CAUTION: This story contains implied sexual activity between minors, mild violence, and profanity. Reader discretion is advised.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Masala Chai
by IndigoNeko and TaintedThylacine
Chapter 2
Saturday, January 9th, 2016
This time when his daughter woke up in the middle of the night, screaming, David was ready for it. The white tiger rolled off the sofa-bed in the guest room and double-timed it into the upstairs bathroom. After shaking two pills out of the bottle of Lorazepam into his palm, he grabbed the bottle of water he’d put there just in case and headed into his daughter’s bedroom. Flipping on the lights revealed exactly what he’d expected: Alex was sitting upright, hugging hir knees and staring into the distance, just as shi had the last two times. Only this time shi was only wearing a sports bra and underwear, having removed hir nightie before crawling into bed.
The tiger frowned. He could practically count his daughter’s ribs, despite the dense fur covering hir sides. His efforts to push protein-heavy meals over the past six months to help put some meat on hir bones, had been undone by just a few days without eating, while catatonic. At least it didn’t look like shi had lost muscle yet... but if he didn’t start packing in calorie dense meals, shi would.
Just as he had done yesterday, he pried hir mouth open and deposited the pills on hir tongue, then gave hir a squirt of water and quickly clamped hir muzzle shut. He sighed with relief as shi swallowed the pills, then set the bottle down on hir nightstand. Seeing his daughter like this was heart-breaking. He’d managed to hold it together for the past few days, having hoped that shi would eventually snap out of it... and shi had. Yesterday they’d spent hours watching movies, talking, cooking, and playing board games. Shi’d been normal.
Now Alex was gone, once again replaced by a mannequin that wore his daughter’s face. He swore under his breath as tears of anger and grief threatened to spill down his muzzle. A moment later he rubbed the back of his paw against his eyes as he lost the battle against his emotions. He turned and blindly slapped at the light switch before rolling his daughter on to hir side and climbing into bed, hoping his presence would help hir sleep soundly. His only comfort was the hope that the Lorazepam would work once again, that shi would be back to normal in the morning.
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Alex awoke feeling more refreshed than shi had in weeks. The young tigress looked around hir room, tinted blue by the early-morning light that seeped in through the blinds of the window above hir bed. Other than a new television hanging on the wall above hir computer desk, hir room was exactly as shi expected it, with the snowboard in the corner behind a lounge chair, shelves holding various bits of sports equipment, little-league trophies, a few books, random brain teasers, and a lava lamp. Shi made a note to ask Dad for a replacement lava lamp bulb.
Unfortunately, shi couldn’t ask him now as he was currently sleeping... snoring softly a few inches from hir head, no less. As a cub, Alex frequently woke up in hir parents bed, but this was the first time shi could remember waking up with hir parents in hirs. Mentally shrugging, shi carefully moved his arm and slowly rolled off the bed to avoid waking him.
The young tigress padded out of the bedroom and into the upstairs bathroom to begin hir morning ritual. After flushing the toilet and washing hir hands, shi noticed a second pill bottle sitting conspicuously on the counter. Shi frowned, then quickly dried hir wet paws with a hand towel and picked it up. It was definitely hirs; the label had hir name on it, but shi had never heard of Lorazepam. It certainly wasn’t the Spironolactone shi was supposed to be taking for hormone management to help hir female attributes caught up with the male ones. Being a hermaphrodite sucked... most of the time.
Frowning, shi set it down and picked up the other bottle and checked the label on it just to be sure, then popped the top and shook one of the Spironolactone pills out while shi was thinking about it. After washing the oddly minty pill down with a paw-full of water, Alex checked hir reflection. Hir left eye was still dilated, but not as bad as it had been. It had been solid black back at the hotel. Now the left pupil was about twice as wide as the right one. It looked strange, but at least it wasn’t downright creepy anymore.
Fifteen minutes later, Alex stepped out of the bathroom while running hir barbed tongue over hir squeaky-clean fangs. Shi shivered as the cool air chilled hir still damp undercoat, wondering if shi should have risked waking hir father. The new drying booth was much better than using towels, but it was noisy enough to wake the dead.
Alex walked back into hir bedroom, where Dad was still sleeping, to get hir phone and drop Azalea a text. For a moment shi stared at the nightstand, wondering where shi had left hir phone, before remembering that Henry had crushed it and thrown it out the window of the SUV. Shi frowned, wondering how to reach Azalea, and mentally added a phone to the shopping list.
