Waterways (44 page)

“I don’t know.” Kory took another drink, more because he was holding the coffee than because he wanted it. “So, I guess, no.”

Samaki’s lips curved slightly. “We are running out of time.”

“I know,” Kory said. “It’s not easy.” The coffee was still hot, and the taste it left behind reminded him of the smell of burnt nuts. On the street in front of the center, an otter strolled by, gave them a curious look, and moved on. It was early enough that the street was mostly empty, still.

The fox shook his head. “Nobody ever said it would be.”

“But it should be.” Kory’s voice was getting louder. “I know I shouldn’t care what all those people think, but I do. I know you can take care of yourself, but I still worry about you. If something happened to you because of what we did…”

“Then it’d be my decision,” Samaki said. “You’re not forcing me to take you to the prom. I’m asking you.”

Hearing the hurt and anger in the fox’s voice just made things worse. Samaki wasn’t even making any movements toward him. The fox leaned against the brick windowsill on which he’d rested the latte Kory’d bought him, one paw in his pocket, the other tapping the brick gently. His muzzle was down, but he looked up when Kory said, “Can’t we just go out to dinner?”

“Sure,” Samaki said. “Where would you like to go? The alley behind the Rainbow Center? Your bedroom? Somewhere else where nobody will see us?”

Kory cringed. Samaki sighed, his muzzle dipping back. “I’m sorry. It’s just… if we can’t go to the prom together, then when? I mean, I’ve already told a couple of my friends that you’re coming. I was really looking forward to showing you off.”

“You told friends?” A little relief crept into the stabbing, paralyzing hurt. The image of them dancing all alone while people stared retreated. If Samaki had friends, at least they would have some allies.

“Well, sure. I don’t just go to school and sit in classes and not talk to anyone,” Samaki said. “Nobody I really hang out with after, but a couple kids I sit with in class. Couple guys on the track team.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kory said. “They’ll be at the prom?”

“Sure.” Samaki smiled. “Everyone’s going to be there.”

“Oh.” Kory took another drink of coffee, which at least was cooler now, but wasn’t doing anything to help the churning of his stomach.

“It’ll be fine,” Samaki said. “You remember I told you about that guy who graduated last year? He brought his boyfriend to graduation and nobody said anything.”

“At the end of the year,” Kory said. “We’ve still got a month of school to go. And he didn’t go to the prom.”

“This isn’t about me,” Samaki said. “Is it?”

“I’m worried about you,” Kory said, though his mind was shrieking,
he knows, he’s right!
“I mean, we’ll be at college together for four years, right? Why is this so important now?”

Samaki cocked his head. “There’s always a ‘later’.” he said. “If we don’t go to the dance now, when will it be important enough to go? Our senior year of college? Our tenth anniversary?”

“I promise, I’ll be able to. I just need a little more time.” In his stomach, the knot loosened just a bit. Surely his promise would help, would be enough. He leaned forward.

Samaki chewed on his lip, meeting Kory’s eyes. Kory tried to smile, realizing that his breathing had accelerated. He closed his other paw around the coffee cup, craving its warmth though the chill of the morning was barely noticeable on his nose and ears. “You really think… like, in a year?”

Kory nodded, barely able to let himself feel the first stirring of relief. They were over the hump now, and things were going to be okay. Samaki leaned closer. “If not… Kory, I don’t want to do this, but I don’t want to have this conversation again when we move into college. Will you try?”

Emotion blocked the words from Kory’s throat. He swallowed and forced out the words, “I have to. I don’t want… I don’t want to walk away from you. I…” But he couldn’t get the last two words out that he needed to and wanted to.

Samaki nodded, his eyes regaining a little of their life. “I don’t want to walk away from you, either,” he said. “But if you’re going to be one of those guys…” He glanced at the door of the center. “Remember Jeremy?”

“The skunk from last summer? What about him?”

“When I talked to him, that time after his mother came to yell at him…” Samaki lowered his head, fidgeting with his claws. “He was crying, said he wanted to be straight, that he just wanted to walk around with a girlfriend like normal people. That’s what he said: ‘normal people.’ He was a little better later, but there was always a little fear, a nervousness about being gay in public.”

