The Milkshake Club

by Athalon

_{Patrick and Johnny, the boywuffs from Little Love, are ©Winterimage.}
^{In awe and veneration, in tribute to their author's skill and grace.}

    Petey's alarm clock rang prompt and insistent, its early morning beep new and cold and unfamiliar. The wolfboy peeped over the edge of the blanket, grumbled, fumbled for the switch. He could hear bacon sizzling in the hot sun-blinded silence which followed. But his mom didn't give the customary call, to make sure he hadn't rolled over again for turtle sleep, ears-deep under the covers, pillow over his head.
    Things were already starting out different, he realized. It was his first day of junior high.
    He brushed out headfur and fluffy grey tail, climbed out of pajamas, dressed. New jeans, conspicuously dark and whole, neat at the hems. A t-shirt with his favorite band on it. Ball cap, backwards. De rigueur. Huge white high-tops. Then stripped it all off.
    The kneeling wolf dug in towards the back of his wardrobe, found a package of underpants from his twelfth birthday. Boxers. The forgotten white briefs he was standing in had almost become the cause of a disaster. He pushed them down, limp and stretched and holed like a crippled battleship, ripped desperate fangs into the rippled plastic wrapping of the new and sound undershorts.
    Petey had heard tell of it that summer, managed to put the issue out of his mind for a blissful sultry thirteen vacation weeks.
    In junior high, there's gym showers.
    Knock at the door. "Petey? Breakfast's ready." His ma. The wolf leaped behind the dresser, swooped into a pair of dark paisley drawers. His big paws caught, tripped him up. He groaned desperation. Having Mom open and walk in to discover him naked wasn't the way he wanted the morning to go.
    "Right there, Ma." His nose twitched, picking up the toasty caramel scent of A.M. pancakes. Petey didn't feel hungry. He might have skipped breakfast altogether. But that would only cause a fight. Petey didn't want to get off on the wrong paw like that on so perilous a day. Besides, he was in junior high now.
    Or felt like he ought to have felt like he was.
    Backpack, starch-stiff and clean brown, bulging with supplies and notebooks and pens and such, leaned against the beveled oak leg of the table when he dropped it. Alone. The kitchen was empty; brick floor accused him of sloth. Mom, Dad, Sis - they were all gone about their day. It felt so unusual: a nutritious cooked breakfast, but nofur at the table. And quiet in the house.
    The clock on the mantle ticked.
    He hunted bacon with a fork, found a pile of pancakes in the warmer. Then changed his mind as nerves overcame anxiety, and ate seconds.
    The wolfboy missed the bus at the corner, feeling bloated and maple-syrup sleepy. No matter. The inscrutable wizards who control the circuitous yellow-van routes had left him quite enough time to make it on paws. It was nice outdoors, cool but not uncomfortable as Autumn first hinted an uncommitted appearance. Petey hunched up his pack, set off into the morning sun. He even wagged.
    Most of the other furs had evidently caught a ride of some sort, as he didn't meet any until he'd drawn up alone to the forbidding stucco facade. It looked like a cross between the Alamo in Texas, and Darth Vader's Death Star. His stomach dropped, anticipation and the weight of a dozen pancakes draining him internally of fortitude and courage. The boywolf stared up, sneaks together. Authority and evil, a new year in a new school as old and alien as a strange planet. When he placed his paw on the handle of the door entering, like Dante, he knew all hope was gone.
    An enormous blast of sound and music rocked Petey back on heels. Three thousand junior high kits seemed to be talking, laughing, singing, yelling, and shrieking all at once; waving, wrestling, running through the halls and furpiling in indiscriminate corners as they pleased. He bounced out of the way of the door, ears flattened, when a herd of water buffalo in football team jerseys plowed into the fray. So wild and exhilarating, a stink of fresh sweat, hormones, and too much bad perfume.
    He grinned hugely. It was going to be an exciting year!
    Johnny slapped him on the back. "Hay, dawg! 'Sup?" The black wolf was a bud from his last school.
    "'Sup. Yo." Petey felt surprised to see him there. Ears rose, cool canid conspiracy. "I thought you said you were gonna transfer?"
    "Word. But my older bro - I mean, step-bro - Patrick, he's staying in district. If I transfer, I won't get to do a year of high school with him."
    Petey shrugged, tail low. Who'd want to hang around their brother in high school? But he didn't say so, being junior high and mature that day and all. Also, because he didn't have an older brother himself, couldn't imagine what that was like. Wondered. Jason, a cheetah fully two years ahead, crowded up. The passing pack of ferrets in choir dress snaked its musteline way down the tube-like center of the hall. Even the janitor leaped clear of their procession.
    "Dude! Kewl hat!" The teencat snatched the ball cap from between Petey's ears, tossed it towards the ceiling. The wolfboy leaped, scrabbled for it in air. When he landed, his feline furiend caught him confidentially arm in arm, took him aside. "Lose the cover, willya? That's the lamest thing since yiff bracelets."
    An otter called Chris and a bunny by the name of Doug showed up. Petey remembered them from his old school, too.
    "Yiff bracelets?"
    Jason rolled his eyes. "Get with it! Caps are so kittygarten. This is junior high. You wear hoodies!"
    Petey nodnodded, noticed for the first time. His bright Wuffeh concert tee was out of place in a sea full of grey fleece. "Bad?" A badger bulled in on the moment, gave him a look which confirmed the worst. Moved away mercifully.
    The cat sighed. "So last year. Just get with it and maybe the shame will have worn off by Spring Break." Then a passing vixen caught his attention. As the wolf watched, Jason gave her the eye. Grabbed his crotch, licked his short feline muzzle. It made Petey's eyes pop.
    "Yo, Cassie," the teencat purred. "You got plans for those on Saturday?" He stared right at her budding breasts; his tail lashed.
    Emerald, a black pantheress in green mini and halter, scoffed passing. "Slut." Then changed her mind, a rightful predator hanging about to watch, ears erect and lidded eyes patient.
    The vixen smirked, pushing her proud chest out, slipped a paw into the front of the lowest jeans the wolfboy had ever seen. "I could say I'm staying home to wash my hair," she replied fluffily, "But you already know I shave..."
    The furs around hooted with laughter, and Petey blushed.
    Emerald glowered.
    Jason raised the grey boycanid under the chin with one claw. "You met the new fur yet?" he asked the girls.
    Petey made eye contact with Cassandra, blushed again hotly.
    "Cass," she advised for his benefit, extending a painted paw. "And yer?"
    "Petey."
    Jason whacked him on the chest, appalled. "He's Pete, Cassie. Get with it, dude! This is junior high!"
    The wolfboy raised eyebrows in bemused exasperation.
    "Pleased to meet you," she replied.
    Emerald shoved her way in. "Emmie. Goddess of Lust; Princess of Yiff."
    The wolf flushed again at the teasing, the laughter, her paw thrust forth for osculation. He shook it. Felt funny, the center of attention. But not at all bad. It was strange and novel that the female furs seemed to like him.
    The vixen glanced assassinating derision at the catgirl as Emerald's twin brother Adrian appeared, pelted and dressed to match Emmie in crack-tight shorts and cut-off shirt, groped his developing sister.
    "Sup, Chocolate?" Chris said. Then Robert passed, and they greeted with slapped paws.
    Petey turned to Jason. "I gotta go to the sandbox. You know where it is?"
    The cheetah groaned, shrugged. "Next thing you'll be wanting me to wipe your tailhole!" The other furs about all roared.
    "Pardon him," Petey replied to Cass somewhat coolly, as she favored the canid with a look. (The wolfkit decided at that moment he liked Emerald better.) "Jason was raised in a kennel." From the expressions on muzzles, he thought he'd scored a point.
    Surprising. He grinned. Interesting...
    The vixen batted her eyes. "It's all the same to me. Go pitch yerself a wicked shit - I'm from New Jersey."
    Petey laughed with the rest, turned his discomfort on Jason, punched him playfully on the stomach. The feline fur didn't recoil, had been doing situps all summer in preparation for MC-JROTC. The wolfboy rubbed his paw. "Restroom?"
    Jason sighed theatrically. "Excuse me, Cass. Have to potty the kittie." He flashed her a warm fangy smile, gallant under his juvenile burden.
    "Just wash your face while you're there," the vixen countered to the cat, never missing a beat. "I only sit in clean places..."
    The cheetah moaned, took Petey around the shoulders, leading him away. The wolfboy felt like he should apologize. But before he could begin, the cat said, "Did you see how she was looking at me? Her nipples were so up!"
    Petey shrugged, gave a wry grin. Then wished he hadn't, knew that Jason must have noticed his discomfiture. So he was expected to watch girls' shirts, too? Besides hiding his ignorance of this, that, and the other. And everyfur who seemed to be more important than himself in the grand junior high scheme of things. He'd have to stay on the bounce to cover for all it was turning out he didn't know these days.
    The empty restroom was big. Lots of slick jaded tile, lots of cold curved ceramic molded to fit. Deco. Crowded. High ceiling seemed inappropriately formal, heavy, embossed with ugliness and gilt with dust. A long row of sinks with a sad and wrinkled mirror above faced a rank of ugly green stalls. They had no doors. Petey took one, faced the water, unzipped and fished himself out through stiff new cotton. He'd gotten a good sprinkle going when he felt eyes on his back.
    Jason's face burned with disgust as the wolf cast an inquiring look over one shoulder. "Dude! What am I gonna do with you? This is junior high. You don't pee at the toilet! You pee at the urinal!"
    Petey oh'd his muzzle in silent surprise, raised eyebrows in mock assent. He pinched off, using willpower and a paw, toddled over to the lengthy porcelain trough on the wall. Releasing his pants from one fist, he glanced down the plumbing. Why, you could probably launch a submarine in that, he thought.
    The cat was washing paws at the sink when Petey looked again. Never mind. The canidboy just wanted to get through the day. Embarrassing screwups aside, he hoped he just might make it.
    Zipped and adjusted - a new experience with boxers - he was soaping his own pads, watching the teen feline poke invisible zits.
    "Dunno what I'm gonna do wif ya, kit."
    "What? For pissing?"
    "No. Everything. You need somefur to look out for ya."
    Petey nodded, reached for toweling.
    "I know! Wait right there." Jason squeaked open the restroom door, whistled loudly. His voice cracked in a most painful way when he hollered, "Tommy! Over here!"
    They were joined in a moment by a boyfox. Dressed in hoodie, as Pete was careful to notice. "'Sup, 'Nilla?"
    "Tom, this is Petey. He's new here too. And..." The cat hung his head, degraded by the very admission. "He needs somefur to keep him in the groove. You down for it?"
    Pete could feel the fox's stare, cool and radical and appraising. "You've been here a year?"
    "Nah. My first too."
    "But he knows how the plays go," the cheetah added. "He's in the meme. You gotta trust him and go with it. What class are you in?"
    The little preteen wolf suddenly felt small, dug a card from the pocket of his jeans. "Umm, 6G. Arithmetic first."
    Tommy's jaw fell with a groan, and Jason shot him a look of abject commiseration. "See? Ya gotcher work cut out. Total newb."
    The fox nodded, passed a sympathetic paw around the cringing wolfboy's shoulders. "'George 6th'. It's 'Math', not 'Arithmetic'. This is junior high."
    The cat snickered, made carelessly for the door, feeling accomplished. "Don't let him into the girls' locker room by mistake. He might not know the difference yet."
    "Latez," called the fox after him. And to Petey: "Just stick with me and look like yer cool and everything's easy. We'll make it." He seemed not in the least hopeful.
    Petey didn't hear that, other things on his mind. He wanted to ask Tom about locker rooms. And gym showers. Didn't know if he should trust him that far. The schedule itched through denim, begged to be checked again on the impossible chance that P.E. had somehow disappeared. Ten o'clock period it was, ten o'clock it had remained. As it was at the beginning of summer, is now, and ever shall be - the card had not mutated when he pulled it out a second time. The wolfboy's anxious pads grew moist.
    "C'mon, the bell's about to ring."
    There was an assembly first period after roll was called. The principal appeared, a big bear in FurScout uniform, pressed and ribboned and medallioned and sashed like a banana state dictator in a bad art film. He advised them all in no uncertain terms that (for their information) he would take no guff, no sass, no backtalk; neither flippancy, truancy, fecklessness, recklessness - nor impudence - was acceptable from any of them. At any time. This school is a Tight Ship, he said, and he Intended to Keep It That Way. Petey was mesmerized by the ursine delivery, the draw and hypnotism of Hitlerian cadence. And a bit frightened by the rising level of implied threat as the bruin's harangue drew on. Tommy, however, seemed to take it in stride, kicking back with his eyes closed and ears down, or else passing notes, whispering, tossing wadded paper at groundlings in front. The wolfboy figured that all this peril and discipline stuff must be bluster, then. Just more of the newness of junior high, he thought, yawning frightfully.
    After that came English class, which Petey unfortunately styled 'Language'. He got laughed at by all for that one. Tom made sure his charge wrote out the homework schedule as the teacher copied it to the board.
    "No worries," the wolf had protested smugly. "I'll remember."
    "Write it down, sheathbreath. You can't blow off homework now. This is junior high."
    It was an interesting class, though. The Bard totally absorbed Petey's attention until the bell and bustling rush following to be elsewhere.
    "What's next, Tommy?"
    "Gym."
    Cold shiver in silence.
    The locker room was still colder, though very noisy. Dark. Coach assigned benches, handed out locks. Left. After a bit of confusion finding his assigned spot (which happened to be quite distant from Tommy's), Petey realized that the other boyfurs were already dressing out. Slowly he removed his shoes, taking eons. There were shorts and a muscle shirt in the wolf's backpack.
    Muscles. He glanced at his bare chest, saw none.
    Then the coach was back, a stocky bull terrier, too loud and eager with his testicles dragging about his knees. He tossed small flat boxes to each boyfur. When he passed Petey still mostly dressed, he growled, "Hurry up, son."
    The wolfling shivered, examined the presented package. Supporter. He groaned, stood on the bench, looked across the room searching for the toilet stalls. Maybe he could bring it off that way. He wasn't even sure how to put the silly thing on in the first place.
    In the end, he waited until the crowd in the changing room had thinned appreciably, tossed the boxed jock deep into the wire confines of his gym locker, zipped out of his pants and into workout shorts. His underwear hardly saw mold-colored neon light.
    It was a basketball day, and Petey loved basketball. No wimp, but no star either, he got lucky, caught a goal and blocked two. But try as he might, he couldn't take his mind off what was to follow the game. And wound up so upset in spite of himself, in fact, that he retched the tailings of his pancakes and bacon into the drinking fountain when he'd stopped for a break. The coach, attending his sudden illness, 'sent him to the showers', and Petey blanched so badly and sheened up with oily sweat, that the tattooed pitbull suggested the school nurse instead.
    Now the locker room was cool and quiet, strangely welcome after the ear-twisting squeal of sneaks on hardwood, the mental taunt of approaching fursonal doom which he had tried so hard to deny. But it stank of wet bread and socks and penii of all species, too, an odor that made the sick wolf feel even queasier. Petey changed clothes in the silence and privacy, suddenly realizing that he was escaping the dreaded inescapable after all! He ducked out, backpack over his shoulder and a grin on his muzzle, as the remainder of the boyfurs flooded in, roiling clouds of vapor from the showers rolling out.
    The two canids met up again (Tommy's headfur still wet) in History, which the wolf was ever so careful not to call 'Social Studies'. It was real history, and real long ago. They heard about the Sumerians who worshipped cats. The boywolf giggled, thinking Jason wouldn't mind living there - not if Cassie was around. Petey wondered, too, what it would be like to be a cat. Silky tails, short muzzles. Short dicks, if everything 'they' say were true.
    Which might not be. The wolf had heard a lots of things already that day, most of which the sort to be written off as gossip, meaningless secrets. Planted disinformation. But to his ears they were News, and the Who's Who of his school had already taken on epic importance in his mind. He knew by that time which vixens put out (it wasn't many who didn't, seemingly), and which parties and sleepovers were not to be missed. Who did drugs, and of what sorts. And who's 'rents made the bucks and who lived on the side of the tracks that your mother warned you about. Even a juicy tidbit about the janitor's private past, something salacious that tickled the fur inside Petey's ears. It was all so dizzying far in excess of the heavy jockstrap stink from which he had been lately liberated.
    The period flew by.
    Tommy had queued up close to the head of the lunchroom line, when Petey selected a table, hoisted up his luggage, and unpacked comestibles. The fox moaned in pain.
    "This is junior high. You don't bring your lunch; you buy your lunch!"
    Petey shrugged. "Well, I could use something to drink." He 'took cuts' on his furiend, selected a paper box with a large red fruit on the front. Tommy was apoplectic.
    "This is junior high. You don't drink apple juice; you drink orange juice!"
    The wolf changed his choice. He was careful not to slurp at the straw.
    They ate together, an affair less comfortable than cramped in the cafeteria chaos of first day. Tommy didn't ask Petey if he was feeling better. Petey didn't ask Tommy if junior high wasn't the epitome of insane.
    "So," Petey interrupted, breaking only silence between. "Do we have recess after this?"
    The fox's face hit the table.
    When the chastened wolfboy returned from disposing of his trash and Tommy's tray, the vulpine was all preoccupation. "I have to go for a bit. Meeting."
    "Oh. You in Chess Club or something?"
    Tommy nodded. "Something like that." He disappeared before Petey had time to ask.
    The wolf spent the rest of lunch period wandering around the schoolyard. Alone. There were all sorts of things to see if he looked, and he found the indoor pool, the library, and a strange small room reputed to be used by the football team after late night practices. Just why the JV team should be practicing late into the evening, Petey didn't know. But then, he'd learned so much that day, that nothing could further surprise him.
    Almost nothing.
    The pool, that was interesting. It was 'Boys' Day - Keep Out', as the sign chained to the door said. He nosed in, thinking the note was more meaningless routine. Besides, he was a boyfur, wasn't he? Petey loved swimming, figured he would watch. The team was practicing for speed seemingly, racing suits omitted against drag, only short sleek fur covering the male otter's preadolescent bodies. The little wolf goggled, blind from sunlight into sudden dimness, dashed quickly under bleachers in surprise. There Chris was, and that other guy - Rocky? - broad footpads and powerful legs, thick lutrae tails. Paws around wide grinning muzzles as they shouted whiskered encouragement to their mates in the water. The kits' pelts were so shiny and slick, their stubby sheaths shameless against the round nakedness of bellies, sacs silhouetted between thighs as they crouched. The wolf would have wanted to go swimming with them, felt shy.
    Physics was next that afternoon (Petey didn't even think of calling it 'Science'). Tommy showed up just as the second bell sounded, disheveled and lax in face and tail. The wolfboy marvelled that a chess game could be so strenuous. The fox brushed his headfur on the sly as the teacher proceeded to read aloud from a book, groomed his pointy ears with a licked paw. Petey kept glancing at him from the corner of one eye. Saw Tommy grin, wag. Must have won, he figured. The fox even smelled great!
    The rest of the day went passingly well. But slow. The only big laugh was when Simon fell asleep behind his mask, tipped bodily from desk into aisle. All in all, it didn't break things up that much. Petey was ready for afternoon dismissal long before it came. The explosion of fur and shouts from out the main doors was like a cannon blast. He chose to walk home, trading extra kinetic energy and pawfur for a little quiet time between the ears. That bus ride would have been stress that he could avoid.
    For the first time in his life, Petey had important things on his mind. Homework, chiefly. He learned there would be book reports due a whole six weeks away. Dealing with that sort of deadline was new to him. The notes he'd taken in class seemed different, too, weighty. This year, study notes would be as critical as the load of books he now lugged under both arms. And then there was all the rest, the social web of junior high that had mesmerized him; and Popularity, that deceptive spider in the center. It was just so overwhelming. How would he ever manage to balance it all?
    His family went out for early dinner, a cheap spaghetti place. Tradition, first day of classes. Petey's high school sister talked, as if her tongue were overdue the next morning for return, braces on her fangs gory with tomato sauce. His mom had taken an important day, too - some sort of highly lucrative business deal in which her choice of silk blouse played a crucial role. Petey didn't understand, kept that bit of information to himself. She was so utterly full of her own success that had her daughter's muzzle suddenly fallen off splashing into the cold vegetable soup, the ensuing gazpacho silence would have stood no better a chance. The wolfboy and his dad remained mostly listening, swapping glances of table sympathy when the estrogen levels in the restaurant threatened to smother them.
    Petey was at the desk in his small room by six-thirty, the ulterior motive of the commercial dining arrangement. But it was hard to keep to task. No TV, no phone, no internet except as needed for research. Summer was gone, and no doubt. The mathematics assignment killed him. He burped gently, then louder, spreading his fearsome canid jaws and shaking the window glass. How he wished he could have help with his homework! Petey punched up the numbers on his calculator again, got an even worse answer.
    Then it was bedtime, and the wolfboy in shorts and a tee when his dad came in without knocking. "How's it going, son?"
    He shrugged. Talking with his father had gotten difficult lately. "OK, I guess."
    "First day at the new school?" Obvious.
    Petey was turned away by then, nodded.
    "Your mom said you forgot your gym towel this morning. She found it on the floor."
    The boy froze. "Umm, we didn't have gym after all. First day..."
    The older fur sat down on the bed, Darkfang comforter turned back for use. "Pete? Do we need to talk about anything?" He was too earnest, too present. Couldn't read the emerging wolf growing into his son's pelt.
    It totally repelled the youngster.
    Petey pretended to get occupied with figures on a paper atop the pile of books he had readied for the morning. "Nah. It's all cool. I'm going to bed now. Night."
    His father rose, dug paws from pockets. Hesitating, he leaned over to kiss the boyfur between the ears. "OK. Night then." He left before their disconnect could blossom to meaning.
    And Petey lay alone in darkness, watching headlights of passing cars play tricks with the ceiling texture. He thought of the day, of all the changes. Secret struggles, secret fears. He'd have to figure out something for P.E. before Wednesday. Figure out lots of other things, too. Math. He turned on his side, paws down his shorts and between his knees, infantile comfort; sought sleep.
    But before he could slip into nagging dream-encoded replays, hauntings from the day which had lately passed, a shadow of loneliness came over the wolfboy. Lunchtime had been so random after Tommy left the table. Kiko the skunk and Nick, the nekoboy with real bare face and arms, had taken off too. Petey hadn't known what to do, had felt out of place, and dry and dangly as a tomb in a west Texas graveyard. His discoveries about the layout of the school were a meager return for feeling so left out, rattling around the playground, a withered nut in its horny shell.
    Rising from fragrant and furiendly sheets, he went to the bookcase. The spines were colorless in the dim, softened in kind darkness. He located a small folio, turned it from its protective box into his paw. It wasn't a book, but a magnetic chess set the size of a paperback novel, a birthday gift from an aunt he didn't know. The wolf placed the cunning parcel into his backpack, grinned. Petey couldn't play chess all that well, certainly not to the level that Tommy obviously could. But maybe, if the foxboy was agreeable, he could teach the wolf. That would make lunchtime lots nicer.
    He got back into bed, pushed shorts and underpants to his paws. This was another new thing, and the tube of lotion under his mattress almost empty from the summer. It was quick, and a crumpled Kleenex later the only sign of the clandestine deed. Petey was asleep even before he retracted into his sheath.