For a split second shi pondered getting dressed, then decided against it; pajamas were way more comfortable. Then hir stomach rumbled; Time for breakfast. Leaving Dad to snore away the morning, Alex turned back around and headed downstairs to the kitchen, pulling down a skillet and setting it on the oven before pulling open the fridge and getting out the milk, eggs, and bread. French toast was hir go-to for breakfast if there was nothing else planned.
The tigress quickly pulled out a bowl and a plate, cracking the eggs into the bowl and whisking them for a half a minute or so before shi popped the cap off the milk. Shi immediately gagged as the rancid smell of sour milk nearly made hir puke. Plugging hir nose, shi quickly poured it in the sink and turned on the faucet to wash it down the drain, then capped the plastic carton and threw it in the trash. Well, that was something else to add to the shopping list.
Sighing, shi pulled open the fridge again. A small carton of heavy cream sat near the back of the shelf. Frowning again, shi pulled it out, checked the expiration date, then cautiously twisted the cap off and sniffed. At least it wasn’t bad. Maybe that would work if shi cut it with water...
Ten minutes later, Alex sat down with a plate of french toast, liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon. Another plate sat on the kitchen island in case Dad woke up. In the course of making breakfast, shi had discovered they were out of milk and orange juice and low on eggs, bread, heavy cream, and sugar. Mom usually did the shopping, but since she was staying at the hospital with the twins, Alex figured shi could at least save Dad some time and put together a list... After shi finished eating. The young tigress picked up a fork and knife, cut a piece of french toast, and stuck it in hir mouth. Alex sighed in bliss and started chewing.
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Azalea reached up and knocked a few times on the side door entrance of Alex’s house, then stepped back and waited next to her mom, Cora. The jerboa and her half-squirrel daughter had driven into Winter Creek to pick up a few things, and Azalea had convinced her mom to let them stop by to check on Alex.
A few seconds passed before the door swung inwards, revealing a white tiger in sweats and a t-shirt. David blinked a moment, surprised to see his daughter’s transgendered girlfriend and her mother. He stepped back, motioning them inside. “Azalea, Cora... Come on in. Sit down,” the tiger said, turning back around and heading back over to the couch where Alex was sitting, holding a Nintendo 3DS and wearing an oversized t-shirt. He sat down next to hir and draped his arm over his daughter’s shoulders.
“We were in the area and Azzy insisted on stopping by,” Cora said as they stepped into the house, shutting the door behind them. “Hopefully we didn’t interpret anything,” the jerboa said as she and her daughter walked over and sat on the loveseat next to the couch.
“Hey Alex,” Azalea said, waving. Now that the tigress wasn’t wearing sunglasses, she quickly realized why shi had been on Wednesday. One of Alex’s pupils was nearly twice as large as the other.
Alex closed the 3DS and gave a shy wave in return. “Hi Azzy, Cora,” shi said, leaning against hir dad’s chest. “Sorry I didn’t say much when you and Dad picked me up yesterday. I’ve been a bit out of it.”
David looked a little nervous at the comment and gently squeezed his daughter’s shoulder. “It was a few days ago, actually.”
Alex looked away in embarrassment. “Oh. Sorry. I... uh... I lost track of time, I guess.”
At the odd looks that Cora and Azalea wore, David tried to explain what the therapist had told him. “Doctor DeLeon said that when someone experiences severe trauma, sometimes they go catatonic and don’t behave normally or remember things. Sometimes shi’s totally normal, other times it’s like nobody’s there. Shi’s been lucid all day, so I’m hoping we’re past it.”
“Well, I’m glad that you’re doing better,” Cora said, smiling. “It’s been boring without you coming to visit for the past few weeks.”
“So, Alex... What happened?” Azalea asked, leaning forwards.
David’s expression suddenly went from slightly nervous to downright panicked; both the FBI agent and Dr. DeLeon had instructed him not to ask Alex about what had happened.
Alex hesitated a moment, unaware of hir father’s concern. “Ummm... it’s kind of complicated, but... I guess my grandparents wanted to see me, but Mom refused. Somehow they found out that we were living out here in Winter Creek, so they sent two of their bodyguards and a servant, a brute, to kidnap me,” the young tigress explained, staring at the fire dancing in the fireplace across from the sofa. “The brute, Henry, tried to... to rape me... and I clawed one of his eyes out.” The R-word sounded awful and shi hated saying it, but it was easier than explaining what had really happened.
