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Vera (and most characters mentioned in the story who will be visually introduced at a later time) (c) Ketzio11 & Gothbunnyboy
~~
A groan escaped as Vera turned to face her bedside table. Her pointy coyote ears twitched up and down with no real purpose and, with her eyelids ajar, she caught the luminous light from the numbers of her alarm clock. An encroaching dread was cast over her body as she abruptly awoke: it was nearly 8 AM and it was a school day. She scattered her blankets and fumbled to the floor in a rush.
It was just so damn unfair. It was not actually her fault her alarm clock was crap. Plus, whoever decided school aged children needed to wake up so early anyways needed to die a horrible death. ‘Drink your milk, Vera, get lots of rest’, only, guess what, she was lactose intolerant and all the sleep in the world doesn't mean anything if she had to jarringly get up at crest of dawn. School was balls.
She scooped up her towel from the chair and made her way across the hall and into the bathroom. At least she had the foresight to always throw her clean clothes for the next day on the bathroom counter, in case ever such an emergency arrived. Her towel, however, never left her room unless she was going to use it. She would be damned to have her cousin’s filthy hands on this: the perfect towel.
Vera could hear it now without her little cousin, Viola, even being there. “Hola, prima,” the little twerp would say, “May I use your toalla for this morning? I can’t find mine wherever I look!” and if Vera was forced to help her weird little cousin by her mother or anything – she would receive that annoying-ass “Prima, te aprecio mucho!”
The way Viola interjected Spanish into her English bugged the fuck out of Vera.
She kicked her underwear off and sprung into the shower the very moment it was hot enough to tolerate.
Vera had a special loathing for the morning because she always felt very gross. To list: Her nose was somehow always either stuffed or runny, her fur magically gets matted, and to make it worse, her hair, once her pride and joy, was becoming unwieldy when she woke up. She was like some horrible gross thing, with sticky fur, bad breath, crusty eyes and tentacles growing from her head. Showers were the only preventative measure.
“Good morning, Vera!” speak of the Devil. She could hear her little cousin’s muffled voice from behind the bathroom door. “I hope you slept goodly, prima!”
“Can you at least wait until I’m out of the shower?!” Vera roared in response. “That’s really rude of you!”
“Oh! ¡Perdóname! Excuse me!” she fumbled around near the door and, with the annoying scratching sound of her tail rubbing against the door most likely in rotation, she was gone. Finally. It was all under one minute… but still… finally.
“Once again, I’m sorry, Vera!” she had run back to the door just to say that. Oh my gosh.
“Go away, Viola!!”
Shrugging off her little cousin’s foolishness, Vera proceeded with her shower rituals. In the moment the shampoo touched her tummy; her phone beside the sink began to chirp and vibrate. She let out an exasperated sigh and clumsily got out to check it. After all, a shower means nothing if she got a text that told her the school had been blown up or something.
The message she received was not nearly so pleasant.
"you know how much I luv you. ditch school and hang out?" the message read. Vera specifically noted the word 'luv', a word that she absolutely hated. Luv, lurve, loves, wubs, and < 3 were all shitty forms of saying ‘I don't actually love you, but here is a substitution’ in her mind. She could clearly read through the message too. It basically said: “Ditch school, let me put dis big old dick in you, and then when I'm done, I'll send you home because I totally forgot I had a thing to do”, or worse than that, “Well, my friend or brother thinks you’re cute”.
Fuck that!
Vera had sort of sworn off of sex anyways. Having a new friend like Kas, her gay jackal bestie, made it easier to ignore the obvious advances and dubious love texts. That, and the moment she found herself on a porn site called LiveFurs.com, she realized how stupid she was being with her ‘easiness’.
She was not altogether against dating, but she was certainly not going to fall into any easy traps for the umpteenth time. Besides, fuck (not literally) older guys, they are more than comfortable with pushing their thumbs into her tailhole but not comfortable enough to commit to her.
She turned off her phone as she suddenly felt a stirring pain in her stomach and a few tears down her cheek. Had she kept her phone on she would have caught a text from her aforementioned best friend, Kas, warning her of the drama awaiting her.