    The next morning was better. Just as pressured for time, but it felt more adjusted. More even, balanced. His sister had her Algebra book propped against a missing cub's muzzle on the milk carton when Petey spread butter and candy sprinkles over toast. He checked his backpack, made sure the homework was in folders where it belonged. And missed the bus again, but this time on purpose. There could be a whole extra ten minutes answering emails and browsing the web of a morning before leaving for school if he made a habit out of walking every day. It was an acceptable trade-off. He wouldn't mind the hike, unless it rained or snowed.
    A huge portable stereo was rattling everyfur's fangs, launching faculty cars like popping corn in the lot as Petey arrived. 2 Live Crew. Jason was in the center of the fray outdoors. Seated on cold cement beside the formal front stair, he was getting a lapdance from Cassie. She was obviously enjoying the attention more than the yiff, but the cheetah's eyes were gratefully glazed. Furs about rocked with the music mostly, crowding around talking and yelling, dancing, generally ignoring the eroticism. Some watched, though, muzzles round with surprise or arched with mindless arousal. When the vixen stood at last from her bump and grind, shook out her skirt and eager pointy breasts, the tented wet bulge in the feline's jeans made the other kits howl with naughty delight.
    Petey noticed Tommy pull up while he was still laughing, felt the fur's knee on his tail. "Hi, Tom. Pretty wild stuff, huh?" It seemed like it would be a day of no fewer new and amazing discoveries than before.
    "That cunt!" Emerald flounced by, appalled at the display. Rick the ocelot, and Robert, a reddish-blonde brindled mouse, pursued close behind her.
    And things that never change, Petey amended.
    The fox nodded. "Yeah-huh. I can tell you true, I've never seen anything quite like that before." He dug deep into his pockets, tugging the bottom hem of the hoodie lower for modesty.
    Shrugging up his drooping pack made the chess pieces within rattle a remembrance, and Petey said, "Hay, I've got something to show you."
    "Yeah, inna sec. I've gotta visit the boys' room."
    "Cool." The wolf thought he might, too. Didn't know if he should say that, junior high and all. He knew of course that girlfurs restroom together in huge packs - saw Cassie and Emmie go en corps the previous afternoon. Must be some sort of mutual support treaty. Or maybe they compared makeup tips after. But he didn't know if boys were supposed to do that, go together. Didn't think so. Tommy was already several comfortable paces in front before Petey turned to follow. He'd had too much apple juice at home to avoid his need.
    The bathdoor squeaked as he pushed it open, and he hopped quickly aside to avoid the huge tail of an exiting squirrel who faced the wrong way as he emerged.
    "See ya after lunch, Tom," the squirrel called back. "For milkshakes." He shook his paw in the air, laughed.
    "Vanilla rawks, Chipper." They giggled, and the tail did succeed in bumping Tommy anyway.
    "Sorry..."
    That restroom was empty (save for a certain vulpine, it seemed) as Petey entered, and the door squealed to, behind. He placed his bookbag leaning against a toilet partition, heard water drip, queued up at the far end of the urinal. Huge burning sigh as he cut loose. And made a note not to drink so much before walking. When he glanced stealthily down the length of the trough, the first thing he noticed was that Tommy wasn't peeing; no stream of yellow issued between paws to splash against steaming ceramic. The second thing he noticed in outline was the close-eyed fox frantically stroking at himself in what could only be an imitation of Petey's own land speed record of the previous night. The wolfboy blushed hotly, stared straight ahead at the wall even as he finished, tucked away without shaking. It had been a TMI experience - Too Much Information.
    The boywolf was washing up when Tommy appeared at the sinks. The fox looked a bit disheveled and sweaty, panted a little yet. Didn't seem to realize he'd been caught, Petey figured.
    Which was cool - he didn't know what to say about it anyhow. If there was never any question, maybe he'd never be asked. Fine by Petey. He would have died of embarrassment just then, anyway, if he'd had to acknowledge what he'd seen. Recognition would imply complicity, and Petey had never admitted even knowing what the act of yiffy self-offense was called. Shame flooded like a used bath over his fur.
    "Oh, umm," - yet he couldn't help himself but break the nervous silence - "I found that chess set my aunt Tricia gave me. I'm not so good at it and all, but I thought we could play." He offered a nonchalant grin, hopeful.
    "Chess? Oh. Umm, yeah. Cool." It seemed the fox was anything but eager. Distracted, maybe. Appeared to have trouble at the knees standing, too.
    "Well, umm, we don't have to, Tom. It's just that you're in the Chess Club and all. And that way we'd have something to do at lunch." Then Petey realized how desperate that must have made him sound, how needy and furiendless. Ouch! What a loser! He turned to the ancient faucet staining the basin with rust, cranked it open, buried his shaming muzzle and both paws in the cooling flow.
    "I'm not in Chess Club," Tommy said. But loud splashing in the wolfboy's ears prevented the revelation from reaching him.
    Morning classes were mostly the same, only different. More opportunities to screw up and get laughed at, more occasions to laugh at others and fit in as well. Tommy figured he was finally getting the hang of junior high. Well, except for Math. Numbers just weren't the wolf's forté. He struggled during the whole calculating period, kept paw raised only as much as he thought was safe for his reputation. Peeked at others' workpapers whenever he could, on the sly. It wasn't depressing - yet - he thought. But could get that way. He devoted all of study hall that morning, in place of P.E. on alternate days, to figuring out the equations that daunted, the blessed arithmetic ties that bound him helpless. Tommy was a big asset, and they sat with heads close together, tails lapped, puzzling over problems. Petey liked that. Besides being confusing, Math was lonely. Of course, he didn't think at all that he could ever say that to anyfur. Certainly not to Tommy. But there was more to the fox's being close and helping, than just helping. And he smelled so good that morning, too.
    Lunchtime came, and Petey purchased. It was Mexican or salad. The gringo wolf couldn't do chili, sat before a bowl of rabbit food with his tongue hanging out in the classic expression of 'Blah'. Dougie took the table next to them, scoffed with a huge grin and great abandon. Furs drifted past to deliver him more crunchy green stuff, and he thanked them heartily, squeezing liberal lemons over the democratic lettuce. Petey sucked at soda, unfolded the chess set.
    "White or black?"
    "Oh, umm, black." Tommy was scooping up stray beans with a tortilla chip. His fluffy red tail had already begun to feel fluttery.
    Simon, a raccoon, but called Spooky by his furiends, peered over incuriously. An electronic GameCub beeped between paws as his thumbs ran on automatic. He seemed amazed that there might be an activity which required a second live player.
    The wolfboy separated the pieces, lined his up. Then set up Tommy's, too, when the fox seemed occupied finishing up his meal, scrubbing paws on pants. He made an opening, the routine complication with pawns in the center known to every amateur chess master. Tommy scowled over the board, mirrored the move. Petey replied, a little more aggressive a counter. Wanted to show he could hold his own - or try, anyway. And then the fox made his first mistake.
    Petey gave him a questioning look, which Tommy missed. Curious yet uncertain he was, trusting implicitly in the other fur's skill, yet caught against his own limited grasp of the game. He examined the board again, just to be sure. Yeah, it was a wrong move. The wolf nudged the fox's black piece onto a valid square. "I'm hungry," he said. "That soda wasn't enough. Did you say there's milkshakes after lunch?"
    Dougie choked, spewed shredded cruciferates all over the place. Chris tried Heimlich, couldn't get his short lutra arms around the bunny. Which struggling rabbit grabbed for Petey's soda, took a swig. He was scarlet in the face, not simply from asphyxiation and the otter's tussling. The gasping bunny avoided eye contact with the gaping wolf.
    "Dude! Shhh!" the fox whispered to him. "Where'd you hear that anyway?"
    Rick dropped a footpaw over the bench, took a seat. Too close, in fact. Too confidential.
    Petey knew he was in a place he didn't want to be, the sudden spotlight-warmed center of attention. Dougie panted with a paw on his chest. Tommy's glare was accusatory, betrayed. The wolf felt like he'd seriously let his furiend down - let them both down - but in some shaming way he didn't quite understand. The canid hung his head, studying the board, ears lowered and flat across his fur. Moved a piece. It was a kittish pressure play, queen out too early. Demanded a corresponding immature reply. Begging to be taken.
    "I've gotta go," said the fox.
    So Petey was left solo for a second time in as many lunch periods. He wandered for a bit again, vaguely in the direction of the track building he'd discovered yesterday. It was quite far from the rest of things, and he passed several new places on his way. When he found an open door en passant, the urge to explore chased away plan and angst, the feelings of rejection, anticipation of revisit. There was an unlocked attic stair that led to an exciting balcony around the roof inside of the gym, an arcade of windows level with the swarm of buzzing high-pressure lamps; another into descending darkness of the forbidden steam tunnels. The boywolf grinned, tongue lolling in hissing darkness. Infiltrating the hidden parts of his school could be a fun thing to occupy many lunch periods to come. Why, he might not even miss having Tommy to talk to.
    In the end he was five minutes late for his next class. But unnoticed by the teacher as he sneaked in, the wolf paired up with a familiar fox behind the last row of computers. His hoodie was dusty at the shoulders; Tommy's headfur tousled, tail damp and unbeautiful. They grinned in mutual ignorance, smirked with knowing assurance at each other, stared into the shared screen.

first.c - Notepaw.exe

#include <stdio.h> main(){ }

appeared. Petey moaned, empty stomach tight. It was just too terribly like Math, deja vu all over again.
    Tommy smelled good, though. Great, actually, and the wolf sniff-sniffied whenever he could (careful not to be too suspicious doing it). When once he thought he'd been caught, Petey stuck his muzzle under his own furry pits, took a whiff. Not awful. He actually was self-conscious, too; afraid he might have reeked after the nervous and cramped urban exploring. But as the fox shot him a polite yet wondering glance, he just giggled, licked his nose: casual canid self-effacement.
    Once again the afternoon bell came none too early. Dumping the non-critical of his books into a newly-issued locker, Petey invited, "Let's go for a snack. I'm just starving." Tommy agreed, and they headed for the nearby Yiffy Mart. The two were soon seated on the stoop outside, huge value sodas in their laps and a cardboard tray of nachos between them. The wolf was careful to scrape the jalapeños off his half.
    "Yo."
    They watched as Chipper ran across the street, didn't get hit by a car. "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
    "Wanna come to my house and play some chess then?" Petey was feeling more empty than could be explained by his light belly as he munched. He thought it was the cumulation of two days of junior high in a row. At that rate, three years would kill him dead.
    Tommy released his straw from muzzle. "Umm, I don't really like chess."
    The wolf scratched an ear. "But I thought you said you had Chess Club after lunch sometimes?"
    The fox shook his head. "Told you this morning I didn't."
    Petey was puzzled. What he remembered wasn't, and what he'd evidently missed explained all. He shrugged, sipped soda, crunched a chip. Maybe he was just tired, having trouble making sense. Thank goodness there wasn't much homework tonight. He might even have a nap.
    "Tommy, what's 'The Milkshake Club'?"
    To his credit, the fox only barked. "'Milkshake Club'? There isn't such a thing. Where'd you hear about that anyway?"
    The wolf scritched in one pocket. He sensed he'd upset Tommy, yet again. It was happening more and more often, seemingly. He didn't know how far the fox could take it - whatever it was that twisted his tail so - without snapping at him. And Petey wasn't anxious to find out. Furiends were as hard for him to get as math concepts. He didn't want to feel any more confused and lonely. There was simply too much of that in his world just then.
    "Can I ask you something?" It was coming out, whether he wanted it or not. Petey knew he'd been holding the fear and worry in all day, waiting for Wednesday. Hoping, praying it would never arrive. Wondering what he would ever do. And thinking too much about it, even as he couldn't make the thoughts go away. Weariness, starvation, and frazzled nerves had combined to make an end of resistance. Fate had finally caught him by the tail, and from tomorrow it looked like there would be no escape.
    He shook a little, even as he said, "It's... it's about the showers."
    "Showers? What about 'em?"
    The wolf was silent then, drew figures with one claw in the soft plastic lid of his soda cup. Inexplicable. He couldn't find words to say it.
    "You gotta problem with that? With getting undressed?" The vulpine voice fluted up an octave.
    Shame burned under lupine fur.
    The wolfboy committed himself. Nodded.
    "Dude! What's wrong with you? It's no big deal! We're all just guys!"
    No big deal. Pete passed his soda to Tom, swapped straws.
    "You don't want this?" The fox sloshed the heavy drink demonstratively, uncomprehending.
    "I'm going home. See ya."
    Petey cast himself onto his bed, groaned, clutched his middle. He was sick, knew it wasn't just the unseen ghost of hot peppers in cheese sauce. So many things were going wrong of a sudden. The room spun, his tongue lolled dry onto the bedspread, stomach made evil noises. He levered himself up, located wrinkled jeans laid over the back of the desk chair. In one pocket was this note:

Pete: Do you want to be in The Milkshake Club? Tell us how much you already know. Leave your answer on top of the soda machine by tomorrow lunch. -Strawberry P.S.: It's a secret. Speak to nofur.

    He'd found it in his backpack that hungry afternoon just before school let out. The pawscript he didn't recognize, nor had the wolfboy the slightest ear-scratching clue of who might have slipped it to him. Or even quite when. He did of course connect his mention of milkshakes, now, and Dougie's fit of choking. But it still gave him no idea, just more mysteries.
    And the most painful being Tommy. The boywolf was sure that his furiend knew about The Milkshake Club. Like the vixen in Hamlet, the fox doth protest too much. But then, were they really furiends after all? Tommy had lied about knowing. Not knowing, rather. Twice.
    Although, Petey thought, it was a secret club. Maybe Tommy really didn't know, on the other paw.
    And maybe there wasn't such a thing as The Milkshake Club in the first place. That seemed to make sense. Back to it, though: hadn't Tommy lied to him about the Chess Club? The wolf hung his head. That answer felt right. He was sure. And when it had popped out of Petey's muzzle, the question about showers that afternoon, hadn't the fox's reply been all of strained ridicule and exasperation?
    Petey clutched the pillow. He didn't know why he'd even asked. Why he had trusted. What good it would do anyway. It had just come out of him in a rush, even before he knew he was going to say it. Nothing about milkshakes mattered even on the moment, just one more way to put off his fear. And then Tommy had turned it back on him, right in his face as anger. 'What's the big deal?' It hurt so bad the boywolf couldn't think; his brain would just shut down when he tried. Petey couldn't say why it was such a big deal. Only that it was. The biggest. It was something he'd die first to avoid.
    After his third trip to the bathroom across the hall, he stayed for a shower. Had to. Heard his parents come in downstairs. Let them use the other john, he thought with numb disgust as he soaped his sore tail. He combed headfur neatly, brushed his ears, gazing at last upon his reflection in the mirror with more care than he felt, soft and sudden pity. His sister's razor lay disassembled on the counter. Petey pushed the insides of his bathrobe sleeves up over the wrists of both paws, examined the fur there. It was so smooth, so pure and clean and unmarked. So whole. He could almost not imagine it would soon be any other way.
    First he drew the fluffy pink rug over the cold tile floor beneath him, then changed his mind and sat. It was warmer there, comforting, soft. He lay down, on his side, blade in one paw, his head in the other. Closed his eyes. He could feel one hip bone against the hard terrazzo under the rug, shifted. His bare furry thighs were together, naked and damp beneath the terrycloth robe. He felt his sheath, wondered if he should play with it one last time. Didn't feel like it. He hadn't felt like anything in such a long time, he supposed. Well, it soon wouldn't be.
    The bathroom wall was close, flat white latex over primer. His nose was almost behind the laundry hamper, and he could see the stains of crayon washed from toddler years and from memory. Oh, that he could have those times back again! To be free. To be cared for. He thought of his parents. Then Tommy. Too much alike. Too numb, insufficient. Too bumbling and ignorant and self-concerned to notice. To see him. They all missed the mark when he needed them most.
    His heart was too dry for tears. He wondered if he'd even bleed at all.
    A bathing suit, several sewn stripes of neon and nylon, lay fallen to the floor, memento of a last summer when hope and youth still promised a different eternity. He bunched it under his head, shifted shoulders. Got a wrist ready. He was sure his mom would kill him for the mess he was about to make.
    Then he got an idea! Standing, he opened his robe. The fur beneath was roughly dried, scruffy and moist and matted. His preteen privates, underfur, showed lighter against the main pearl grey of his pelt. He pulled the bathing trunks up, yellow and orange and purple, colors only a kit could love. It was a way out. "Hay! I can wear this after gym!" He exhaled in relief, pawed between his legs unconsciously with intimate self-posession.
    "That's enough, open up in there!" His father pounding. Petey jumped with fright.
    "Coming, Dad." He put the razor together, hissing as he almost cut himself doing so. The older wolf was paws on hips as the sheepish boyfur pulled open the bathroom door.
    "Are you all right? What you been in there for so long for?" It wasn't concern in his voice, not what Petey heard.
    "I'm OK. Taking a shower."
    His father studied him severely, silent and unrevealing of his thoughts. Stingy of those thoughts in the past, unwilling to allow their dilution by share. He pulled the boy's robe suddenly open, felt the flat furry chest for temperature. Petey knew if he hadn't been in his swim briefs, he would have shown more just then than he cared. Was shocked blushing by it, too.
    "Since when did you start taking a shower with your bathing suit on?"
    "Nah, Dad. Put it on after. Lemme go to my room. I don't feel so good." Which was true, now again. The emotional roller coaster of his life had taken another degrading plunge, this time into unnameable family darkness that made his stomach weak like he was going to need the toilet again. He belted the robe tight, shut himself in his bedroom, careful not to make a slamming sound. Knew his mom would be pissed if he didn't show for supper, demurred nonetheless when she came to his door. Petey knew he couldn't handle it - the social obligation of dinner - not after all that had happened. If she got to yelling, he'd be back on the floor with Gillette Super Blue again.
    For a mercy, the bitch stayed away. His dad did come up again later, bearing a tray of graham crackers, a bowl of milk. It was a sicktime supper Petey could remember from kithood, strangely comforting in a sad way that embarrassed him even within himself. He smiled a little, thanked his father. Moved away. The big wolf set the food upon the desk, carelessly atop hard-won mathematical solutions and a fair-copied essay assignment. Petey pulled the comforter on which he lay over his skimpy bathing suit.
    "Son, I'll be frank. I'm worried about you. School's just started, and it's your first year there. And junior high, too." He left off, led the question. His cub was too exhausted to rise to it. "Son, are you having problems in class?"
    "No." He pushed away, so wanting to be brought close instead. Turned towards the wall.
    "Everything OK with your teachers?" Already distrusting the reply he'd got.
    "Yeah, sure." If only Petey could be gathered up, like when he was a kit. It sickened him even as he craved. The pillow on which lay his head seemed so remote.
    "And your furiends? You have furiends from your old school there?"
    "Yeppers. A few." But they weren't the problem. There was that new one, however...
    "And how about this P.E. stuff?"
    Petey froze again, ill and crippled canid in the crosshairs of a drunken hunter's rifle produced unseen from behind the seat of a pickup.
    The adult wolf saw fear, read success. "I knew it when you forgot your towel yesterday. And tomorrow's gym, too, isn't it?" So plain, so cold.
    The kit nodded, weak before the approach of judgment, craving a sudden salvation, his insides like jelly. If only his dad could be a dad for once, and not a father.
    "Well, you're not going to stay home sick. I already figured that out - why you're in your robe and shut up here in your room and all. But that's the end of it. We'll not say anything more. You go to bed tonight, and tomorrow you come downstairs with your act together and your head on straight. And I want no more nonsense about P.E. and showers or anything. You get me, young fur?"
    Petey was pale and trembling by then. He so wanted to die. Knew he'd been gutted as he stared at soiled paint on the bedroom wall, saw blood splashes. Having shown throat; trusted; exposed the tender underbelly. A trip to the bathroom again would be useless: he knew he no longer had the cornered will to off himself. It was like a tricksy crush of Fenris fate, the winepress of overwhelming authority from which there is no exit, this mechanical parody of parenthood which tore his will and love to juicy bleeding shreds. He quivered, bit his lip. It wouldn't do for his dad to see him cry. The big wolf would only know how badly he'd won.
    It was very late as Petey sat by the window, watching colorless cars pass in the chilly sodium distance of arc lights. There was an empty place beneath both shoulders where his soul used to be. It felt like gas from the dentist, like too many peppermints after school. Images passed his eyes, free of context and the power of affect, devoid of the dangerous associations which everything had begun to take on. He didn't know what to do, had only the same meager plan as before.
    Could he pull it off? Should he even try at all?
    Felt for himself beneath his robe; a pawful of despair from his heart.
    He watched the string of highway markers whine silently into the map-world of midnight trucks, those magical fuel-stop oases of light between cities unseen. Maybe he could run away from home. The wolfboy licked at paws, inner wrists above. No, he didn't have what it took to run. He didn't even have what it took for a quick biting slash across the carpal arteries, peace everlasting to follow. Facing a life on his own, furiendless and solitary and utterly abandoned - the small grey canidboy knew his mind would never hold to it. He'd never be able to fully will his own salvation, lift tail and muzzle in the desperate attempt. Even seek self-destruction as the Malthusian alternative. He was tamed and helpless, and cowed and callow. Running away: he wouldn't even know how to make a start.
    So Petey was back to it. Bathrobe in his pack, bathing suit under jeans. That would take care of things. At least for tomorrow. What could Coach say, after all? And he could care less about classmates, their macho jeering calls, their whispers and tauntings. If it had to be, it had to be. The little wolf could take it.
    Until he saw there in his imagination Tommy, siding with the rest, naked in a nucleus of evolving steam and raw in his peer-boosted torment. No matter that the foxboy had been mostly kind. The taunting that afternoon would be only a foretaste when the dreaded finally occurred. Petey sighed, wiped a tear. In the stakes of degradation, of defiance against parents and against school authority, the faithlessness of a furiend had hurt him most. Life had turned against him utterly. He was sure that his plan was about to cost him more than he wanted to pay.
    But was Tommy even a furiend at all? The wolf remembered the arguments used on himself by that very self earlier, his doubt about the fox's honesty, sly vulpine intention. Knew where he thought that it stood. Knew, too, that in the swirl of his feelings, the whirlpool of angst and brittle fate, that furiendship was equally useless and quintessential.
    He hated Tommy. Hated himself for wanting a furiend. For needing. Hated himself for everything. It was all his own crazy fault anyway.