“Then he knocked me out. That’s when I got the concussion,” Alex continued, turning to look at Azalea and pointing at hir left eye. “I found out later that Henry was going to kill me, so Jordan shot him. Anyway, Jordan and Douglas flew me to Philadelphia in a small airplane. After we landed, Harold got me some new clothes and Mrs. Oliviera gave me some morphine. I fell asleep, but I guess she and Harold took me to a hospital and then put me up in a really nice hotel. I met my grandparents, Viktor and Dina, the next day. They took me all over the city doing stuff, like the aquarium, the zoo, a museum, and an indoor skydiving place. We had dinner at a really nice restaurant and we were going to go to the movies, but when we were leaving the restaurant...”
The young tiger’s voice trailed off for a moment as shi took a deep breath and stared back into the fire before continuing. “When we were leaving, two people dressed like soldiers, but all in black, told us to freeze. Mrs. Oliviera was still in the restaurant, and when she saw them, she started shooting. I covered my ears and ducked. When the shooting stopped...” Alex swallowed as hir voice started quavering, getting choked up. “Everyone was dead.”
The room fell silent other than Alex’s sniffles. Shi ran the back of hir paws over hir muzzle to wipe away the tears. As his daughter told the tale, David’s expression had gradually changed from panicked to stricken. The story explained everything that Raenne and the FBI had found: the dead horse, the Cessna that Denver ATC had lost, why Alex wasn’t at the Ritz-Carlton, and the mass shooting where shi had been found. He looked up at Cora, meeting the jerboa’s gaze, and nodded to confirm that’s what had happened, as far as he knew.
Alex’s mismatched gaze shifted from the fire back to Azalea. “Please don’t tell anyone,” shi whispered. “They won’t believe it.”
Cora had to practically pick up her jaw from the floor after hearing the story. It boggled her mind that something like that could happen to someone, especially someone as sweet as Alex. She looked down at her daughter, who was clearly just as dumbfounded as she was. She gave Azalea a nudge.
“Oh, uh... I won’t tell anyone. Your secret is safe with me,” Azalea said, standing and walking over to Alex. She sat down opposite David and gave Alex a hug, squeezing hir tightly.
“Thanks,” Alex said, with a small smile. “I... I know that kidnapping is wrong, but... other than Henry, they were all very nice to me. It hurt... it still hurts, knowing they’re all dead.” The young tigress raised a paw to wipe the tears from hir muzzle again. “I even feel bad for Henry. If I hadn’t torn his eye out, maybe Jordan wouldn’t have had to shoot him. He probably didn’t know any better...”
“Alex, your mother said that horse was big. They would have had to shoot him to keep him from killing you, whether you fought back or not. It’s not your fault he’s dead; You did the right thing,” the white tiger said, trying to console his daughter. “What’s done is done. We can’t change the past. We can only try to do our best in the present and hope for a better future. Speaking of the future... would you two like to stay for lunch? I can make some quesadillas.”
“Oh, heck; That sounds good right now,” Azalea looked over at her mom. “Can we?”
“Sure. David, would you like some help?” Cora asked.
“Can’t hurt,” David said with a smile, standing up and walking over to the kitchen, leaving Azalea and Alex to cuddle on the couch.
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Sunday, January 10th, 2016
David led his daughter down the hallway towards the maternity ward suite where his wife was staying with the twins. The Prairie Flats General Hospital was surprisingly quiet for a weekend, although it was fairly late. After reaching the door, he rapped on it with his knuckles and waited. The door opened after a few seconds. Raenne stood there in her usual flannel and khakis.
A broad grin spread across her muzzle as Alex came into view, and she bent her knees, holding out her arms. “Hey, kiddo!”
“Hey, Mom,” Alex exclaimed, darting forward. They wrapped their arms around each other, purring loudly.
David waited as his wife and daughter exchanged hugs for the first time in a week. Then gave his wife a quick hug after she stood up. “I come bearing gifts,” he said, holding out a small duffel bag stuffed with food and other supplies from the shopping trip earlier that day. “Alex put together a shopping list for me yesterday, if you can believe it. Half the stuff on it was just for you.”
