Vixen (The Fox and Hound Book 1)

by Catherine Labadie

  “Don’t worry, I would never mistake you for a decent person,” I say, resisting the urge to say any more. You already have who-knows-how-many demerits for something stupid, I think.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Katrina splutters.

  “You’re smart. If you’re this worried about extra credit you must be on some sort of honor roll. I’m sure you’ll figure it out…eventually.”

  “Know what? I’m thinking this whole monitor thing is a waste of time. It’s bad enough we’re forced to attend school every day with people like you,” she says the words to me like they’re supposed to wound me. “Your kind has been getting above themselves for ages, and I don’t think I want to be a part of this after all.”

  “Fine,” I sigh. “Just let me know where my classes are, and you can go back to your little nerd clique and

  discuss the evils of M-DNA people all you want.” Good riddance, I add in my head.

  Katrina lags again; I don’t hear her steps behind me. I pause and wait for her to catch up but when she doesn’t I turn and face her.

  “Well?” I ask. She glares at me as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, appearing

  conflicted about something.

  “You’re in a human school. You should learn to function on your own…you think you’re so smart, after all,” she begins, and I feel the familiar pangs of frustration as she continues. “I have things to do and you are not part of them…the only thing I really needed to do as a monitor was pick you up from the principal’s office.”

  “So why are you still here?” I say. Katrina blinks at me, rather startled I’m not following her train of thought.

  “I need to make sure I still get the extra credit. If

  I tell Harper you were rude to me and how I worry about your hostile reaction to my helpful tips she’ll understand, and I’ll still get the extra credit I need.”

  “Never mind that it’s a lie,” I add, knowing she won’t care.

  “Who cares? The odds are more in my favor if you look at it from any reasonable perspective,” she smiles, and her expression clears. “I think I’ll do that. Have a good day with classes, Sierra. Watch your tail in the doorways!” This time I’m the one who just blinks at her as she disappears around a corner.

  REGION 5 HISTORY TEXTBOOK FOR GRADE 12

  TEXT PROVIDED BY S.M.A.R.T. INDUSTRIES

  SECTION HEADING: MID-CENTURY 22

  CHAPTER HEADING: CONSEQUENCES OF M-DNA

  Favorable conditions, a longevity of roughly 120 years, and the hardiness of the new race led to a massive increase in population for M-DNA people over most of the 22nd century. Over time, M-DNA people grew too numerous for the government to conceal. In fact, the reach of Chairman Heights proved it was long enough to have made sure his experiments with mutation stretched across the globe and across decades. M-DNA people, informally called half-breeds, reached a quantity that would have required their own small continent. The humans, concerned about the purity of their own gene pool, the survival of their current way of life, and dwindling resources rejected these people outright. After much unrest and racial antagonism against half-breeds, global war broke out: humans against half-breeds.

  This war became, perhaps, the most controversial and most devastating war in history. Many humans were on the side of treating the

  half-breeds as equals, which led to countless wasted casualties in the biological and urban warfare that took place for almost ten years. As the war dragged on and took countless lives, change surged ahead as the planet, resource quantities, science, and the half-breed race altered forever. Humanity was on the brink

  of either extinction or a total revolution of everything it had known at the time.

  5

  Before coming to a human school I thought I’d have to worry more about the pretty, popular girls making fun of me. It’s an old high school drama cliché, after all, and not something I’m wholly unused to; even my M-DNA school had stereotypes. But for the people who are supposed to be on the higher education level to reject me simply because I don’t have pure human DNA? This day has been so unfair that I want to call Eisen and leave. I feel the warm weight of the SMARTcall telephone in my bag, the round and silver device a comforting link to people who actually care about my life.

  You can’t just leave, Sierra, I think, trying to encourage myself with a positive thought. The first day

  of school is always difficult. But the fact remains I’m still standing alone in a hallway with nothing but a list of confusing catalog digits and room numbers to help me find my classes. I could always wait until the bell rings and just miss my first class, but I'd rather not do that. Or, I could try to smell my way to find Lyle or Morgan, but I don't want to wander the halls sniffing around like a weirdo either.

