7 Days in November, Friday, Part 2

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Friday, Part 2

Furball never looked at himself in the mirror. He didn’t like it. It wasn’t because he was small and almost pathetically scrawny, but because he was a calico. When girls were calicos, there were exotic, something that rarely happened, but in a good way, like finding gold in a stream. Furball was a genetic freak, one in a billion, something that was never supposed to happen. There were papers on him from when he was born thirteen years before, detailing how something like that could have happened. He made Time and Newsweek and the BBC, and everyone lost interest and went away, which was fine. Mostly, he just wanted to be left alone, and not reminded that he was profoundly different than everyone else.

And then he skipped two grades, and found himself starting over. The calico thing played itself out in school more or less like he expected: fanfare, extreme attention, and then fatigue, and things went back to normal. Now he was thirteen in ninth grade, and he was getting attention again.

Furball pulled some clothes out of his hamper, and joined Ty outside. She stood with her back to the basement door, hands in her pockets, shoulders up and ears back, staring at the ground. She didn’t move when Furball closed the basement door behind him, except for a small twitch in her tail. Furball padded up next to her, and held out his hand. Ty looked down at him, her headfur falling over her eyes, and she handed him his house key. And then she turned towards the Strip and started walking. Furball trotted to catch up, and did his best to fall in step with Ty. They didn’t say anything, and neither really felt the need to.

Furball had chosen a pair of dirty jeans for this excursion, a crumpled shirt of a band he was only vaguely aware of, and his tattered army coat with the peace-sign button stuck on. Like most of his other clothes, these were hand-me-downs. Ty and Bryan, Ty’s boyfriend, gave Furball the clothes that didn’t fit them anymore. Ty’s clothes usually fit him better. The coat was Bryan’s, though, and when Bryan had worn it, it looked normal. On Furball, it almost reached his knees. That was his favorite part. It was big and warm and he could almost burrow down into it during the sharp Midwestern winter. The peace-sign button was a precaution. A couple years before, some kids in Colorado got tired of being pushed around and decided to attack their attackers. They had worn army coats, and people started looking at Furball differently after the attacks. Overall, it worked to his advantage because people left him alone.

“Well?” Ty asked.

Furball came back into the world. “What?”

Ty watched the ground. “Nothing.”

“No, really. What?”

She sighed, keeping her eyes on the ground. “Do you think I’m a slut?”

“What? No! Why would you think that?”

“Well… I mean, I’m always hanging around guys…”

“That doesn’t make you a slut.”

“I dunno.” She swallowed painfully and pushed her hands further into her pockets. “People talk. I guess it’s my fault. I shouldn’t try to stand out so much. I should be such a tomboy. I shouldn’t-” She stopped herself.

“You’re not a slut.” They hurried across a street, and stopped in a bus shelter. “Is that why you’re not in school?”

Ty nodded. “They say things, the girls. Bad things. They don’t think I hear them but I do. TJ says I shouldn’t listen to them and I try not to but when you hear something everyday-” Everything came out in a frustrated stream. Ty held her mouth shut, her ears pinned against her head, tears welling in her eyes. She didn’t look at Furball.

They waited in silence in the shelter for the bus to come. Every once in a while, Furball would look up at Ty, whose eyes remained focused on the ground in front of her.

“They don’t hate you,” She said. “At school, I mean. They have no reason to hate you.”

The bus rumbled from down the street.

Furball said nothing.