“Thanks, kiddo,” Raenne replied, smiling and ruffling Alex’s shaggy head-fur. “You have no idea how much I appreciate it. I’ve been practically living on vending machine snacks for the past three days whenever the cafeteria here is closed.”
“You’re welcome,” Alex replied, smiling back, glad that hir hunch had been correct.
“Come on in,” the older tigress said, stepping back inside the medical suite. She frowned as she realized Alex was wearing a black skirt and hoodie, neither of which she recognized. “Where’d you get that?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and pointing at the skirt.
“Harold bought them for me, after Henry ripped my other one,” Alex explained, reaching down and taking the hems at hir sides, spreading the pleated skirt slightly. “They’re from Saks Fifth Avenue,” shi added unnecessarily. The shiny black cursive along the front of the hoodie made that obvious.
“They look good on you,” Raenne said, gesturing at one of the chairs just inside to the side of the door. “Come, sit down, both of you. The cubs are sleeping, so try not to be too loud. David said that yesterday you told Azalea what happened to you,” the tigress said, waiting until her husband and daughter took a seat before pulling the last seat around so she was facing them. She immediately noticed one of Alex’s eyes was more dilated than the other, probably from a severe concussion. “So... what happened? Who are Harold and Henry?”
Unlike the brief synopsis shi had told Azalea, this time Alex recited what happened in far greater detail. Raenne frequently interrupted for clarification, or to double-back on events Alex had thought were unimportant, like learning the bodyguards had served in the British Army.
Raenne felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, realizing what happened to her battle-buddies, Brock and Sophia. They hadn’t gone up against a bunch of mafia thugs, but a squad of trained infantry soldiers. Both of them were dead, because of bad intelligence. Intel that she had provided. As guilt began to build, she pushed it out of her mind. She would mourn them later, in private.
Eventually Alex got to the conversation they’d had in the aquarium. “Mom, Viktor said he wanted to apologize to you, for everything that happened to you as a child. The Brotherhood threatened to kill you and Ivan if Viktor didn’t do what they told him to... and hurting you was their way of punishing him when he made mistakes. He tried to kill himself, multiple times, because he was sick of it all,” shi explained, sounding nothing like a ten-year-old child.
David’s mouth hung open at that. Alex had clearly lost what little remained of hir childhood innocence. No wonder shi had been traumatized. His wife had told him, over the last year, about having been abused by her father and his men, about her gym teacher being murdered, having stolen hundreds of thousands in cash, and all the people she’d killed in revenge... but this flipped that story on its head. Everyone seemed like a victim in this tragedy.
The younger tigress swallowed before continuing. “You saved him... saved him and Dina from the Brotherhood. He said you were ‘Like a Goddess of Vengeance, one of the Furies, descended from Heaven’. He was proud of you, and he asked me to tell you he was thankful that you saved them,” Alex said, unaware of the pain hir words were causing hir mother.
As the realization that Raenne had completely misjudged her father settled in, so too did the revelation that she had inadvertently orchestrated the deaths of her squadmates, parents, and their bodyguards. All because she had refused to believe her father, out of spite and anger for the abuse and torment she had suffered as a child. Torments that she now knew were intended to hurt her father and force him to perform horrible acts. Everything she thought she knew about her parents was a lie, and now they were dead, along with her two closest comrades.
As his wife began to wail, David quickly moved and knelt next to her, holding her as she shook, sobbing. After a moment Alex joined them, holding hir mother’s paws.
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Over an hour later, Raenne had more or less gotten herself back under control, to the relief of the nurses who had come to check on them when she had started wailing. Alex had proven to be a treasure trove of information about what kind of people Viktor and Dina truly were, having spent hours talking with them during the day shi had spent with them. After escaping from the Brotherhood, the Kaminskis become devotees of the Arts, secret philanthropists, and critics of food and wine from all over the world.
Finding out that her mother had been a member of the Kirov Ballet had been a shock for Raenne; there were whole documentaries about the famous Russian ballet theater. Certainly she’d known her mother liked ballet, but knowing she had been one of the most renowned dancers in the world... It was possible there were videos out there of her mother performing.