  Dejectedly, I look up from the list I pulled out of my bag and glimpse the red hair before I recognize Duncan approaching me from around the same corner Katrina disappeared down. There’s an awkward pause as he comes to a halt and notices my presence.

  “Uh…hey,” he says. I’m not sure what to think of him yet, since I only know what I’ve observed and what I heard from Morgan. I’m thankful he broke the silence first.

  “Hi,” I say in reply. “Escape from class already?” The effort it’s taking for me to be pleasant is considerably less than what I’d have to make for some other human. He nods as he takes a few steps forward; he seems wary, but I try not to blame him for it.

  “Yeah…I mean, I have a free hour first period, and I was just getting a snack,” Duncan says.

  “You’re Sierra, right?” He goes to his locker, and I tentatively take a step or two closer. Whatever developing conversation we have doesn’t need to be shouted down the hallway.

  “Yes I am. And you?” I ask his name even though I already heard it from Morgan.

  “Duncan Ledford,” he tells me. “So you had the meeting with the principal?”

  “Yes, I did. And it was not the best conversation of my life, that’s for sure.” I should be asking him how to get to my class; I shouldn’t be dawdling. But he’s actually having a polite conversation with me, which is very refreshing after the annoyance of the past hour. Duncan smiles; even if it’s a small gesture it makes me

  feel better.

  “Yeah, it seemed like Harper could be really passive aggressive and—” He lets the sentence die before he can complete it. I blink, my tail twitching nervously as my fox ears perk up to listen better. I’m relieved Belinda is new here so there’s no previous history of positive behavior with even the human students...they only know what they’ve read on the school SMARTspace page.

  “Anyway… where is your monitor?” he asks.

  “She kind of…had to go. I’m pretty sure I go to Business Math next, so that’s something,” I say lamely. Duncan finishes grabbing food from his locker and shuts the door; it doesn’t seem like he

  regrets talking to me, and he’s frowning at what I said.

  “Before getting you where you needed to go?” he asks. We’re closer now, and I can observe more of his features. “Who was it?”

  “She really wanted to get going with her own stuff, so I only know her name is Katrina.” An expression of understanding crosses his face.

  “Yeah, that sounds like something she’d do,” he

  grimaces, shaking his head and slipping a bag of some unhealthy variety of snack into the pocket of his dark wash jeans.

  “You know her?”

  “We’ve gone to the same school for a few years. Eventually you get to recognize faces,” he says.

  Speaking of faces, I study Duncan’s further. He’s better looking than I thought at first, even with the flaw

  of a previously broken nose. His skin is entirely clear—except of freckles—and his eyes are…nice. Pleasant. Honestly, he’s more attractive than I would generally admit about a human boy.

  I’m not sure where to go with this conversation as it’s deteriorating to an awkward final
e. More small talk related questions drift around my mind, but my shyness interferes with the words reaching my mouth. I’m suddenly self-conscious of my ears and my tail and the obvious gold hue to my irises as

  a second or two passes.

  He may be one of the only people here willing to talk to you like a person, but don’t get carried away, I think.

  “If you need to get to class I can show you where it is,” Duncan offers, breaking into my reverie.

  “That would be great…thanks,” I say. He steps closer and takes my class list out of my hand. I’m momentarily glad that our skin didn’t make contact; rather, I’m glad the fur on my hands didn’t touch his skin. I don’t want to deal with a human reacting to touching a half-breed; depending on the human, it's

  not pleasant, and I can't handle that after this lousy morning.

  “You said you have Business Math. That’s down this hall way on the right,” Duncan says. I nod, taking back the list as he hands it to me; I look at the catalog number listed. “Not that you would have gotten all that lost, but finding your way is easier if you have help.”