“You think I’m going to be like that? Why?” Comprehension hit him even as he asked the question. “Because my mom wanted to put me in one of those camps too? Because she blew up at me?”

“No!” The fox’s head snapped up.

“I moved out,” Kory said. “I don’t even worry about her now.”

“I know.”

“She has nothing to do with this.” His voice felt tight and hard.

Samaki stepped forward. “I know,” he repeated. “I know. I’m just saying, I think of Jeremy at times like when you didn’t want to come live with me, or when you tell your neighbors that I’m a ‘friend,’ or when you play cute word games with the guy in the tux shop.”

“None of them need to know…” Kory started.

Samaki cut him off. “Yeah, none of them need to know, but they don’t need
not
to know, either.”

“What if the tux guy was like, some kind of religious nut?”

Samaki shrugged. “We’d get our tuxes somewhere else.”

“You know what I mean.”

“What? What if he followed us out of the mall, and stalked us, and shot us? That barely ever happens. We’re in more danger of being run over every day.” He waved toward the street.

“I know.” Kory stared down at the plastic lid of his coffee. “It’s not that, exactly. It’s just… I can feel them judging us. Like Flora, when she found out, it was just all about me being… being gay. It wasn’t who I was.”

The fox made a noise that was half-laugh, half-cough. “So you’re worried about the tuxedo store salesman knowing the real you?”

“It sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

“How would you say it?”

The fox’s gentle voice reassured Kory somewhat. “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. It’s not him specifically, it’s everyone. I feel like if people know I’m gay, that’s all they’ll ever see in me.”

“That’s their problem.” Samaki’s tail flicked hard against the wall below the window. “Didn’t Father Joe say that this is an expression of God’s love?”

“I don’t wear a cross, either.” He sighed. “Maybe I’m just a more private person than you are.”

“No question,” Samaki said. “The only question is whether that’s going to be a problem for us.”

“I already said I’d try. Within a year.”

“Another year,” Samaki said.

Kory nodded. Their upcoming one year anniversary loomed the weekend after the prom, two weeks before graduation. He was terrified now that they wouldn’t make it. They’d only mentioned it a couple times in passing, more excited about the prom—that is, Samaki had been more excited about the prom. Kory hadn’t even been allowing himself to think about the anniversary until the prom were over. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I promise to try. I really do.” He looked away from the fox, to the sidewalk where a mother skunk walked slowly to let her young kit keep up. He tottered along, taking baby steps, just learning to walk. Kory watched him pull his paw away from his mother, then grab at her again when he lost his balance, while she cooed encouragingly.

“I guess that’s all I can ask.” Samaki stepped toward him and reached out, closing both his paws around Kory’s, pressing the otter’s fingers against the warm curve of the coffee cup.

Kory smiled, until he happened to catch out of the corner of his eye a movement on the sidewalk. The mother skunk and kit had stopped right in front of the Center to fix the kit’s shirt, and the mother was just straightening, her muzzle turning toward them. Without thinking, he stepped back, pulling his paws out of Samaki’s. A moment later, he realized what he’d done, but it was too late.

Samaki stared at him, then looked down at the sidewalk. His muzzle lowered, ears flat. “I gotta go cancel the tuxes,” he said. “Tell Margo I’ll be here next week.”

“Wait,” Kory tried to say. All the relief he’d been feeling drained out of him, leaving his stomach clenched, heat and shame pulsing at the back of his head. The fox ignored the guttural noise that didn’t quite sound like a word, just raising his paw.

“I’ll see you next weekend,” he said, walking down the stairs and away, in the opposite direction from the skunks, now moving away from the center.

Numb, Kory watched the white-tipped black tail swing out of sight. He placed his coffee on the window ledge next to where Samaki had left his, and sank down onto the porch, his back against the wall.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Maybe he really was like Jeremy, one of those kids who would never be completely right. Maybe it would be better for Samaki just to break things off, so Kory wouldn’t continue to hurt him.

No, he was better than that.

You think?
said a small voice in his head.
Doesn’t look like it from where I’m sitting.

I can get better, he told himself. It was just an instinctive reaction. I didn’t mean it.

Exactly. That’s what’s really inside you.

