Waterways (16 page)

While Mickey’s father talked cheerfully about baseball, Kory leaned back and responded occasionally. Samaki looked out the window, but his paw crept over to seek out Kory’s. Still jittery with echoes of his mother’s visit that morning, Kory moved his paw into his lap and stared straight ahead. The fox didn’t react, just left his own on the seat until they reached Badger Square. “Where you guys headed from here?” Mr. Donovan asked.

“The library,” Kory blurted out. “Working on some summer projects.”

“Pretty smart. You keep that up, you’ll get into a good college. You see that, Mickey?”

Mickey looked considerably less enthusiastic. “Yeah, come on, Dad, let’s get to the show.”

“Thanks for the ride, Mr. Donovan,” Samaki said, getting out.

“Yeah, thanks,” Kory said. He waited until Samaki was out to press two twenties into Nick’s paw. “See you tonight,” he said.

“Seeya.” Nick made the money disappear into his pocket in a smooth motion.

Samaki walked quietly beside Kory to the thrift shop they usually made their first stop. It wasn’t open this early, but they stopped to look in the window anyway. “Library?” the black fox said.

“What? Oh. Well, they don’t need to know.”

“You could’ve said you work with homeless kids. You didn’t have to say gay homeless kids.”

The feeling that Samaki was disappointed in him was a new one. Kory’s stomach fluttered. “I dunno. It was just easier to say the library.”

“Easier?”

Kory looked up at the black fox’s bemused expression. “I didn’t want to get into a whole discussion.”

Samaki nodded. “I didn’t mean you should’ve said ‘gay homeless kids.’ I just wondered why you went to ‘library’.”

“It was the first thing that came into my head.” Kory curled his tail down as he walked.

“I guess it doesn’t matter.” The black fox looked around, his ears perking up as he looked across the square. “Hey, Starbucks is open.”

Kory’s mood improved almost immediately. Ever since their first cup of coffee in the Starbucks by the pool, the little green coffee chain felt special to him. He could walk into any one and remember how the sun had hit Samaki’s black fur and violet eyes that afternoon. It never failed to cheer him up.

By the time they had gotten their coffee and pawed through the dusty racks of the thrift store, where Samaki found a pair of pants for him and a shirt for his brother Kasim, the comment and Kory’s queasy worry, as well as the jitters about his mother’s morning visit, were long gone. The walk to the Rainbow Center, a short six blocks, was always nice even in the warm summer morning, and though Kory would always rather be swimming, walking through Hilltown early in the morning was a close second, especially with Samaki at his side.

Holly Street led away from the bohemian Badger Square along rows of brick and wood houses, relics of an older time. Faded paint and cracked wood showed the age of the buildings, but no fast food containers littered the street, no old clothes hung over the bare wooden railings, and the windows were kept clean and free of dust. Between the tightly packed rows of houses, they passed a hamburger joint, a taco stand that was their favorite lunch place (two tacos for a dollar!), a laundromat, and a few book and clothing stores that had yet to open. Left down the narrow Badger Lane brought them to a converted three-story house that had once been two row homes. Alone on the block, it sported a fresh coat of neutral ivory paint and a well-kept porch. The words “Rainbow Center” were engraved on the wooden plaque to the right of the door, and beneath that, a quotation: “Beneath my roof, let all gather without fear or hate; for if we are to banish them from the world, we must first begin at home.”

Kory had looked up R. Carmine, the attributed author, on the Internet with Samaki one night and had enjoyed reading about the life of the arctic fox, poet and ardent gay rights activist. She’d died twelve years before, but it was thanks to a foundation she’d helped create that the Rainbow Center continued to exist. Only one book of her poetry had been published, and it was on back order everywhere he looked. The Rainbow Center library had a copy, of course, but he wanted to spend his time at the house helping, not reading, so he only stole a look at the book on his breaks.

Usually, he loved to look at the plaque as they walked in, but today it brought back the memory of him saying “library”. Was it wrong to not want to tell Mickey’s dad their whole life story? Maybe not. But how would Carmine have handled it?

