wryly.
“Yes, pity he missed out on that particular mutation,” I add. We enter our house and I shake my head again, marveling at the moodiness of my brothers.
The first thing I see when I walk in is Wade standing
at the sink, his hands coated with what looks like blood. The next thing I notice as my gaze flies up to view his face is the magnificently blooming black eye and the gleaming white smile he’s sporting.
“Wade, what—” I drop my bag on the table and rush up to him. He laughs and shoves his sticky hands under the hot water running from the faucet before I can grab them.
“Relax, Sierra. It’s just juice from the burgers,”
Wade says, his smile widening so his bruised eye closes completely. Eisen laughs as I huff and lift my hand to Wade’s fur covered face.
“He’s fine, S. I checked him for injuries before I left to pick you up,” Eisen tells me as he walks to the counter by the stove to snack on the hamburger trimmings I assume Wade set out earlier.
“He doesn’t look fine,” I say, gingerly examining Wade’s discolored eye with my fingertips. Wade rubs his face and the tip of his nose against my hand once or twice in a reassuring nuzzle before he pulls away to undoubtedly preserve his “manliness.”
“You made dinner?” I ask as Eisen shoves what looks to my peripheral vision like an entire block of cheddar cheese into his mouth. Wade shrugs.
“My work shift wasn’t as long as normal today and I knew Eisen would be home earlier than usual. Harold had a big case at work…plus you had school. I didn’t think you’d feel up to cooking tonight,” he says. The emotional turmoil of the day must be catching up with me because I feel a growing danger of approaching tears lurking in the corners of my suddenly moist eyes. I also notice that the dirty dishes piled in the sink from this
morning are nowhere in sight.
“How was…that, by the way?” Wade grunts. Eisen, still attempting to swallow the huge piece of cheese in his mouth, chokes a little and waves his hands frantically at his brother. I laugh, but a weird sort of sniffle escapes me, and my eyes feel even more in danger of shedding tears. Wade exchanges a look with Eisen, who is now endeavoring and failing to speak.
“Damn, S, it was that bad?” he asks, more sympathetic than incredulous. I try to master the lump in my throat so I don’t start crying. Harold raised us all to be tough, and even if I was babied sometimes I still have enough grit in me to stop crying when I need to.
Eisen finally clears his mouth so he can speak. “Don’t make her tell you right now, I already heard
it. Wait until Harold gets home, otherwise if she has to say it all a third time she might be hysterical by that point,” he says. I give him the customary glare that he usually receives whenever he implies that I am weepy, but my heart isn’t in it.
“It wasn’t terrible, really,” I say, my voice beginning to warble. “It could have been a lot worse—”
“All right,” Wade cuts in hurriedly, nodding before resting his wet hands on my shoulders.
“Eisen and I are going to finish making dinner, so you can go upstairs and…er…freshen up before then. Maybe you can call Hayley.” The water from Wade’s freshly cleaned hands seeps through my shirt, but I don’t mind.
“Okay,” I say. I want to hug Wade, but I don’t want to be more of a baby than I already am right now. My brothers hate when I cry, but they genuinely care
about me and don’t like seeing me hurt.
My brothers exchange information in low voices as I leave, and even though I could eavesdrop if I wanted, I decide not to. By the time I’m up the stairs the tight feeling in my throat is disappearing. Nothing you can’t handle, I think, reassuring my subconscious in the same way I would comfort an irritable animal. It’s not much, but it helps.
Now that I can focus, my mind wanders to other topics. Hayley is my best friend si
nce childhood; her large family has Persian cat DNA mixed into the bloodline. Her mother took interest in my damaged family when my mother died. We haven’t gone to the same school for years because they don’t live very close to us anymore, but Hayley and I remain friends.
I tug my SMARTcall out of my pocket and
weigh it in my hand, taking a moment to organize
my thoughts. Unlike Eisen, Hayley won’t be satisfied with the bare detail version of events. Plus, she home schools and has done so for years, which is why the government generously let her out of the mandatory public school attendance law. Earlier in the summer when we saw each other more, she asked me to keep in contact about what my new school would be like, since she’s curious about public school.
I key in her number and listen to the trip-trip-click of the SMARTcall connecting tone. I hear her talking right when she picks up.
“Sierra.” She speaks my name like it’s a proclamation of doom. “How are you?” I’m smiling a little bit already, and it hasn’t even been ten seconds into our conversation.
“I’m good, Hayley,” I tell her, picturing her clutching the device to her head, her cat whiskers twitching with excitement. “What’s happening over
there?” A strange yowling sound transmits through the speaker of my device.
“Nothing worth speaking of. My sisters planned a sleepover for tonight, and they’re upset because I want no part of the little hellion fest they’re
summoning,” she replies dismissively. “But never mind that! I want to know everything that happened with you today. All of it!”
“You sure about that?” I sigh, knowing I’ll probably have to tell the story of my day at the
human school at least two more times today. “It’s not really a good story.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Hayley squawks into the phone. “I live vicariously through you…sort of…well, I wouldn’t want to go to a human school, but I do want to know how it was for you,” she concludes.
Vixen (The Fox and Hound Book 1) Page 6