Raenne’s brother Ivan had turned out to be a bad egg, just as she had suspected. The FBI had told her that he was still on the run, and apparently Viktor had said something to the effect that Ivan was ‘dead to me’. With luck, Raenne would never see her older brother again. The scar on her paw pad where Ivan had stabbed her with a hot poker was all the reminder she would ever need of what kind of person he was.
The tigress watched as her daughter cooed at the twins who were laying in the enclosed incubator. Their eyes were still closed, but now that the faintest hint of fur was starting to come in, it was obvious that they were going to be different colors. Nicholas was almost certainly going to take after Raenne, with an orange and black striped coat. Katherine was lighter, and could wind up white with black stripes just like David, but it would be another week before their fur had come in enough to be sure. If it turned out that Katherine was white, it meant Raenne was a carrier of the rare white gene mutation and so was Alex, on both the male and female sides of hir DNA. An interesting, but ultimately useless tidbit of information.
Realizing that her daughter was quietly singing, Raenne walked over to the incubator. Both of the cubs had stopped squirming and wore obvious smiles. She was so delighted that she didn’t realize that Alex was singing the Cossack Lullaby, a song Raenne hadn’t heard since infancy.
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Monday, January 11th, 2016
A white Nissan Rogue pulled into the Scott Carpenter Middle School parking lot, coming to a stop in one of the marked ‘Visitor’ spots. It was still twenty minutes before school officially started. A dozen cars sat in the faculty parking area, but it was still mostly empty. Even the teachers didn’t want to be at school any longer than they had to, David thought to himself.
Since David was usually busy working, Raenne had been the one to handle all of Alex’s school-related business; this was the first time he’d ever been here. The relatively new concrete building didn’t have very many windows, despite the modern architecture. Given the rising frequency of school shootings, it was probably for security reasons. The fact that school shootings were a real concern nowadays made him slightly nauseous.
As he turned off the engine, Alex pushed the door open and hopped out of the vehicle, wearing a white polo shirt along with the sunglasses and the black skirt shi’d picked up in Philadelphia. As shi hauled hir backpack out of the footwell and shut the door, David stepped out of the car as well and followed hir across the street to the front entrance, adjusting the collar of the leather bomber jacket he wore over his burgundy dress shirt.
“Alex? Since you’re wearing skirts again... do you want me to pick some up for you?” David asked as they approached the front doors.
“No,” came the instant response. Then the young tigress paused and looked down at the skirt. “Actually... Yes, but only black with pleats. Knee-length, size twelve slim. Oh, and can you get some more of those black lycra shorts and sports bras that Mom got me for Christmas?” shi asked, pulling open the heavy glass and metal front doors.
“Sure, love,” David said, making a mental note to call his wife and ask about them as he followed his daughter into the main hallway and from there into the front office. A green-scaled lizard wearing headphones and a thick fur-lined coat was sitting behind the front desk.
David was more than a bit surprised to see an Anole lizard in this kind of climate, but they were clearly well-dressed for it. Given the lack of a dewlap, they were probably female... and surprisingly small. His daughter was bigger than the secretary.
The secretary pulled off her headphones as they approached the desk. “Hello! How can I help you?” she asked in a pleasant, high-pitched voice, then tilted her head slightly, looking at the young tigress. “Wait... You’re Alexandrea, and this must be your father. Mr. Andreyev, yes?”
“Yes,” David confirmed. “Alex was kidnapped last week. That’s why shi wasn’t in school. Principal Martin said he would put together a school-work packet?”
“He did. I have it right here,” the lizard said, leaning to one side and picking up a folder. She stood up and held it out to Alex. “Are you doing alright, dear?” she asked, looking down at the younger tigress.
“Yeah,” Alex said, nodding and taking the homework packet. “Mostly.”
“Actually, I’d like to talk with Principal Martin about that, if he’s available,” David said. “Alex might have... issues.”
The secretary nodded. “Of course,” she said, turning and walking over to another door that had a metal plate next to it that was engraved with ‘Principal Robert Martin’. The secretary knocked, waited a moment, then opened the door. “Mr. Martin? Mr. Andreyev and his daughter are here.”
“Send them in,” a deep voice replied.
The lizard stood to one side and motioned for the two tigers to enter the office. “Head on in,” she said, before turning and walking back to the front desk.
David stepped into the office, followed by his daughter. The mule deer behind the desk stood, straightened his gray suit jacket, then leaned across the desk, holding out his hand. The white tiger walked up to the desk, giving the Principal a firm handshake.
