The Xander Years, Vol.2

by Jeff Mariotte

  The pathway to the hyena house was blocked off by yellow caution tape, and signs on easels read “Positively No Admittance.” Yet another sign said “Closed.” Orange lights flashed on the warning signs. The meaning was pretty clear, Lance figured. The zoo officials didn’t want anyone wandering into the hyena exhibit.

  Which, according to Kyle, was the “fun part.” Lance couldn’t quite figure, but he was willing to go along. After all, they were being nice to him, which was a first. And besides, they had him more or less surrounded. Rhonda lifted the caution tape and they ducked under, headed down the path.

  Hyenas, here we come.

  Xander, Willow, and Buffy weren’t far behind. They saw Lance go under the tape and disappear down the path. There was something very wrong about this picture, and it was as obvious as Lance’s bright red sweater — he would never be part of that crowd. Xander knew Lance was no more likely to hang with Kyle and those guys than Willow was. Or himself, even. Like, not at all.

  “What are Kyle and his buds doing with Lance?” Willow asked.

  To Xander, the answer was clear. “Playing with him, as the cat plays with the mouse.”

  “What is it with those guys?” Buffy asked. They stopped at the tape, looking down the path. Lance and the others were gone from sight.

  “They’re obnoxious,” Willow said. “Professionally.”

  “Every school has ’em,” Xander explained. “You start a school, you get desks, some blackboards, and some mean kids.”

  Buffy started toward the tape. “Yeah, well, I better extract Lance before —”

  But Xander raised a hand to her, stopping her in her tracks. “I’ll handle it,” he offered. “This job doesn’t require actual slaying.” I hope. He ducked under the tape and headed for the hyenas, fully aware that the two girls behind him were watching him go. A small display of bravery, tiny, really, compared to some of Buffy’s. But, hey — you take what you can get.

  Buffy wasn’t convinced. “You don’t think we should follow?”

  “Kyle and those guys are jerks, but they’re all talk.” Willow had lived in Sunnydale her whole life and knew the kids better than Buffy. Buffy was inclined to trust her, until Willow added, “Mostly.”

  “Why don’t we —”

  Willow agreed with a nod. “Yeah, why don’t we —”

  They hadn’t made it two steps beyond the tape when a zookeeper appeared. “Whoa, hold it, hold it,” he said. What hair he had was blond, long in back but mostly dome-like on top. He had a neat blond beard and glasses, an almost professorial demeanor. His voice was gentle, but firm. “Are you blind, or are you just illiterate? Because hyenas are quick to prey on the weak.”

  “We were just —” Buffy started.

  He cut her off mid-sentence. “You’re not going in there. Anyone that does is in a world of trouble.” He raised the tape for them to slink back out.

  Willow, always the peacemaker, chimed in. “No, no one’s going in there.” She led the way back under the tape.

  Buffy wasn’t so willing to let it go. “Why is it off limits?” she asked.

  “It’s a quarantine. These hyenas just came from Africa. So keep out.” His voice indicated that he would accept no response other than obedience. But he raised a single eyebrow, giving his face a slightly friendlier aspect. Then he said something that Buffy found very strange. “Even if they call your name.”

  “What’re you talking about?” she asked.

  The zookeeper looked even more like a professor as he launched into lecture mode. “A Masai tribesman once told me that hyenas can understand human speech. They follow humans around by day, learning their names.” His voice lowered. Now he sounded like a man telling a ghost story. “At night, when the campfire dies, they call out to the person. And once they separate him” — he snapped his fingers — “the pack devours him.”

  There was more caution tape at the actual entrance to the hyena enclosure. Kyle just ripped it down as he passed through it, so that he was festooned in it for a moment, yellow against his yellow shirt. It was dark in here, shaded, and cooler than outside. The walls were artificial rock, a man-made cave with cutaways for illuminated displays, and a larger one for the hyenas themselves, up a couple of steps, chest-high bars across the front.

  Kyle looked around, turning slowly. “Cool.”