    When the wolf awoke late the next morning, painfully stiff and crippled and cold from a raw night on the window seat, the house was once again silent. Nofur had even remembered to yell at Petey, to get him up and see to it that he was out the door. And seal the inevitable fate await for him after P.E. He was sure he hadn't escaped, supposition confirmed when he opened the bedroom door, found his gym towel over the knob. The white-glove slap that proceeds the firing squad. He didn't bother with breakfast, no last meal for this condemned. The wolfboy pulled on his hoodie, packed the bathrobe, discarding extra notebooks and supplies. And in a moment of promised self-comfort, added the packet of graham crackers. He could always buy milk in the cafeteria.
    There was an unscheduled assembly at ten o'clock, and the whole school gathered in the gym. Nofur knew the reason, and there was chattering and shivery anticipation, frank ignorance - and opportune flirting at the sudden opportunity it presented. The students climbed to the tops of the bleachers, sat overflowing on the floor in front like discount ticket-holders at an Elizabethan drama. They sprawled and furpiled and sagged and waited.
    When the principal showed, he was accompanied by cops.
    "There have been didoes, boyfurs and girls," the bear roared, taking them all in with beady eyes. "Traipsing and trespass and treason and trickery. I said we'd not be having such creative and constructive behavior this year. AND, BY GOD, WE DAMNED WELL WON'T!" He ripped the Sam Browne scout belt from his waist, smacked the table which had hastily been installed for the assembly.
    The furkits jumped as one. There was a strained gasp of "...the fuck!" loudly from one corner of the gym, but when the bear's head snapped to the side, only silence. Petey even dared to believe it had been a teacher's voice he heard.
    Trespass. Burglary. Breaking and entering. Unauthorized access. Culprits uncaught. It went on. Steam built behind the tunneled ursine brow, leaked from the attic corners of eyes and muzzle. It went on. The police officers, bloodhounds in uniform blue, stood at attention, apparently unfazed by the precipitating insanity in the precipitous display. It went on. The principal raged and raved, ranting and panting until the school nurse dropped a politely obnoxious comment about making everyfur late for the next class. If not otherwise sick, the white-capped ewe added, under her breath.
    It didn't conclude, simply finished. A palpable - almost visible - vacuum left by the bear's exit remained behind, sucking in whatever thought the probing furry mind sought to put to the whole unreal experience.
    And Petey sat alone and silent, in the crowded noisy press of three thousand milling students astonished and harried and appalled and amazed, with forty minutes left until next period and no place in particular to go. There was excited talking together, recapitulation; speculation, shouts, and incredulous laughter. Yet it was all in vain. For only the wolfboy knew. He had almost grinned and laughed aloud when he realized it, kept his muzzle under tight rein. It wouldn't do to let the cops see. And he'd had such good practice at that sort of self-control anyway.
    For the principal had been talking about Petey, one small wolfboy sneaking about the less-used parts of the school. In ursine paranoia, the culture of the lone and lonely and curious had grown to bands of unseen marauders, plunderous thieves and rapists alie in wait. But the distrust and reserved distance of analysis, the cool mental savoir faire that Tommy had modeled, cut right to the core of the mystery. Petey understood it now. The whole school was on red alert because of his own passage-crawling lunchtime adventure!
    Tommy wiled his way through the crowd, crouched next to the wolf. "Sup? Was that teh freaky or what?" He licked nose.
    Petey nodnodded, grinning. Then looked away. What was he supposed to be feeling? He was excited and thrilled at the secret he'd discovered: the secret of his very own that nofur had uncovered. Wanted desperately to share that, to bask in the simple warmth of admiration and vivisected young awe, to giggle together in mutual kittenish joy of the forbidden. But here was Tommy, the foxboy who had so betrayed him.
    The wolf didn't know what to do. Who to be. He sighed and sat within himself, waiting for the earth to open and swallow him up.
    "Hay, are you still feeling sick from yesterday?" The fox sounded genuinely concerned. Or at least troubled that he might get dragged into uncomprehended involvement, strange fruit. Who could tell?
    "What's up with all that shower stuff?"
    Petey shrugged him off, tried. "I don't want to talk about it, OK?" It was cold, naked on white wet tile. Nasty. Perhaps unfairly so, the wolfboy thought. He knew he wasn't sure of Tommy's motivations, what had caused him to avoid and dissemble, to reject and distance himself. To turn him out without fangs or claws. But there it was: Petey pushed away.
    The fox's paw struck him on the shoulder. Twice. Caught the wolf under the arm, compelled him forward. "C'mon, we need to talk..." Petey didn't resist, much. Whether out of surprise or because it would look ridiculous to fight off a furiend in front of the whole school like that, neither knew. They wound up in a small unfinished room off the gym used to store sports balls, a place familiar to Petey from whence the infamous attic stair led. When the door slammed behind vulpine tail, the space became tomb-quiet and close. Unnatural light filtered in from an unseen world above them; the air smelled like a million unwrapped condoms.
    "Look, Pete. What the hell's gotten into you? I've been trying my best to keep you from making a fool of yourself, and you go off the joystick on me! Give over, fur! What's going on?"
    The wolfboy glared. "I don't wanna talk about it."
    "You have to. We have to. I'm not hanging around with you if yer not talking to me!"
    "Fine then... Don't, just don't!"
    "Yeah, right. Like you'd get anywhere on your own."
    "Yeah, I might! It's not like I need you." His voice betrayed self-betrayal, anger at own need, emotional fangs searching for the jugular.
    "Nah, yer gonna talk. We gotta problem here, and let's just have it out and be done. What's all that stuff yesterday?"
    "Lemme out of here! I don't want your help. I don't want you! Now leave me alone and let me go!" He struck out, forcing the fox away with his backpack. The vulpine claws snagged defensively on the zipper, spilling contents across the floor.
    "Bathrobe? You brought a bathrobe?"
    The wolf waited under simple shame, exhaled will and the urge of self-preservation. Laugh or taunt, scoff or misunderstanding he was ready for. Not what followed.
    "Pete, this locker room stuff makes you really uncomfortable, doesn't it?"
    Petey nodded. Stab between conspirators, delivered with dagger swiftness.
    Tom hung his head, tried to figure it out. "I guess I was a dick, huh?" A photographic flash-capture of permanence; uncertainty and concession.
    The wolf stood silent, and a plea of not guilty was entered by the court. He said, "Don't worry about it, fox. I'm messed up, that's all."
    "Nah. Yer just..." Tommy reached across light-years for tail. His arms weren't long enough, his courage. "Don't worry about it, OK? I mean, don't worry about what I said before. Yer just..."
    The fox was again unable put it into words. Couldn't say, as a kit in junior high, what needed to be said to another on the moment.
    He sighed. "You go on and do what's right for you, Petey. It's OK. Meanwhile," he knelt in embarrassment, a boy having spoken things no boy wished to hear, scooped up fallen pens and notebooks sprayed across Green Mile linoleum. "Let's get this all back in your pack."
    They picked up the wolf's school supplies, his assignments and texts; action, the best of alternatives when the course is hesitatingly unclear. It was furiendly there, like sweaters in a cedar chest: unpleasing in the olfactory atmosphere, frank and obvious in touch and texture and physical proximity. They didn't speak, didn't share. Yet when both stood at last, much of the infestation of angst, like pestilent moths of the heart, had fled the fabric of their furiendship. It wasn't comfort and trust, but a different reaching-out when Petey said, "You ever seen what's up that staircase?"
    "Nah, dude. That's all off lim-" Light behind the fox's eyes glowed in the dim. "You mean...? You? That slaughter out there was all about you?" He howled with glee, pounded Petey on the back. "Aww, man! Yer the greatest!"
    The rest of the morning was the best Petey could remember. The two boyfurs had the sense between them to swear never to let the secret out. Then both to mistrust that the other would slip, and the whole school know of their conspiracy in bare moments. In the end they did neither. But Tommy made Petey promise to show him some time, to take him on a few of the whispered adventures that kept the listening fox enrapt through the ignored lesson on Babylonians and the number twelve.
    Lunch period was good that day, too. Not only because there was pizza. Petey shared out the grahams with Tommy, explaining their shy and private significance in blushing awkward phrases; something fursonal that always made him feel better when he was ill or sad. He was amazed how well he felt, then; not sad or ill at all. The fox grinned knowingly, nibbled. Continued to hound the wolf about his infiltrations, pressing for details, tongue lolling from the side of his muzzle with drooling hunger for the sheer secret thrill of it all. By mutual agreement they kept their society exclusive, shunning otherfurs who gave even just a glance at the empty spots at their table. Robert and Kiko and Nick were less than pleased, had gravitated spurned to the pair of furs who seemed so curiously confident, even as all hell broke loose on the school security front. Likewise Jason, when he happened by, was given that brutal kiss-off which only snarky junior high first-years can deliver.
    Yet came the fateful moment when Tommy sat up, said, "I have to go," and darted off. The wolfboy sighed, bussed their cafeteria trays to the galley window, padded forlornly out to the playyard. He really wished he knew where his furiend the fox went of a lunchtime. Wished they'd simply be able to sit for a moment and chat. It had been great, the sudden cramped soul-baring privacy of that dark and reeking storage room. Yet random, too. Why was it they couldn't sit down and talk at will? And why do the best sharings happen only at moments of cusp and peril, risk and pain? Petey consoled himself with the thought that at least the two now had something in common, a post-prandial pasttime of urban exploration which they could someday pursue in tandem.
    That mental graham cracker was dry and tasteless. But it was all he had.
    Taking the metal ruler from his backpack, Petey headed aimlessly for the custodian's utility on the second floor. Didn't even notice Sam in the corridor as they passed. The wolf had spied through that innocuous closet yet another door beyond. And from the snaking of halls and illogical layout of the place in that vicinity roundabouts, there was surely something hiding in the architectural space behind the wretched little mop room. He'd noticed it in passing, had filed the discovery for later check. Might turn out to be interesting. Maybe even something perhaps that he could show Tommy, if they might eventually go UE-ing together.
    When the wolf had silently picked the latch and got the lights on, he whistled through his fangs.

    They were at Tommy's house that afternoon. The fifty dollars had bought chips and ice cream, comics, a couple of used X-Box games. The fox's room wasn't as nice as Petey's. In fact, it was rough. The wolfboy tried not to notice; the foxboy tried to hide. There were lots of brothers, older and younger, and the smaller ones hung on the grey canid, while the bigger ones teased and wrestled him. He got past it, and a slab of frosted cake from a cheery old vixen whose pelt was streaked in shades of his very own fur.
    The two were finally alone and Petey booting up the first of the games to try, when Tommy exploded into wild giggles, clutched himself with outrageous pain. "Oh, man! You have to tell it again! I can't hardly believe it!"
    Petey snickered wetly, sinuses sore and swollen from laughing so hard as he remembered the look on Mrs. Gleason's face. "So there's Jason sitting on this turquoise vinyl sofa. Butt ugly! His jeans are down to his knees. And his cock is down to the sheath in the school secretary's muzzle!"
    Tommy howled and squealed and rolled about on the bed, dripping tears as he mimed the unseen scene, the cheetah's paws in the old badger lady's headfur holding her to the fellatioid task.
    "It was too late for them to do anything, and when she pulled back in surprise, he was already spooging! Oh my gawd what a mess!!" Petey's nose ran from mirth.
    The fox laughed and gagged and laughed some more. It was so unbelievable, so impossible, so deliciously wicked and nauseously scandalous that he savored every bukkake moment in the retelling. "Oh!! Oh, that's so funny!" Slitted vulpine eyes were streaming all over his furry cheeks as he giggled at the obscenity.
    What had happened next was that the secretary, a fine and upstanding churchfur with unfortunate tadpolling tastes, had chosen to buy Petey's silence. The half-century note to-paw in her tacky beaded purse was just a down payment, she knew. But to the wolfboy, it was an unexpected opportunity beyond his wildest dreams. He couldn't even remember the previous evening when fate rested on the polished edge-finish of a sliver of chromium steel. Today he was on top of the world!
    And when Tommy's tail plopped down next to him on the uncovered plywood floor, the fox was clad chiefly in briefs - tighty-whities - t-shirt and socks. He had hung up his school jeans to keep them neat. The wolf gave only half a glance, went back to playing. They stole cars, beat up cops, stabbed perfect strangers and slapped whores in the muzzle. While the next level of gaming violence loaded, Petey stood, removed sneaks and jeans. He wasn't worried about keeping them clean. But intuitively he knew that he should dress to match his host. He'd feel more comfortable, anyway.
    Tommy did look, briefly. A bathing suit the wolfboy had on, Speedos striped in wild colors. The fox smirked, did something to a police officer with his video avatar's tail which would send three little piggies crying wee-wee-wee all the way home.
    With undies like that, he thought, I'd be ashamed to strip off in gym, too!
    They sat together against the bed, racking up points, crashing into things, dusting off the furry fuzz. It was fun and exciting, and they ate and played and yelled and moaned at the game console until they were both restfully tired, tranquilly relaxed. Then Tommy turned round, dug under his mattress, came out with a book.
    "As Boyfurs Grow: Vulpine Edition," Petey read aloud over the fox's shoulder. "Oh my gosh, it's a yiff manual!"
    Tommy nodded eagerly. "I haven't checked it out yet. Wanna look?"
    They did. It started with color plates of young foxboys, mostly undressed. Tommy read knowingly, Petey with interest. He was careful not to show it, though, especially when his furiend glanced at him from the corner of one sly eye. But then he got to that picture, the one that showed the engorged male knot, and his own eyes popped from his head.
    "Wow. I never knew. Do...?" He blushed uncomfortably, wriggled.
    "What?"
    "Do... Do you have one of those?" The wolf knew he was scarlet under his fur, pointing with a paw.
    Tommy giggled. "Of course. I'm a fox, aren't I? But you have one too, I think. Don't you?"
    "I don't know."
    "Haven't you ever...? You know! ...Masturbated."
    The wolf took a body rush at the whisper. Only upon that moment did he realize what the M-word actually meant. "Touching it with paws? Umm... do you do it?" He could not imagine his ears burning worse. Or remember what he'd seen only that very morning.
    The fox nodded. "Since this summer. I can't make spooge yet, but I can make a knot." He beamed with innocent pride.
    Petey hadn't even thought of spooge. He knew what it was, of course. That knot thing fascinated him, though. "Does the knot take a long time to make? Is it like spooge?"
    "Spooge? You can spooge?!"
    The wolf gasped, realizing what he'd inadvertently admitted. "Well, just a little. It takes a while - a whole minute, too."
    "I haven't read that far in the book yet. Maybe it'll say how to do it." He flipped pages.
    Petey noticed his bathing suit was getting tight and quite a little fuller in the front. He reached down, cupped himself in pads.
    Tommy saw, slipped into his own tighty-whities. Grunted. In just a moment he whispered, "Look," and eased the fabric over his wrist. The small foxy penis was standing erect and free of his sheath. At the base was an immature and undeveloped knot, bulging above the short white fur of his groin, the tiny twin mounds of his tight little sac.
    The wolf's muzzle was dry. "Wow," he croaked, an excited whisper. "That's awesome!"
    The fox's nose pointed at Petey's groin. He was curious himself, never having seen spooge. Wanted to ask, too. Didn't. Figured the wolf's paw gently manipulating himself through that bikini would bring it to pass. His head was drawn to the other boy's shoulder.
    "Makes me feel like cuddling," Tommy chuckled softly, unbelieving even as he admitted.
    Petey grinned, nodded. "Yeah. Me too." The preteen foxboy had laid on his shoulder, and he in the fox's headfur. They snuggled close, masturbating gently, unhurriedly - free of purpose and of goal - within the privacy of their underpants.
    Presently the young wolf removed his paw, turned it over so the pads would show. "Spooge," he whispered. There on the flat black surface of soft canid flesh lay a drop of precome wetness, shining in the light. The fox caught paw in paw, examined the tiny snail trail. It was colorless and watery, smelled sweet as he sniffied.
    Tommy grinned up huge, looking into the eyes of the blushing wolfboy. "Awesome!" he said with quiet excitement. His tongue hung out.
    They were holding each other in silent sharing innocence when the door burst open. "Tommy! Mom says to come for dinner!"
    Both boyfurs meeped with surprise. But being down on the floor on the far side of the bed, neither was revealed intimately to the intruding foxsib. They dressed and tucked and stuffed away in silence, turning mutually apart, overcome by a sudden shyness.
    "So... umm... See ya in school tomorrow."
    "Yeah. Right." Then Petey reached out a timid paw, placed it on Tommy's shoulder. The fox did the same. There was a gentle tug, a drawing together. Their footpaws were too far apart for what should have happened. However, it was a warm feeling they shared. Petey said his good-byes to Tommy's tired folks, slipped out into the evening street.
    He was very quiet at supper.
    "Petey? Why aren't you eating, son?" His mother never asked anything of which she didn't know the answer, except as a laid snare. Knife and fork grated unnervingly on china.
    The wolfboy stared guiltily at his plate. He'd spoiled his supper with snacks.
    "I guess I'm just not hungry." He regretted lying; still, thought it kinder than causing a dinnertime row.
    His father was not given to such subtleties. "We had a talk about this last night, young wolf. You didn't get up to any of that nonsense again today, did you? I'm checking your gym towel after supper. And it had better be wet..."
    Petey reddened, drew in on himself in his chair. His sister barked out a cruel, knowing laugh.
    "You, bitch. Take your dinner and finish it in the kitchen."
    She pouted, collected her meal, withdrew in dignified royal protest. "Yes, Daddy."
    It was a hundred times worse, and in no way unexpected, with Petey as the only focus. His mother ate primly and precisely, chewing each controlled muzzleful exactly the same unnerving number of times. His father glowered at his own flowered plate, as equally close to roaring with bourbon-stoked bonhomie as to driving a drunken fistpaw through some nearby wall. The wolfboy was frightened, deeply and surpassingly, by the Rockwell horror of the domestic scene. He forced down food, as bereft of appetite by the mood in the room, as he had been by aprés-school eatables.
    When he asked to be excused, fled to his room, his father followed. It did not go well. If the dry towel infuriated the wolf at his son's manifest disobedience, the presence of the bathrobe literally drove all sense from his fuzzy mind, sodden fistpaws. Petey's truthful protests of the cancellation of Phys. Ed. class due to the impromptu assembly that morning were no amelioration; contempt of the law-giver, no excuse. Things were ripped apart, torn open; things that no time, however long, might someday heal. He clamped his ears down, showed throat, prayed it would be over. Or at least not make him cry. The boyfur hung on, but only barely.
    Then when it was time, and the door securely shut, he did cry. Gentle weeping, the seeking of a release beyond what he knew, beyond where he knew even to look for strength. He didn't howl or give himself over to grief. Knew it wouldn't help anyway. Things weren't really changed, he knew. There was still what he needed, and still what he needed not to do. To be forced to do. What nofur could make him do. Nofur. Well, at least nofur but his parents. What he needed now was not only a way to avoid the thing he feared most of that ten-aye-em class three times each week, but a way to cause the school to absolutely prevent him from ever having to endure the indignity of the communal shower room.
    It was impossible. Petey had dealt with impossibilities all his life. At least where his parents were concerned. He might not find a way out this time - he knew it. Remembered the razor, sharp sacred wafer, a final furless furiend for the day he could no longer convince himself that some part somewhere of his parents was really doing love. He pushed school books away, repacked his bag. No robe. Tomorrow was safe, anyhow. One more day of respite, of ungraspable chance. Who knew what could happen, what he might think of...
    But the wolfboy didn't really believe that. It felt so final already, so like things were coming to an unreal and dreamy end anyway. Predestination, planets ticking like a clock, the universe drawing to a close. He knew they could only punish him so much, now. But if time ran out on his game, he wanted to be caught playing, not huddled in fright on the bench. Petey went to his dresser, found the spare CAT-5. His internet grounding was over in an illicit moment. He knew what he wanted to google, typed in 'Urban Exploration', and 'Urban Infiltration', and even 'Underground Exploring' and 'Urban Spelunking'. He found lots of entries, and a really great site authored by a horse named Triggur. That one was most awesome, and he browsed and replayed (and revisited and rehearsed) the incredible virtual tour of an abandoned subterranean nuclear missile silo until his eyes got droopy and he could imagine nothing more inviting than bed.
    Meanwhile, as he read, the wolfboy had been keeping a list. He sent it to the printer, snuck quietly downstairs. His parents were asleep; his sister - in passing her room, he learned - was on the phone. Petey didn't at all like it when he heard her giggle his name too loud to her girlfuriend. But then, he shouldn't have been listening at her door quite so hard, he admitted.
    What was on his list were things he might find helpful when hacking the school. Hacking - he liked that name for it. Made the campus and physical structure, the architectural spaces and hidden avenues, seem like one big machine, a computer. And he, a little mouse sneaking around inside. It was a risk, the futility of collecting all these things, of slipping them past the stationed cops, when tomorrow might be the last time he went in pursuit of the hobby - the last time he ever did anything fun. His date with twin-blade relief might only have been postponed after all. But, he figured, if I have to go out, make the last party the best.
    He collected a flashlight, the spare set of batteries from the fridge. There were gardening gloves from his mom's basket - a cutesy floral print, but Petey didn't care. He took a pollen mask, too, from the box above the dryer. His dad's hunting knife he rescued from the tackle box, and the digital camera from the desk drawer in the study. He already knew how to charge it and download pics onto his computer, as that was his job after family events and holidays. There were only a few miscellaneous things to add to his gear after that, and he was back in his room before anyfur noticed.
    It all went into his backpack.
    He might even have room for graham crackers.
    The sadness and loneliness all came back to him then, dark night soil from the bowels of the mind. His father was still angry; P.E. still remained another predator, await before the waterhole of the weekend. Even standing at the sink brushing fangs did nothing to distract him. The next time he was backed into a corner, would it be so fortunately the one in the bathroom with the warm pink rug and the exit which lay through the medicine cabinet door? What would happen if life caught him with no escape?
    He shut himself in his bedroom for the evening, switched off the lamp and got under a blanket. Tried to take his mind off the pain with one paw. No success: his young body didn't even respond. He got up, sat at the window. Shivered, not wanting to spend another sore night asleep there. Freeway lights still led like a jeweled caravan into unseen camel lands, every page of the atlas as real as every other page he'd never grow up to visit; another world, in which he was beyond harm. Petey wished he could fly, imagined soaring from his upstairs dormer, over lawn and house, following with furry paws that never-ending Road which goeth ever on and on. He fetched himself a pillow, hugged it to his body like an Autumn sweater there in the midnight fantasy leak of street night through the open window. It was some comfort at least, the tactile sensations against his chest and throat and chin and muzzle.
    Brought an idea.
    The preteen wolf lowered himself to the carpet beside his bed, back to the mattress and pillow abreast. It leaned against his shoulder, and his head rested gently upon it.
    'Makes me feel like cuddling,' he remembered an incredulous fox whispering, giggly, into his twitching ear.
    Petey grinned, nodded. "Yeah. Me too." He got his underpants all the way off paws, the inside of one knee over the pillowy ersatz vulpine. The pleasure from his cubhood erection was slow and dreamy as he masturbated, void of the painful build and directed pressure of the promise and grip of orgasm. He drifted, floated, enjoying love without the knowing burden of that name upon it, without the responsibility to another beyond himself. It was a selfish pleasure, immature and beautiful in that innocence from which the grown-up world soon recoils, whole and complete and honest and pure for the last time as ever one can be. He didn't make love to a furiend or mate or a buddie, neither to the pillow nor to himself. There simply was love, and Petey's body accepted it, much as the supple massage of summer sun or the bracing plunge of an afternoon dive. It was immanent and rich and prolonged. And when he was sated - full but not spent - the cub crawled into his kittenhood bed and under the Darkfang quilt, yawned in sleepy laxity and contentment. As the fox had done that evening, for the first time Petey licked his paw clean, found himself creamy and boyish and sweet. It had never been so perfect before, and he slid smoothly down into dreams, with the taste of pre-semen in his heart, sanctity on his tongue.