Even though it wasn’t quite nine, the house was bustling. Summer was a busy time for runaways, with school out of session, and the kids were used to getting up at seven or eight even in summer. The house had DVDs to keep them busy for a few hours, but Margo, the black squirrel who ran Rainbow Center, didn’t like the kids to sit and watch TV all day, so she organized work projects, some more fun than others. Samaki, in his second summer helping out, was allowed to lead projects unsupervised, but Kory had to be with Samaki or one of the other experienced volunteers, which didn’t bother him at all, truth be told.

True to its name, the inside of the Rainbow Center was a hodgepodge of different building styles. In places like the school or public library, the interiors were deliberately minimalist so as not to favor any one species over another. Even though the Rainbow Center received some public funding, the equal-access laws known as the Orwell Act only applied to the common areas of the building, and then only to specify that the area be equally welcoming to all. Margo interpreted that to mean “as welcoming as possible to all,” a passion which showed in the ceiling rungs, for squirrels and other climbers, the hard salt licks in the walls, the shallow trough of water running along one side of each of the ground-floor rooms, the sheltered corner with the thick triangular shade stretched over it to block out the light, and dozens of other small touches. Kory, used to the simple one- or two-species houses of his friends and the bare public school and library, had been first overwhelmed and then delighted by the feeling that he was entering a space that was not just communal, but an intersection of several different private spaces. It contributed to the feeling of home, and in fact, when he’d suggested adding a loft-type structure to the common room, inspired by Ajani’s suspended desk in the Roden boys’ bedroom, Margo had not only taken enthusiastically to his idea, but had let him design and oversee the building of it.

“Good morning, boys!” Margo said as they walked into the common room. Two boys a little younger than Kory sat in front of the TV: a skunk and a porcupine. Up on the loft, a weasel, hung half off the frame, watching with the others. Below him, slouched against the wooden frame, a fruit bat surveyed the room with folded arms and over-affected boredom. Piercings glittered in both her large ears, echoed in the silver studs down the side of the black leather jacket that hung over her bony frame.

Coming in here and remembering what these kids were going through made Kory’s problems seem trivial. He put them aside and waved to the bat.

“Hi, Malaya.” She snorted, but nodded to him before turning back to the TV. The boys continued watching, oblivious. Kory leaned against the “dark corner,” after checking that nobody was curled up inside it.

“Did Marty get his placement?” Samaki asked after a quick scan of the room.

Margo nodded. “He left yesterday evening. I have his address if you want to send a card along.”

“Yeah, please.” The young fox had been Kory and Samaki’s favorite all summer, a boisterous bundle of energy who’d been the first to help out with every project despite his broken wrist. The only thing he wasn’t eager to talk about was how his wrist had been broken. Kory only knew that his father had been somehow responsible and that his mother hadn’t done anything to stop it.

“All right. I’m just going to get some more e-mails sent out. It looks like Jeremy’s situation might get ugly.” She dropped her voice, glancing sideways at the skunk. “Don’t say anything to him, though. Now, go get started on the back yard. I’ll come out and join you later.”

“Bye, Margo,” they chorused, grinning at each other. Samaki reached for Kory’s paw as they walked across the room, and here in the only other place that felt safe, Kory took it. With that grasp, their argument of the morning faded completely. He saw Malaya roll her eyes at them, and gave her a big smile.

A little over an hour into the backyard project, Kory noticed that Malaya was gone. The boys were working hard cutting the fence posts, Samaki was collecting the old pieces of the fence, and Malaya was supposed to be on the other side of the portion of the fence that was still standing, digging at the foundation to loosen it while Kory did the same on his side. Only he hadn’t heard her digging in a while, and when he peeked around the wooden slats, there was nobody opposite him.

“She’s probably up in her room,” Samaki said. “Want to go get her? If you can’t find her or if she won’t come, then get Margo to help.”

“Sure.” Kory started to go in the back door, then reconsidered and walked around the fence, down the narrow space between the houses. At the side of the front porch he paused, looking out into the bright summer street, and then the acrid tickle of cigarette smoke stroked his nostrils. He looked down and saw the fruit bat sitting with her wings closed around her knees beneath the porch.

As soon as his eyes met hers, the lit tip of a cigarette came back into view. She puffed on it and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Damn,” she said dryly. “You won’t tell on me, will you? Because then they’d kick me out and that would be terrible.”