  “Yeah they assigned monitors just for the purpose

  of showing us around,” I say, a little more sarcastically than I intended. He looks at me as we begin walking in the direction he indicates, smiling a little.

  “Your first day hasn’t been much of a welcome, then?” he queries. I nod, not wanting to voice my other feelings on the topic of school- assigned monitors. He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds.

  “Not really. I mean, I know some of…of my people already, but aside from them—” I say.

  “Everyone else here hasn’t been friendly. I get that,” Duncan says, his tone understanding. “Especially with that scene earlier…you’re pretty cool, fox girl.” My shyness intensifies at the compliment. My lips curve into a smile, but all I do is murmur a thank-you so I don’t embarrass myself with anything else.

  We walk a few steps in silence until we’re right outside the class door. I see through the rectangular window in the door that class is well under way; this makes me want to enter even less, since I don’t want any more needless attention today.

  “Thanks for your help, Duncan,” I tell him, my hand on the door knob. I’ve resigned myself to the

  awkwardness of the next few moments already.

  “No problem. I…I guess I’ll see you around,” He smiles politely again. “Try not to let the crap from the other students get to you.” I smile back and then he leaves, heading down the hallway and retrieving his snack from his pocket.

  They’ll get used to you…eventually. I finish his sentence with the missing phrase in my head.

  I enter the classroom, shoving the class list back into my bag so I don’t have to look up and into the faces of my classmates for as long as possible.

  When I do look up, the teacher is blessedly ignoring my presence, and he doesn’t choose to make an issue of my lateness. The more important issue is finding a place to sit, but there seems to be an obvious line drawn between the two halves of the room: humans on the left, half-breeds on the right. Morgan has chosen a seat next to the window; her tall antlers make a statement without any conscious effort on her part. I don’t know why I was self-conscious about my fox traits around Duncan, but I’m glad now that I didn’t hide my vixen traits like the majority of my half-breed classmates. Lyle slouches behind Morgan, appearing very cat-like as he stares at the teacher with glassy eyes.

  I hurry over to the two of them and slide into the seat in front of Morgan. She taps my shoulder, and I turn around.

  “How did it go?” she whispers. “And your walk is very graceful, by the way,” she slips the compliment in

  with her original question like it’s a natural thing for her to do. Which, for her, it probably is.

  “It sucked royally, and I hope I never have to talk to Belinda Harper again,” I inform her, the injustice of the entire meeting striking me again. She murmurs sympathetically and sits back. Lyle leans around her and speaks next, his whisper a little more carrying than Morgan’s.

  “Did you get into any trouble?” he asks.

  “I got some demerits, but she didn’t tell me how many. It wasn’t worth staying longer to ask,” I say.

  “You’ll probably get a SMARTnote telling you how many, right?” Morgan asks, twirling some of her long hair around her delicate fingers.

  “I still have to set up my SMARTnote account for school…and I’m not sure I want to know, really,” I say. “Now let’s be quiet, I don’t want to

  get into any more trouble for the rest of the morning.”

  “We’ll talk at lunch, then,” Morgan says, sitting back again. Lyle hasn’t contributed any more to the conversation, so his silence continues, and I face the front to try and find out how useful this math class is going to be.

  z

  ““This is so much better than that lousy cafeteria,”

  Morgan declares as we walk outside and into the bright early afternoon sun. Our last class felt extremely long; Sociology is definitely not my favorite subject.

  “It is nice to be out in the sun,” I agree; I haven’t seen our cafeteria, but I’m sure it’s revolting. We sat beside each other in our last few classes, since it turns out our schedules coincide for the most part. Lyle also shares some classes with me, and I’ve been told he’d

  be joining us for lunch along with a couple other people I haven’t met yet.

  Morgan carries her lunch in her small bag, and she pulls out a small bag of deep purple grapes to munch on as she walks.

  “I hope we’re heading to the right athletic field…it would be so awkward to run into a pre-season football practice or something.”

