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All things considered, it was a pretty good day for the pit bull and the runaway jackalope.

BJ had his concerns about Marcus's tolerance, not to mention if he'd have a panic attack given how anxious the kid tended to be, but those concerns turned out to be misplaced. Although it took some convincing to only take one hit and wait a bit before thinking "it must not be working," once the high took hold, Marcus quickly sank into a relaxed, if a touch giggly, pile of jackalope on the canine's couch.

Strange as it was, and admitting he wasn't being entirely responsible, BJ was feeling pretty proud. It wasn't often he saw Marcus genuinely relaxed.

True to his word, BJ found which pizza place had the biggest size available and ordered one, getting half garden style and half with the works, along with a couple bottles of soda.

"Hey dude, if you're here for a Weedsday, we're doin' it right," he laughed when the massive rectangular box arrived,

Of course, getting high and ordering pizza was only part of the equation. Naturally, they had to pull out the video games. The only way for him to have more fun with his stoned little buddy was to get him to try and steer a colorful little go-kart around a track. Normally the entertainment would come in watching Marcus getting way more worked up about the game than necessary, but today the opposite was true. He was just having fun playing.

"Marcus... you know you're barely moving, right?" the big dog inquired, peering at Marcus's half of the screen and its vehicle creeping along.

The young hybrid was laser focused on his kart. His eyes were narrowed even beyond the smoke-induced squint. "I gotta go the speed limit, man, I don't wanna get pulled over."

Needless to say, the day had managed to turn itself right around.

After a few races, the two decided to take a pizza break and just play another TV show for a while, settling on an adult-humor cartoon, one of the types that every streaming site had in their catalogue by the dozens. It was just the right speed for the moment. Clever enough to get them laughing, simple enough that they could follow it.

"Hey... Hey BJ," Marcus called over to his friend.

"Yeh? What's up?"

The jackalope had his eyes on the canine's slice, nodding in a gesture towards it.

"You think, like... that shit tastes like the real thing?"

BJ paused mid-chew, glancing at his grease-covered lunch. "Y'mean the meat?"

Marcus nodded.

Another pause from the pit, while he thought it over. "I 'unno, never had the real deal," he responded.

In history class, Marcus had learned (or at least his teachers did their best to tell him) about the importance food storage and transportation had on modern society. Long ago, when their ancestors were wild, the carnivores ate the meat of the herbivores. As the generations passed, and they began to develop higher intelligence, language, and gather into larger communities, the need for one portion of the population to eat the other for survival was... a point of contention. To put it mildly.

To put it less mildly, it was the cause of many wars in the primitive world.

In the early ages, a compromise was reached. The feral cousins of the upright animals were allowed to be kept, and cultivated, as livestock. It gave the carnivores a way to survive without needing to hunt down other members of the "civilized" world. Unpleasant as it may have been, and uncomfortable for anyone who was occasionally forced to look in the face of a genetic relative doomed to be eaten, it was necessary.

The way his history teacher had put it, the herbivores either had to agree to the compromise, accept a life of always watching over their shoulders, or attempt to eradicate the carnivores completely. Only one of those choices would have resulted in the modern world they lived in today.

It also had a profound effect on species distribution. As agriculture became more advanced and species were interested in moving beyond their original habitats, it meant that herbivores and carnivores could move rather independently of one another. At first, the herbivores were far more mobile. After all, a wagon full of seeds and some friendly soil was enough to get started, but over time meat production caught up. The world was beginning to settle, to modernize.

Still, there was always a dark cloud overhead.

Even in those early eras, it was known that carnivores could live off of fish well enough, but cultivating that wasn't as simple as fencing off some land and raising them. Without the right water sources, there was just no way for supply to match demand, nor was there a good way to transport them without the whole lot going rotten.

The introduction of preservation blew the doors open for an increasingly integrating world. Being able to store food for long periods of time meant that there were, essentially, no more boundaries. There were no reaches of the earth that were inhospitable for anyone who wanted to live there.

As nations began to settle and governments formed, it was decided that limitations on red meat would be imposed. Diets were able to shift to focusing on fish, and on the surface, all seemed to be moving in the right direction. Gradually, the need for genuine farmed meat subsided, with the goal to be the end of it altogether. No longer would herbivores need to bear the thought of their primitive brethren being eaten all around them.

Then came the biggest leap forward: Synthetic meat.

The idea of "meat without meat" had come up from the earliest days of integration, but had never been feasible. Using plant-based sources neither offered the necessary nutritional value nor satisfied the urges in carnivores, the latter of which was more important than most realized. While they could survive on "alternative" proteins, meat-eaters still had their innate need to hunt. To taste blood.

