“Oooo,” Feb said, finally looking up from her drawing. “I think I like her.”
A few people in the lunch crowd actually cheered. Luke was full-on glaring at me now, a good clue that I’d forgotten not to grin. I just gave him that blank stare that he never knew what to do with until he got distracted by Ben theorizing about the digestive needs of a species with the physiology of two large mammals. Some of the tension left my shoulders then. But not enough.
I shot one more glance around before telling the others I needed something from my dorm and hightailing it out of there as casually as possible. My hat went low over my eyes, my insides like Jell-O. What was I doing getting involved? She could handle all those eyes being on her. She didn’t need my help.
I told myself not to worry as I speed walked across campus toward the safety of my dorm. Nobody had noticed, no harm done. Stay away from her, and you’ll be fine.
She caught me as I was walking down the sidewalk by Building 3 one evening. I nearly jumped out of my sneakers at the sudden low, rumbling voice from the bushes to my right. “You! Wait! Can you h’elp me?”
After assuring myself that I had not actually experienced a heart attack, I turned and stared into the bushes. It took me a second to spot the raccoon-mask face hiding in the leaves. I should have kept walking. “Uh . . . what’s wrong?” I cast a quick glance around to make sure we were alone, but the lawn was empty, the sidewalk lamps starting to come on. Probably safe enough. I took a few steps closer as her head and blue-shirted torso rose above the bushes. Her face was all scrunched up. She looked . . . embarrassed?
“C’an you please get that down?” She pointed. I looked. I squinted. What was that? Something big and bulky hung in the tree branches. It wasn’t even that high. I glanced back at the centaur, searching for an explanation, when I noticed . . . huh. Something was different about the shape of her horizontal half. I moved a little closer, and she immediately sat down in the bushes.
“Please don’t l’ook.” She sounded even more embarrassed. Understanding hit, and I hastily turned my red face back to the tree. It took a few minutes and some painful scrapes to get up there and pull the big, bulky belly strap/saddlebag thing out of the branches where it had been very purposefully tangled. It wasn’t as heavy as I had expected, although dang, that girl carried a ton of textbooks. I may have dropped it. She didn’t comment on this further mishandling of her things. I occupied myself with climbing the rest of the way down and studying the campus architecture while the shufflings of a felnim dressing herself rustled behind me.
“I’m al’right now,” she said quietly, and I turned and watched as this alien creature, easily beating my height by two feet, stepped out of the trees in front of me. I’d never been this close, so you can’t blame a guy for staring (again). Her fluffy head of hair matched the raccoon marks on her face, and her ears tilted like a curious kitten’s, her tail shifting back and forth in a slow wag. Her sleeveless shirt had a Japanese cartoon character on it. (That threw me a little.) When she held out her hand to me, it was only slightly bigger than mine but padded on the palms, with small claws instead of fingernails. She smelled faintly of juniper-berry shampoo. “Th’ank you very m’uch for your h’elp.”
I shook her hand out of reflex. That curiosity of mine was buzzing like a swarm of bees, and maybe it was the cartoon T-shirt that relaxed my guard, because the question spilled out before I could stop it. “What happened?”
She turned away and crossed her arms, a soft growl emanating from her throat. “I was n’apping on the grass. I sh’oke up and my”—a word consisting of an impossible mix of guttural and musical sounds—“sh’as in the tr’ee. Probably somesh’ne’s idea of a joke.” If her face were any indication, Vasa did not find the joke funny. “I c’ouldn’t get it down sh’ithout . . . exposing m’yself.”
Searching for a way to be helpful, I volunteered the first thought that came to mind. “You know, the centaurs in movies don’t wear anything on their back halves, so probably no one would care if you—” Everything stupid about that statement slapped me in the face before I could finish the sentence. I winced, bracing myself in case a real slap was imminent.
“Oh, is that sh’at you call th’em?” Vasa sounded amused. I glanced up and, yep, grin on her face. Phew, dodged that bullet. “I’ve been m’eaning to see th’ese ‘Narnia’ movies people keep ment’ion’ing.” The smile faded off her face, and those blue eyes clouded. “But that doesn’t m’atter. I’d still feel nak’ed whether h’umans knew it or n’ot.”
I scratched the back of my neck. “Guess I can’t argue with that. How long have you been here?”
“Ab’out an hour.”
I stared at her. “You haven’t seen anyone except me for an hour?” Was there a concert going on or something? This place usually bustled.
“No, I s’aw a few p’eople.” She looked down at me, and the warmth in her smile would have melted ice. “You were j’ust the first sh’ne I th’ought would be k’ind ab’out it.”
And that’s when good sense jumped the hurdle back into my brain. What am I doing?! I stumbled back away from her, stammering. “Sorry, I, uh, I have to, uh, I have to get to a meeting or something . . .” Chills ice skated up and down my spine as I turned to leave. I was an idiot, a complete idiot, what if someone came along and—
Her rumbling accent rang out way too loud over the sidewalk. “Sh’ait, can I ask you—?”
I spun around and stomped back. “Shut up!” It came out as a frantic hiss. She just stood there while I took another quick look around and then pointed a finger in her furry face. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not a kind person. I’m not. And I, I can’t be friends with you.” My flash of fear began to fade, and all of a sudden I felt like a terrible person for what I was doing. Well, good, that’s what I was trying to get across to her anyway. “People look at you, everyone looks at you. I can’t have them looking at me, and they will if we know each other. I don’t need people being interested in me, OK? I’m just trying to be normal.”
She could have been smiling or shooting me a death glare—I didn’t know. I couldn’t bring myself to look her in the eyes. I smashed my cap lower onto my head, trying to make my hands quit shaking. “Why did you have to show up?” I muttered, mostly to myself. “Everything was fine.” I needed to shut up, but I couldn’t stop. “I know everyone is a jerk to you, and that stinks, it really does; I hate it. I wish I could do something about it, but I can’t, because then they’ll think I’m on your side, and they’ll pay attention to me, and they might figure it out. And then everything will be ruined, and I’ll . . .” The words tried to clog up my throat, but I forced them out. “I’ll be a freak just like you!”
I stopped finally, out of breath. The sun had fully set, only the sidewalk lamps lighting the area. Bile rolled in my stomach. At least now she’ll know I’m a jerk. No way she’d want to talk to me after that, and no way I’d ever want to look her in the face again. Best of both worlds, right?
“I th’ought I rec’ognized your smell.” My head snapped around at those soft words. Vasa was staring at me with . . . I don’t know. Compassion? She smiled again, way too nicely for someone who’d just been snarled at by Jerk Incarnate. “I’ve r’un into it b’efore,” she explained. “Just not . . . h’ere.”