  “Aren’t practices after school?” I ask her, and

  she shrugs. “At any rate, this field looks empty, so we might as well stay here.”

  "Okay!" Morgan smiles and plops down with a surprising lack of grace under a tree. I join her, choosing my spot on the ground a little more carefully. The lunch from my bag is more substantial than hers; Harold can actually cook when he’s in the mood, and he made me a grilled smoked sausage sandwich I plan to enjoy.

  Morgan and I exchange casual words about the events of the day as we begin eating. We’re about to discuss what happened during my meeting with the principal when we see Lyle and two other half-breeds

  coming our direction from over the hill. Behind them, other stragglers from our misfit senior class wander the grounds of the school looking for different spots to take lunch.

  I recognize the boy with the bear traits from earlier. There’s another girl with him and Lyle, but I don’t recognize her.

  “Hi!” Morgan greets them like we’re all old friends

  already. The tan-skinned girl I don’t recognize looks like she has some cute poodle-like features from some canine DNA; she seems startled by Morgan’s cheerfulness.

  “How were your classes?” I ask the group in general, further attempting to break the ice. The poodle girl’s eyes widen a little as she notices me, and she grabs the thick arm of the bear boy in a “look there!” gesture. I picture the two as a couple and have to stifle a laugh.

  Good thing half-breed offspring doesn’t blend the animal DNA of the parents…bear and poodle would be an odd mix, I think.

  “Classes were normal, aside from all the dirty looks and insults,” Lyle says nonchalantly, shrugging.

  “Annoying, but it’s bearable.”

  “Yeah,” the bear DNA boy grunts in amusement. “Bearable is exactly the word I would have chosen.” He flashes me a grin and poodle girl giggles at his pun. “Hello, Vixen,” he says.

  “Sierra,” I correct him again.

  “Ivar,” he tells me. “This is Shelby, my girlfriend.”

  “As of four months today,” she adds, smiling up at Ivar with reflective dark eyes. Morgan and I exchange amused glances as she speaks.

  “Have an extra sandwich, Morg?” Lyle says, throwing himself d
own on the grassy ground and, somehow, a sandwich is already in his hand. I realize it came from Morgan’s bag, but she has her own lunch in her hand so I assume they have an arrangement.

  That’s interesting…I file that information away for later.

  “How did the talk with the principal go, Sierra?” Morgan asks me as the others sit beside us and pull out their food.

  “You’re the girl who came in the main entrance, aren’t you?” Shelby asks, intercepting Morgan’s question with one of her own. I nod warily, not sure what her reaction will be.

  “That was one of the reasons Belinda wanted to talk to me…at me, rather,” I say. Shelby squeaks, and I observe her wild black curls almost trembling with emotion.

  “That’s so cool! You braving the main entrance with all the crazy humans around, I mean…not the principal giving you crap about it…” She trails off and whispers something to Ivar, who is busy manfully

  demolishing a sub sandwich about the size of my head. My liking for the pair of them increases—even if it’s still weird to think of them as a couple—because that’s two more people on my side.

  “You said you got demerits…what for and how many?” Lyle asks. I explain everything that took place.

  By the time I finish, my irritation with the situation has passed on to my new friends.

  “The whole thing is foolish,” Ivar says in his deep voice, shaking his head ponderously. Morgan is frowning, Lyle looks angry, and Shelby watches Ivar as she quietly eats her food.

  “The ridiculous thing is forcing us to go to this

  school,” I say.

  “You’ve had a hard day, and it’s barely noon,” Morgan observes with a measure of sympathy in her voice.

  “You’re telling me,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting rainbows and sunshine when I walked in here, but…” I let the words die. I don’t know what I expected.

  “I’m all for desegregation and equality, but this?” Lyle says as he waves his hand in a dismissive gesture towards the school building. I’m getting the impression that he’s an angry person, alongside his more admirable leadership traits. Just the kind of thing you’d expect from a mountain lion, too, I think, catching the irony.