    The busy junior high wolf was up in darkness the next morning. He scoffed silent toast, stole the juice bottle from the fridge. And took off out of the house before anyfur else rose - leaving his bedroom door purposefully open so they would know he had already gone. It was a mild walk, cheering, as the cool breezes of Dawn riffled his grey headfur with Her famous rosy fingers. When he got to school, only the janitor was in attendance, a short but kindly tiger-striped feline who the rumors said used to be a monk. The polite cat in the blue workshirt was indeed reserved and introspective, a disavowed genius grinning fangily in Everyfur's dress, patient and courageous and permissive. He let Petey in early, not giving the slightest thought to vandalism or trespass. Francis had his own ways of dealing with the psychotic principal, and never worried about career or security of position. For he had, too, secret means of ensuring that his own paws would push a broom for as long as - and for whatever reason - he wanted the job.
    Petey had learned lots from Triggur's site, from the corral of links which he'd chased around cyberspace. He knew how to make maps now, to count out the number of paces carefully, how to find hidden rooms and passages. To mark where're you're going, where you've been when you get there. Knew, too, how to avoid pipes, closed spaces where the air wasn't so good, doors that couldn't be jammed open behind your tail. Asbestos.
    He just wasn't sure where to start first.
    The team building on the far edge of the track seemed like a good choice, even more so when he had made his dewy way there, found the small cinderblock house unlocked so early. Petey figured it must be left open all night, but to what purpose he couldn't tell. It was a sort of small classroom, unpanelled, undecorated; with student desks which must have dated from the 50's and stank of rust and sweat and graphite and stables. There were slotted metal shades louvered over bare tubes on the ceiling, lights switched off and gloomy and cold. The greying pink paint on walls was like the nauseous inside of a dead stomach. A chalkboard, scored and faded - the belly of the room - bore scars of scrimmage strategies and rips of gang tagging with a switchblade. There was an empty coffee tin with cigarette butts and gum wrappers in it, discarded soda cans and lunch sacks on the floor. An orange.
    And a picture of Emerald was tacked to a bulletin board raped of its cork. The pantheress crouched in cheerleader drag: pomms, pasties, short skirt. Some wit had penciled in a huge penis between her furry breasts, and another under the tail as she turned and bent seductively to thrust out her rump. Petey considered tearing it down - or taking it home, maybe. Couldn't decide. But neither the prudish sort, nor yet possessed of (and by) his own yiffy orientation, in the end he left it, figuring Emerald probably wouldn't get out there much to see.
    Then again, he thought: even if she did, the girlfur might be flattered by the attention. He snickered wildly, imagining her whiskered feline face upon the sordid discovery.
    That nasty mood which the place projected made him scout rapidly for a furnace, find radiators instead - not that he intended to stay long enough for a warm-up. Radiators meant a boiler, steam heat. It hurried him, encouraging. He'd learned that trick from the UE sites. There was no bathroom in the small building, no plumbing but a deep and stained laundry sink. And the utility or coat closet was bare, filled with smelly garbage. The wolf wrinkled his nose, slammed that door quickly. A false wall supporting the chalkboard at the front of the classroom had arches at either end which opened on generous storage space behind. The floor there was carpeted in condoms, some old and brittle which frizzled away under his scuffing sneaks, more recent others bearing a squishy-wet surprise. Petey grimaced, scraped that mess away on a fallen booster-club poster. He decided he'd finally solved the mystery of that wretched little room, moved quickly.
    Another closed door, from which upwards oozed a wet and telling dark smell in wicked search of the sun, gave a little as Petey shoved. With a squeak and a bang it finally flew open, gaping like sudden jaws projecting from under the evening sofa. Stairs led down: wide and straight the path to darkness. Steam tunnel - obviously. There had to be a way for water and heat and electricity to get out that far from the rest of the school, and sink drainings to return. Pawprints on the metal treads, as he descended snapping his pocket flashlight into play, told the canidboy that this wasn't as abandoned and infrequent an access as the he had thought on first discovery. And the direction of those tracks said that he'd found not a remote exit from the main physical plant, but an entrance instead.
    Petey grinned with excitement. It was just like on the internet!
    He ducked to avoid dripping moss, reached sodden cement beneath his paws. Dank. Pulled the hat from his pack and put it on. The little furry wolf shivered. It was damp and cold there. His brave small flashlight beam seemed to peter out awfully fast down the length of the shaft which ran back seemingly towards the school. Hopefully. But it didn't feel hopeful at all. Ears drooped. It was distinctly not like the internet said it would be! He meeped, wished he hadn't come alone.
    The wolfcub unzipped, pushed jeans and underpants past his bottom, curiously like when he was five. Peed into a corner. The urge had gotten to him only a moment after the fear. He hoped it would be OK, though, the subbasement floor already littered with half-full beercans and rings of dried urine, other bodily fluids. More rubbers. A curious bumpy pink plastic something which he didn't dare touch.
    Petey glanced up the stairs again, to farewell light that seemed so far and furiendly and distant and remote. And hoped he'd remembered to wedge the door. All the underground tricks and tips and dangers and warnings from Triggur and his furs were painfully apparent. All battling for attention behind his eyes, still shocked and enormous at the monstrous gape of the maw of darkness which echoed his tinkling stream like a rushing cataract. But he took a deep breath, faced the faceless black invitation into nothingness, the high reek of urine in his nostrils, vulnerable boyhood shrinking away between his pads for fear.
    It was cleaner after a fashion, when he had let go his sheath, taken himself in paw the other way, and started to explore the hidden subterranean recess which stretched on endlessly before him. Thankfully, the filth and refuse didn't extend beyond the first length of his flashlight beam. Nor did a great deal of the boyfur's courage. Just as quickly the signs of another biology, simpler but no less wild and rampant, took over. There were mushrooms and mold, black and grey and brown, stalactites and wet rivulets and living shelf-like brackets projecting as dangerous as poison knives from the sides of the tunnel. Some of it the wolfboy had to brush past like cobwebs, some he had to duck under. Yuck. The walls were nitreous in spots, white where potassium and groundwater leached in from the soil, sinister cracks admitting prophetic water from concrete stone. Petey thought of Mr. Poe's well-known cask, and shuddered at the horror of a walling-up in such a dungeonous underworld realm. He looked back behind again and again - in case of monsters - the universal fear of being followed that dwells in the mind of every living thing on paws.
    Petey pressed forth, into dark and uncertain cold, deeper and deeper beneath the living earth. Quiet noises from the upperworld, which he'd never have noticed in the normal course of things, pounded on his ears like atomic explosions and played on his imagination like tickly bees, modulating unfamiliar timbres and frightening transforming articulations. Until that next step he took, when things went suddenly silent. Petey turned, knowing the sounds he had been hearing, common things like planes and cars, voices and dim shouts, reached him through the door at the head of the stair.
    At which his honest teen-cool logic drew only one conclusion: he was now shut in.
    Somefur has sealed off his backtrail.
    A shiver found his tail, zipped up his spine. Threatened to untie his bowels. He felt himself groped on shifting pads of a giant paw, shuddered with sudden uncontrollable fear. Petey was terrified of the dark.
    He was sure he hadn't been followed. Positive! Or, mostly sure... Why would anyfur follow him? Besides, he could always go back, find the staircase and make certain that the exit was free in case of emergency. But when he turned to backtrack, his heart sank. He knew there was nofur following, no monsters under the bed. To go back would be to admit the very opposite, to give in to the fear. It was a hard thing to do, but he showed tremulous tail to the blackness behind, set out at once again.
    On Petey went, with less than no choice now, growing impatience in his heart and paws despite his resolve to be calm. What he'd ever seen in the idea of urban infiltration, the wolfboy no longer remembered. He set himself a confident, unthinking pace, brisk enough to outrun second thoughts - then stopped suddenly to consider. And realized that he'd forgot to start count, to map out the tunnel and give an idea of where he might be. He turned to look back again. And groaned.
    "Damn." The wolf was as lost as possible in a dark hall with only two ends. Hopefully, only two ends, he added. And nofur else down there with him! He shivered, danced in his sneaks. But estimating direction, the frightened canidboy supposed that he was heading under the running track and the football field, somewhat vaguely in the direction of the main cluster of buildings which they all called the school. At least he thought it would be the school.
    Next time, he decided, I'll bring a compass.
    There was a light up ahead, and Petey felt himself magically drawn to it. Needful, in a way which made him all the more aware that he was honestly helpless and afraid. It itched beneath his pelt, crawled up his back like a dead thing. But it wasn't a shameful fear cast on him like a birthstain under fur, he realized; only one that he had sought, reveled in. Like a wild carnival ride, an underground E-ticket to scare himself blithering. More than that, too: a touch of the mysterious, the occult, that final Ouroboric dark which swallows up the whole world. Power beyond himself. Or just beyond.
    He hurried nonetheless.
    Standing on toes, Petey peered up out of the top of the tunnel wall, from whence a slotted metal grate allowed wet and greasy indoor gloom to pour down on his headfur. A pair of paws in shiny black patents clicked across composite floor, came to snappy attention facing him just inches away from his nose. The wolf heard splashing, smelled piss. White sneakers pulled up close beside the first fur, more spraying gush followed. Petey laughed aloud, realizing. He was beneath the field bleachers, under the snack and restroom building, where the junior ROTC and band and other furs of that sort all hung out of a day. And snickered in spite of himself with the incongruity of relief, the warmth of companionship even so intimately strange.
    Until he heard, "What the hell?" Petey hurried on into unknown night, eager to prevent perilous discovery.
    The fading light, if only brief brightness at floor level under a urinal, had lifted his spirits, his tail. So, too, the presence of other furs. Petey thought about that, of how he hated the prospect of growing up, getting alone. He did stop briefly, look back as even he hadn't at the stairway door when he'd first made a start. Was it the light he craved most, Petey wondered, or the anonymous furs he'd left in that otherworld seemingly so far behind?
    A fetid smell reached his nose only just before his paw found the puddle. Dank, ripe. Repulsive. The wolf figured it was rain, some stagnant oily runoff stinking away in a place never touched by day. Then it pulled the sneaker right off his sock. "Ick!" He'd read about sewer tunnels, knew those had to be avoided at all costs. But this wasn't the same sort of underground passage as those that conduct rainwater or 'the sanitary needs of the community'. 'Sanitary' - the wolf would have laughed at that scatologic euphemism, had he not been in such immediate distress. Petey examined the roof with the beam of his flash light, the undersides of the pipes and conduits which ran beside him and over his head. Certainly one had to be a wastepipe, he figured. But none seemed to be leaking, and the smell wasn't exactly a bathroom odor.
    He hesitated, willies in his tail, suddenly wanting nothing less than to cast his light on the floor, chilled at horror thoughts of just what he might find. This was too much like a book he'd read last holiday - and Mr. King always knew what scared the wolf worst. Petey had never smelled a corpse, didn't figure he'd stepped in anyfur he knew. Still, it was the hardest thing he remembered ever doing as he aimed the pocket torch at where his paw had just been. The boyfur burst into giggles. The rain channel, a narrow and shallow depression which drained the center of the tunnel, a tiny trough only a pawbreadth wide, had succeeded in snagging his shoe as he stepped carelessly into it. Petey pulled the sneaker free, leaned his furry butt against the damp moldy wall to put it on again, velcro everything up nice and secure.
    A dead paw grabbed his bottom.
    The wolfboy screamed, leaped away, nearly bashing himself unconscious on the roof. The tunnel shook and rang, alive with rumbling echo. He would have run, had his tennies been tight. When he swept his light behind like a panicked sword, he saw only a purple plant, some subterranean succulent with discolored fleshy fingers, pulpy and bruised and corrupt, growing down into darkness through a void in the cement. Petey shuddered to his toes nonetheless, aware how he had lost himself in the lore and peril of underground exploration. Aware of how he'd almost wet his jeans. He'd so forgotten everything, school and showers, and troubles at home and with furiends, that the boycanid hardly recognized himself, crouching in the sunless dank sarcophagus to which he'd come at call.
    Was he there to revive the dead? he wondered. Or to bury something?
    The tiny wolf stood, straightened himself up. Rubbed smut from his paws, wiped nose on his sleeve. Then opened his muzzle in the vault of sodden cement and howled down a mile of resonating sepulchral blackness that would never see stars. It was a roar and a bellow, a yell like even pain of birth had never torn from his throat: eternal youth, in defiance of death and darkness and dark beyond. His eyes streamed from the effort and his scrotum even hurt. He howled long and loud with exultation, knowing at last what he was there for; what had chased him; what he was there to entomb.
    Fear.
    He laughed himself silly for joy.
    And when finally he reached environs airier and brighter and more populous, tried a few doors before coming upon one that would budge, the wide-eyed wolf found himself in the boy's gym locker room, looking the coach in the face.

