Tonight, Tonight, Tonight
Author's Note: This is another of my older submissions to FA that I'm transferring now over to SoFurry. I really liked this one and I hope that you can enjoy it as well. Peace.
Synopsis: When a teenager returns home due to his father swtiching jobs, he rediscovers an old flame and finds that she has become the school's prom queen, a real beautiful woman. But he also finds that she has begun seeing the school's bully and when she has a bad time with the jock, she turns to her childhood friend for condolence, revealing her true form and finding someone who really cares.
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I had lived for nearly seven years of my life in Maywood. But when I was in second grade, I ended up having to move with my father when his company transferred him out to California. All my friends in school hated to see me go. They loved how I made learning fun, especially books and history, because I would act things out at the teacher's request.
The person who hated to see me go the most was a girl named Marie Bard. She was a pretty girl with long, black hair and a fair face. But she was tomboyish and would fight and play sports with the rest of the guys. Nobody seemed to care. We were all too young to care anyways.
Either way, she hated to see me go because she was always the one up playing with me and acting out scenes from history. She loved playing generals and presidents. Her favorite was Tom Jefferson and would even jut out her lips when she signed the Declaration in a little skit we had. She cried on my last day, but sucked it up and waved goodbye.
But for nearly another decade, I lived and went to school in a town called Henley out in Northern California. Things there weren't so great. I hated moving so much that I became a bit recessive and made few friends at a time. Don't get me wrong, I had friends and school was fine, but, it wasn't like it was out in Maywood.
While I was out there, I found out that I had a really high IQ, which is why learning was always fun for me. I studied in the highest, most advanced classes and I was fifth in my class rank. I became a true nerd, but, never dressed it. I wore cheap band tees, long, cheap jeans and ratty shoes. Sometimes I wore a ratty cap, but, not always. Money and buying power and that sort of expensive showing off never impressed me.
I found out that other people thought differently, but, never let myself be brought down by the actions of other people. Finally when I turned sixteen, my father's company gave him a huge promotion and a huge raise. But there was a catch: we had to move all the way back to New York, back to Maywood.
When my father told me, I didn't really care. Although I had some friends in Henley and had a life, I wasn't really attached to it. I'm not sure exactly why, but, I was never attached to my life there. He told me how excited I should be and how I would see all the friends from elementary school, but, I wasn't excited by that either. I was too young to remember much of my elementary school career.
We packed a week later and moved, really fast, across the country. We ended up throwing out half of our house, which was mostly just old junk anyways. Some of it was left over from when Mom passed away. Most of what we threw away included things that no longer held any sentimental value and the things that ended up packed into the far back reaches of our closets, spare rooms, garage and basement.
Arriving in Maywood about three days later, it would have been two thanks to a flat tire on the moving truck, and moved into our old house, which was twice as big as our house in Henley. My father was happy and excited, but, I didn't move quickly. I didn't care; I could hardly remember the house anyways.
I helped my father move all of our half-useless crap into the house, well, what we didn't throw away, and then things began to quiet down. The summer went pretty quickly, I spent most of it inside because I had no contacts in the outside world. I gamed, watched movies and even slept through entire days. I read a lot as well, but, only added to a library of books which I had already went through.
My father worked, six in the morning until six at night. He didn't worry about it, though, because of all the money he was making. We replaced old, worn out televisions with big screen plasmas, replaced our water heater, revamped the house, added a second garage and replaced our 1999 Toyota Corolla with a 2010 Dodge Challenger. He bought me a 1989 Saab 900 SPG for my first car. It didn't impress me, but, I'm not easily impressed. He even went so far as to spend three grand building his own, special computer, which I ended up putting together and using because he hardly had time to get on it anyways.
Anyways, when school rolled around in the fall and I went to attend my junior year, I found that things out here weren't the same as they were in Henley. People here were really conceited. Everybody was impressed by flashy, expensive clothes and fast cars. They sneered at me when I walked in through the front door because I still wore the cheap clothes I had since I was born. It was the only thing that I could convince my father not to buy.
I didn't care and simply walked by them with a straight face. Tough sports players, though, threatened to beat me up and the wangster and redneck kids tried to recruit me to their camp, but gave up when I wouldn't even make eye contact with them. I was secluded back into my own little world and it was how I liked it.
But, while on my way to second block, because we have a thing called block scheduling here, unlike in middle school and high school back in Henley, I saw something that tore me out of my little world. When I rounded a corner near the new gym, I saw three men and two women standing in the doorway which was set into the wall.