He hadn’t had this animated a conversation with himself since the time he’d been trying to figure out why he was attracted to a young male black fox in the first place. It’s not really inside me, he said stubbornly. It is, but it’s just how I’ve been brought up. I can unlearn it.

Really?

And there was the doubt. Was any of the stuff he’d told Samaki true? Was it about being judged? Or was there some lingering shadow of his mother, some shame at other people seeing that he was gay? He held his head in his paws and rocked back and forth, the knot in his stomach spreading to his chest and throat.

He heard the door open. Margo’s voice said, “Kory?”

He struggled to his feet, wiping his eyes. “Oh,” he said, and stood there stupidly.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he said without thinking, and then, when his brain kicked in, “I mean, no. I’m feeling kinda sick.”

“Well, don’t just stand there, come on in!” She put an arm around him, trying to bustle him into the house.

The plaque caught his eye:
Beneath my roof, let all gather without fear.
He balked, twisting out of Margo’s hold. The squirrel staggered against the door frame. “I’m sorry,” Kory said. “I don’t think I can go in. I mean, I think I’ll just go home.”

“Are you sure? You don’t look well at all.”

“I can make it,” he said. “Only, can you throw those away?” He gestured toward the coffees.

Margo moved to pick them up. “Of course.”

He didn’t have to fake the paw to his stomach or the pained gait as he descended the steps and moved through the fog of his thoughts, people and buildings blurring past him. He thought he saw Samaki half a dozen times, and each time set his thoughts whirling afresh, digging the tracks deeper without reaching any conclusion.

He stayed in his room for most of the weekend, avoiding Malaya, eating ramen noodles while she was at work and keeping his door closed when she was home. When he did boot up his computer, he stayed offline, using it only for homework and not even connecting to the ’net. On Sunday, bleary and exhausted from another night spent tossing, turning, and crying, he went again to his mothers church. The temptation to talk to Father Joe was strong, but he asked himself whether he’d be running to someone else every time he had a problem. That drove him back to the bus stop without even catching the tall sheep’s eye once the service was over. What would he have told me, anyway? he brooded. Face your fears. Some other trite, useless aphorism. It was one thing to force himself to take a dive off the deep end, or go see a scary movie. Those were concrete things, done once and over. How could he face this formless, gnawing dread that went on and on?

Sunday night, finally, he slept. On Monday, with a full night of sleep behind him, his thinking became clearer. The situation wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. They hadn’t broken up, after all. Samaki had agreed to give him more time, and Kory was determined to make use of that time. How he was going to do it, he had no idea, but he was sure that in a year, he could get to the point where he could hold Samaki’s paw in public, or at least on the Rainbow Center porch.

He only became worried when Samaki missed their Monday call and picked up on Tuesday just long enough to tell him that he had a lot of studying to do and couldn’t talk. On Wednesday, another form from Forester arrived, asking whether Kory wanted to sign up for the mentor program. He mentioned the form on Wednesday when he called Samaki.

The fox took a while to answer. “I got it,” he said. “Didn’t really look at it, though.”

“I don’t think we need mentors,” Kory said. “Do you?”

“Nah,” Samaki said. “Thing is…”

The silence started to gnaw at Kory’s nerves. “What?” he said.

“Well, I asked my Dad about going to State. I mean, there’d be a lot less pressure on me to keep my grades up, and Kande’s there and all. I can still accept up to end of June.”

Kory felt as though he’d been yanked out of a warm pool onto cold, dry tile. “State? But… you’re going to Forester. With me.”

“I’m just keeping my options open.” Samaki spoke quietly. “We could still see each other if I’m at State and you’re at Forester. Weekends, like we do now.”

This was his fault, all his fault, Kory knew. “I guess,” he said, unwilling to start the whole argument over again. “If that’s what you really want.”

“You know better than that,” Samaki said, and Kory couldn’t think of any response.

The following Wednesday, Nick stopped trying to get Kory to tell him what was wrong long enough to give him another bit of news, once they’d finished their pizza. “Whatever it is that’s wrong,” the younger otter said, “this isn’t gonna make it better.” He fished for something in his pocket.

“What now?” Kory couldn’t think of anything their mother could do to ruin his life further, but he supposed he hadn’t put as much time toward thinking about it as she might have.