A synthesis of insect proteins and chemicals extracted from plants managed to approximate the taste of real, genuine meat. Though some farms remained, selling their product on the black market for a premium, for the most part meat had been off the menu for quite some time. Despite some grumblings, the carnivores generally understood the necessity and, as the herbivores had before them, were willing to make the sacrifice for the good of society. The older generation might still wax nostalgic about having a "real steak," but by and large the urge was quelled, and all could live together in relative peace.

So Brian Thomas Jr sat, looking at the chunks of sausage on his pizza, pondering his friend's question. The menu called it "pork sausage," but he had no point of reference for that. Come to think of it, as often as he read words like "pork" and "beef" on his food, he'd never really connected those with actual animals. To him, and to most anyone his age, they were just flavors, like apple, or vanilla.

For a moment, BJ's mind traveled back in time. He tried to picture what it must have looked like as those pigs, raised for nothing but meat, were slaughtered and ground up, all for him to have some little chunks on his pizza. He went back further still, trying to wrap his brain around actually hunting one down, having to look it in the eyes and kill it with his own hands. All for a meal.

"Uh... BJ?" Marcus asked, bringing him back to the present.

The dog blinked, shaking his head clear. "Huh? Oh, uh... I dunno, dude," he said, shrugging casually. "I guess? Cuz like... they always told us in school that us carnivores need to eat meat, right? Somethin' about a primal instinct. This is good enough, I guess! Why, ya wanna try it?"

Marcus wrinkled his nose. "I think I'm all right."

BJ took a bite of his slice and stood up, stretching out. "How 'bout a beer, then?"

The question caught Marcus off guard. His eyes went wide. "...really?"

"Eh, why not," BJ said, tilting his head to the side to make his neck crack. "Already sharin' my bud, no sense actin' like I'm bein' a good influence now."

The jackalope nodded. "Yeah! Sure!"

It wasn't the first time Marcus had alcohol, but getting any into Greenwood was a struggle, so opportunities were rare. He'd only ever been properly "drunk" once. Corey had brought him along to a room party with a few of the bull's friends and they had snuck in some liquor to pass around and soda to mix it with. Marcus remembered feeling a bit out of place at first, but once everyone had a buzz going it was pretty fun. A little less so near the end when someone started making comments about his species and a fistfight nearly broke out, but at least he couldn't remember much of that part.

Mostly, though, sharing a beer with BJ made him feel like an adult, like an equal. More than ever, he needed that today.

Marcus's "grown up" feeling took a bit of a hit after he pulled a face taking his first sip of the cheap beer BJ had ("Sorry I ain't got some fancy German shit, bud!"), but once he adjusted to the taste... it wasn't too bad. So he drank, he ate, he had another hit of his friend's weed, and Marcus Lewis simply did his best to forget that the rest of the world existed.

A few episodes of their show came and went with few words passed between the friends, both of them mostly melting down into their seats. It was perfect.

"Yo, Marcus."

The teen blinked a few times, getting his focus back. He turned his head. "Yeah?"

BJ did his best to wake his limbs back up by giving a few stretches, then reached out to grab another slice of pizza. Even after all the feasting earlier there was still a good amount left. "Has uh... has your mom tried callin' you since you came over?"

Marcus froze, eyes going wide. On the drive over he'd furiously stuck his phone on silent, and had completely forgotten to even look at it in the last few hours.

"Ohhhhh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck."

He repeated the word for a little while longer, reaching into his pocket and scrambling to unlock it, praying that there wasn't a whole mess of missed calls and texts.

"...fuck."

BJ winced sympathetically. "Everythin' okay?"

Marcus took a deep breath, bracing for impact. There were no voice mails, but a whole string of texts.

[Marcus! You answer your phone when I call!]

[Marcus, please pick up, I'm sorry for what I said...]

[Come home and we can talk about this, don't give me the silent treatment!]

[MARCUS PICK UP YOUR PHONE RIGHT NOW OR I'M CALLING THE POLICE AND TELLING THEM YOU RAN AWAY!!]

And so it went, before one last text:

[I won't call the police, just PLEASE come home, ok? I called off my appointment, I'll be here when you get back...]

Finally, a single frowning face emoji. That was two hours ago. Nothing since then. In an instant, Marcus came crashing back down to Earth. The high was gone, and there was a rock in his belly that was only partly because of how much pizza he'd packed away. He laid his head back on the couch and let out a nice, dramatic groan of despair.

BJ didn't need to see the screen to know what that meant. "Er... maybe you should give her a call..."

