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A year has passed...

Chapter Twenty-Four

Friday August 14, 2009

10:58pm

Pop radio. Booze. Friday night.

A shop just beyond the edge of town buzzed with the ambience of thirty-some inebriated teens. Sophomores, juniors and seniors, all representing Sandy Varsity High, posed and mingled with drinks and phones in paw. Some fought for control of the stereo whilst others lounged near a pair of sofas set 'round an impressive entertainment center. Just outside the comforts of the shop, Bella Spriggs cast a mouthful of vomit at her feet, a foaming, watery mess which painted a shallow puddle 'round her sneakers before the dirt slowly sucked it down. The seventeen-year-old German shepherd put her head 'gainst an exterior wall of the shop, muttering, spitting and wiping at her muzzle. She waited a minute to regain her bearings, but the moment she stepped back the world around her lurched sickeningly, and she stumbled into the embroidery of a crimson-red hoodie, clinging to it for dear life.

"I've got you," sighed the rabbit in the sweatshirt.

Two hours prior, Bella had been screaming her lungs out for the varsity football team's home opener, and while a lackluster fourth quarter had lead to a Sandy Warriors loss, nobody at the party--including the couple of football players guzzling red Solos inside--appeared much discouraged.

Now, Bella, some unknown number of beers deep into the post-game, groaned and put a bony, black-furred paw to her head.

"Hey, let's go," the rabbit urged, and not for the first time that night. "I'll drop you off at home."

But dizziness and nausea aside, Bella was feeling great. It was the first decent party of her senior year, and she had no intention of going home early.

"Tch," she snorted. "Fuck that."

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and made another go at walking. One foot before the other. There we go. Easy. Successfully maintaining verticality, Bella teetered her way back inside the noisy shop ahead of the sighing rabbit. There was a small cheer of "Hell's Bells!" from somewhere in the shop's main room, but Bella ignored it, crossed the large, open area and came to stop behind a pack of girls who stood near the stereo.

"Hey, sluts!" she exclaimed over the loud music.

A short puma spun, laughed. "Heya, bitch!"

A bat and beaver made faces and continued their conversation.

Bella put her paws over the short puma's shoulders, leaned down to shout in her face, "Dance with me, you bitch!"

"Your breath smells like shit!" grinned the feline.

"Fuck you!"

The puma laughed, grabbed her friend who had entered a drunken, backwards list and steadied her by the shoulder blades. "God, how much did you drink!"

"Who fucking knows!" exclaimed Bella. She closed her eyes, felt her body gently rolling, swayed from side to side by the short puma's steps, and she rested her muzzle on a soft shoulder. "Not enough!" Not all the alcohol in the world would satisfy her, but she would still try. She had to. After all, she had a reputation to uphold.

When the song playing on the stereo came to its end, Bella draped a hug over her friend and set her tippy sights on a square table clothed in red plastic and adult beverage, but before she could serve herself her next drink, Bella felt a prod at her back, an obnoxious voice in her ear, and she turned to see a scrawny little ferret whom she couldn't name--some annoying underclassmen.

"What?" she grunted.

The ferret simply jerked his head to the side and started walking.

"Goddamn it," said Bella.

Away from the alcohol, away from the music and away from the eyes and voices of the other kids, Bella dragged her feet after the ferret, following him into a dark, vast space--another room of the shop which smelt of diesel and gave her eyesight fits.

"The fuck are we going?" she slurred, but the ferret only pressed further into the darkness, easing around farm equipment and tools left out on the concrete floor. Only when they slipped 'round a jutting wall of an enclosed office space, into a an even darker, more secluded corner of the shop did the ferret speak, at the same time producing a twenty-dollar bill from a pocket of his torn jeans.

"If you're still doin' it," he said.

Bella took the money without a word.

A few minutes later she would stumble out from the darkness, pour herself a chaser and pass out on a sofa beside her frowning rabbit friend.

* * *

Saturday August 22, 2009

12:38pm

"--sixty, eighty, one hundred."

Bella sighed at the fan of bills in her paw, the five Jacksons staring past her, and tucked them into the purse which she flung from her bed, then tucked herself back underneath her covers, groaning at the pounding in her skull and the lead-weight of her body.

"I'm gonna die."

But Bella knew, much to her discontent, that she wasn't really going to die, that her symptoms were no more than the weekend's mandate and that fighting through them was only the start of a normal Saturday. Eventually, she would claw her way from bed, claw granules of sleep from the corner of each eye and drag herself through the sea of laundry that was her floor, then down the carpeted hallway towards the sunny TV room.

She was wishing that she could have slept a few more hours when a clamor arose from a room long silent, from an open door which had spent the last several months shut. Bella peeked through the doorway across from Anessa's room, and an unpleasant expression immediately befell her face.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" she growled.

From over the threshold, empty, chestnut eyes reflected Bella's stare, but they adhered to her for no more than a second before busying themselves back with the process of packing.

"Just grabbing a few things," said the other shepherd.

"Why? Finally decided to get it over with and move in with that whore?"

"No. I'm gonna be moving into a place just off campus." Bella didn't care that her brother had hardly visited Sandy over the last twelve months, that he had been absent from their Thanksgiving and Christmas. She had never been close to her brother nor cared to be. What upset Bella was where her brother's allegiances_did_lie. She had learned it from Anessa, the glue connecting their fractured family, that Tyson was keeping in close contact with the whore--the heartless, lying, cheating whore who had raised her,raised being a rather optimistic choice of word--and for that, she would keep her grudge against her brother sharp.