    "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Lemme go! Gerroff you son of a mother's..."
    The coach swung the wolfboy by the ear, slammed him roughly into a desk chair in the office near the equipment cage. It smelled of mold and elastic and horror. The filing cabinet rattled like bones. "Mate, you 'n me are about ta go waltzing matilda! Now what the hell are you doing in the change room before school? And what were you doing in the utility tunnels? And WHAT IN HELL WAS ALL THAT FOOKIN' HOWLING ABOUT??" The huge hound with tiny eyes frothed rabid at the muzzle.
    Petey hung his head, and a tear rolled down his nose. He barely refused to cry in front of his dad; seemed to have less compunction about lacrimary release in the presence of other male authority figures.
    Or perhaps he was just that scared.
    "They heard you in bloody Melbourne, they did!" The muscular bull terrier was livid in the face, wide ugly muzzle knotted, neck sinews tight and straining at his singlet.
    The boywolf sniveled, kept still, tail lowered by threat. Petey knew when not to fight. When even showing throat would only bring a savaging rip. He bit fangs into his lip until it hurt.
    "Every 'roo in Sidney shat Vegemite, I'll tell you. Now you've got some explaining to do. Or are we hie-off to see Principal Gace right now?"
    The principal hadn't even figured into Petey's trembling notion of punishment. For the first dawning moment he realized how close he might be to actually getting expelled.
    "Talk, dammit!" The coach had leaned over from the desk on which he sat, one paw on the floor, and screamed in the wolfboy's face. Fangs sprayed, snot leaked from his nose.
    It worked. Petey babbled. "I was looking around and... I got curious and so sometimes I... There was this door, you see, and..." He trembled too badly to form coherent thoughts, regretted almost instantly having given up the right to remain silent. The dam had burst, and there was no way of embanking the flood. His essential sorrowful defensive reserve had been compromised by own choice, and he now nauseously carried away out of control.
    The world spun as the coach seized the swivel chair.
    "If you won't talk, son, I will. To the headmaster." He shoved the boy painfully against the wall. "That's done. I know your kind, and I'm just tired of it. You sneak when there's nofur around, you hide out and break in and spy when nofur's looking! And then you get caught, and you whine and cry like a babyfur!"
    Petey was indeed crying, out of his mind and powerless to stop.
    "You were sneaking around the pool the other day, weren't ya? Coppin' a peek and such! You pervy little creep!" The pitbull wrinkled his muzzle in disgust.
    "But I wasn't..."
    "I'm sick of it! Do you hear me? SHUT THE FOOK UP!"
    His shout made Petey swallow tears, choke. He crossed his legs protectively over himself.
    "And in the meantime, I've got other business with you. Yeah, you, Mr. My-Pelt's-Too-Good-For-A-Wash-Up! Have a look at this!" He stood, jerked Petey's chair around in front of the desktop monitor. The bull terrier had a pup in his jaws; knew he could dispatch such a one with a shake.
    "You use a computer?" Petey's paw went to his own muzzle in late remorse. The machine was only a Mac, after all. But he hadn't meant to say anything like, to inflame the enraged canid to greater heights of small-eyed sadism.
    "BLOODY FOOKIN' HELL!" The stocky dog slammed his huge fistpaw on the desk, upsetting cups of old coffee. "You are so heading for a beating, young wolf! You just shut that snarky muzzle of yours and read this email. I got it this morning. From your dad!"
    The wolf swore that without looking, he could hear the coach's smirk. He mouse-clicked on the browser. Then Petey clamped his tail down hard. It couldn't be. He'd held out for the moment that it must have been a lie, that the coach would stoop to anything to humiliate him. But it was all too true; his father's office domain address confirmed the outrageous extremity. Petey got pale and sick and shaky, the text message swam before his eyes as his paws went limp.
    "Seems like you've had a bit of a biscuit back at home over change room, haven't you?" The beast was slick and confident. Commiserating, even. Subtle. The cruel smile reached his tiny eyes, topped the absent forehead where his brain should have been.
    "And forgetting your towel so you don't have to shower up?
    "Oh, yeah, and goldbricking it so I let you out of class early!"
    The furboy's ears burned, and not from the vicious twist administered by the coach's paw. He knew he was being screwed over, betrayed by his parents and manipulated by the coach. Humiliated far beyond nakedness. Why had he not been able to see it coming?
    But it had been too huge, too impossible, too slaying and final a stroke. They had overwhelmed his defenses jointly and severally - brutally - tossed him about, an expert team at savage volleyball. Hooking up like that would have been unthinkable for them, Petey swore denying, even as he re-read the damning email.
    "Well, there it is. I knew it when you made yourself vomit the other morning. Your mom and dad both know. They've seen what you're doing. And they're sick of it too. In fact, they're just as ashamed as can be! More ashamed than I am, in fact. Read it! Read what they wrote! And they don't know about your nasty gym-spying yet. Oh no! What'll they think of that, Petey? Hmm? What will it be like to look them in the eyes when I tell them?"
    The wolfboy's soul dissolved to dry ash, blew away in the wind.
    "Not like you need to care, however: we'll all be ashamed more than enough for you."
    Petey didn't in the least doubt that his parents were ashamed. Outraged. He could almost see their faces, the looks of their own acid betrayal and caustic smoldering disgust. It was all too easy to imagine, how they would turn his own suffering to grounds for their own victimization.
    "And I do not for the fookin' life of me know what's wrong with you. All the other boyfurs in this school - and all the other schools I've ever taught - they've all done what they've had to after gym. Do you have some sort of problem, son? You afraid of somefur seeing yer sheath?"
    The wolf felt himself go dizzy, as if he might faint. He sank back in the chair, utterly overcome and defeated. There was no way he could fight the monster that close to his face. He wished he could simply be sick on himself, purely for the relief of it.
    "Your parents think you have a problem, son. So do I. They just don't know what it is yet - but don't worry, I'll make sure they do! They have a right to know. And they think gym will straighten you out. I'm sure of it. Make you grow up and act right. Yeah. It's not what I want, son; it's what they want! What they've told me to do!" He gloated in obvious satisfaction, sensing complete conquest, salting the meat with hormones of helpless terror as he tapped on the monitor screen.
    "But you don't care what they want, do you? Hmm? Did you read it?"
    Petey set his jaw. No, he didn't care. Knew that now, for a certainty. He was beyond caring, and found it strangely liberating. Couldn't say it aloud; knew he couldn't. But all the little strength there was left to him lay now in defiance, in the realization that his power existed in simply not caring anymore.
    The coach boiled over at the fanged lupine muzzle, tearful, yet set against him. "You just don't fookin' CARE what your parents want, you sniveling worthless cocksucking runt!" The swivel chair slammed into the filing cabinet, sent it crashing to the floor.
    Then the predator sat back quietly, paws between thick knees, even more terrifying than when he yelled.
    The wolfcub shuddered at the irrational thought, that the attack terrier could read his mind as easily as run small chisel-slit eyes over the pelt of a bare dressing boyfur. He felt stripped, vulnerable and bound, gagged with underpants and helpless with horror. The eyes screamed from his skull.
    "But you don't need to care, do you, Petey?" the beast whispered. "It doesn't matter if you do. Here's what yer parents want, and here's just what we're going to do."
    Petey panted hard, swallowed down puke. He was finally coming apart from the inside, out. And, strangely, he didn't object at all.
    "No more faking sick."
    "I wasn't faking!" he screamed, surprised at his own useless effort.
    "No more excuses not to bathe."
    "I wasn't..." There hadn't been an excuse, no possible thought to make one. Petey just couldn't!
    "No more dallying in the bogs until you run out of time and have to rush to next class."
    The wolfboy didn't know what that meant, saw now only cruel, hot, and sinister intent beneath strange words. Then caught all the rest of the stream in that shiny mental bucket, insight flooding on insight like light through a draining storm grate overhead. The email and the dissing down were just a cover for something bubble-dark and stinking and truly evil beneath. Something beyond imagining. His head spun; he reached toward the savvy clarity and clever discernment that Tommy had taught.
    It didn't help a bit. When his eyes met the coach's, he was as trapped as in a tunnel. And wanted to shriek, if only he could find his own throat.
    "I'm serious about this, Pete. There's no more room for excuses because I'm simply not letting you have time."
    But that last was actually lame, the wolf realized! He fought down panic, strove for logic, struggled to hold onto the floating straw. Wasn't it? Was the coach finally running down? Was the horror over at last? Was Petey actually going to survive with pelt intact? He dared to believe, dared to exhale. His breath was bitter, bile and fear.
    "It ends here, son."
    The wolf moaned.
    "Read it! Read what your da' wrote! 'Do whatever you have to, Peter's to fully participate in gym. No excuses.' There! There it is! Black and white for all the fookin' world. Even your fookin' parents are sick of your excuses and your crying, son!"
    Petey sensed the backtracking again, the repetition. Found firmness within his terror. Knew he was going to make it out. Hoped. Maybe not OK, maybe even expelled from school for all the other stuff, the tunneling. But alive. Intact. There's no way they could make him do anything.
    At least until he got home to his parents.
    "So! It's twenty minutes 'till eight. You have time for a shower up before class. You'll do it right now in front of me, and then on Friday after gym things will be easier. That's how it will be. C'mon on, we're going to it."
    Petey was aghast. He'd fallen eyes-open into a bottomless shaft full of sewage and snakes, struggled at the slippery sides to escape, motionless and trapped in the ancient writhing desk chair as he drowned retching. His mind absolutely could not fathom what the coach was demanding on the instant.
    "No!"
    The bulldog put an efficient halt to delay by simply snatching the young wolfcub under the shoulder, dragging him resisting to his assigned locker. "There, boy. Strip off. Full monty."
    "While you watch? No!!"
    The bull terrier reared back a paw to strike. "I will bash your face to jelly if you open your muzzle again to me!"
    Petey shook his head slowly, eyes huge and shimmering, panic building with a strange and deadly calm overarching all. It was beyond thinking what to do next. He reached into his backpack, as if in pursuit of soap.
    "Now, young fur!" The coach's paws went to the button on Petey's jeans. He would brook no more insubordination, whinging futile resistance against him.
    Then Petey's left paw was in the coach's headfur, his right on the handle of his dad's hunting knife. The canidboy's voice was cold and fateful. "Let me go. Now. Or you won't see home and your wife tonight."
    The bulldog knew he'd been caught. Realized his proud rage had caused him to compromise not only his career and his professional self fursonally, but his own life as well. He stood off balance and crouched, center of gravity too far forward for a save, with the furboy's paw controlling firmly between his ears. And weapon unknown in the desperate wolf's grip. He saw the kit's tendons knot as the paw flexed dangerously around it, shifted with pad-wet nervous tension; saw it move ominous and evident beneath the fabric of the backpack. It was no amazing feat for the dog to know that he was owned. He wouldn't be the first teacher he knew to die by the claws of a student.
    The coach was sure he could bargain, capitulate and promise. Betray later - he was, after all, the one in charge of the situation! Figured he could perhaps even invoke his own authority, voice firm and clear and commanding. But he didn't know Petey for certain, had no clue how the wolfboy on the edge would react - guessed it was almost worth a chuckling try, from how easily the canidcub had been put to tears earlier. Then there was always begging... but the bulldog gave that not a thought. He could choose the more heroic and daring approach, to jump away, turn tables by force and surprise. But he neither trusted own speed and beer-addled agility, nor the limit of the kit's videogame-honed reflexes. They both had years of practice for that one moment, and the advantage was not in his favor.
    Frank surrender was best, the coach decided. And raised his paws, backed away carefully.
    Petey knew on the instant that he'd been had!
    "OK, Pete. We're done with that now. No need to go and do something crazy."
    The panic-eyed boy saw him sneaking for defensive space, realized that the balance had shifted. It was self-defense only as long as the wolf was cornered, only if he could kill the dog dead on the first stroke. The knife that had maybe saved him was now no asset. He was in way over his head, and couldn't think anymore, just one armed kit hopeless and hopelessly out of control, thirty seconds on the nightly news and no more.
    And it wasn't even eight o'clock yet.
    "You touched me!" he screamed. "You were gonna pants me! You pervert! You fucking creep!" He harried the coach as the broad-muzzled bull terrier fell back, the wolflet dragging the napsack and its unseen contents with him along the damp-dark dressing room bench, yelling in a desperate and futile attempt to attract attention, attacking to keep the attacker off guard. Uncertainty in the other canid's eyes was his only furiend. He knew doubt and youth would destroy his own nerve the instant he quit shouting.
    "Petey, stop screaming. Just stop it." The bulldog's strong tone was assurance and cold fatherly logic. "No more of that now." Projected authority trying not to pee its pants.
    The voice was almost soothing, the sound of command and patriarchy, an ancient instinctual drumming; the tribal urge to give up, to obey and submit and follow the alpha. It was nearly Petey's undoing.
    "Yer sick, Coach! It's you, not me!" He fought anew, struggled for level. Spat slime, swallowed tears. "Yer the one who's messed up here!" It reminded him all so much of his dad. He shook bodily, groaned, fighting a second front now. "Yer one sick puppy and you know it!"
    The wolfboy was suddenly sure he was going to lose.
    "Petey, just look at me. You know what's happening here. You're smart. You can see where this is leading. You're going to give me your backpack, and we're going to sit and have a quiet talk. Honest and grown up-like. That's what you want to be, Petey. You want to be adult about this. You want that, don't you?" If he couldn't bluster and patronize himself to safety, the coach could at least bore Petey to death. He had no doubt about the outcome now.
    "Shut up! Just shut up! You tried to touch me, you bastard!" He banked his panic, feeding it, feeding off it, letting it consume his soul. Petey knew he would be a hollow shell in only seconds.
    And then he would die.
    The coach dropped his paws, glanced to the side with an expression of brutal frankness, fearless and noble masculine honesty. "Pete, look. I'm the teacher. You're the student. You've got a weapon. And no witnesses." He smirked, rotten as mold on the locker room ceiling, while his meaning ate into the boycanid like an evil parasite. "Who're they gonna believe, Petey?
    "You?
    "Or me?"
    When the wolfboy's tail cleared the row end of lockers, his escape was open. He took it. The coach leaped after, fell over the end of a changing room bench. There was a sickening splintery crack. Petey had the presence of mind to draw weapon from his pack, brandish it in his crippled pursuer's face.
    "Flashlight, tailhole!" He took off running flat out, screaming, hit the front doors amid the morning press of students, so hard that the wireglass exploded.

    Petey had the sense of all pursued wolves to go to ground - fast! It was probably why he wasn't caught and arrested. The coach went raving for reinforcements, but Gace the principal - an old classmate and ally - wasn't in the habit of arriving early: his way of boosting own political position. And there wasn't much that could be done presently anyway, as the bulldog was at a loss to be able to explain exactly why he wanted Petey found and brought to him in the first place. He hemmed and hawed and negotiated with Mrs. Gleason, lately more of a firebrand than usual, surreptitiously reduced his greedy request for vengeance to a polite page for Petey to come by the gym office when he might please.
    And upon the first moment that the secretary understood just whom the coach was trying to enlist her to harass, she shivered and moaned, agreed to anything just to get the crazy canid and his stinking bottled hormones out of her office. In the end, the Queen of Admin officially dismissed the complaint as something the teacher would have to settle at earliest permitting convenience of the student's class schedule. That was the gist and verbiage of the campus email she sent (cc:'ing Gace to cover her tail), and promptly erased from the school server after delivery. The badger lady had the good sense to know when she was beaten, the savvy to wiggle her way out! She smirked at her institutional coup. Made note of the fursonal slight for later.
    But things were not all well for Mrs. Gleason. That portion of salary she was already stuck shelling out to the very same boyfur pinched her severely. She might even have to forego Wednesday night meeting at church, rather than pass the plate untithed. It raised her hackles unpleasingly. If only she could find a way to let the Phys. Ed. teacher have his way, without drawing her into the fray if he failed. Not priority that morning, she adjured. But soon. Soon.
    She picked up the phone, dialed her minister for advice.
    The coach didn't let the situation bother him either, smug and muscled and self-assured. He reclined again in his office, inhaling the erotic scent of shower mold and soap, wet fur and socks. Smirked. It was only a matter of time. He was betting that Friday morning P.E. class was going to be one that a certain wolfboy would never forget.
    Nor would the football team.

    Francis hummed a soft tune in his light but gravelly voice (the small adult cat perpetually caught in puberty) as he keyed the door of that room behind the second floor closet. And made his surprise kindly matter-of-fact. "Oh, hi. I didn't know you were here - sorry. I'll just...
    "You're crying."
    Petey nodded. He was shaking like a raped leaf, sobbing for all he was worth. Charming, he thought bitterly, of the janitor not to point that out, too.
    "Well, stay here and rest for as long as you want. It's more private than most places." Off-limits to students, but that didn't distress the cat. He turned to go. "Is there anything I can get you?"
    The wolfboy shook his head, scrubbed nose on the back of a paw. "A new life."
    The janitor smiled wryly. "I ordered a case of those a few years back. Funny, I don't think they've come in yet." He patted Petey on the shoulder. "No hurry. Stay here as long as you like."
    "Thanks."
    "Kitto, do you have a furiend maybe you'd like me to find for you? I'm pretty good at getting hold of furs and other stuff on the queue-tee. Helps, with the sort of job I do."
    "No, sir. Thanks." There was a hideous purple pillow on the ugly Santa Fe sofa, but Petey cuddled it to himself anyway. Wondered how many sniffling kits had needed that same pillow in the past. Why it sponged so horribly in his nose.
    And just what the janitor's real job really was.
    "Umm, I was wondering... Is this yours?" The stripeycat produced a ballcap from the bib of his work overalls.
    "Yeah, thanks. How'd you know?"
    "Found it in the North Lateral. Saw you near the basement boiler room earlier. I can do the math." He grinned, teasing. Knew the kits often thought little of his intellectual skills. At least the ones who didn't know him.
    Petey held the hat in paws. He'd been too busy that morning to miss it.
    "Hay, how did you get out from that point? There aren't many places up from there that don't take keys."
    Petey told him. Then said more. In the end, he wound up in sobbing wracks and snout-dripping snorts, reliving the whole forced locker room nightmare in the custodian's arms. He clung to the small and comforting cat as if his life depended on it - and perhaps it did. Francis scritched the boy's headfur gently, soothed as best he could.
    "Little wolf, I think we need to do some things real quick. Will you let me help?"
    Petey nodnodded, eyes wet and huge. It seemed like forever since anyfur asked to help. He cried all over the janitor's work shirt, staining it with his tears.
    The cat's beeper sounded. "Damn. Probably the broken door glass." Then he grinned. "It can wait! I'm not so flatpawed around here, after all."
    The canid liked the custodian. Found his sweet self-involvement amusing. He trusted intention, hoped smarts and skill would match. But couldn't stop crying to save himself.
    "First, I think, we'll get your furiend. You need him. And if I'm not off by too much, he'll be needing you, too. What's his name?"
    Francis left briefly, brought back a soda returning. "Got you this. Drink it slow, though." He didn't want Petey so upset by the time that Tom arrived. For both the boyfurs' sakes. "OK, next. The knife - you've really got one? This is a 'no tolerance' school. You could get whacked just for having it. Let me see your pack."
    Petey handed it over, and the cat dug out the weapon. "My dad'll cut my tail off if I lose it," the wolflet said.
    Francis chuckled. "Lot worse will happen if you hang onto this - and get caught, anyway. But I'm not taking it. I'll just hide it for a while in case they come looking, or they want to take you to a bathroom someplace and check."
    Petey winced, whined, appreciating at last how much trouble he was in by the sudden fatal confluence of fears. In his present state, strip search would be certain cause for the razor blade.
    The wolfboy's instant fit of shivering crouch told Francis that he'd struck nerve unrealizing. The cat licked his own nose, found the chess board in Petey's things. "Oh, wow. My friend in school used to have one of these. Do you play?"
    "No, not very well." Petey moaned, so wished Tommy was there of a sudden. Was startled at that need, his first for anyfur. He clutched the pillow tighter.
    "Neither do I. But we can try it sometime, right?" Francis didn't know what to say, how the situation had gotten away from him. Shook his head.
    Petey nodnodded. "OK." He'd agree to anything just then. It was the best he could do.
    "Good, that's taken care of. Next... Oh, visitor - back in a sec." And when the absent cat returned confidently from the outer room, Tommy was with him. "Sometimes I can get a few things done around here," the janitor commented with a happy smirk. "It's all about knowing how."
    The watery wolfboy smiled sadly looking up, almost cried again when he caught his foxbuddy's eye.
    "Oh my gosh, I've been so worried!" Tommy came close, checked out his furiend. "You wouldn't believe what I've heard this morning!"
    Petey had been nowhere to be found after the story of the broken door reached the fox. There was rumor of a fight in the locker room, screaming murder in the basements, and another - unconnected and unconfirmed - of Petey having had a freak out. The whole school was still on edge after the bizarre assembly earlier that week, and deductive embellishment played havoc with truth. Lockdown was declared, and police now patrolling the corridors. The two sat side by side, talked together quietly for a few shivering adrenaline moments, the wolfboy being rather sparing with details as he tried still to pull himself together. He felt too drained to rehash any more than absolutely necessary. Too protective of his own bruised furriness to trust more than he must.
    Tommy actually petted the boywolf's damp and trembling paw. Sensed that the story wasn't complete, that Petey wasn't ready to tell.
    It didn't matter. The fox was growing in ways that eclipsed his vacation summer.
    "OK, good so far. Next, we shouldn't stay here. This secret room -" Francis giggled like a boyfur, showing whitest fangs "- isn't all that secret. But there's another. Heck, the school's got more holes than a troop of lesbian mice in a Swiss cheese dairy. C'mon, I know where to go."
    Petey and Tommy snorted nervously at the weird obscenity, followed with as much eagerness as the school custodian had a right to expect on the moment.
    The cat led the fox and wolf through another door opening onto a tiny bathroom. He unfastened the refuse wall unit from its bezel, opening a slender but passable portal. They could see a long low space leading away behind, rough and unfinished and exposed like an ugly habit, the dusty insides of walls never meant for occupants' sight. Low indeed, as they had to crawl quaddie, tails in each other's faces in the dark, a meager supply of light dripping from occasional leaky cracks in old yellowed plaster. They could hear classroom noises through the lath on their left, continued onward in creeping silence.
    "Wait here," the janitor whispered to them, after they had reached a little vestibule. He popped what turned out to be an access panel, and the boyfurs caught a glimpse of pastel wallpaper. Then moments later a scream, and Francis' voice saying, "Ooh, sorry ladies. Closed for cleaning. Didn't you see the sign?"
    Tommy and Petey piled out. "Where are we?" the fox asked, brushing grit from his knees. He was wide eyed with excitement and grinning - though still blind from their dark, dirty pilgrimage - a blushing virgin to UE given an initiation by a tittering master.
    Petey grinned. He'd never been in the girlfur's bathroom before.
    "Third floor, east wing. Faculty john. Somewhere near the library." Francis was pasting an 'Out Of Order' sign on the door, giggled at his own self-perceived cleverness.
    "Library?" asked Tommy. "You can't get there from here."
    The cat nodded. "Right. But that won't stop us. The crawlspace went under the windows of eight classrooms. The next part is even better!"
    Tommy bounced on toes. Petey looked greyer than ever.
    "C'mon. But let's be inconspicuous when we leave here."
    They departed the girlfurs' bathroom in series, spacing their exit into the classroom corridor and hoping not to attract attention as they slipped out. It was dangerous, travelling in the open like that. If the boyfurs were being sought at that very moment, they most risked being caught at that point in their flight. The janitor led them across the way and down the hall a dozen paces, to a vent beside the air duct, removed it with a pocket screwdriver. He kept looking about, over his shoulder and back down the staircase, in fear of discovery. "Quick! In you go!"
    They went not just in, but up as well, scaling a wooden ladder stained with a decades-thick patina of pawprints. It smelled ancient. The tin ductwork around them was close and stifling, played dim reflective tricks. The boyfurs could hear an ominous rattle far in the distance, feel a trembling of the air about them.
    Tommy shivered, wondering what it would be like to be caught in the ventilation shaft when the massive basement blowers began to rotate.
    A door - the real and common sort, with an ordinary knob to turn - opened easily under Francis' key. "Very quiet now. Be careful of the floor."
    When Petey and Tommy piled out of the duct, making only as little noise as boyfurs can, they were utterly amazed. The cockloft over the library shimmered before them, a deep and hazy golden cathedral baking in an oven. Translucent skylights admitted massive amounts of hot cloudless sun, and the aisle of unpainted plywood leading away over beams like pews below, the sheeting under tiles of the peaked roof above, muted the world to a soft amber dream. Distance was difficult to judge in the strange geometric parallax, crisscrossed by dark struts and supporting pillars of aged fir, but it seemed the basilic space stretched on for half a mile, a round rose window at the far end augmenting the ecclesial aspect.
    They descended from a little landing railed and banistered by wall studs, sneaked silently across the ceiling of the library below. There was another door on the same end of the attic, and when that was shut securely behind their tails, the grinning cat said, "Ha! Much better."
    They were in a bedroom.
    "Do you really live here?" Tommy asked in disbelief and awe. He'd seen so much, nothing could be impossible now!
    Francis grinned. "No. Just a private place to come once in a while." There was a high double bed with a puffy comforter, white and lilacs and skirted about the bottom. It was very fresh and clean, but at the same time, very old. Magic. The room was cool and cozy and welcoming, an English fieldstone house with a low roof from a fable. The boys took the mattress; the cat eased himself into a tall and narrow high-backed chair, turned walnut and red velvet. It had the look of a throne. His feline tail lashed through the slats, found a comfortable spot, yawned, curled up for sleep.
    "How you doing, Petey?"
    "OK," the wolfcub replied. He was still trying to catch up - mentally, emotionally - more than a bit bewildered and turned out by their unusual journey, the even stranger destination. And the reason they were flying in the first place. "Is this where you're taking us?"
    "Yes. It's safe here, and it seems like you needed that. We can relax and talk for a bit." He pawed at his nose. "You'll want to think what to do."
    Petey sighed, nodded. What to do. His mind was still battered, spinning about in a vortex stream of unreality, which the secret crawl through walls and ascent of the transcendant air ducts did little to help. He was feeling calmer, though. Almost safe.
    Perhaps even safe enough to risk another exhausted cry.
    Which he did, without meaning to. Francis looked away, let Tommy do what was needed. The fox's heart was learning, his paw; and he took the other boy close, covered tail with tail. Petey whimpered, "You guys believe me, don't you?" The coach's final argument had hurt worst, turned his world upside down. Even running and hiding as they had done, the wolf felt there would be no escape. His heart was crushed in a vise of self doubt, handle broken off as the barn was set aflame.
    Tommy nodded, patted Petey's arm. "Yeah. I believe you."
    The striped cat caught the wolfcub's sneaker in one paw returning. "Of course I do. We're risking a lot to help here, but I'm sure you've figured that out."
    Petey meeped guiltily; Tommy gave the janitor a look of gratitude and annoyance.
    "So. Now what to do..." More of frank knowing sadness than purpose and planning. The cat was as tied up in the whole horrible mess as either of the boyfurs themselves, and he knew it.
    "Kill him," Tommy stated flatly.
    "Hmm. Best solution is always the simplest," he cat agreed. "However, Occam's Razor isn't for slitting throats. Although in this case, Bill and I could make an exception..."
    Petey shivered. He'd come so awfully close to pulling the knife - to having to - plunging it hilt-deep into the tattooed and overmuscled neck of the canid gym teacher.
    "Call the cops?" The wolfboy's throat was tight, scratchy, tumbleweed dry like the moment he realized he'd spoken an embarrassing answer to a math problem in class. Only this was so much more critical than formulas and sums.
    "Maybe. But there was that special assembly the other day, you know..."
    Petey remembered it. The bloodhound officers flanking the raving ursine principal seemed as content to let the lunacy go on as to stand there at mindless attention. "Are they his furiends?"
    Francis grinned wryly. "Smart boy. The principal and the coach are furiends. Perhaps 'furiends' isn't quite the word, but you do get the problem. There's alliances. Nofur operates on their own here. And you can never tell just who you're taking into your confidence when you speak to one."
    It seemed all so hopeless to the wolfboy. He meeped with despair.
    "But we can go to the cops!" Tommy insisted. "Forget Coach and the Principal."
    "It goes beyond just the school, Tom. Besides the possibility that the cops might not believe Pete - yeah, the coach wasn't lying about that - they might not want to believe. The principal will see to that. He's got more than a little power around these-here parts."
    "But that's not right!"
    "That's the trouble with cops: Justice isn't right - and Law isn't real unless you can convince the police that they ought to help you. That they want to help you. It's a bit harder for them than driving around eating doughnuts. Usually involves at least a touch of tough mental work as well. And if they weren't so lazy and stupid and dull, they wouldn't be cops in the first place."
    Tommy grinned. He liked the janitor, too. Felt at last they had a furiend they could count on, a grown-up who wasn't all about hurting and controlling and the sort of manipulation that mixes authority and betrayal so deep into the soul that love becomes a sick-making thing. He was already nauseous with worry over the situation, but trusted that the two canidboys were in the best paws they could find.
    "If you can't offer a cop excitement to get him to do what he ought, there's other ways. First, there's money." The cat looked over the smallfurs, shook his head sadly. "Allowances won't get us anywhere, not even with what they pay me on top."
    The fox wanted to up the ante with the expected monthly contribution to their fursonal education fund from that generous benefactor, Mrs. Gleason. Stayed silent, though, as that was Petey's scam.
    "The other way to interest a cop is by threatening his job. They're all cowards at heart when it comes to feeling like they can take care of themselves financially. And cops aren't paid all that well anyhow. But that's something your parents would be better at exploiting than us three." He turned to the wolfboy. "Petey? What about your parents? Would they believe you? Would they support you to go to the authorities?"
    The small grey canid hung his head, drooped his ears, turned paws over and over in his lap. It had already played out in his mind, the scene of himself confiding the morning's events to his mom and dad. His mother's dramatic assumption of the mantle of victimization, as if she herself had been assaulted to offend; his father's righteous infuriation that such a complicated and involving turn of events should sweep the elder wolf from the petty control over own life which he considered just due and proper. Petey slipped pads shamelessly to the front of his pants, grasped himself through fabric. Not since he was three years old had he suddenly been so hopeless and helplessly close to wetting.
    "I don't think my parents would be on my side." His voice faltered as he pronounced the doom on himself.
    Tommy passed an arm around the boywolf's shoulder, rested his furiend's head on his neck. His own old and run-down house, the small and poor bedroom didn't seem like the worst that life could dish out, now.
    The cat saw urgency, hastened things along. "You could run away, but that's no way to prepare for a life. You could change schools...
    "I'm sorry about your parents Petey. That's one of the saddest things in the world, when they don't make you feel loved."
    "But they do love me!" the wolfboy protested. It rang in the air.
    The cat hung his head; Tommy sighed out.
    It felt to Petey like another of those wrong Math answers caught too late.
    "What am I going to do?" A wavering whine from the weary wolf. Tommy kissed his headfur unnoticed. Francis meeped.
    The cat studied the braided rug over floor boards, said, "I don't know. I don't have all the answers - never said I did. But I think you're going to have to rely on yourself. Be brave and face things."
    "Showers?" Petey trembled, shivered, feeling at last finally and fully betrayed. Tears prickled his eyes; his sheath ached.
    Tommy tightened his snug around the wolf's shoulders. It couldn't end like that. It just couldn't!
    The cat opened his eyes, shrugged. "If you're that uncomfortable, Petey, then I would say not. It could harm you more than even you know. But then, you'll have to decide that. There's nothing the world throws at you that you can't handle, but the way that you have to handle it might be very far from clear at first. And mistakes are sometimes too horrible to think about.
    "But look for opportunities, for other ways. You make your own luck, you know. Mostly by keeping your eyes and ears open, your head and heart and muscles ready. Louis Pasteur said it: luck favors the prepared mind. But sometimes to get what you need, you sometimes have to risk everything to get it. Luck..." He broke off, stroked his own tail. "I had a furiend - best furiend - when I was only a little older than you both. I didn't pay attention to things between us, and..." He sat up, released the self-soothing member. "Tee-em-eye, as you cubs would say. But my life turned out pretty good, all in all. Married, nice house, kits. His, on the other paw..."
    Francis was silent, leaned forward in his chair, sniffied at Petey. Then Tommy. Then the two furboys together. "Hmm. No, not yet. Someday, perhaps..." He brought himself back from bemusement. "What was I saying now? Oh, yeah. Luck. Petey, your good luck always costs somefur. Somefur else somewhere always pays for any good thing which we get. So be careful of using that luck without cause. And always remember to be merciful and kind when you do."
    He thought silently of that long-ago furiend, who had willingly but unwittingly paid for the good in the cat's own life, at the expense of his very own.
    Tommy looked at his watch, started right off the mattress. "Oh my gosh we're really late!" He had miscalculated conservatively in his shock. The boyfurs had both missed the entire first period, were already tardy for the second.
    "I can take care of that," Francis stated with a smirk. "Gace and I have an understanding. Or: he thinks we have an understanding, but I understand him instead. Very different things, those. In the meantime, maybe the best advice is to stay out of sight, stay away from the coach, the cops - and the Principal, too. Although... well, if Gace doesn't know already, I think I can keep him from finding out. For a while, anyway." He scritched Petey between the ears. "I'm sorry I couldn't do better for you. If it were up to me, you could stay hidden here forever. But life isn't all fantasy treehouses, and you always have to face the fangs later."
    Petey nodded, stood. Knew it was over; didn't want it to end. He dropped to his knees in front of Francis' chair, put the cat's paw to his own muzzle. "I know what you are," he whispered, tears coming again to his eyes. He couldn't struggle anymore. "Thanks."
    Tommy swallowed a lump, got on the floor too. The janitor's pads were soft against his face, reason fuzzy and comfortable and warm. A paw in his headfur told him that he wasn't alone with Petey in the fight which he knew was to come, for which he was to prepare. That maybe the small cat's words were true, and they could make their own luck. But he knew one thing for certain, as evident and apparent as his own red pelt prostrate before that throne.
    He was on Petey's side, to the very end.
    Francis led them downstairs, yet to another hidden closet. He discovered a small box, forged a pair of excuse slips and hall passes, complete with the principal's signature from a rubber stamp. Admired his work. Tommy and Petey giggled, beamed at him in conspiracy, squeezed the kindly cat's paws there in the damp and smelly confines of the mop room when at last they had to go.
    "Thanks for everything," Petey offered. He stood on toes, rubbed his muzzle beside that of the shy and blushing cat.
    "And for showing us all that hidden stuff. And your room." Tommy was greatly satisfied with the adventure. Excited almost nauseous for whatever was to come.
    Francis looked askance, smirked. "Dude! You don't seriously think that was my room, now do you?"
    Petey and Tommy glanced at each other, feeling they would never know all of what was going on, not between the walls nor between the staff and faculty members. They again took Francis' fuzzy paws betwixt their peaked ears. He wished them well, sent them on their furry way.
    The canidboys hurried, stealthily slinking along the empty hallways just to make sure they weren't interrupted by a curious teacher. Lockdown had been cancelled, but occaisional cops roamed the corridors. They dropped quad when they got near a window, checked carefully for observers when they drew close to a door. Not that they had much to fear, bogus permission forms in paws. But the delay would only make it worse when they finally arrived at their English class, padded in with all eyes upon them, slunk nervously to seats.
    And in the middle of the deserted ground floor hallway, they met Jason.
    "Dammit, I've been looking all over for you," he said, with sweat and irritation, on edge from the rumors and security reaction. He checked himself; wary, embarrassed eyes narrowed to feline slits. Drew up with ample coolness, and pressed small white waxed bags into the paws of the boyfurs. "Here." About-facing, he left.
    Tommy nosed into a sack, Petey did the same. "Jelly doughnut?"
    The wolf withdrew his muzzle, spotted the retreating cheetah at the end of the corridor. Pounded after. Sneaks squeaked as he caught the cat.
    "Jason?" He blushed, forced himself to look up. The other boyfur was so tall, older, so handsome. "Thanks. You don't have to do this anymore." He realized that exacting the daily bakery bribe from the spotty feline wouldn't please a certain stripey one.
    The cheetah shook his head in disgust, turned away.
    Petey padded slowly back down the hall to where Tommy stood watching.
    "What was that about?" He licked his muzzle, drooling in sweet anticipation. At his furiend's glance, he wiped penitently on a paw.
    "Nothing." The wolfboy was tired, sad. His good deed hadn't gone unpunished. But it was mercy, a deposit to pay in advance for luck he would surely have to use.
    Even if Jason hadn't understood.
    What if Francis had been wrong?
    They didn't make it to class that hour anyway, sat on the daring front steps with grease on paws, granulated sugar on their muzzles. It was nice, fresh air and plain reality clearing their heads, carbohydrates helping them reintegrate into the ordinary world from whence adventure and attack and peril and magic had so lately taken them. They were ignored when spied by cops; the jelly doughnut hath its privilege. And as Mr. King has said about cubhood, just because you face monsters in the morning doesn't mean you can't have an extra chilidog at lunch.
    It was only time for study hall, not the noontide meal, when next the bell rang. The corridor before them entering flooded like a storm drain with inrushing students, some sluggish along the walls, some rising on a surge to upper floors, other racing in turbulent flow to their downstairs destinations. The canids spotted Cassie, red around the eyes and angry as she huddled standing beside Jason. The cheetahboy's posture was tense, straining, even as he hunched over her protectively, a guilty and miscalculated battle within written outwardly upon his pelt. Emerald hung back ever so near, appearing quite ecstatic and overjoyed, as she simultaneously tried to ignore Sam, a small tiger already on nearly every team that the school had. Obviously her companion du jour, who meeped suddenly when Adrian showed up, grabbed the other catboy on the pants around his tail for surprise.
    Neither Tommy nor Petey asked.
    But it was Emerald's paw on her brother's behind that spoke volumes. Expounded, recapitulated, enlarged and critiqued. Its mate, on Sam's front, translated the resulting oeuvre erotique to body language any yaoi girlfur could understand.
    Cass's eyes were sore from the sight, Kleenex livid with makeup.
    Jason goaned under the unsought weight of premature admission.
    The fox shrugged, watching. The wolfboy matched it. There was already too much drama in their small, fuzzy lives.
    The two furiends arrived early in the library for study hall, kept glancing up at the ceiling, imagining the space above. They tried to place the hidden stair and secret room, the shelter there, the rose-window niche across that sun-drenched dome so filled with unseen wings. Most of the hour, though, they spent in useless discussion about Petey's problem. It was difficult. All the answers seemed to run to dead ends. Or else to blatant impossibilities: crimes, arrest, and detention. They knew the saying, that a fur just can't think outside of the box he was raised in. Tried as hard as they could to imagine what Francis would do, what new and creative ideas the smart and devious cat could come up with. And hoped they might visit him again some time. But trading long discursive notes back and forth while pretending to read their books, commenting in pawscript, and considering and reconsidering and revising and reviewing, they passed the entire period without any strategic advances or succoring brainstorms.