“Sit down, you two,” the mule deer said, taking a seat. He watched as the two tigers sat down across from him, noticing the child was wearing aviator shades with only one lens mirrored. “Alexandrea must be doing better, given what you told me on Thursday.”
“Yes,” David replied. “The psychiatrist I saw on Friday prescribed some medication for Alex that seems to be working. That’s actually what I wanted to talk about. Shi’s either going to be mostly normal or practically comatose. If Alex goes into a catatonic state and stops talking or responding to anything, can you have hir brought here to the office so I can pick hir up? And would it be possible to have someone keep an eye out for hir between classes and during lunch for a few days?”
“Certainly. I can have the Vice Principal escort her to and from classes, other than lunch,” the mule deer said, then turned to the younger tigress. “Do you happen to have a close friend that you sit with during lunch?”
“Uh... Yes. Azalea Winters,” Alex replied. “We usually sit with Jennifer Morton.”
“Oh, good. I know Azalea. She’s been a great help with the art department’s after-school activities. I’ll have her meet you in your last class before lunch; she can escort you to lunch and to your next class after that. I’ll call her up here during first period and ask if she’s okay with that,” the mule deer said. “Now... do you know yet if this is going to be a long-term thing? If it is, we can come up with an individual education plan for Alex.”
“No idea,” David said, shaking his head. “Alex was catatonic when we met with Doctor DeLeon on Friday. We’ll be meeting with him again on Wednesday. Also, shi has to wear sunglasses. The optometrist said it was something called anisocoria, from a concussion.”
“We can discuss it on Thursday, then,” the Principal said, then turned to look back at the younger tigress. “Alex, would you stay here in my office until Mrs. Chambers arrives?”
The young tigress nodded, taking off hir backpack and setting it on the floor.
“Okay... I’m going to take off. Keep your sunglasses on, love. I’ll be back to pick you up when school gets out,” David said, standing up. He bent and kissed his daughter on the head, then leaned over and shook Principal Martin’s hand. “Thank you.”
“Just doing my job,” the mule deer said with a smile, following the white tiger out of the room. “Sarah, can you please tell Marion to come see me when she arrives?” he asked as he stepped out.
As the door to the Principal’s office swung shut, Alex realized the room was surprisingly quiet with the door closed. Quiet enough to hear the tick-tock of the clock hanging on the wall. As the young tigress realized shi was totally alone, a wave of panic hit. Shi fought back the urge to scream, feeling the seductive pull of a blackout coming on.
The sudden ring of the phone on the desk snapped hir back out of it. It continued to ring for a few moments, then went silent. Alex suddenly remembered the thick stack of papers in hir hand. Shi unzipped hir backpack and quickly stuffed the homework packet in with the books and binders.
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Alex followed Azalea into the cafeteria, walking across the polished tiles to join the lunch line. Unlike hir last school, this one actually had real, healthy, and tasty food. It was good enough that most of the children actually preferred to eat school meals rather than brown-bagging it. The lunch line was fairly fast, too. As they walked along with the rest of the line, Alex noticed more than a few children pointing and staring in hir direction.
“Ignore them,” Azalea said. “It’s just ‘cause you were on the AMBER alert that was sent out last week. There were a bunch of rumors going around about what happened to you. Everything from mafia kidnappings to alien abductions.” The half-squirrel’s fluffy purple tail twitching in annoyance. “Some wise-ass even suggested you’d been eaten by a feral mountain lion... the same one as last time, come back to finish the job.”
The young tiger’s ears went flat and shi glanced at the other children near them and stepped closer to Azalea to speak quietly. “Mafia kidnapping wasn’t that far off... Grandfather was in the Brotherhood, the Russian mafia, but he escaped. That’s why they had bodyguards. Dad said the FBI told him the two people in armor were probably mercenaries hired by the Russian mafia to kill him.”
Azalea turned around and stared at the young tigress. “The heck? You’re joking, right? You know I’m not Jennifer. I don’t believe everything I hear.”
Alex shook hir head. “No. It’s true. I told you nobody would believe it. And you promised you wouldn’t tell anyone else.”