"Well, adios, fucker," she bid in adieu, and she marched into the uninhabited TV room, mind reeling with rekindled frustrations and reawakened suspicions.

She couldn't wrap her head around it, had never been able to make sense of it. Like herself, her brother had never gotten along well with her, at least not until the weeks preceding the divorce when all at once things had turned sunshine and slumber parties. It just didn't make sense, and at times, when she could find nothing better to preoccupy herself with, it had driven Bella mad. The strange feeling in her gut. The not knowing.

But before Bella could dwell on those vague suspicions or seat herself at the computer to drift through social media recounts of her Friday night, a pang of nausea averted her to the bowl of the toilet where she knelt and to whom she gave her own recount.

* * *

Thursday August 27, 2009

12:08pm

Bella hadn't eaten a school lunch since her freshman year, not since once picking a fiber of fur out of her casserole and her friends had acquired their licenses and cars. McDonald's was the usual, and, like most days, she and her friends claimed a corner table away from the large, warm windows.

"Gonna have some anorexia with those fries?"

He wasn't far off, the hyena making the smart-ass grin over the table, and Bella set her small pack of French fries upon an otherwise empty tray. "How else am I gonna pay for more fucking piercings?" she scoffed, and she flicked at one of the big black triangles jutting from her long black hair.

Three sterling silver rings glistened from each ear, two riding the lateral fringe near the apex of either whilst a silver stud spotted the lower third of each pinna. She wore the piercings as badges. She wore them with pride. They were the only part of herself which she truly liked, for the piercings marked her apart from that bitch. Everything else was derivative--her obsidian coat, her caustic smile, her average stature, even her middle name-- and so Bella would continue to don her silver stigma, supplement it against the wishes of her father who had refused her cent and consent. Anything to distinguish herself from her.

"What else ya getting pierced?" asked the hyena.

"Nose, tongue," shrugged Bella, and her smirk curled 'round the word "everything."

The puma beside the hyena purred through a toothy grin. Her name: Lexi, a little sex kitten, a gorgeous purebred with a stacked little body and the confidence to flaunt it. Her forward lean and a V-neck offered an eyeful of soft, creamy chest fur which Bella took a moment to appreciate before her eyes went to the golden piercings lining the puma's ears.

"I need to get my tongue pierced soon," said Lexi. "I've been waiting forever."

"Wait 'til I get some more money, and let's go together" said Bella.

"Hell yeah!" the puma cheered.

"Hopefully I get some for my birthday, but my dad's a fucking puritan." Bella flicked at her ear again. "That's why I've only got these."

"When's your b-day?" the hyena asked.

"September eighth."

"Nice!" said the hyena, and he winked. "Gonna hook me up with some porn when you're eighteen, huh? How 'bout some smokes?"

"No fags for faggots," said Bella, making Lexi laugh and the hyena grimace.

* * *

3:40pm

Through intermissions of note-taking and slander, hallway gossip and tranquilizing lecture, a beam of enlightenment was forged, a pillar of light which shone upon Bella's doubts--two birds with one stone--and so, absent her typical, lethargic step, Bella worked through a maze behind Sandy Varsity High, a maze ended at a dirty Jeep and a smiling little sister.

"Hi, Bell."

Anessa's small frame wore the products of pubescence and a year of stress-eating, and alongside the navy Grand Cherokee she now stood a roundish five eight. Underneath the added fluff, she was the same pup, annoyingly patient and kind and helpless outside a classroom.

"How'd you get out so early?" Bella grunted as she unlocked the Jeep.

"Mister Werner let us out early. He said--"

A growl of bass and tight burst of snares hushed Anessa, and the younger, fairer-coated sister instinctively molded her paw 'round the handle over the shotgun seat before the streets of Sandy would transform once more into whirring, deadly corridors.

"What!" Bella shouted over rhythmic obscenities and engine noise.

Anessa only shook her head.

Bella rolled her eyes onto the road.

Minutes later, with her Grand Cherokee flung into the garage, Bella continued her sprint, racing up the house and through the door at the end of the upstairs hall, heart racing as her phone rung into one thrice-pierced ear. But it would be for naught.

"Your call has been forwarded--" began an automated voice, cut by Bella's claw and a curse.

Two hours later, as she was climbing back into her Jeep to see her friends, Bella jerked the ringing phone back to her ear, heart thumping again, mouth drying. "Hey," she said, and a callous voice breathed into her ear.

"You called."

"I did," said Bella, irritated at once, a conditioned response. She was tempted to hang up, to call the entire operation off as she was reminded of how much the sound of her mother's voice pissed her off. She paused to smooth her tone. "My birthday's coming up. I wanted to see you."

Barf.

"What's this about?" asked Patricia.

"Nevermind," said Bella, injecting an upset growl into her response. "I should have figured you didn't want to see me."

"Still the drama queen," Patricia sighed. "What was your plan?"

Her eighteenth birthday falling upon the week of Labor Day, Bella grumbled a proposal for an overnight stay over the long weekend.

"Your father's alright with this?"

"He will be."

There was another extended silence.

"It's fine with me."

Bella squirmed behind the wheel of the Jeep, grinned as she lowered the phone and backed out of the garage, but before she could make it off the drive, her ringtone sounded from her side. She frowned, putting the phone back to her ear.

"Yeah?"

"What do you want for your birthday?" Patricia inquired indifferently.