Marcus's high was fading, but the beer was sinking in. "Fuck that," he said, tossing the phone across the couch in a huff.

The big pit sighed. "C'mon bud, she's prob'ly worried sick, least let her know you're alright."

"NO," Marcus said back, with a little more force than he meant to. He crossed his arms and frowned, both of his legs starting to make that anxious bounce on his toes. "If I call her now, she's just gonna start bitching at me."

BJ shrugged. "Probably. Can ya blame her? Ya ran off and ain't answerin' your phone." He paused a moment, a realization dawning on him. "Wait, does she know you're here?"

Marcus sighed, dramatically rolling his eyes like he was offended by the suggestion. "I didn't say where I was going, but there aren't a whole ton of places I'd be. I don't think she knows your address, though."

BJ rubbed his face a bit. He wasn't entirely happy with this new wrinkle in the arrangement. "Point is, bud, I don't mind lettin' ya stay here a bit, but I ain't lookin' for a roommate, y'know?"

The jackalope sulked, looking at the TV in front of him in sullen silence. He knew BJ was right. He couldn't just stay here on the couch all weekend. What was he going to do, sneak into the house Sunday night and grab his stuff for school, then just hope that by the end of the semester everything will have blown over? The longer he waited, the uglier it would get when he went back.

"Fine," he said, shooting BJ the same tone he threw at his parents whenever they made him do pretty much anything. He picked his phone up again and looked at the screen for a few seconds. If there was one skill Marcus Lewis had, it was giving off the appearance of focusing on a task while he was actually looking for excuses not to do it.

"Wait, shit. Not now, though. Don't want her to hear me all high and stuff."

BJ nodded, chuckling dryly. "Good point. Don't think it'd help to get in an argument when ya ain't in the right mind. I ain't lettin' you forget, though. C'mon. Ya only got one mom."

Marcus glared at the dog, making his ears fold down awkwardly.

"...sorry, bud."

Obviously BJ hadn't meant anything by it, but Marcus was already in one of his trademarked moods and nothing was bringing him out of it. The two sat in an uncomfortable silence, neither sure what to say.

"I uh... I think I'm gonna get another beer... you want one?"

Marcus nodded. That would help, at least.

The atmosphere in the room had soured, but another round of drinks and a hit on the pipe was enough to buoy the spirits partway, and before long BJ managed to get Marcus joking around with him again. He felt guilty for just helping Marcus run away from his problems, but at the same time... maybe that's what the kid needed. Everyone else was ready to give him hell, he'd have to deal with all that when he got back home, when he went back to school. He just needed a buddy right now. Wasn't like BJ was his father.

His father...

"Hey uh... Marcus? Can I ask ya somethin'?"

Getting the teen's attention during a game was damn near impossible. He had to repeat himself twice, getting louder and louder, before the jackalope's oversized ears picked up the signal.

"Yeah? Wanna know how I'm kickin' your ass so bad?" Marcus snickered, putting a whole ton of body English into nearly everything he was doing.

BJ laughed. Okay. Back to a good mood. Still, this was likely to make things awkward again. "Ya ever, uh, tried t' get in touch with yer real parents?"

Marcus's attitude swiftly turned. He went quiet, all those dynamic movements fading off until he was sitting with the controller in his lap.

"Shit bud, sorry," the dog immediately apologized, "I wasn't tryin' to like, open up..."

For once in his life, Marcus completely forgot being competitive, setting the controller down on the couch beside him and reaching into his pocket. "C'mere. Lemme show you something," he said, waving BJ over to the couch with him.

BJ furrowed his brow. He paused the game and joined his friend, leaning over to look at the small screen. Marcus had his phone in both hands, holding it like he was afraid of breaking it, which struck BJ as odd for someone who could buy thirty of the damn things. The teen tapped on the screen, pulling up a photo gallery, and after some more scrolling, selected one image to show.

"...who's that?" BJ asked.

Marcus nodded softly, eyes locked on the image in his hand. "That's my mom."

BJ nearly jumped at the revelation. He furrowed his brow, looking between the image in Marcus's hand to the boy himself. No doubt about it, that was Marcus's mother. A striking jackrabbit in her mid to late thirties, the photo was clearly taken with a cell phone and given a bit of a sprucing up with a filter, but there was no mistaking. Her eyes, the coloring, even that little attempt at a sassy grin. All that she was missing was... well, all that rose from her skull were her ears.

"How did... you find..." BJ asked, words not coming especially easily.

The jackalope snorted. "My dad keeps records of everything. I'm pretty sure he's got a log for every time he goes to the bathroom."

