The days
The days were nice when I was truly happy, when it was easy and nothing to think or care about. Nothing but the simple problems, the drama of nothing important at all but two peoples' friendships that no one heard of or cared about. The ignorance of myself and the persona I worked up. The simple days where I'd sit in six different classes for forty five minutes with breaks in between. Going home and spending the days online in front of the glow of the screen. At least I had one other to spend my time with, someone I met online someone nice and loving. A white wolf two years older than me, I waited at least two months before asking for a picture of him, we e-mailed ourselves to each other at the same time, and he looked more striking than I thought could be real. He was surprised by my looks. I'm very a slender and abnormally tall fox, which only contributed to my underweight looking frame; I have black fur, everywhere, my belly tail tip, and inner thighs a dark red, light red coming in freckles on my muzzle, my eyes a golden hazel with piercing glowing yellow vertical-slat pupils.
I guess it changed when one day I got home and the lights didn't work, so I'd sit there brushing my black fox tail nervously waiting for some one to come home. I couldn't call anyone the phone that I was using was pre-paid and just yesterday ran out of minutes because the two that I had didn't roll over to next month. My mom came home and called dad, who just said to light some candles when it got dark and that he'd be home as soon as he was able. Nothing really changed, I helped mom make dinner I was happy that we had the gas and water still. Then dad came home and I woke up, all curled up in the fetal position hugging my tail to my dark red chest fur. I followed him to the side of our house and watched as he pushed in an electric meter and snapped a few breakers; apparently all they took was our meter. This wasn't the first time I watched either, before this when the furs from the department of water and power came and left after checking the numbers on the meter we'd swap out the official meter and put in ours. After we were turned back on I went online to greet my mate.
We had power for about a week, everything was normal and perfect, and I was taking a program voluntary my high school was jointed with which offered free lectures and on the job training expense free to students. I asked a raccoon who was I'm guessing in his late thirties how much it was costing him to attend; I got a very somber response of six hundred. It was not a big stress, Tuesdays and Thursdays six thirty to nine thirty. I was taking the veterinary assistant program they had and was doing well I even got an A- on my progress report. Then after another day of the same routine at school, I came home and the lights didn't work again, I went to the side of the house and there it was, a different meter, a digital one, with a lock on it. My ears laid back and I went back to my room and just laid in bed, nuzzling against my tail until I fell asleep.
My mom came home and she didn't bother to wake me, I slept the day away till dad came home, the front door opening and closing jarred me from my sleep and I was immediately up and alert, following him again to the back and watch as he undid the foreign looking lock with what appeared to be a small metal poker. He took it off and saw that the DWP put rubber stoppers so the electric would be cut off, so he took them off and plugged us back in, putting the lock back on inconspicuously, and I questioned that now that it was on the digital numbers would show that we had a current flow, his respond was a shrug and an "Oh well." My dad was a foreman of a plumbing company, and said that he was the next most important person next to the owner. Being a plumber he had a lot of knowledge, being in the business for more than half of his life. He was someone who knew too much about anything you can think of, often saying ‘would you rather have an expert or an Elmer Fud?'
I smiled a lot as I got back online with my mate again, greeting him quickly with "Hey Kapugen." I got replied to immediately as always, I got really happy when I spent my time with him, it was time well spent. I loved him, and he loved me back, we were certain that we'd spend our lives together, that we'd amass enough money to get an apartment somewhere. But a fleeting memory because we were still greatly dependant on our parents and the relationship we had was hard. We lived about forty miles from each other, which is very fortunate considering how far we could have been from each other. There was no reason to be sad in the least at our situation, we were infinitely fortunate on how close we actually were, so close yet so far away.
We had our power on for three days when we woke up to the DWP furs on the roof cutting our power lines, they didn't bother even knocking on the door or informing us with an official note. When our power lines were cut, that same day our water was also turned off. I knew prior to any of this that something was wrong because our phones went off at all hours of the day, usually by no one who hung up as soon as you answered, and a lot of creditors. After a while we just unplugged our phones. Not having water was not much of a change; the DWP furs just disconnected the pipe fitting connecting our house from the water main on the street; dad bought a fifteen hundred gallon barrel for water and being a plumber he put together a replaceable fitting so that we could fill the barrel and take showers at night. Having our power lines cut did not bring on much change in my life, not like anything did. Since we usually went on camping vacations we had a backup generator handy, a three-thousand, which could power both fridges and then some. We had a fifteen gallon gas tank sitting in our back yard because one of my dad's friends did not need it and we got it for free still in the box, which dad was planning on mounting to our trailer to refuel the generator; that idea fell short and finally saw use after more that a year of sitting in the weather. I wished that I'd be more affected by this, but I wasn't, the only consequence being that I had to shut the generator off at eleven at night.
One of the other changes that I noticed was at school, junior year I had a lot of friends at the place I hang out and it was fun, two canines; a male fox and wolf; three felines, I'm not good with species of cats but two were calico and one was pure black, two raccoons; I know for certain that they weren't related, and a squirrel. That was who I hung out with my third year of high school, minus the felines, the coons and the squirrel. The fox failed his classes and was sent to continuation, the wolf I guess couldn't take family life and ran away and was found walking down a beach about five miles north of us with a backpack full of clothes and a few twenties in his pockets. I saw him online a couple times and usually never got a response when I tried to talk to him, last I heard he was taking the rest of high school online and saving money to visit his relatives in Washington. One of the calico cats found a mate and took off from our group, the other calico bringing her new found feline boyfriend to our hang out spot and doing nothing but touching noses and more. I don't know about the black cat, she always used to just sit there and only talk when engaged in conversation, like me for the most part. The two raccoons would only come by when they were out of cigarettes, or couldn't find any other furs around that they can bum off of. And the squirrel just sat there most of the time doing her homework with an always twitching tail and was quite enthralled with gossip.