“I won’t,” Azalea said, peering skeptically at Alex for a moment. Then a grin spread across her muzzle. “But you have to tell Jennifer. I wonder if she’ll believe it. She almost believed the story you made up about getting arm blades installed.” The half-squirrel was still snickering over the idea when they picked up their trays and started walking over to the table where they usually sat.
As they walked across the cafeteria, Alex tried to ignore the stares shi was getting and looked down at the tray in hir paws. There was a small bowl of caesar salad, fried pork chops, and vegetable medley with a cup of ranch dressing. The crust on the pork chop looked golden and crispy, and clearly had some kind of herb seasoning in the breading. Alex was practically salivating as they reached the table, quickly setting hir tray down and sliding onto the bench.
The tigress picked up the fork and knife, sawing into the pork chop. The dull edge of the butterknife was barely able to do the job. If not for how tender the pork was, it would have been impossible to cut. Alex stabbed the piece with hir fork and stuffed it in hir mouth. It was just as delicious as it had looked. Shi closed hir eyes and chewed for several seconds before swallowing and opening them again.
Jennifer was sitting across the table, staring suspiciously at hir with big pink eyes. “So it’s true, then. Aliens did take you,” the white rat stated. “And from the look of the glasses, they gave you a fake eye to spy on us.”
Alex snorted and shook hir head. Actually, Azalea’s suggestion hadn’t been half bad. Telling the truth but making it sound like a tall tale was a brilliant idea. Since nobody would ever believe it, why bother making it sound believable? Hir frown slowly changed to a smile.
“Nope. On Monday morning I was dancing through the snow, listening to music on my way to the bus stop, when a big black SUV pulled up next to me and three men in suits stepped out, pretending to be the FBI. After I told them my name, the biggest of them, a horse, stuffed me in the back seat while the rest of them got in and started driving,” the tigress said, noticing kids all along the table go silent, obviously listening in. Shi raised hir voice so they could hear.
“When I took out my phone, the horse grabbed my phone and crushed it, then threw it and my backpack out the window. A few seconds later, he bent over me, sniffing me over like a feral. Then he picked me up and tore my skirt off. I fought back, kicking him in the stomach and then ripped his eye out. He slammed me against the car door,” the tigress said, lifting hir aviator shades and pointing at hir mismatched eyes, “and gave me a concussion. The men in the front seat knew he was going to kill me, so they shot him in the head. They wanted me alive, see...”
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By the time Alex had finished the story, half a dozen children had their phones out and were arguing whether the tale was true or not. All of them knew Alex had been kidnapped and that the FBI had been involved, thanks to the AMBER alerts. The sleuths among them quickly found the news articles from Philadelphia describing the mass shooting on Tuesday. It took a little longer for them to find the news articles about the murdered horse in Winter Creek and the old FBI most wanted list with hir grandfather and uncle’s names. The tale shi had told spread like wildfire; It was totally unbelievable, but the evidence was undeniable.
Alex still hadn’t finished hir vegetables when the bell rang, but it didn’t matter. It had actually been a huge relief, telling the story in the most dramatic and thrilling way possible. Azalea had been enormously helpful, telling the other kids that kept interrupting to shut up. Jennifer had sat and listened, riveted, to the entire thing.
The tigress wore a smile through the halls as shi followed Azalea to Math class. Shi didn’t care anymore whether anyone else thought it was true or not; it didn’t matter. The verse from the Book of John ran through hir mind: ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
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Wednesday, January 13th, 2016
The two tigers stepped through the glass-paneled door that the pot-bellied skunk held open for them. Alex looked around at the office that didn’t look like an office at all, taking in the entertainment center with a bunch of old video games and stuff and the bookshelves full of young-adult sci-fi, fantasy, and mysteries. Shi stepped onto one of the colorful rugs, then turned around as the door clicked shut behind hir.
“Hello Alexandrea,” the skunk in slacks and a sweater said, crouching down and holding out a paw. “The adults around here call me Doctor DeLeon, but I prefer to go by Everett, or Mr. E. What about you?”
The young tigress smiled slightly at the pun and shook his hand. “Hi Everett. I prefer to go by Alex.”
The skunk smiled broadly and straightened back up. “Go ahead and have a seat. Make yourselves at home,” he said, stepping over to the computer chair and taking a seat. He turned it around to face the room. As the two tigers took a seat on the couch, he said “Your father brought you here last week, but you weren’t very talkative then. Do you happen to remember?”