  “I don’t see any hyenas,” Lance said. He was having second thoughts now. Fifth or sixth thoughts, really. He was ready to go.

  Almost as if on cue, a hyena stepped forward from the gloom of its pen, revealing a dark, almost black muzzle, full of large, pointed teeth. It growled. It didn’t sound friendly. Now Lance was more than ready to be gone.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now we’ve seen it.” He turned to go, but Tor was standing right behind him, blocking his way.

  And the others hadn’t had enough, it seemed. “It looks cute,” Rhonda said.

  “I think it looks hungry,” Kyle said. He stepped away from the bars. He and Tor grabbed Lance, muscled him up the steps toward the cage.

  “Come on, Spot!” Tor growled as they dragged Lance forward. “Suppertime!” They held him in front of the bars — which now seemed considerably shorter and less substantial than they had just a minute ago. The hyena growled again, deep in its throat. Someone had a hand on the back of Lance’s head, pushing his face into the cage. Everyone laughed — except Lance.

  “Ow!” he complained. “Stop it! That’s not funny!”

  Xander heard that last part, and had to agree — despite the raucous laughter coming from the Kyle Brigade, none of it sounded terribly humorous. He leapt up the stairs and into the thick of it, yanking people’s arms away from Lance. He shoved Lance out of their reach, down the stairs. When Lance was safely away, Xander found himself eyeball to eyeball with Kyle.

  “Why don’t you pick on someone your own species?” he asked.

  Kyle glared back, not giving an inch. “What, are you gonna get in my face?”

  The hyena interrupted the stare-down with another long, low growl. It raised its head into the light again, growling more, and then they were all looking at it. The thing was not lovely, but its eyes held a mesmerizing quality, and the five of them found themselves staring into those eyes.

  Barely noticing when the eyes flashed with an eerie green glow.

  And, of course, they couldn’t see their own eyes. Flashing an answering green.

  Nor did they, at this moment, notice the bizarre red design painted on the enclosure’s floor. The design on which they all stood. Their attention was riveted on the hyena, growling and moving in its cage.

  * * *

  Lance took advantage of their distraction to make his escape. He started for the exit. Tripped. His notebook slid across the damp floor. He grabbed it up again, hoisted himself to his feet. But the others had heard him fall, were turning — weirdly, turning slowly but in unison — and laughing. Laughing at him, their laughter rising in pitch, becoming almost hysterical.

  Xander, who had rescued him, was the last to turn, the only one out of synch, and Lance didn’t know what he expected to see on Xander’s face but it wasn’t what he saw, which was a smile. He wasn’t laughing like the others, but the smile — knowing, and without a trace of kindness or real humor — was almost worse.

  Lance ran.

  Later, Kyle, Rhonda, Tor, and Heidi strolled the zoo grounds. The school buses had long since gone. They had stood in hiding, watching the near-frantic search for themselves, punching each other on the arms and biting back raucous laughter. Finally, Mr. Flutie had given the order to go ahead without them — Another black mark on our permanent records, Kyle thought. Horrors!

  They’d get home somehow. It wasn’t that far. Nothing to sweat.

  But — and this went unspoken among them — none of them wanted to leave. Something about the place — the sound of hooves scrabbling on dirt, the ruffling of feathers, the sharp smells of feed and fur and filth — drew them. Kept them here.

  The
y felt strangely at home.

  They wandered the paths, laughing at the locals looking into the enclosures, and the tourists in from Ohio or Omaha, getting their first glimpse at a real California zoo. An hour or so after the buses had finally gone, they came across a young couple, arm in arm on a bridge, watching ring-tailed lemurs scamper around an island enclosure. The couple looked to be in their late twenties, maybe early thirties. Middle class. He was tall and clean cut, she was smaller, and cute, in that red-haired, freckled way. Young marrieds, intent on starting a family, maybe. Yuppies. Conventional.

  Kyle hated them on sight.

  He started to say something to the others, but his gaze met Rhonda’s and he knew he didn’t have to. We’re all on the same page, he thought.

  The couple faced the cage, their backs to the path. Kyle stepped up to the safety railing, next to the redhead.