    "I'll be on the campus, Chastity," the big bear growled as he swaggered from the office. "The new attic alarms are going off. Heat, I think. If not, somefur's ass is mine!"
    "Very good, Mr. Gace."
    "Email me if you need, call if you must. Got to keep those cellphone minutes down."
    He bumped into Francis, scowled. "Server room fan. Didn't you just repair that this morning?"
    The cat nodnodded. "I'll get right on it. You didn't approve the requisition for the spare, though."
    The bear grunted; the janitor smirked, whistled as they passed. It would be a cold day in hell before that old bruin ever signed off on a five thousand dollar motor. And should Gehenna ever experience that frosty winter sensation, the cat had no idea what he'd do. For the requested commercial dynamo in question was a contraption ten times too large and a thousand times more expensive than the actual hardware store replacement part required.
    Francis sailed breezily into the Admin office. "Hi, Cherry. What's news?"
    Mrs. Gleason gave him a look that meant murder.
    "Hay, babe. I'm sorry about the delay on that window. My beeper's been dropped in the toilet more times than a near-sighted lioncub's tail." His grin was free for all, paws spread begging credibility.
    He didn't receive it. The badger lady obviously wasn't amused at juvenile fanginess.
    The cat came back. Shrugged, aimed for nonchalance instead. "It's just how things are these days, budget and all. But you know about tight budgets and such lately. More than my humble custodial self." Tight tailhole-bitch, he whispered under his breath. She had fursonally blocked his request for a cell phone for years.
    The secretary suddenly stopped her seething steep in estrogen to speculate at the possible insinuation. Just what did the sly striped cat in his blue work shirt know about her finances? Budgets? Surely he wasn't talking about the school's as he seemed. She kept her face unbetraying of suspicions, the double meanings like eyes within.
    "Anyway," he continued merrily. "I'm here to see the principal. It he in?"
    Underling and Swiftian flapper, unmighty herself but gateway to the mighty, the blue-haired fur smiled bureaucratically. "Perhaps."
    The janitor wiggled his nose endearingly. "Well, I - Oh, should I make an appointment or something? I know you have your rules and procedures and things down here..."
    And she was indeed all generosity. "Yes - perhaps you should. Email is acceptable."
    "Email?" Skeptical feline brows rose to headfur. "You know I don't have a computer, dearest! Where ever would I learn to use email?" He scoffed dramatically at the very notion.
    She cut him off with a single emasculating snip. "Ha! You can't even keep the server room fan running, Boots. The day you can operate a computer, I'll line up all ten of the Commandments and bowl them down with my ass!" She guffawed at her own shocking remark, daring crudeness beyond her fundamentalist wont.
    The cat chuckled. "Now Cherry, dear! Mustn't talk that way - vindictive God, and all. Such a naughty girlfur! What would your Sunday School teacher say?" He smiled so sweetly that she seethed anew, robbed shivering of her small victory.
    Or so she let the custodian believe!
    "Main Cat, the fan's out again. Get it fixed. And don't bother me with your fursonal problems."
    Francis feigned surprise, hostility behind fangs. For that last, his dramatic talents weren't stretched. "The fan? I don't believe it!"
    "Yes, the fan. Can't you do anything right?"
    He hung his head, fisted paws. Oh, how he longed to belt the bitch.
    She said: "You work here, just the same as me" - hardly true, the badger snorted derisively - "And it's all the same whether you show up each day or not. But let my server overheat, and I promise your feline tail is lunchmeat. Am I making myself quite clear?"
    "Indeed, Mrs. Gleason. If there's one job skill I do know well, it's my place. Lead me to your dinkum thinkum, and I shall repair his refrigerium!" The cat's smile was obviously forced past a smirk.
    Delightful.
    The badger lady was out of her desk with keys in one paw, unlocked the server room through pure energetic anger. How dare a mere janitor taunt her so! Why, if the school was run by a better head - a position to which she saw her own managerial skills as supremely suited - there would be no tolerance for such scandalous disrespect. She ticked off Francis' failings, his seven deadly sins. Added an eighth for good measure. Yes, she thought, I've had just about enough of him.
    Just about enough.
    The custodian thanked the secretary sweetly and sincerely in a manner that boiled her blood, surveyed the vent in the roof, made to push shut the door. He'd need to reach the grille above.
    "Just leave it open, boy," she snapped. "Security. Can't have you alone in there. No windows - you could get up to anything."
    Francis meeped with surprise. The screwdriver fell from his paw.
    "Oh, haven't you heard? New rule. Unauthorized access to the computer system is now a firing offense." She smirked in turn, herself responsible for communications to the non-networked members of the staff. And had been waiting to pull this particular trick out of the hat on the cat since she found he wasn't quite so cyber-illiterate as she'd believed.
    He writhed most obviously, between her teasing claws.
    It pleased her.
    "Cherry, dear." Francis tried to save the ploy, got very serious. Redoubled the stakes. "You're holding me up. I can't work on the chiller with the door open. And you know I don't have the foggiest idea about computers. Now you can come sit in here with me, or you can go back to your desk and pretend to work..." The custodian couldn't help but grin at her gasp. "But for me to fix the fan, the door must be shut. And locked - from inside. You wouldn't want anyfur knocking the ladder out from under me, now would you?"
    If looks could kill, the cat would have been flogged, castrated, skinned, quartered, and run over by a car. Then put to death.
    "You'll have to sign the log. Everyfur does. Time in, time out." She handed him a clipboard. "Name, signature. Social. Employee I.D. Date of birth. Hire date. Blood type..."
    To his eternal credit before the eldila, Francis refrained from asking her how to spell his own name. He waved as the steaming secretary departed the station, softly closed the door.
    Double locked it.
    Then got to work.
    The fan was running again in seconds after he shoved aside a roof panel, reset the double switch. Its mate lived in seclusion behind a roll of paper towels in a closet two floors up, and the janitor could thus both cause and effortlessly repair the ever-recurring cooling system failures at will. Next he took a seat at the server console, got 'root' via a backdoor. And chuckled as he noted that the password had been changed as of that very morning.
    It was all so easy, so ridiculously simple, playing with furs' lives like that. Of all the Seven Sins, he thought, too much Patience is the deadliest. Francis had waited for a day like this for a long, long time.
    And in her office, Mrs. Gleason's keylogger began stealthily to record the unfortunate cat's uncovered hacking. Headstripe puffed beneath her wig, she watched with drooling excitement while the monitor window duplicated what Francis was seeing as he broached the email system, spoofed a pair of messages between faculty members. But the technical details of his transgression didn't matter. It was all in evidence.
    And the cat's days at her school were over.
    Chastity poured coffee, propped slippered footpaws on the desk. Yes, she thought, it will be good to be rid of the stripey-tailed pest. She'd gone to Gace in the past about him, had even threatened a yiffy harassment lawsuit over the cat's pet name for her. But Gace had vetoed that, soothed and stroked the secretary - in a figurative sense, of course: she had her standards! - and doubled her salary. He surely couldn't believe she needed all she got. But then, he didn't know many of her other habits either, private tastes and peccadilloes.
    As may be. Things were moving now, and in a direction she wanted to go.
    Nipples peaked in her brassierre as she drew up to the workstation screen, scanned the principal's schedule while verifying that the activity monitor on the server continued to run. The bear was booked solid for the afternoon, but with accomplished multitasking efficiency, the secretary cleared two hours off his Daytimer after lunch. That should be enough. The elegant and professional badger could present the incriminating spyware log to Gace at one, have Francis dragging his pink-slipped tail out the door by three. She opened the fursonnel files, deleted his annual reviews, copied over a set of her own making ready to-paw. In short, a certain cat could now not repair a toaster in the rain to save his own pelt. She printed out copies, bound it neatly to be produced for official approval at a moment's notice. Then she set to work on Francis' termination packet.
    It was the first time she had grown wet between the legs since her own Confirmation day so many years ago.

    History period was better yet. Petey and Tommy asked for a library pass, got one. On the way, they happened to spot Emerald's sib Adrian, on an out-of-the-way stairwell landing with Cassie the vixen. Horizontal. The fox made a silent gagging motion with his paw at his muzzle, and the wolfboy rolled his eyes. After so incredible a day, nothing could upset or amaze them further.
    They found a secluded spot for themselves amid the towering library stacks this time: huge and fluffy futons afront a window, private; spent the period talking softly or resting with eyes closed. Tommy thought it would be better than trying too hard for ideas to help the wolf's situation. Maybe patience would be better, to wait and see what brainwaves come. Petey felt it was a good suggestion, too, a recharge from the emotions and excitement of the morning. He yawned a great deal, and the fox wondered if he might indeed fall asleep. That wouldn't be good at all if the coach or principal turned up. Francis said to stay on their guard, to watch out for those particular furs, to keep their eyes and ears peeled for whatever they could find. And that luck would see them both through - no, that they would make their own luck. Tommy didn't know much about making his own luck, but trusted the stripey cat implicitly. He yawned, too, catching some of what Petey had; hoped that if they could make their own luck, they would do it before tomorrow's gym class.
    They were late for lunch that day. A musculine book-pusher found them snoozing together. The librarian squeaked and chittered, shook them both with rough and impatient disgust, dished them flicks of her slender rodentine tail. The boyfurs yawned and stretched, hurried down to the cafeteria. By the time they had gotten through the serving line, their customary table was filled with furiends. There was no choice for it, and so Tommy and Petey squeezed close and shoved in.

    The principal completed his attic inspections, finished with a detour past the distant field bleachers, checked out the boys' bathroom there. It seemed empty at the lunch hour, but the bear double-checked, opening each stall door in turn. He knew that his boyfurs often got up to didoes and such that way, private and secluded as it was. So he trusted the duty to no other, never mentioned his informal mealtime investigations. Confidential. He had even found another remarkable place once, somewhere in the vicinity of the library. Shame it hadn't been there when he'd attempted to return a second time.
    Standing in the sunlight outdoors, the suited ursulid checked email on his phone. Get out of debt. Enlarge your sheath. Last all night and make her scream. Something from his secretary, reschedules for the afternoon. He swore. That badger bitch was almost not worth the trouble. Just because her daughter had seen fit to spend a few lunch periods in Gace's office, and more than a few very late nights after Francis had locked everything up and gone home, that shouldn't give the mother rights to extort the bear so.
    He sighed. Maybe she'd get PMS and die, or something.
    There was a message flagged for priority. From the coach. 'Milkshakes.'
    The principal grinned, switched off. There would indeed be some tail busted that lunch period.

    Robyn, the bull terrier in tight A-shirt stained under the arms with sweat, closed MindSweeper, minimized the porn pop-ups, dug out his flashing mail client. Found an e-card waiting from his mom, announcements of ten new ways to Work For Your$elf And Get $Rich$ Quick! And an urgent note from Gace.
    "'I have received a tip from my anonymous source that there will be milkshaking today. Meet me at the usual place. Be discreet.'," the coach read aloud, sounding out the hard words. He sighed, wished the principal could just take care of these things by himself. Not that the dog didn't savor being so included - live meat that cried out and squirmed got him hot in ways he couldn't begin to describe with so limited a vocabulary. It was just the third time that week he'd been summoned to the messy task.
    Even busting naughty boyfurs could get rather old.
    But some traditions die hard. He rubbed an aching knee, thinking of a certain boyfur who he intended to bust up quite a lot worse than the rest.

    Francis knelt alone in quiet sunlight. Forces came together in synergy, calculations of lives reduced to the common denominator of ones and zeros. He sensed and saw, knew his plan was almost ripe.
    The rose window end of the loft was stunningly beautiful, the legacy of a principal of greater generosity and conviction than the present ursine in office. The janitor tiptoed across the far ivory distance of the secular library ceiling, began his climb through towering dusty ducts to rejoin the mundane world.