The guys were all baseball players, as indicated by their t-shirts and jackets. The one girl was a popular red head who had health class with me (it was one of the few classes that there was no Advanced Placement or Honors to it). The other girl, tall with long, black hair and a fair, soft, supple face was Marie Bard.
I couldn't help myself but walk towards her. She was one of my best friends when I was little and I figured that she could never have forgotten me. Holding my backpack, a letter carrier's sack, to my side and twisting the cheap, polyester rope that acted as a sling, I walked confidently towards her.
The five of them were laughing and talking about things that I could hardly make out. They all laughed in a stupid, half-interested way, like they were simply flatterers doing what they do best. One of the baseball players was leaning against the wall and the two girls stood in a circle made by the three of them, leaning up against a closed door and the wall.
As I approached, Marie looked up to me and her eyebrows went up. But the other girl quickly spotted me, laughed and then said something to the athlete standing closest to her. He swung around as I was nearing them and I quickly stopped in my track. The other two mimed him after a short pause, but, didn't move as swiftly or as angrily as the first man.
The main athlete was a guy whom I would later find out was named Brad. He was five inches taller than me, about fifty pounds heavier than me and could have probably lifted me from the floor, bent me over his knee and snapped me like a matchstick. But he didn't do that. He towered over me with his arms out at the side like a gunslinger at high noon, and approached me like a bouncer.
"Well, well, well, what is it we have here?" He said idiotically. "Could it be some little dork who thinks that he can talk to people way above his social circle, maybe?"
"My name is Charlie and I'm just here to see Marie." I said to him, not afraid of his tough guy façade.
"Marie Bard, my girlfriend, is who you're here to speak with?" He asked me happily, glancing to his buddies, before looking back to me angrily. "Do you even know how I could kill you right now? Do you even know how much trouble you'd be in if my girlfriend weren't standing five feet from me?"
"I don't think so." I replied, sarcastically. "Oh, please, tell me how badly that you could hurt me! But you won't, will you? Because I haven't done anything wrong enough or insulting enough to force you to do something stupid in front of my best friend from elementary school who happens now to be your girlfriend."
"Shut your mouth, you little shit!" Brad snapped back. "She may have been your friend a long time ago, but that was a long . . . long time ago. Now get out of here before I kill you, you damned nerd!"
"You're such a Neanderthal." I answered.
Suddenly I was off the ground. Brad picked me up from the ground and slammed me back against the closed door. There held me for all of twenty seconds, his teeth showing and his mouth close to my clenched face. The other two guys laughed like idiots and hit each other in the shoulder playfully. The girls were silent.
He shook me around and slammed me back against the door again, shaking my one hundred and forty pound frame. But, an angel of mercy appeared shaped as the period bell. Ringing loudly from the ceiling a toning bell signaled the end of the passing period and Brad left me go.
"You're lucky. Next time I'll kill you." Brad informed me.
He and his buddies turned away from me and took the girls with him. Marie smirked at me, obviously not remembering exactly who I was, and strutted with that rooster of a boyfriend up the hallway. I stepped out into the center of the tiled corridor and watched them go.
"I'm sure you will, jackass." I said low, to myself almost. "I'll see you next time, then."
The rest of the day went smoothly, well, as smoothly as possible. All of my high level classes were pretty dull and boring, except history and politics and my literature class. Those were interesting, despite my literature teacher being miserable and monotone.
At lunch I saw Marie again. This time she was sitting with her snobby friends, making jokes about all the kids in the social levels below hers. Obviously she was now in a position of power, of popularity and beauty, something she didn't value in elementary school. But the worst part is that she loved having that power. She made fun of any vulnerable person, including me.
That afternoon I drove myself home after school and stayed confined within my familiar four walls. I played video games and listened to hard rock all evening when Dad simply crashed in his room without making dinner. I ended up warming up leftovers from a few days ago, but, I didn't really care. Fancy and expensive are two demons that I didn't invite into my life.
Late at night, after I had officially gone to bed, or tried to go to bed, I simply stared up at the ceiling. Sleep is something that I couldn't force to come easily because I knew tomorrow would be another walk through the valley of evil. With my arms behind my head and my body out on top of the covers, I sighed and counted the paint specks that needed to be covered.
Suddenly, around number one hundred and twenty seven, I heard something tap against my window. I let it go and lost the number to the silence, but listened harder and harder to the darkness. When the sound didn't repeat itself immediately, I guessed as to the source.