  “Like those monkeys?” he asked her.

  “I don’t think they’re monkeys,” she started to say. The man, the husband, just glared at him.

  Heidi approached the man, put her hand on his arm as if he were an old friend. A very good friend.

  “I think they’re funny,” she said. “Do you think they can smell us from here?”

  “Across the water?” the man asked. “I wouldn’t think so.” He tugged his arm away, but Heidi persisted.

  “You don’t mind, do you,” she asked the wife. “Donald and I go way back.”

  “My name’s not Donald,” he insisted.

  “It’s not,” his wife said, backing him. “It’s Henry.”

  Heidi laughed. “I thought you were going to stop using Henry,” she said. “Don’t tell me you told her you were a programmer, too.”

  The man’s face was clouding over quickly. “Listen,” he grumbled. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here — ”

  “Oh, very good,” Rhonda said. “I’d almost believe it if I didn’t know you.”

  “Henry, you don’t know these people, do you?” the redhead asked, almost plaintively.

  “Of course not!”

  “You’re hurting my feelings, Donald,” Heidi whimpered. She put her hands on his chest. He brushed them away.

  “Be nice, Donald,” Tor said. He swelled out his chest and arms, trying to look threatening. “Is that any way to treat old friends?”

  The woman’s head swiveled like a spectator at a tennis match. Tears started to run down her cheeks.

  “I’ve never seen these people before in my life,” Henry thundered. “Now get away from us or I’m calling security!”

  “Ooooh,” Kyle said in mock terror. “Not that!”

  “I mean it.” Henry pulled a cell phone from his pants pocket and started to punch in numbers.

  “I said, not that!” Kyle slapped Henry’s hand from beneath and the tiny phone went flipping end over end, landing with a small splash in the water beneath the bridge.

  Henry’s face turned bright red. “Do you have any idea how much —”

  Kyle cut him off. “Can it, Donald. We’re tired of you. You want to lie to this nice lady, pretend you don’t know us, that’s fine. We don’t know you either. Come on, guys.”

  He started off the bridge, clomping loudly on the wooden crosspieces as he went. He didn’t look back, but heard the others following him. Behind them, he could hear Henry and his wife talking, arguing.

  Kyle started to laugh. Heidi joined in. Within seconds, they were all laughing so hard they could barely stand. They flopped down on a swatch of grass, rolling with laughter. Loud, high-pitched squeals of laughter, the kind that was so funny that when one of them stopped, the sound of it got him or her going again.

  They were still laughing an hour later, when the zoo closed.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Bronze was crowded — like that was news. When there’s only one decent club in town where kids under twenty-one can hear music, drink coffee, dance, and hang out, it’s likely to draw a crowd.

  Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg turned away from the pastry counter. Buffy carried a croissant and a soda. Willow settled for a box of raisins. She’s preoccupied, Buffy thought. It didn’t take a genius to figure out with what. As far as Will was concerned, the sun rose and set with Xander.

  She’d felt that way since they were both five years old — a little young for serious romance, but maybe not for a first crush. Even at the time, though, she’d thought it was true love, recognizing that the relationship was not all she hoped for only when Xander broke her Barbie.

  Even that, I forgave him, she thought, with a rueful smile. Even that.

  But in all the years since then, while they’d remained steadfast friends, that was just about as good as she got. Xander, her buddy. Xander, the guy who would complain to her when he was having girl trouble.

  Never seeming to realize what he could have had.

  “I thought Xander would be here by now,” Willow said as they threaded their way toward an open table.

  “That’d make him on time,” Buffy replied. “We couldn’t have that.”

  “Did he seem at all upset on the bus back from the zoo?”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know,” Willow said. “He was quiet.”

  Buffy slid onto a seat at one of the chest-high tables. “I didn’t notice anything. But then again, I’m not as hyper-aware of him as, oh, say, for example, you.”

  “Hyper-aware?” Willow asked, taking the stool across from Buffy’s.

