Rachel Vincent - Stray

I growled, deep in my throat; it was a sound no human could have made. Some people think only dogs growl, but cats growl too, mostly in warning. For once, Marc took my warning and shut up.

For the next two hours, I faked sleep, beyond caring whether or not he bought the act. Just as my eyes were starting to close for real, Marc jerked the wheel to the right and veered across two lanes of highway—both empty, fortunately. He sped down the off-ramp and swerved into an all-night service station, sliding in front of another customer in line for the only available pump.

I twisted in my seat to see the unfortunate driver—a chunky man in ill-fitting slacks and a dress shirt—burst from his Volkswagen Passat and slam the door. His face was comically red in the fluorescent light from the awning overhead. He was yelling before he’d taken two steps, his gestures becoming more and more animated with each word.

Marc watched in the rearview mirror. His grip on the steering wheel tightened. The metal began to groan.

“Play nice with the other boys,” I warned, watching his jaw tense and relax.

He ignored me. Without a word, Marc opened his door and set first one foot, then the other on the concrete. He stood slowly and smoothed his black T-shirt, giving the other man a chance to realize that he lacked both the size and the build to back up his big talk. When that didn’t work, Marc took a single step forward.

The other man dove into his car, pulled the door shut, and slammed his hand down on the lock.

Satisfied, Marc nodded politely at the man, as if in greeting. The Passat pulled out of the parking lot as Marc lifted the nozzle from the pump.

Shaking my head at the near-toxic level of testosterone, I headed for the convenience store. While Marc pumped, I called Andrew from the one-man restroom, standing to avoid any contact with the filthy toilet seat.

“How ’bout pizza?” Andrew said by way of answering his phone. He never bothered to say hi, but spoke as if continuing the same ongoing conversation we’d been having for the entire four months of our relationship. I thought it was cute, but also wondered how he answered when someone else’s number showed up on his caller ID. Did he ask the guy selling magazine subscriptions whether he wanted mushrooms or pepperoni?

I glanced at my watch: 11:04 p.m. “It’s too late for dinner, and too early for a midnight snack.”

“It’s never too early for pizza.” He sounded a little stuffy, as if he had a head cold.

“You okay?” I eyed the scum-coated cinder-block walls for a spot clean enough to lean against. No such luck. “You sound a little nasal.”

“I think I’m getting a cold. It’s not affecting my appetite, though. I’m starved. I’ll pick up a large with everything. Unless you’re afraid of catching my germs.”

I smiled. “No, I don’t mind your germs.” I probably couldn’t catch them anyway. “But it’ll take you a while to get here.”

“Why, where are you?” he asked, sniffling. Over the phone, loud grunge music echoed with a reverberation apparently unique to thin apartment walls.

“Twenty miles north of Waco.”

No pause, and no questions. “Okay, but it’ll be cold by the time I get there.”

The grimy concrete seemed to absorb the sound of my laughter as soon as it left my throat. Andrew’s sense of humor was contagious. It made him very easy to be around, which had become my only prerequisite for boyfriends lately. Not that he couldn’t set the jokes aside when he needed to. But his smile was genuine, and it was always lurking on the edge of his other expressions. Talking to him never felt like work, as it did with some people. Andrew knew how to take things in stride, such as my sudden departure from campus.

I glanced at my face in the grease-streaked mirror. I looked tired, but it was probably just the thick layer of dirt. On the mirror, not on me. “I think you’ll have to eat without me tonight. And tomorrow. And maybe for the rest of the summer.”

“Why, what’s up?”

“My dad’s mad ’cause I didn’t invite my family to graduation. He threatened to yank my funds unless I spend the summer at home.”

Andrew laughed. “So the mysterious Faythe Sanders does have a family. And where is home?”

I hesitated long enough that anyone else would have commented on my reluctance to answer. Not Andrew. He never acknowledged an uncomfortable situation, unlike Marc, who wallowed in tension like pigs roll in the mud. “A ranch near the Louisiana border,” I said finally.

For years, I’d carefully avoided any conversation that might have led to questions about my childhood, because it had always been easier for me to pretend I hadn’t had one than to try to explain the Sanders family dynamic. From a human perspective, we didn’t make sense, and struggling to explain it only made things worse.

As children, humans learned to compromise, share and make friends. I learned to identify animals by scent and to stalk them without betraying my presence. While normal parents discussed political elections and spiking interest rates, mine discussed expanding territorial boundary lines and how harshly to deal with trespassers. Humans just didn’t understand my childhood, so I generally avoided the subject altogether.

Andrew coughed, but the sound was muffled, like he’d covered the mouthpiece. “So you withdrew from school?”

“Not yet.” I cringed at the very idea of withdrawing, as if my absence from school wasn’t real as long as I was still enrolled in a class. “I’ll do it over the phone tomorrow, but it’s only for the summer. I’ll be back in September. Maybe earlier. It depends on how long it takes me to talk some sense into my father.” Yeah, right. Like my father and I had ever had a sensible discussion. Or even a calm one.

“No problem. I’ll come see you during the break between summer sessions.”

My stomach lurched at the thought of introducing Andrew to my parents. And to Marc. “Um, let me talk to my dad first, okay?”

“Sure. But don’t worry, parents always like me.”

Not my parents , I thought, leaning against a sink jutting from the wall like a porcelain ledge. Not unless you’re hiding fur and claws beneath your Abercrom -bie khakis . But he wasn’t. I didn’t know every cat in the country personally, but I’d know one if I met one, and Andrew was one hundred percent certifiably human. Which, of course, was the attraction.

“I have to go now, but I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I glanced in regret at the bathroom door. If the facilities had been nicer, I might have considered staging a sit-in, in protest of being taken home against my will. But one glance at the filthy floor drove that thought right out of my head.

“Sure. I’ll give you a wake-up call before my first class,” he said. “Or do you farm girls get up with the roosters?”

“Not this farm girl,” I said. “We don’t have roosters.” Or any other livestock, for that matter .

“Good to know,” Andrew said. “I’m going to go eat now, all by myself. Talk to you tomorrow.”

I said goodbye, and my stomach growled as I hung up. I thought of Andrew’s pizza with envy. Maybe I could talk Marc into swinging by a drive-thru on the way back to the highway. But I’d probably have to say please.

Suddenly I wasn’t that hungry.

Back at the car, Marc was nowhere in sight. I was searching the glove box for a spare key when I noticed him walking toward me from the burger joint next door. He carried a grease-stained paper bag in one hand and a cardboard tray of drinks in the other.

Damn. Now I’d have to say thank-you.

“Four double cheeseburgers, extra pickles,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat with a creak of leather. “But two of them are mine.” He dropped the bag in my lap and settled a drink into each of the cup holders in the center console.