Alex shook hir head, then brushed the fur out of hir eyes. Hir hair had grown just long enough now to be irritating. “No,” shi said, looking down at hir skirt. After a moment, shi brushed away a loose strand of white fur on the black fabric.
“Your father and I had a fairly long conversation about what happened to you last week,” the psychiatrist said, spinning in his chair for a moment to snag a handful of printouts off his desk before spinning back around. He reached out and set them on the coffee table between them. “You had one heck of an adventure, Alex. I was able to find all sorts of news articles about what happened, from when you went missing in Winter Creek to when they found you in Philadelphia.”
The doctor adjusted his spectacles as he watched the young hermaphrodite across the table, hoping that his strategy of going big straight out of the gate would pay off. The assertion that he already knew what happened would leave very little wiggle room. Shi would either completely deny it, which would set them back weeks, or they could skip the song-and-dance routine and save just as much time and get straight to addressing hir real issues. “Have you told anyone else what happened?” he asked, already knowing the answer. David had told him the entire ugly story as well as Raenne’s childhood story on Monday when Everett called to check on Alex’s progress.
“Yeah... I told Azalea and her mom when they visited us on Saturday. Then I told Mom when we went to see the twins on Sunday. Then I told it again in school on Monday, at lunch with Jennifer and Azalea,” Alex said, sighing. Shi was actually getting a bit tired of telling everyone what had happened.
Doctor DeLeon leaned forward slightly, waiting until Alex glanced up meeting hir mismatched gaze. “How did telling people what happened make you feel? Did it feel good to get it off your chest? Or did it make you sad when you remembered what happened?”
The tigress blinked. That wasn’t the question that shi had been expecting. Shi frowned. “A bit of both. When I first told it, it made me sad. But when I told it at school it felt good, getting it off my chest,” shi said. “Originally I wasn’t going to tell it to anyone, but Azalea said we should see if Jennifer believed it. She’s kind of gullible. I almost got her to believe that I’d gotten cybernetics once. So I kinda told it like an... An action movie?” Alex said, tilting hir head slightly as shi thought about it. “Like, I totally didn’t expect anyone to believe me and didn’t really care. I just wanted to see if Jennifer believed it. Only a bunch of kids started listening in and they kept looking up stuff on the internet, trying to see if I was telling the truth or not. I didn’t realize how much you could find online...”
The skunk nodded in agreement, pointing at the stack of printouts sitting on the coffee table. “It’s pretty amazing how much you can find on the internet. Now... you said that telling it at school felt like it helped you get it off your chest. Do you think telling it again to me would help? Or are you getting sick of telling it?”
“Both,” Alex said after a second, giving a quick nod.
“How about instead of telling it like an action story, you tell it like a drama?” Everett suggested. “Tell me what you were thinking and feeling when you went through it. If you’ve got mixed feelings about something, maybe your dad and I could help you sort them out.”
The tigress frowned again, then nodded. That would probably help. Shi took a deep breath and began telling the story for the fourth time.
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Raenne pulled out her phone, wondering who the heck would be calling at almost nine in the evening. Then she saw Alex’s name on the screen and quickly swiped to answer it, holding the phone up to her head. “Hey Kiddo! How’s it going?”
“Good. Dad took me shopping at the mall after we got out of the psychiatrist’s office. I found some plushies to remember everyone I met, and Dad bought me a new phone,” Alex replied.
“I take it you got your new phone all set up,” Raenne said, smiling. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah. It’s got all the contacts and everything already, so I don’t need to go add them again. Dad said it was all stored on my iCloud account, along with most of my other stuff like photos and such. Pretty neat. I still have to re-download all my music, apps, and games again though,” Alex said, obviously frustrated at how long that was taking.
“Speaking of music... What was that song you were singing to Nick and Kate last night? They were smiling when you sang it, and I was hoping I could sing it for them too,” Raenne said, pulling the small pencil and pad out of her purse to write the name of the song down.
“You mean this one?” Alex asked, singing a verse in Russian.
The fur on Raenne’s arms and neck stood on end. The haunting melody was intimately familiar, yet she didn’t remember having heard it before in her life. “Yes, that one,” she replied as her daughter finished the verse.
“It’s Казачья колыбельная,” Alex replied. “Бабушка sang it for me, to keep me from crying, after she died.”