A loud clink, like metal against glass again, rang through the room and I sat up straight. Swinging my legs out over the side of the bed, I dropped them and went to the only window in my room on the first floor. I parted the blinds and looked out onto the dark, wet backyard.
There stood a familiar girl, huddled against her own body in the cold of the night. She wore hardly anything: a tank top, long jeans and a belt. She didn't even have shoes on, as I could see in the moonlight. When I looked over her messed up black hair and fair face, I knew it was Marie. Why she was here at this time, well, at all, was a mystery. But the tears that streaked her face and the sobbing gasps she sucked in were a clue.
I threw open the window and ducked my head down under the glass to speak with her. Immediately upon sticking my head out, I could hear her sobbing and knew that she was crying. When I looked up to her, she stepped forward, but didn't step into the flowerbed which ringed the house. That's why she didn't knock, she threw rocks instead.
"Marie, what the hell are you doing here?" I immediately asked. "Why are you crying, what happened?"
"Can I come in?" She asked between sobs.
I thought about it for what seemed like ever, but, sighed and agreed. Stepping back, I allowed her to step through the flowerbed and climb up and in through my window. She swung her legs in after wiping them off on her own fifty dollar pair of jeans and then stood quietly near the door. I took a seat on the side of my bed nearby and she dropped her arms. She looked up at me with teary eyes and tried to begin.
"It was Brad." She told me. "We were on a date, seeing a movie in his Mustang."
I nodded my head like an idiot, crossed my arms in my lap and looked to her. She wouldn't move and I noticed that, despite lowering her hands, she grasped something in her right one. I didn't focus on her hand, figuring that she would notice, but I couldn't help seeing it in the first place.
"He tried to take me and I refused." She continued, calming down a bit. "He got angry and tore my necklace from around my neck. Then he saw . . . he saw me."
She threw her hands up over her face and started to cry again. I couldn't understand what she was talking about, but I stood up and walked to her. She must have heard me coming and lowered her hands down and then took my hands from my sides. In her right hand I could feel the distinct shape of a fleur-de-lis Catholic cross. But, I couldn't piece together what it was about the thing that was so important to her.
"I thought he would understand." She said before I could say anything. "He was only a bad person around his friends; I thought he'd be different!"
"Marie." I finally said, gaining her attention. "I don't understand what it is you're trying to tell me."
She began to weep and then she stumbled forward and threw her arms up and around my body. Her arms wrapped themselves around my upper back and she pressed her fine body against mine, but, her pitiful weeps and streaking tears kept me focusing on her sorrow.
Stumbling a bit, I lead her back to my bed and sat down with her still clinging to me and crying. I lifted my arms up and placed them gently around her back and patted the center, trying to get her to calm down and explain. After about three minutes, the crying fit lifted and she pushed herself gently up and away from me, standing up again.
"He called me a freak, said he hated me, said he never wanted to see my freakish face again." She said between gasps again. "I grabbed my necklace and ran from the drive-in movie theater. The first place I thought of was here because . . ." She began weeping again, but collected herself quickly, "because I figured that you'd be the only one who'd understand, who wouldn't call me a freak, who was my only true friend."
I still couldn't understand what in the world she was telling me about. But I sat and listened intently anyways. She needed me now even if she did treat me like shit earlier. Maybe it was just a mask she would put on to please everybody else in school and remove her from the metaphorical shooting range that was high school. Either way, she was a different person now and needed me.
"Marie, I don't know what you're talking about." I told her in a gentle, precise voice.
She sniffled and then looked down to her right hand, which clenched the cross in the palm. She looked to it and then up to me. Her incessant crying finally began to slow down into tranquility and she smiled a little. She wrapped her fingers, one at a time, around the little gold piece and then sighed.
"I want to show you something, something that my uncle did to me when I was really little." She said calmly. "It's not really a bad thing but it's not a good thing either. It was an accident that ended up killing Uncle Wally. But it drove me away from that side of the family forever. I can trust you. You're the only one whose kind enough in your teenage years, not jaded and fake like the rest of society. I trust you fully."
She held out her arm as if to present me with the cross, but, didn't step towards me to give it to me. Turning over her hand, she dumped the cross out of her palm and then closed her eyes. The gold piece fell into the carpet and disappeared in the darkness. She crossed her arms and embraced her body and acted as if she were in pain.
Immediately I saw something begin to change in her. Her skin pigment went from a normal Caucasian white into an almost arctic white. Bristled poked from the surface of her skin and she began to shake. Her hair began to turn the same color as her skin, an icy, arctic white.