Needless to say, it wasn't worth showing up for break, but I did anyway, and since my school schedule was limited from six periods to four periods because of my lectures, and I only had one period after the break. My mother worked for the school so I knew quite a few of the staff. I would walk to the media center, basically the place where all of the copies were made for the teachers, and it had a computer. So after fourth period I would walk there and talk to my mate through lunch break and until school ended. I only waited at school until it ended was for two reasons, one because we lived a town over, and for two I could talk to my mate without having to run a generator. My mom worked a second job keeping stock for a car rental company, but they laid off half of their staff and mom was one of them, she was stressing out so much because she couldn't find a second job after that, and when she found another stocking job at a department store she was nervous her first day and ended up dropping the hand held stock computer she was given. They never called back to confirm a schedule
Now the school system targeted me, or at least when I was young it seemed that way, because I was on permit, I didn't live in the town where I went to school and my grades had to excel, which they didn't. The summer right before junior high I remember walking into my mom crying since they weren't taking permit students anymore because of overcrowding. I was there the first day of sixth grade and everything was fine, the only reason why we were fine was that we were renting and apartment in town, not really even renting one out just using the resident's address so it looked like I was living in town, we shrouded this by saying that my mom and dad divorced and that was my mom's place of residence. I was a week into seventh grade when the principal came to my first period class, literally pointed at me with this angry look in his eye and said that I didn't belong there. So I laid back my ears, got my things and followed the mastiff principal to the office to which I sat myself down in the chair next to the door to his office and sat there forgotten for over and hour and a half until my mom came. She took me to our apartment and I stayed there for a week, no school or anything just there, my tail wagged when mom came home and she took me to my house, "my dad's house." Then after that week of being kicked out of school I went back and everything was normal, I don't know how I got back in I just did.
But that one experience was enough to frighten my parents and they found an apartment and I lived there legitimately for the rest of junior high, going to "my dad's house" on the weekends, not once were we visited again by a school official to check to see if we actually were residents, so the money spent was wasted in my views, but dad just kept saying, you never know. We found a cheaper apartment in town and we rented out the other bedroom to my aunt, who wasn't technically my aunt. She was my aunt's daughter, my true aunt died of old age when I was really young. Whenever my parent's fighting lasted more than a few days they'd take me and my sister to aunties. My sister was more dismayed than I was about my aunt dying, just because she was older and could grasp the concept of death. That wasn't the first time she, or I, had to go through it either. My mom's sister was living with us and she was always better to my sister than to me, probably just because I was a boy. She died of throat cancer from smoking too much basically in our living room, ironic. And all I remembered through the whole incident was watching the ambulance drive away through the front window, I wasn't effected by that either, no comprehension of death.
My ‘aunt' was on disability, and I remember sitting in the backseat of mom's car while she drove her to the clinic, which I didn't know any of the details then, but I know now it was to get her supply of methadone because she was a recovering heroine addict. She had a husband who walked to work every morning and one day my mom and I came to our apartment and there was police tape around the door with a coroner parked in front. Apparently her husband died from an overdosing and hitting his head against our glass table, which was broken beyond repair. We kicked her out of the apartment and gave our thirty day notice to the landlord. That was towards the very end of eighth grade, we found a new one before I was a freshman.
My sister was out of high school, found a job and a boyfriend and we found another apartment and split the rent between my sister, us, and a strange female Doberman who was never there, I assume they were just using it for the address. She gave her thirty days and we found a strange coyote that only paid for a month's rent then was gone. He was always talking about how sleeping on the floor was better for your back than a bed, and preaching sayings and proverbs of his own mind. So then my sister's friend and her fiancé moved in. They were two wolf metal heads always getting drunk and going to mosh pits, coming home all beaten up and bloodied. Their rent was always paid late and after five months we were evicted. Good thing that the school didn't bother me about my address anymore since I was halfway done with high school. That was that, and I was back at my own house full time, and I didn't have to lie and say that I was living somewhere that really wasn't my house. But just as a precaution, my mom's friend offered to let us use her address for no charge.
My mom's friend was a cheetah, she was divorced two times and had a cub with each of them, the oldest I courted, when there was nothing really else for me to do but go along with her own intentions, there were no feeling to be had at all, and she took my virginity, which every now and then I regret. The cheetah's youngest was born while I was with her daughter, she was autistic and apparently had a "crush" on me since I was the only other male she knew besides her father, and she was deftly afraid of males for whatever reason. The cheetah and I started right as I moved into the apartment under hers, the one which housed my sister. I remember, the fourth day of my sophomore year she walking up to me during passing period and just saying, "by the way it's not working out." And that was that, I didn't care there weren't feelings in it.
I've always done well, though I did fall in junior high, all thought eighth grade I was depressed over nothing, I shouldn't have been I had everything I could want, most certainly more than other furs in the world I'm sure. I didn't deserve to be upset over anything my life's been too good to be to be angry about minuscule subjects. We could have been doing better I suppose, but paying mortgage each month is more important than paying the DWP. Besides it could have been worse, a lot worse.
But I have a mate I was so lucky to find, and I was never an outcast in high school, I was never picked on except comments on my height which were unavoidable in any public setting. I've been very grateful and courteous, even when others weren't, and under these circumstances a normal fur would have cracked a long time ago, or had issues in life. I don't think I have issues with anything in my life, maybe with instances not mentioned, maybe. But my life goes on and you're eyes are in front of you not behind so you can only look forward and smile at what's to come and who you're going to be with one day.