Marcus looked over at his friend with a sneaky, but pleased grin. Seeing some confusion still, he continued. "Okay. He's got this set of filing cabinets up in his office. It's fucking huge, and he keeps records of just about everything. Every dollar he's ever spent, every meeting, taxes, all my report cards, you name it. Perfectly organized, too. Pick any day in the last twenty years and you can find whatever he was doing."

Slowly, BJ put the pieces together. "So all you had to do..."

"...was go back around when I was born and see what he had."

The pit eyed Marcus sideways, more than a little suspiciously. "Why do I got a feelin' he didn't exactly want you snoopin' around in there?"

Marcus grinned just like before, absent-mindedly pinch zooming on the screen to make the picture on his phone zoom in and out. "The locks on those drawers are weak as fuck. I don't even think the key does anything."

BJ nodded, unsure if he should be impressed or a little disappointed in the teenager for snooping. "So uh... they had her info?"

Marcus laughed, shaking his head in mild amusement. "It was crazy. He had this bigass folder for me that he got from the adoption agency. It's this place called Heaven Hearts Hybrids, and like... that's all they adopt out. It's crazy. They had a bunch of my baby pictures that looked like glamour shots, all these behavioral reports, weird cuz I was like a year old, this whole booklet called Jackalopes, Fact vs Fiction, and then a copy of my birth certificate at the back."

That last one caught the dog by surprise. "Didn't think they'd give those out."

Another chuckle from the teen, shaking his head in mild amazement at the whole process. "Like I said, this place is all about hybrids. The owner's a chimera, if you can believe that. Three-way. I didn't even think that was possible. The letter's this big speech about how the world is hard on hybrids, they deserve better, thank you for opening up your hearts, blah blah blah. I guess they give a copy of the certificate because that shows the lineage? Proves that I'm a real hybrid and not like a jackrabbit they glued a couple antlers to."

BJ grinned crookedly at the image, but nodded. "So... that was enough to find her?"

"Mmmmm-hm," Marcus replied, simply. "Wasn't too hard. Not a whole lot of jackrabbits named Kristine Martin in the Amherst area. Got an old Facebook profile pretty quick."

Marcus tapped away on his phone quickly, and pulled up a profile page for the hare. It was rather threadbare, truth be told. The banner picture was the same that Marcus had shown a moment ago, but aside from that there were only a few posts. Some generic faux-motivational phrases with fancy text on flower backgrounds. A selfie from a vacation at the beach. The most recent one was from several years ago.

BJ wasn't exactly sure what to say at first. In all the years he'd known Marcus, he'd never brought up the subject of his birth parents before, figuring if the hybrid wanted to talk about that, he'd say so. It was only thanks to some extra chemicals swimming around in his head that he spoke up at all.

"Ya ever contact her?" he asked.

Marcus shook his head, shrugging lamely. "Nah. What the fuck would I even say? Hey, it's me, the kid you didn't want?"

BJ sighed. "C'mon, bud. You know that probably ain't it. I'm sure she didn't wanna put you up for adoption, just... you know how it is."

Marcus certainly did know. He'd spent enough time thinking about what might have led her to give him up. Too much time, honestly. Long nights imagining the day his real parents went to the adoption agency, tearfully giving him up. Promising they'd see him again someday. That it wasn't his fault. They had no choice.

"Besides, you got her profile, there's gotta be some way to get in touch with her, right? Email address, maybe?"

Marcus blew a breath out through his nose. "I got her address."

BJ paused, looking towards Marcus sidelong. He was sympathetic, but didn't like the sound of that answer. "Bud..."

The jackalope huffed. "Don't give me that. Come on, it's my mom! My real mom! I was just... you know. I was curious where she lived. The Facebook profile didn't have anything in it, so I did some more searching, found some listings..."

There were a whole lot of questions whirling around in Brian Thomas Jr's head, but he had to be careful about which one he selected first. "Marcus... how long you been sittin' on that? I mean, when did you find all this?"

Marcus shrugged again, looking like he barely had the energy for it. "Two years? Ish?"

BJ grunted. That was about what he expected. The big dog put a hand on his head, scratching at his scalp, piecing his way through his next steps. They had wandered into somewhat thorny territory. "And in all that time, you never even tried?"

The jackalope shifted awkwardly in his seat. "I mean... I did. Once. I shot her a message on Facebook, but... I guess she doesn't use that anymore."

BJ chewed on the inside of his lip a moment. He saw the distress on Marcus's face, in his eyes as they swept over an image of his mother he'd undoubtedly looked at a thousand times, seeing her face but never hearing her voice. "And uh, what about your dad?"

Marcus shook his head, frowning. "No idea. He wasn't on the certificate, so I don't have a name or anything."