A loud crack hit my ears and I looked down to her feet to see her toes begin to grow, and her littlest one begin to move up her leg. Her heel left the ground and she gained nearly three inches in height. The same sound came from her fingers, one for each, as white and black speckled nails jutted out from the ends of each one.
Her arctic white skin began slowly to grow something on its surface. Like hair at first, small bristled sprouted like grass across her soft, beautiful skin. But that hair soon, if not more swiftly, turned into fur which began to cover her body. My heart began to pound and my jaw dropped open, but, I didn't move or say a thing. The truth was I was so interested in this whole thing that not even a house fire could move me now.
She cried out in obvious pain and I lifted my eyes up to see that her face itself began to move. Despite the fur which crept up over her mug, I could see a mountain-like feature jut from her nose and jaw. Soon, as if a tractor were there pulling them with it, her jaw, mouth and nose began to combine into a strange muzzle-like thing. Her nose disappeared almost entirely, but a black, button-like nose appeared at the end of the muzzle.
Her eyes moved very little, but it seemed obviously painful for her. Her ears moved up into her hair, having disappeared below the ever encroaching fur, and formed into round radar-like discs which stuck up out of her head almost like the tail wings on a plane. I kinda wanted to laugh, but, I could see that she didn't think it was too fun.
Something cracked behind her and a long, white fur covered tube stretched from her pants. It whisked along the top of the carpeted floor, but didn't set down. Her feet had disappeared entirely by this point, as I noticed as I watched this obvious form of a tail appear, and white fur lined paws now acted as her feet.
When the tail appeared, I stopped hearing cracks and moans and painful yips. She shook from head to paw with either fear or pain and when she opened her eyes, I could see fear and shame hidden behind the cool blue of her pupils. Her mouth dropped open and she took in several sobbing breaths. Her arms loosened up and Marie dropped them to her side.
"I'm a freak." She said. "I'm a fucking freak!"
"No, no, no, no you're not!" I replied loudly as I stood up. "You're . . . different, but, that doesn't make you a freak."
"Charlie, look at me!" She cried. "I'm a weasel!"
I didn't know what weasel look like, honestly, but, I stepped forward, accepted it, and slowly placed my arms around her. Marie quickly closed her eyes, grabbed my body and began weeping again. I could feel her soft fur through her shirt, luxurious and silky. It was like the finest furs from Russia that people buy at million dollar auctions.
I hushed her repeatedly and soon Marie calmed down. She still held my body close, allowing me to watch her newfound tail swing around behind her nervously and her paw scratch up my carpeting. But, despite this, I rocked her back and forth gently and she calmed down entirely.
Finally, she let me go and stepped back. She looked to me with sad eyes below distinguished eyebrows, which had a slightly black pigment on the tips, and stopped crying. Her hands ran down my arms and grabbed my hands for security and she looked down to my night shirt, not wishing to make eye contact, I suppose.
"Thank you," she said to me, "for being so understanding. Nobody else in this world would be, unless they were related my father's side of the family."
"It's alright." I told her. "Nobody should be treated like they're a freak, no matter what. It's just common courtesy."
She smiled and then looked to me again, directly in the eyes. I could see that she realized what she had done in school with her friends and her boyfriend's friends and so on. She mustn't have approved of it now, but, knew at this point she couldn't reverse any of it.
"Thank you." She told me.
She lifted her left hand from my hand and placed it down onto my shoulder, squeezing it gently. Then she stepped forward and put her right hand behind my head. Before I knew it, she tilted her head to the side and pressed her strange-feeling lips to mine.
But I didn't reject her. I simply put my arms around her, pressed against her body and felt over her weasel lips with my own in return. The kiss lasted for the longest time, each second feeling like an hour. But when she gently released me, she put her forehead against mine and I could feel her breath.
She no longer hated her own form from then on. Although she still hid it with some magical trinket her aunt had given her, as she informed me later, she loved to reveal it to those whom she trusted. She and I stuck together, even in school, breaking the social rules imposed unofficially in school.
But this allowed the entire system to come crashing down. There were no more second or third class students in Maywood High. Everybody mingled and, despite some people being treated differently, there was no more outright discrimination. Brad had his ass kicked by the science club two weeks later. I was accepted back in school and I began hanging out with the same people I did in elementary school. Soon I felt like nothing had ever changed, that I had never left. And I haven't been happier.