  “Well,” Buffy said. “I’m not constantly monitoring his health, his moods, his blood pressure —”

  Willow knew that one. “One-thirty over eighty.”

  Buffy laughed. “You got it bad, girl.”

  “He makes my head go tingly. You know what I mean?”

  “I dimly recall,” Buffy said, gaze cast toward the ceiling.

  “But it hasn’t happened to you lately?”

  A shrug. “Not of late.”

  “Not even for a dangerous and mysterious older man whose leather jacket you’re wearing right now?”

  Buffy glanced at the jacket Angel had given her. Angel, the tall, dark, mystery hunk whose life kept intersecting with hers in the oddest ways. He had told her that the jacket looked better on her — which wasn’t, strictly speaking, even close to true. It was way out of place, for instance, with the pale green dress she was wearing tonight. And yet, she had barely taken it off since he’d given it to her.

  “It goes with the shoes,” she insisted.

  “Come on,” Willow said, having none of it. “Angel pushes your buttons. You know he does.”

  “I suppose some girls might think he’s good looking,” Buffy relented. “If they . . . have eyes. All right, he’s a honey.” Understatement of the month club, she thought. She didn’t want to let on to Willow, though. The poor girl thought the whole situation was terribly romantic, but there was still that Slayer thing to contend with. Makes dating a little complicated. “But he’s never around, and when he is all he wants to do is talk about vampires, and I just can’t have a relation-ship —”

  Willow interrupted with an excited, “There he is!”

  Buffy’s head swiveled. “Angel?”

  “Xander!”

  Then Buffy saw him too, wending his way through the crowd, wearing a brown flannel shirt over a dark T. A little more somber than his usual look, she thought. And he didn’t move quite like the Xander Buffy knew — he sauntered, stopping now and again to look at women, smile at women, flirt with women. Okay, so not completely unlike Xander. But he was usually more discreet about it.

  Finally, he made his way to their table. “Girls,” he said.

  “Boy,” Buffy replied.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he went on. “I just forgot we were gonna be here.” He looked at Buffy’s plate. “Hungry,” he said, tearing off a chunk of Buffy’s croissant and shoving it into his mouth.

  Willow chose to ignore the less-than-polite behavior. She had known Xander since they were five, so
Buffy figured that slack-cutting, where he was concerned, was a long-ingrained habit.

  “Xander, you still want me to help you with geometry tomorrow?” Willow asked. As she spoke, he downed a swallow of Buffy’s drink, without a trace of pleasure. “We can work after class.”

  “Yeah,” he said. Then, indicating Buffy’s snack, asked, “What is this crap?”

  “Well, it was my buttery croissant,” Buffy said.

  “Man, I need some food,” Xander said. His voice carried a tinge of anger, as if she’d ordered the pastry just to offend him. “Birds live on this.”

  But apparently he wasn’t too angry to notice the look that passed between Buffy and Willow. “What?” he asked with an anxious smile.

  “What’s up with you?” Buffy asked.

  Willow took it more personally. She fiddled nervously with her raisin box. “Is something wrong? Did I do something?”

  “What could you possibly do?” Xander asked. “That’s crazy talk. I’m just restless.”

  “Well, we could go to the ice cream place . . .” Willow offered.

  Xander raised his head, peering over the crowd, as if looking for something. Or just surveying his territory. He scratched his chest. “I like it here.”

  And as if the way he’d been acting wasn’t bizarre enough, he began to sniff Buffy’s hair.

  “Okay, now what?” she asked.

  “You took a bath,” he explained. Although “explained” wasn’t the word for it, since it didn’t actually explain anything. He kept scratching at his shirt. Fleas? Buffy wondered.

  “Yeah, I often do. I’m actually known for it.”

  “That’s okay,” Xander said.

  Gee, thanks. Glad I have your blessing. Slipping into announcer-speak, Buffy said, “And the weird behavior award goes to . . .”

  But he wasn’t even listening anymore. His attention had become riveted on the door. Buffy turned to see what he was so intent on.

  And was instantly sorry she had.

  Kyle, Heidi, Tor, and Rhonda. The good-time gang.