    The school secretary treated herself to an expensive lunch, lingered over cheesecake. It would have been so much better to have brought a furiend, she mused wistfully, polishing claws on chintz blouse, rattling pearls. Still... unlucky. Her scheme was not yet complete, too dangerous in flux to risk possible compromise of a shared confidence.
    If only Cassie didn't abhor her adoptive mother's company so! "How sharper than a serpent's tooth..." the badger lady sighed scripturally. She waved the waiter over, presented her champagne glass for refill.
    At least the chaste and demure she-beast could enjoy the perqs of her sparkling job, while savoring the complex and satisfying taste of the custodial cat she was about to disembowel for dessert.
    'Come to the office at once,' Chastity pecked out on the keypad of her cell. Gace would probably shell out another raise. Yes. His faithful secretary certainly deserved it, she decided, as she warned the principal that he'd been set up.

    The stew was really good, rich and heavy, and both fox and wolf ate heartily, went back for seconds. Petey had never tasted cornbread before, fell in love on the instant. There was much laughter and talking at their table, the trophy of a first completed week in junior high about to be awarded to all. Nick shared out a bag of chips, Chris had brought maple taffies. Jason hurried off first, complaining of a teacher who he'd promised to meet for extra help, remarked departing that he'd see them all later. Shook paw in the air. This left only first-years, and the comraderie was comfortable. Something of the furiendliness of bootcamp graduates, the playful competition of the young in a wide and uncertain world. Tommy laughed loud; Petey absorbed furiendship through his pelt.
    They traded jokes and stories, the latest blushing, giggling gossips, a reviling toast to absent members. It seemed like Adrian was getting a bit of a reputation lately, at which the boyfurs tittered. Robert related a story about his summer job delivering papers; Simon told one about the last Scout campout. That was... disturbing. But nofur really took Spooky's surreal view of life too seriously - it was often the sort of puddling thing to melt clocks right off the wall.
    But interest flagged eventually. Lunches were consumed, laughing flatulence passed, and soon other elective obligations called. One by one the boyfurs had elsewhere to be. Soon it was down to Pete and Tom.
    The wolfboy wrung a napkin in paws on his lap. "You don't have to stick around for me," he said. "I can handle it." He kept custody of his muzzle, didn't want to press.
    Tommy lowered his nose, caught between what he wanted and what he knew he should give. "It's ok. I can miss just this once. Not sure it'd be smart to leave ya." The stress and storm of the morning was still all too present to the fox.
    "Nah. You go on. I'll be OK."
    He shook his head. "Is that what you want? You sure?" Tommy would almost rather have been asked to stay.
    No. "Yes, I'm sure. Go have fun. Just win one for me." The napkin bounced off his tray, paper petulance, mute protest in congealing stew. Petey forced a grin.
    Odd look on the fox's muzzle, then a smile. "Thanks, Pete. You're the best!" He fuzzled his furbuddy on the head.
    The wolf watched him go, trying not to feel lonely so fast. After all, he'd practically chased the fox off with a horn. He took care of their leavings, hoisted pack and headed out the door.
    Then halted. The hallway back to classrooms on the right, into which Tommy's tail had lately trotted, stood open and unguarded. It wouldn't be as risky, the wolf thought, to do his clandestine exploring in the more populated places of the school for a while. Not of course that it would be anywhere near as fun as the high-stakes infiltration of the forbidden areas: lofts and tunnels and cellars and secret rooms. But if what the principal said was true, there were a lot more security measures in place now. And far worse penalties for anyfur caught in trespass.
    So purposefully and casually, Petey started down the wrong hall, social-engineering any would-be observers with his assumed attitude of innocent confidence, counting patient paces observantly in his head. A flicker of tail up the staircase at the far end told of a fox ascending. The wolfboy got an idea. He could scout and map and survey for future explorations, or follow Tommy and find out where he went of a noontime. Which seemed the better choice, present opportunity considered. So hurrying along, Petey peeked up the stairwell behind the foxtail to be sure he wasn't seen to follow.
    The boywolf bounced on paws up a floor, glanced out into the quiet hall there. No Tommy. Up another floor. Almost walked into the fox on account of his own eagerness.
    Tommy scanned up and down the corridor, slyly, one paw poised on the boys' room door, waiting as Petey watched. There was a loud report like a pistol when he pushed it open. And voices, indistinct and echoing on tile, floated out.
    Petey meeped. Bathroom? He didn't think the fox would be so shy, end of the hall and up two floors for privacy or something. But then, there were those voices... Curious - he scratched an ear - boyfurs don't restroom in teams. He drew nearer, attempted to eavesdrop, heard nothing.
    Odd, but there were voices before, he thought. What would a whole group of guys be doing hanging out in the restroom? And every day? It was too coarse and mysterious to let go, too strange to be soluble without investigation.
    And much more interesting than the hacked fieldhouse.
    The wolf dug into his backpack, produced a vial of oil scrounged up the night before on Triggur's advice. Carefully he lubricated the hinges of the door and the tight spots on the frame, testing it gently for any signs of the erstwhile explosive bang. Done. Whatever was going on in there, Petey wanted to have his escape covered. And that meant surprise and stealth, the opportunity to sneak away unnoticed if discovery would upset the discovered. Or run like hell if he found anything to endanger his very own pelt.
    He wasn't really spying on a furiend, he told himself. (Nor was it just curiousity either. As lunchtime in junior high had always been, Petey was lonely.)
    Portal led to portal; darkness closed noiselessly behind him. When his paw fell to the inner door, the boywolf nearly jumped with a start. Only in the nick of time had he remembered to test the second set of hinges before trying. But it seemed to be stuck, didn't give as he probed the barrier with gentle pawforce.
    Petey thought for a moment, couldn't remember seeing a bathroom door that fastened so. Certainly not with the double trap of doors leading in. He puzzled it back out. No, must be weighted or bolted or something. The wolfboy pulled out his flashlight, checked carefully around the jamb and the threshold underneath. There he found what appeared to be the tip of a wooden wedge, kicked securely into the crack. With a fangy grin and the screwdriver from his pocket, the slick canid had released the impromptu lock in a trice.
    The door opened silently on short facing rows of dripping white sinks, gray-green and taupe tiles on walls and floor. Parallel mirrors glimpsed eternity. Petey poked his muzzle inside, scanning the scene. The windowless restroom seemed completely deserted.
    Then his nose told him otherwise. It wasn't a bathroom stink, murky and mucky and hinting of sick. A happy sort of smell, like pond water for swimming, or fresh bread with butter. Tommy's scent, he thought with a grin. The wolf stepped silently through the door, closed it behind without a sound.
    A quiet scuffling led him around the corner of the labyrinthine restroom. Digigrade in his sneaks, the wolfboy peeked into the toilet section. Empty. He went quaddie, checked under. No paws. A short line of black-painted stalls faced four pale urinals which shared the back of one deep sink-hung wall in the first section. The plumbing smelled clean. But that scent, bright yet rich, was still present, the one that reminded Petey of foxes, of the private experimental sharing on the floor of Tommy's twilight bedroom.
    He shifted, about to stand again, spied something in the other direction. There almost behind a doorless partition stood Robert and Nick. They were half-turned towards the wall, didn't detect the canid interloper. The catboy's arm was around the mouse's shoulders; the rodent's tail on the neko's bare butt. Their pants had been lowered beneath buns; free paws played at their sheaths.
    And the shock of it nearly made Petey meep.
    "I can't believe how smooth you are," the mouse tittered as he caressed the catboy on the ass.
    Petey skittered back to the sink bay, ducking mirrors, made sure the otherfurs couldn't see. The wolf shivered, paw at his muzzle to stifle a groan. This was all so strange, and he eyed the door again, protecting his jealous exit. Not that he hadn't witnessed his share of the incredible that day. But some things... Well, Petey wasn't sure he'd ever have been ready to see that. And in a public restroom? It was all he could do not to flee howling.
    The boywolf stood before the boy's room basin, silently combed his headfur, calmed himself. Wanted a wash, didn't risk splashing pipe noise. His ears were pointing straight up as he checked himself in the mirror, his eyes so big it was nearly comic. But it's not like he was doing anything wrong in just being there! He hoped it would seem like that, anyway, if anyfur saw him. Petey slouched, tried to pretend he was in that particular restroom at that particular moment for... for... for something. Anything normal and rational and sane - but he wasn't sure he knew what that was now. Tried to act like he had a reason for standing there shifting between paws, so uncomfortable and awkward and out of place - and stunned reeling! His heart was beating track-sprint fast, and his head spun. He couldn't social-engineer his way out of that situation so easily, he soon discovered.
    Spooky floated by, from somewhere on the left, towards the bay where the two other furs were busy. Petey gasped aloud. He knew his cover was blown.
    But Simon the raccoon ignored him, casual pants held closed in one unstartled fistpaw, ringed procyon tail sweeping out this way and that. Could the creepy coon possibly not have noticed the sweaty cringing wolf?
    Petey didn't think so, followed Simon's backtrail as the oblivious raccoon disappeared to a giggling welcome behind the corner partition. There was obviously another section on the opposite side whence the spooky fur had come, widdershins the facing rows of sinks. The curious wolf stalked with primitive care in the secret latrine forest.
    When he peeked around the tiled corner, there was Kiko on toes before a long metal trough. He wasn't peeing, and neither were Chipper on the end, nor Rick in the middle. The skunk had the staring ocelot's stiff pointing boyness in his paw, which he traded out to the squirrel as Petey watched. The two fluffytails worked their own exposed boycocks, hard and standing from their sheaths, until the spottycat moved to reciprocate, taking them each in either paw. He stepped back, drawing the other furs by their dicks, and the skunk and squirrel closed the circle, caressing each other's fuzzy and immature sacs.
    "You've really grown over the summer, Oreo," Rick said with a laugh.
    The wolfboy ducked back out of sight, shaking his head; checked over a shoulder towards the other bay of the bathroom where mouse, neko and coon remained indispose. Hopefully they would stay that way, or at least keep out of the protected path which lay between the canid and escape. More than ever before, he thought he might have to run for it.
    Petey had utterly no idea what he was watching. Well, he knew what he was seeing, doubted it all in the very first place. He just couldn't believe his eyes, found it utterly incredible, too, that such bizarre scenes could be playing themselves out in nearly mirror image on parallel sides of that wretched little restroom. That such innocent boyfurs could be playing each other out in such a way as well! Hell, he thought, I can hardly imagine that this is happening anywhere else in the whole world.
    He caught another peek, paws on the wall and tail out for balance. It was real. Mirrored behind, three boys were standing in a circle before red restroom stalls, doing... that... with their pants around their knees.
    Petey knew what it looked like, of course. Knew from the sounds of mrrrs what it had to be.
    But it wasn't.
    It just couldn't!
    He breathed in panting gasps, oxygen battling incredulity, fangs fighting pneumatic noise. Heart and throbbing head straining to take it all in. He nosed out again.
    No freekin way!
    The little wolf stood, recovered himself hastily. Brushed out the front of his shirt, his jeans. There wasn't really danger there, at least no more than the utility tunnels braved that very morning. He had choices, could plan. Grasped for calm. He would leave, sneak out silently and pretend this Twilight Zone episode was all just a bad dream, Mr. Dickins' 'undigested bit of beef... a fragment of an underdone potato.' That there was more of fruit than of fruitcake about it - whatever this uncanny scene was - Petey didn't doubt.
    Yeah, that's what he would do.
    Petey backed away carefully, keeping eyes peeled, ears erect and trained. He didn't want company suddenly popping up from Robert's posse in the far bay, nor Kiko and crew emerging from the side whence he himself withdrew. Quiet groans and giggles issued from both ends. Reassuring, in a weird way.
    The wolf found the aluminum trash can, Braille by tail. And nearly shrieked in surprise, almost falling over it. He seized the toppling bell, desperate to prevent a crash. The imaginary bang and rolling clatter from the prevented accident echoed so real beneath his ears, that Petey was sure everyfur in the whole school had heard.
    He paused a moment to catch his breath, recover his nerve. To stop the fearful hammering in his chest. Then get ready to run.
    A thought came, quiet contribution of mind while muscles remain yet uncommitted. His presence hadn't phased Simon in the least. Well - maybe that was just Spooky, he countered. (Idle paws are the devil's advocate.) The coon didn't have that nick for nothing. But the wolf wondered curiously if it might not hold true for the others. After all, what did he really know about this? What if he cleared his throat quietly and politely, padded casual and cool around Kiko's trysting trio, queued up at the end of the pisser for a whiz? What would they do?
    Petey could imagine several things, most of them frightening and decidedly not pleasant. All equally unreal. But why would he even want to do that in the very first place?
    He certainly didn't think he could sneak around the busy boyfurs. But curiosity had laid claim to him, fastened collar around neck, and his spatial talents and pace-counting said there was probably more plumbing somewhere behind the third wall. He sneaked close again, nosed carefully around the splash barrier.
    Besides, he hadn't found Tommy yet.
    That thought sent a shiver rippling visibly over the wolfboy's fluffy silver pelt. He drew back clumsily. Could the fox possibly be part of this craziness?
    "I'm outta here," he stated. "To hell with it." And Tommy. Whatever was happening was just too freekin' bizarre! His tail smacked the wall.
    "Hay, Petey!" Chipper said brightly. "You in the club, too?"
    Busted!
    "Uhh, oh, well... Hi, Chip. How's it going?" Petey's ears turned nearly purple for shame. He stepped forward briskly, trying to act natural. The concept seemed to have utterly escaped him within the past microsecond. He burned beneath fur.
    The squirrel giggled. Said to the rest, "We gotta new member here, I think."
    "Hola, Pedro!" Kiko greeted. "Joo gonna jus' stan' there an' watch?"
    The wolfboy was appalled. Not only having witnessed the madness, he was now cast into the middle of it! Caught in jaws, more like, to be shaken until limp.
    He groped himself in a pocket, prayed he'd be able to pee as he took his place on the far end past Chipper. Then realized the boyfurs weren't paying attention, had barely paused in their play to recognize his presence.
    Club? It that what the squirrel had said?
    "Tom!" Rick called out, adolescent voice cracking on hard tile. "You gotta visitor."
    "Go 'way, cat; I'm doing something."
    Tommy's anonymous reply thrashed Petey meeping from his stupor. He glanced away from the wanking furs, realizing only as he liberated his eyes that he'd been staring all along. Then quickly located the missing bathroom space. Around yet another mirrored corner, and there were stalls, battleship enamel scratched with age and abuse, sink and mirrors before. The wolf dropped quad, spied paws. A pair, facing, in the same cubicle. Jeans puddled on the floor around both. He stood, eased back the toilet door.
    The fox's forehead was on Jason's bare chest, the older cheetah's open shirt hanging loosely about. Their fistpaws were as Petey expected, on each other's sheaths and fapping for all they were worth. Tommy moaned into spotty fur; the taller catboy stretched pale underthroat towards bright neon at ceiling height, mrowling, eyes wide shut.
    Petey felt hurt. Betrayed.
    Maybe even a little jealous.
    It was an incredible insanity from which he wanted to run slavering, tail between his legs and ears down with fright. It was the fox's bushy sneaking deception, every day at lunch. His unthinkable lying involvement in this mind-tipping barnyard activity. And it was, too, the exclusion. For hiding the truth from Petey, keeping this game - however insane - away from the fur who so wanted to be his furiend.
    Tommy met the boywolf's gaze just in time to track the fall of a tear. The fox interrupted reached up, both moist and fragrant paws on Petey's face. "Oh my gosh, I should have told you. I'm so sorry!" He was shaking too, heavy with sudden remorse. In equal excitement and fear, underpants at his ankles and heart even more exposed. "Don't cry, Pete. We meant to have you in and all."
    "Have me in? Tom... what's all this about?"
    The fox grinned, blushed. "Welcome to The Milkshake Club, Petey."
    Jason snirked, pushed his impatient way past Tommy and the wolf. "I'm outta here. Too much drama. I'll go see what Butterscotch and Rocky Road are up to."
    Petey glimpsed the mature feline catness in passing. It was huge!
    "They're cousins, 'Nilla. Those otters will never let you come between them." The fox snickered, following the inside joke. "Prolly bigger than you can handle, too!"
    "I think they'll let me play," the cat answered with a snirk. "Ancient Lutra Proverb: Too many cock is just about right!"
    Tommy blushed beneath foxfur, said to Petey who was even more red: "Hold on, lemme get decent." Fastening his pants, he put muzzle beside the astonished wolf's ear. "Do you want to talk, or do you need to get out of here?" His eyes were bright with worry, tantalized by yiff unfinished.
    "But what is all this? Why are they...?"
    "Pawing off? It was in the book, just further than we got."
    "Masturbating?"
    "Well, no, I don't think so. Looks like it, though. Doesn't feel the same. It's..." The fox took Petey's face in his sticky paws again. They smelled heavenly to the wolf. "Petey? Do you want to try this? Umm... with me, I mean?"
    The grey canidboy trembled. A moan slipped from between his fangs. He did want to try it, he realized. To join, be part of the club. Of what Tommy did each weekday. To be part of Tommy, with Tommy, share this strange thing with the only boyfur with whom he trusted enough to try it. He nodnodded shyly, looking about, nervous at the strange closeness in such a public place. It felt so unlike their familiar bedrooms.
    The fox sensed trepidation, trembling insecurity. Paw in paw, Tommy led Petey further around the restroom maze, to a dead end where the space should have otherwise joined the back of that first bathroom bay, presumably where Nick the neko and company were still holding penile court. The UE-ing canid made automatic note of the dimensions, even as his furiend backed him into a corner.
    "Are you sure about this, wolfdude? We don't have to, ya know." The fox begged silently, hoping against hope that he wouldn't be refused. Suddenly looking forward to it more than he could deny. He shivered beneath fluffy fur.
    Petey nodded. "I wanna. But it's sort of..."
    The fox giggled. "Exposed? Here, let's change places.
    Tommy was in the corner now, perhaps the most private spot in the milkshake parlour. He grinned into his buddy's eyes facing him, unfastened jeans again, got them to his knees. "S' ok. Just you 'n me, like before."
    "Before?"
    The fox spared a paw from his growing sheath to rub Petey's tummy. "Yeah. Friendly. Like this."
    The wolf shivered, fear and anticipation battling modesty and shame. Motionless he stood, watching as the fox licked pads, began to stroke boyflesh.
    "C'mon, Petey," Tom whispered, blind and floating on a moan. "You gotta play too!"
    The wolfboy nodded, discomfort flooding him like a hot waxy wave. He knew this was something with which he just couldn't go through.
    "OK, you don't have to." The foxcub stopped stroking, licked his muzzle. Bent to raise his shorts. Petey saw selfishness, hurt, reflected in the red canid's eyes. His own selfishness, masquerading as fright.
    "No, Tommy. I want to." The wolfboy ripped at jeans, spread the denim flies wide. T-shirt almost covered his undies, white briefs with toy cars printed on. He shook all over from the effort, the futility of the whole eminently realized. "I just can't... I don't know..."
    The fox's tongue caught his nose. "Locker room? Don't be scared, Pete. We're furiends. C'mere and lemme see if this helps." Tommy drew the wolfboy closer, got Petey's head over one vulpine shoulder, his own chin on the wolf's back. "It feels good," he whispered into the canid ear drooping over his eyes.
    Petey mrrred, nodded. Never thought seriously about hugging his furiend before. Wondered why not. "Yeah. Feels nice."
    Tommy smiled, snorted. "No, dude! This..." His paw was under Petey's shirt, feeling up the soft pelt, the promise of ripples that would someday appear beneath fur. Lower and lower the fox's pads petted, exploring sightless the bulging elastic of the boywolf's briefs. Then with an awkward twist of the wrist, Tommy was inside, suddenly timid and shy as Petey himself.
    Who sucked cold air between fangs! The strange paw in his pants was a surprising new experience. Pleasurably exciting, even before first touch was received. Petey held the foxboy by the arms to steady himself, to ward off the groping curious grasp that his lidded eyes could almost see. That he so tremblingly desired. A whine broke from him.
    When Tommy's fistpaw closed around Petey's prick, the wolf all but howled.
    "Liking that?"
    "Oh my gawd don't stop!"
    Vulpine giggle. "I won't. But tell me when it gets too sensitive. Jason's doesn't, but he spooges now. Oh my gawd, does he ever spooge!"
    The wolf giggled too, imagining the expression of the silly boyfox over his shoulder. Both laughed when they heard Jason's squeal of, "Bitey! No bities!! Oww!"
    "Hay, Petey? Leggo a bit my arm, so I can milkshake some."
    Petey realized he'd been holding on too tight, had probably bruised the eager fox with claws. He released his grip, resting on the soft vulpine shoulder, rolled his muzzle against the tickly neckfur. It was so wonderful, so fuzzy and comfy there. Not to mention the moist paw jacking up and down his tingly wet wolfness. Friendly, yeah. Just like Tommy had said.
    He felt the fox move, realized his furiend was pawing at himself, too. Petey scritched his buddy's tummy, fluffing up the white underpelt there. Tommy mrrred gratefully.
    "I like that."
    "Yeah-huh. Feels so good," the wolf whispered. "Why didn't you tell me about this?" The fist on his dick was absolute bliss.
    Tommy shifted again, discomfited. Sighed. "I wanted to, even if it's a secret club. Found out that Robert had sent you a note. But then you didn't answer it. And... First I didn't know that you'd been invited in, then I guess I thought you weren't interested. Or didn't approve." He switched paws, tickled Petey playfully on the wolfsac. "Ya know? Made me feel sort of alone, too."
    "You did? Cause I did too. Felt alone. That's why I went all those places, the tunnels and stuff. I was lonely." He took advantage of self-shock at the admission, a moment of distraction from own guilt, to find the fox's navel. Descended shamelessly from there.
    Tommy sighed with pleasure, stroking the fuzzy grey canidboy on cock and fluffy testicles. "I'm sorry about that. Got too into this and all, before I knew it. I hung out with 'Nilla, heard about the milkshaking over the summer, almost couldn't wait for school to start. I guess I haven't been paying attention, huh?" He froze hissing, ceased his gripping padslip on the wolf's slickening prick.
    Petey's paw had just found the fox's sheath. Tommy cried out, and the wolf thought he'd hurt him.
    "Are you OK, Tom?"
    "Milkshake me, Petey! I've wanted this so much!"
    The wolf pressed closer, forcing his vulpine furiend tail-first against cold tile. The feel of the fox's boyness in his paw was a startling shock, exciting, as huge a mental realignment as Petey's discovery of the Milkshake Club in the first place. It was thrilling, far beyond the secret sneaks through attic and stair, portals undiscovered, hidden chambers of unknown night. The tongue lolled from his muzzle over Tommy's shoulder as he grasped his buddy by the balls, drew the firm and full sheath rapidly over the protruding interior pinkness. He could feel the coveted vulpine knot slip through his pads. His furiend begged for pleasure, freely received, freely given. Petey had a tough time controlling himself.
    The boyfox moaned shuddering with surprise at the aggression, gripped the wolf tighter in his paw. "This is great! You're better than I am at this." He giggled beneath blush. "You feel so good all over me. Like, inside my heart as well."
    Petey nodded, licked the closer ear. "You're right - it's not very much like masturbating. But it's kinda fun, too."
    "Kinda?" the fapping fox chuckled. He had noted the emergence of the preteen lupine's knot. Sensed with paws that his furiend would be huge when fully grown. It wasn't just a kinda-thing for his very best new milkshake buddy.
    The wolf snirked. "Yeah. Stuffies at your house; that was nice, too. Sorta private in our underpants and all. Dreamy. But together. That was hot."
    Tommy nodded. "I liked it, too. We should read more of that book."
    Petey agreed, giggled. "And masturbate, maybe? Not all this fist action. Friendly paw, slow in the shorts."
    "Mmm, you make me wanna be home already. OK. We'll do that next time. Meanwhile..." He stopped jerking the trembling boywolf, brought paw to his muzzle, spat. "This makes it feel nicer."
    The wolf groaned loudly at sudden uberslickness, redoubled tight pleasure of the fist sliding up and down around his preteen length. He did the same, lubricating pads generously, resumed jerking at the moaning fox's small fleshy member.
    Petey felt strangeness in his tail, under it. Tickly sensation inside his thighs, his fuzzy sac. A pressure built, and he hunched forward, thrusting his cock into the stroking vulpine paw. "Ohhh!" he moaned with delight. "Feels fantastic!"
    The fox tried it, humping gently at the wolf's fist. "Oh wow! I can feel it in my tailbase, too."
    Petey giggled, imagined furry vulpine buns flexing as they both fucked paws.
    "What's so funny"?
    "You. All soft and silky and sweet - and humping like a wild thang!"
    Tommy laughed. "What about you, wuffbutt? Ever had a milkshake before?"
    "Never. This is my first time." He flushed.
    "Me, too. Nearly. Well, almost nearly. It's fun, though. You gonna join the club?"
    "Yeah. Can I?"
    "I guess. Not like you don't know our secrets and all. We have to give you a club name, though. Like: Jason's 'Vanilla', and I'm 'Cherry Chip'."
    "Cherry? You?" The wolf snickered in the fox's ear.
    "Yeah, tailhole! It's just milkshaking. Not a real yiff or anything."
    Petey groaned suddenly. A spasm from his very own tailhole had started at the fox's mention of that most erogenous zone, caused the wolfboy to move even closer, press belly to the meeping vulpine. He pinned the other fur into the corner, hunching gently their sheaths together. "Oh, what was that?"
    "Umm, I dunno. But it feels awesome!" The foxboy's tender length slipped over the wolf's, trapped between tummies, sliding on a wet and watery coat of his buddy's immature precome. "Oh, I never tried this one before!"
    "It feels wonderful!" Petey cried with a shudder. His shameless paws were in the vulpine's boxers now, grabbing those envisioned red boycheeks with greed, felt them move and flex under his pads. He pulled his fuzzy furiend close, heads over each other's shoulder, fucked their fighting cocks together. "Oh my gawd! Are we yiffing?"
    The fox bit at fur, licked an ear as his passions swelled in turgid flesh. "Yeah. I think this might be yiffing! Even my tail likes it."
    "Touch mine then, please?"
    The fox grasped lupine tailbase. The wolf moaned.
    "Something's happening," Petey groaned in awe. "Something's about to..."
    "Yeah!" Tommy gasped with treble desperation. "It's coming close! Feels huge!"
    They got paws between them, wanked wildly. Gnashed fangs, panted and mewled.
    Petey cried out, and a vise squeezed around his internal boynut. Dripping tears on a buddy's furry back, he howled as the spasm of his very first come seized him. A thick lick of slick new spooge leaped from the tip of his straining prick as he pounded, fell on the foxboy's flying fist. Then another, and another.
    The psychic stimulation of Petey's orgasm so close beside own fur was too much for him. The peaking wolfkit's ears were against his vulpine face, the hot jet of fresh lupine semen on the fox's paw. Slippery lubrication as it dripped onto his dick made Tommy gasp between fangs of erotic pain. His twin shivering testicles drew up so tight in the firm fuzzy sac that he thought they would disappear. Then the straining rip of his virgin climax hit the boyfur, cored his cock like a red hot wire. It was not the way the book said orgasm would be.
    Four arcs of thin colorless jism peppered the wolf on tummypelt, glazed his sensitive steaming self in seething glistening fluids most male. The fox shuddered out of control, howled, hung tight to the panting wolfboy for support, for very life and fur.
    "We spooged!" he yelled. "We did it! First this year!"
    Petey flushed, gasping, anoxic from orgasm and heady with the smell of fresh yiff. That surprise nearly knocked him on his tail. He had come! Petey was a real wolf now!
    He just wished the fox over his shoulder wouldn't be so loud. They weren't alone, after all. And he couldn't stop stroking, rubbing the fox's first spooge over the steaming skin of his aching wolfness.
    "Pete and I did it!" Tommy hollered again. "We did it! We won!"
    Then the wolf realized that the excited vulpine's indiscreet information hadn't been intended for him in the first place. He blushed hotly as the forgotten boyfurs gathered, tried to let his burning sheath cool.
    "Where?" Chris demanded, paw still on his cousin's otterhood. "You gotta show it for the prize."
    "There!" the fox pointed to his paw, to Petey's pelt and groin. "And there and there! There too. It's spooge! We spooged first!"
    "Wait, just wait," Rocky injected, a fine length of lutra penis yet in his fist. "The prize is only for one. Which of you cummed first?"
    Tommy and Petey just stared at each other.
    "Umm, we don't know," the fox admitted.
    "Tie, I think." The wolf was blushing again, trying to hide within fur, made worse as the other boys crowded around to cherish and savor the canids' new adolescent produce. Paws poked at his belly, his sore and sensitive sheath. Chipper inspected Tommy's pads, pronounced the emissions acceptable.
    With a slam of banging metal, Jason crawled like roadkill from the far toilet stall. The otters had completely worn him out. He grasped the cousins' thick tails, pulled himself erect. A large, limp, and battered phallus hung from open pants. "Just let 'em split the money, guys. You lutrae are too competitive."
    The boyfurs all laughed as the cheetah sank to the floor, eyes crossed, wang streaming steaming stuff onto cold waxed tile.
    Robert counted out $100, ten from each of the boyfurs in the club, while Nick stood by, sucking the mousekit's tail as they molested each other. The neko's amazingly smooth and peachy bottom had earned him the nickname 'Melba', and in supporter and socks, he showed it to great advantage. But the ottercubs became the center of attention, though, dropping torturously across moaning Jason's lap for a numbered eye-popping act of mutual oral yiffiness - which mathematical concept Petey had no trouble grasping visually. He fidgeted, and Tommy led the spent wolf back to the sink bay.
    They were washing up, and Petey whispered, "Thanks. That was great." There was something exciting even about his embarrassment, first erotic confidence shared with a partner.
    The fox nodded, smirked. "Yeah. I think we can do better, though."
    The wolf agreed. "With cuddles. That part in your room, that was the best."
    "Surpassing! Yer my best furiend: you know that, right?" He got suddenly shy, put nose between wet paws in the splashing sink.
    Petey meeped. It was something that he'd wanted to hear so bad, the thought could never have crossed his mind. The wolf grabbed Tommy dripping from the water for a hug, and the wet fox joined in enthusiastically. "Aww, Tom. You're my best furiend, too!"
    Simon ghosted by. "No hugging. Club rules. No kissing. Milkshakes only. No muzzles. Verboten. No tailholes. Interdit No exclusive pairings-up.
    "There will be punishment..."
    "Aww, get yiffed, Fudge Marble!" Tommy snapped with a grin.
    "I did. Twice."
    The canids laughed. Then Petey suddenly went quiet, eyes staring into the infinity between paired mirrors. His paws on Tommy's shoulders were cold.
    "What is it?" the fox asked, atremble.
    The wolf blinked, shivered. Was it Spooky? Or was Petey actually seeing a ghost?
    "Wuffy, what's the matter?" Genuine concern, confusion. Tommy wondered if maybe guilt, the heavenly hound which pursueth unto betrayal, hadn't caught his furiend in fangs by the tail.
    "Don't say anything," Petey whispered. "Don't look around. Just come with me."
    "Hay... wait! What's going on here?" The sudden turn of tide was frightening the fox.
    But the wolf couldn't wait. Couldn't let the moment be spoiled by vulpine babble, however dear. He caught Tommy's muzzle between paws, kissed him deeply. The fox melted to sweet currant jam in his mouth, a soft red Valentine's stuffie in his own encircling arms. "Trust me, OK?"
    Tommy's eyes sparkled.
    They hit the explosive door at full speed, paw in paw, Petey snatching his backpack as they departed. Startled boyfurs behind zipped up with sheath-emperiling panic. The fox whiplashed around the wolf as they cornered, Petey casting about the corridor madly for bearings. Tommy saw him calculate in his head, figuring - what? - the poor strung out vulpine didn't know. Then the small grey canidboy watched the floor, began to pace off: counting, turning, recounting again.
    "Pete! What's up with this?"
    "Dunno, Tommy. But I have a feeling. We have to move quick!"
    The fox followed the mapping wolfboy, and an instant later they stood seven steps down the stairwell. Petey scouted about wildly, then spotted it. Halfway up on the high wall, where mundane eyes might never be drawn, there was a door, the knobless sort with only a deadbolt lock apparent.
    "There!" he whispered. "Ya gotta help me..."
    "Anything. Just say." His fox's voice was low, too, with fright and unsafe wonder.
    The frantic canid dug through his pack, found the pocket cam. "Hold this. No: get ready - and snap everything you see. Then run! Don't wait for me, and don't stop for anything, whatever you do." He paused, desperation in eyes, fate in shared paws. "Whatever happens now, I love ya, fur." They kissed again, and it was like the movies.
    Petey got a boost onto the fox's shoulders, slipped twice. Slammed the blade of his screwdriver into the deadbolt latch. "Count of three," he whispered. "One. Two. THREE!"
    The wolf lunged sideways, throwing all his weight into the leap, kicked off savagely from the reeling fox. Tommy almost fell on the stairs; and Petey did fall, to the landing below, handle of the severed tool held tight in both paws. The old wooden door ripped from the lock, hinges sprung wide and apparent.
    And the digicam in Tommy's paws began to flash.
    "BLOODY FOOKIN' HELL!!" The gym coach's beady eyes stung in sudden light. He was up past his knot between flabby bruin buttocks, the principal bent low over a wooden chair, knees wide spread, fumbling his limp and impotent furself between the legs. There was video equipment on the floor and strung from walls and rafters. The darkened closet in which the males yiffed stretched around and behind and amidst the boys' bathroom like a reverse physical image, covered wall to wall with what the fox recognized now as half-silvered one-way glass.
    Every mirror in the restroom was a window!
    How long the bear and bull terrier had used this secret blind to spy on The Milkshake Club, Tommy couldn't imagine. And neither could the other members, as from the sounds of screaming and the recent detonation of honest daylight into the perpetually darkened end of the trap, the boys in the bathroom had all begun to see ghosts - of Principal and Coach ass-yiffing. But the fox continued to shoot image after incriminating image, heedless of his own peril, sickened by squick and daring and the deadly intoxicating thrill of provoked danger in his tail.
    Petey crawled quaddie back up the stairs, both ankles badly sprained. There was insane fire in his eyes; fierce agony dripped from his muzzle. He threw himself halfway across the high threshold into the secret closet with a painful cry that made Tommy's nuts crinkle.
    "What's this, boy?" Gace demanded. The principal wasn't used to public humiliation - certainly not while tied helpless up the tailhole to a mere faculty member. But he remained cooly sure that he could handle the situation, take things in paw once again.
    Just as had thought the coach, earlier that same morning.
    The wolfboy drew his weapon. "It's my P.E. grade, Mr. Gace. Although we'd better consult the coach, too. No showers. No arguments. I get A's for three years and $200 a week...
    "From each of you!" he added at Tommy's encouragement, the wounded wolf wincing against tears. He panted in nauseous agony, held together by the heart of his unseen fox love backing him up. Heard giggles and snickers and growling laughter behind as it dawned on Tommy what they were about to get away with. He prayed for rescue, wanted to puke. Petey knew he could only pull this off by appearing so rabidly convincing that neither cub-loving male locked in secret rut within that reeking closet would ever even think he could get away with a double-cross. The wolf's eyes flamed red, he foamed at the mouth.
    Coach, for all his small-eyed bluster, was slightly more reasonable than the impaled bruin. He knew he was caught. Struggled against it sheerly from habit, self-righteous outrage. "You'll never get away with this, son. You won't! It's bloody blackmail, that's what it is!" The dog was all muzzle and tongue, brows and forehead and brain atrophied. He looked utterly ridiculous in lace bra, panties, fishnets and high heels.
    Petey began to laugh until snot dripped from his nose.
    "This isn't blackmail," he wheezed out with victorious glee. "This is junior high!
    Then somefur yanked Petey from his suspended perch, and the door to the observation room was kicked shut with a dark and ominous boom.
    "Looks like you need some medical attention, kit," the whiskered custodian whispered. "You did good."
    The cat beamed at Tommy, with the wolfboy over his shoulder. "And you - go keep all your Milkshake Club buddies in the restroom. We'll have to have a talk with them as soon as I get Petey some help. If they break the secret, all that you've fought for is lost."
    The fox stood digi, placed muzzle beside Francis', a paw on that posterior part of Petey against the cat's other cheek. "You were right," he whispered sobbing, licking generously. "We made our own luck. Thank you."
    The smiling feline blushed. "It's what I do. There's more to life than pushing brooms, you know."
    Tommy looked away. Never again would he think of the cat in work clothes as anything less than a saint.
    "But how did you know about... You know..." The fox dropped to a whisper. "The Milkshake Club?"
    Francis flushed, giggled. "School's been here a long time. I'm 'Sherbet'."
    And as the grinning janitor turned to tote off his adolescent burden of fur and pain, Tommy caught the weeping wolf for a hug. Relief and grief and agony had overtopped resistance, and tears flowed freely from the crying canid. The fox snugged him tight, promising to join his furiend soon, to save the camera at all costs, to hang on to Petey's precious backpack until the wolfboy's return.
    When Francis descended stairs en route to find the nurse, Tommy remembered the other windfall of the day, called out down the staircase, "And I'm going to buy you both the biggest damned milkshakes you've ever seen!"
    Tears of high emotion in his eyes, trembling on the fox's paws, he reached the bathroom door. It had been wedged, this time from the outside. By Francis, he supposed - he removed the nail. Releasing the trap brought clamor and mayhem from inside the milkshake room, and it was quite a task for Tommy, restoring calm and order. In truth, the boyfurs hadn't been that traumatized by the weird and yiffy apparition, had mostly taken it in stride as more of the bizarrie of which the daily life of those too young for yiff themselves too often is. They had neither understood the extent of the situation, nor that The Milkshake Club had been spied upon on a continual basis - possibly video taped - maybe even for years.
    And Tommy stood in front of the door, preventing escape, providing a modicum of focus and support to the anxious detained boyfurs while they argued and wrestled, speculated and grilled the fox, and even gave way to reprise of earlier play. Adrian had joined them, and Sam, drawn by the confused forming crowd out in the corridor. They were miffed to learn that the annual Puberty Prize had been awarded in their absence.
    "As long as I had to pay out ten bucks," Adrian stated, "I would have expected to see some spooge!"
    Sam concurred, and they consoled themselves and each other with a dry yiff over the sink. Adrian's pants were around his ankles as he faced the mirror and pawed: moaning, pinching tits, making faces and generally hamming it up in erotic thesbianism. Sam was behind, hard in his chinos but unexposed, as he play-fucked the black panther under the tail. The other boyfurs milled about, confined but creative, ignoring the mating pair or talking together, laughing, giggling - or watching and wanking with jeans about their knees. The fox on guard at the door, the patent weirdness of the day, made for a loosening of their inhibitions and inattention to security. Had anyfur walked in, they would all have been instantly capped.
    There was a shearing scream of "Squeee!" that sent Tommy flying, the door ejecting him upslope like a steel bearing before the pinball paddles. Emerald cannoned into The Milkshake Club; alerted, by gossip and female deductive intuition, of her brother's lunchtime whereabouts and occaisional occupation. The budding misunderstood scandal already simmering from the stairway closet that afternoon made what she'd learned ever the more juicy. She spied Adrian sprawled over the sink, tail up and thighs wide, apparently taking a tiger yiff under the base. It was the last thing she saw before helplessly impacting the facing wall inside the boys' bathroom, with a sickening inertial thud.
    "I die a happy onna!" With a smile on her face, the yaoi panthergirl slid to the floor, trading consciousness for concussion.