BJ hummed. "You think they're still together?"

The jackalope thought that over for a few moments, then lifted one shoulder. "I dunno. Seventeen years is a long time. Anything's possible, but like... I kinda like imagining they are."

BJ leaned in, looking at the image on Marcus's phone. He wondered how many times the kid had pulled up that picture after a fight with the Lewises, holding one-sided conversations, building a relationship with some imaginary version of her. Two years of just holding a picture on his phone of his birth mother, not telling a soul about it.

Maybe the beer and weed were starting to take hold more than he realized, but Brian Thomas Jr had a thought.

"Why don't ya go visit?"

Marcus stared at his friend a moment like he was waiting for a punchline to come, then snorted, looking down again, "Oh sure. I'll just drop in and be like hey mom, what's up, mind if I come in? What's for dinner?"

BJ laughed softly. He knew it was , "Well... why not? You know where she lives, right? Amherst ain't that far, you could be out and back in a couple hours. Barely a day trip."

The jackalope looked at his phone. It was only a bit past two. So much had happened he thought it would have been much later.

Wheels began turning in Marcus's head. He was already in boiling water with his mother, another day couldn't make it any worse, right? Maybe if he played up the sympathy card he could convince her not to say anything to Mr. Lewis, that he just freaked out from everything that happened and he'd be back first thing in the morning, ready for school. Well, ready for doing his schoolwork from the dining room.

Besides, BJ was right. It was a quick trip, and he wasn't packing up to move in, but they could touch base, couldn't they? Go over, reconnect. Marcus could see it now. Her face lighting up, happy to see him for the first time in so long, thrilled that he went through so much effort to reunite with her. Maybe his dad would be there, too. They'd invite him in for dinner. Meet each other. Make up for lost years...

Marcus turned toward his friend. "Think you could give me a ride?" he asked.

BJ blinked, surprised by the question. He chuckled, shaking his head. "Like... right now? No can do, bud. No way I'm making it all the way up there like this. Besides, I got a load of shit to do around the house still. I was cool with you staying over, but I'm not takin' a road trip. "

Marcus shifted in his seat. "I mean, not right now! But maybe in like... an hour or two? My real mom probably won't be home from work until later, and it'd give us time to sober up, right? Come on. Please?"

The pit bull paused, trying to wade his way through the fog in his head to come up with a gameplan. He wasn't expecting the kid to want to drop everything and do it today, he figured it would take Marcus at least a week just to drum up the courage to consider it. Then again, it was kinda his fault for bringing it up in the first place.

BJ blew his cheeks out, falling back in his seat. "Okay, bud, how about this. Let's check and see if there's a bus heading up that way. I'll drive you to the station."

Marcus blanched. "The bus station??"

"Hold on, just hear me out okay?" BJ said, doing his best to calm his young friend down. "You don't want me there. Really. You wanna be able to take your time, not have someone else watching, and I can't just hang out in the driveway while you're rebuilding all those bridges, y'know? "

The jackalope squirmed in his seat, making BJ eye him a moment.

"You... ain't never been on a bus, have ya," he asked, hiding his amusement.

Marcus shrugged, the embarrassment obvious on his face. Whenever he hung out with BJ, Marcus felt awkward about all of those experiences his sheltered life never gave him. Self-conscious. "Mrs. Lewis always said that only junkies and poor people ride the bus."

"Not ONLY them," BJ chuckled. He saw that the teen was legitimately uncomfortable about the idea, so he changed gears a bit. "Okay, for real, the bus ain't a big deal, bud. Just a buncha people who got places to be."

The jackalope didn't look terribly convinced, so BJ kept going. "I rode the bus damn near every day before I got ol' Penelope," he said, referencing his oversized pickup truck out front. Marcus still had no idea why he named it Penelope. "Never had a problem with nobody, even made a couple friends on the regular route. Honest, no one's gonna hassle ya. Probably be a whole lotta guys your age gettin' around who just ain't got their own car yet."

That seemed to be what turned Marcus around, and he nodded a few times, perking up and getting that antsy look going again. Like he was trying to concentrate on making time speed up so they could get moving.

Brian Thomas Jr laughed, clapping his friend on the back enough that it nearly pitched him forward. "Awright, looks like we got a plan. Just gotta clean some shit up, sober up a li'l, and then we'll get ready to go."

Marcus's feet pressed into the floor, legs bouncing anxiously once again. Yeah, he thought. It's perfect. A quick bus ride up to Amherst. Easy peasy. No big deal. A short little family reunion, that was all. Marcus just hoped she'd be as happy to see him as he would be to see her.