There was just enough room next to her for Kory to squeeze in, leaving his left shoulder and leg out in the sunlight. He could see why Malaya liked it here. Nobody could see you. It felt safe, almost like swimming. “If you don’t like it here, you could just leave.”

“And go where? They won’t let me go home yet. I’d rather be here than living in a box somewhere.”

“It’s not so bad here.”

She blew a puff of smoke into the dark space under the porch. “You don’t have to live here.”

He sighed. “What don’t you like?”

“What, going to go tell Margo to fix it? Don’t bother. It’s shorter to tell you what I do like.” She took another drag, and scratched at her wing with her left hand. “The free food. Talking to you. That’s about it.”

“Me?” He’d known they had a rapport, but he hadn’t thought he was the only one.

She shrugged. “You don’t live in some pie-in-the-sky fantasy world. Margo says I’ll be placed with my grandmother, as if I want to go live in a swamp. The boys all think their troubles are over now they’re in Lotusland here. And your boyfriend, no offense, makes Pollyanna look like a realist.”

It still took a few seconds for the glow of having Samaki referred to as his boyfriend to sink in and dissipate. “He’s…”

“Relax.” Her laugh was too deep for her age. “You guys prob’ly balance each other out well. You know what the real world is like. You know that your mom isn’t going to pick up some PFLAG brochure and read it and suddenly say, ‘Oh, I’ve been wrong about faggots all this time.’ You know that placing you in custody with your grandmother in some other state is going to mess you up worse than dealing with your asshole father.”

Kory wasn’t sure he knew any of those things. He just hated to contradict people. “Sure,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t hope for things to get better.”

Malaya looked at him. “You know what hope is?” She took a drag and opened her short mouth into an “O”, puffing out a small cloud of smoke. “That’s hope,” she said. “It burns and it stings, and when you try to grab it,” she waved a hand through it, “it’s gone.”

Kory watched the tendrils of smoke dissipate in the darkness. “But you keep taking another puff,” he said, his voice quiet. “Why is that?”

Their eyes met for a moment. Then Malaya ground out the cigarette in the dirt and bumped his shoulder. “All right, let’s get back to it,” she said. “Man, it’s gonna suck around here when school starts.”

“Aren’t you going back?” He got to his feet and extended a paw down to her, which she ignored.

“Sure, but I’ll be coming back here at night with Margo Sunshine and I won’t have you to bitch to because you’re going back to school too.”

“You’re in Samaki’s school. Don’t any of the other kids go there?”

“I can’t hang out with them at school. They’re losers.” She grinned at him. “Not your boyfriend. But he’s gonna be a senior and I’m a junior. Doesn’t work too well.”

“You can still have lunch, can’t you?”

Malaya paused at the fence. “Do I have smoke on my breath?”

The whole crew worked through the afternoon, only breaking to get tacos for lunch, and finished the fence fifteen minutes before Samaki and Kory had to catch their buses home, giving the fox and otter barely enough time to wash up. Samaki released Kory’s damp paw as they left the Rainbow Center and walked to the bus stop. “I hope Jeremy will be okay,” he said.

“I hope Malaya will,” Kory responded.

“Once they work out her travel to Millenport, she’ll be fine,” Samaki said. “She just needs to get to a better home.”

“I don’t think she wants to go to Millenport,” Kory said. “She wants to stay here.”

“That’s silly,” Samaki said. “It’d better for her to go to Millenport. Did you hear what her father did?”

Kory shrugged as his bus rounded the corner. “This is her home. Why should she leave?”

“If she doesn’t want to leave, she’s crazy.”

Kory looked at the vehement violet eyes. “Maybe sometimes people want things that aren’t good for them.”

The fox’s intensity melted away. His first response was lost in the squeal of brakes from Kory’s bus stopping. “Fortunately,” he said as the doors opened, “the things I want are very good for me.” Cool air washed over them both. “See you Monday.”

“See you Monday,” Kory said at the bus stop as Samaki’s bus pulled up.

“Bye, foxy.” Kory smiled, tilting his muzzle upward. They touched noses briefly, which was as much affection as he was comfortable showing in public, and then he stepped reluctantly onto the bus. Samaki waved one more time as the doors hissed closed, and then the bus pulled away, leaving Kory with only the lingering smell of fox on his nose.