    A Friday night, and Petey sat at table, an expensive restaurant high atop the downtown skyscraper. Another family ritual, less tribal. Perhaps more primitive.
    The wolf would rather have had spaghetti.
    Dark suit smothered, the necktie choked like a chain. An evening with Tommy was his top preference, though, made so much better lately with their new sources of income. They split equal everything the boyfurs' schemes now brought in.
    Why did he have to go out to eat tonight?
    Maybe they could take the fox's family out for supper, Petey mused. Spaghetti, even! That would be great. Well, after they got Tommy a new bike.
    He turned to dinner, puzzled over which fork, nearly upset his water. The stupidity of serving so common a beverage in a footed glass chafed. Why couldn't he be kicking back in cool shorts with Tommy and a bowl of popcorn? At least the orthopedics were off his ankles, and he could play basketball again.
    "So how was school this week, son?" His father was no less curious now, no more interested than always. But Petey understood. His talks with Francis had helped a great deal.
    "OK. We're getting a new secretary next week. The old one left suddenly." Petey didn't have details, took it on happy authority from a smiling striped cat that one small canid didn't need to know everything. 'Falsifying documents' was as much of an explanation as he seemed likely to get. As may be - the whole affair was mostly meaningless to the boywolf.
    He nibbled green beans.
    The senior canid sliced steak, shoveled up baked potato. The wine was not to his tastes, muzzle obvious on the issue.
    "Well, I hope they replace her with somefur capable. You know how school administrations are, these days..."
    His mother's dry comment made the boywolf choke, grab for a drink. If only she knew!
    "Manners, son," the bitch remarked, icily.
    "Beg-pardon," he whispered into his napkin, trying not to giggle.
    "And have you decided about the girl you're to take to homecoming? It's just a few weeks away, you know."
    Paternal authority rested ever the less easy on the shoulders of the small wolf. Petey gritted fangs, ponied up the prepared response.
    "Well, Dad. Yeah. I know who. She'll say yes, too. I guess I'm pretty popular with the girls." Pete and Tom both intended to ask Emmie to go. It would be a fun evening all around.
    His sister smirked, remained advisably spartan.
    "So, Peter... Have you gotten past your difficulties with gym class?" The alpha male's next attack was casual. Uncalled for.
    A bite of salad stuck in the wolfboy's throat.
    Sister exchanged looks with mother. Evidently there had been a supplementary discussion between. Petey could have guessed now what had gone on in that particular family chat. Such were insights to be gleaned from junior high, in an attic over the library.
    "No problems, Dad. I think I need some better towels, though. The others get pretty wet from just a gym shower."
    The elder canid smirked satisfaction, the knowing complacence of degradation well done. Neither he nor his voluptuous blonde mate suspected the trace odor on bath linen was now vulpine, not lupine. And Tommy's mother certainly didn't mind the load off her laundry chore.
    Petey went on, suddenly engaged. "I even noticed some other stuff. You know a boyfox has this thing on his sheath called a knot?"
    Sister tittered, blushed. Mother blanched.
    "Son," his dad said. "Maybe this isn't really..."
    "Well, it's not exactly on his sheath, it's inside. But sometimes when we're all in the shower like we do, and naked, then the foxes will..."
    The wineglass shattered in the alpha wolf's paw. "I really think that's enough, Peter. Yes, I quite do." He wrung grape stained and lacerated fur, muzzle stoic, fangs furious.
    The wolfboy nearly belted out a huge laugh in his paws. Hung his head for pitiful shame. "Sorry." The cowed Coach wouldn't even allow Petey within shouting distance of the showers, one hundred feet of the gym. The happy grey canid only regretted not being able to watch those interesting otterboys at swim practice. But it was small price to pay for his other freedoms.
    And one of them was: from fear.
    Not even Gace had anything to say to the boywolf when he and Tommy had been caught hacking the school's carillon tower. The foxkit had got piano lessons free from a generous orange ferret once, was anxious to try his small paws on seven-ton bells when they'd discovered the steam tunnel hatch that was the way in. It had taken Petey only a week's practice after school at Tommy's house to manage the chords and bass part, the two furs spending such time together already despite the sometimes bylaws of The Milkshake Club. Then at lunch one day they'd made their move, classmates alerted to the offing. 'Westminster Tune' failed to strike twelve. The members of The Milkshake Club waited on toes, assembled in flash mob with the rest of the student body. Some knew of the plot, others only by halves. All were aware there were heroes and angels among them - though details were always sketchy, gossip abound.
    The amateur furry carilloneurs timed it just right, eight measures of soft rock backbeat in F Major as the Principal appeared from his office to investigate the disturbance, the unauthorized cafeteria plan. Gace had received an actionable tip that day; the server room fan was also again on the fritz. He didn't need any more problems.
    And as the harried bear arrived at the refectory, all the furs in the school began to sing - quite slow, and gothic, and magical - 'to the rolling and the tolling of the bells'.

When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we see
No, I won't be afraid
Oh, I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand
Stand by me,
    So darling, darling

Stand by me
Oh, stand by me
Oh stand, stand by me, stand by me...

    That was the beginning of the end for John Gace the principal. He knew it even as he stormed the tower.