She didn't know that, over the weekend, the gym teacher, a very fresh-faced and muscular piece of something sweet, was caught in a compromising way with a young female student. Apparently, as either rumor or police report suggested, he had been figuratively fucking her for 2 months now; going so far as to allegedly pull her out of classes so that they can have wild exhibitionist sex during school hours.
Of course sympathy was somehow on him because he was married with a young son and he was a fun, nice teacher; he was merely seduced. Rumor also immediately made it clear, regardless of what she said in the matter, that Vera was the whore that seduced that fun, nice and hot man into a lucid affair that he is now fired and ruined from. That bitch whore.
It would be a long, cold, and boring walk to school for Vera.
~
At around the same time, it was first period elective for Hunter, a Samoyed with dyed black head hair, as he gathered up his guitar and took his seat beside the window. His particular station consisted of himself and two girls he knew very well at a large circular table nearest the windows that spied on the now motionless hallway.
Hunter had a particular affinity for this class: Guitar 01, the basics, and in the weeks since the semester started, he had risen to a star student. His teacher enjoyed him and ultimately he respected his teacher. Most of his class had either taken the class from some misguided notion that playing guitar would either: get them girls or teach them to instantly shred. The sighs were more than plenty from when Mr. Robbins, the music teacher, started off the day with simple folk, blues and 4-chord rock which all demonstrating the minor and major chords.
Most of his classmates had taken to relieve part of their frustration towards Hunter. The attacks were never outwardly malicious but a majority of the class didn't like the fact that he was often first to get the lesson down and was a natural savant at the instrument. The students focused on his shaggy hair and outdated taste in music.
"Mop top" they would call him, or "Where are the rest of the Beatles at?" were the average taunts but, as silly as it seemed, Hunter shrugged it off. His mother always said: "If someone is mean to you, they're just that way because they're jealous". He always knew that was bull, but he loved his mom enough for that to cheer him up.
He had two friends here: The first was Lana, his best friend, a redheaded mouse that always wore huge goggles. She had a major attitude but she never had any issues with him. They were friends by default. They had always lived relatively close together and had spent all of their early and current school life in the same grades. He had been drifting farther from her this year though because her little sister, Zaily, had grown very ill. Always being a small and frail thing that she was; Hunter was unsure what it was, but either her blood was too thick or too thin, but somehow she ended up stuck in a crutch a lot of the time. Sadly that meant Lana was always distracted and self-absorbed during class; making her conversations almost surreal.
His other ally was Zara, a spunky and chubby rat / opossum who had all the moods from dour to angry. He fancied that Zara was not her real name, he actually assumed it would either be Sarah, or simply something else very plain, but Zara, being the strong woman she was, wouldn't settle for plain.
He suspected she gave the name to herself.
She was a very skilled guitar player, being that she was a year older and a grade ahead, and had already joined a band but she dubbed that this class was easy credit for her since she could play everything the teacher spat out already. Hunter admired her forward nature about things and envied her strong and angry, burning pride. If something was going to be done, she would do it the best!
He loved them both equally, but he also felt like the middle child: Zara was older, strongly fought for female rights and had a temper, while Lana was slightly younger, stubborn, and vocally advocated against 'privileged people who whined too much'. He was sandwiched between two very strong, clashing women and not in the preferred male way. It seemed that sexual relations between them, at this point, would be about as awkward as incest because of how close they were to each other.
This morning was like any other: The first 15 minutes, everyone had some free time to tune up and the teacher liberally turned a blind eye to anyone using this time to finish any of the homework for later classes. There was a rather nasty chorus of acoustics plucking idly with some people running chords and others simply dicking around. Hunter stayed deaf to it and watched the window.
It was mesmerizingly pretty, so close to freezing that just the tiniest dots of snow danced in the breeze. Everything was so grey, and he felt he could relate to it... not in a dramatic way, of course, but because his body was 95% white and grey. It was in his blood to love winter with its gifts, holidays, snow, ice, cold and family (even though he could barely handle the cold).
He was also deaf to Lana and Zara, who bickered tediously about whatever the hell. Deep down, they liked each other a lot, and he suspected their fighting was just a code for "I love you, thank you for loving me too".
Hunter felt that way about a lot of things.
In the graying morning light, he watched a lone figure walking late to class. His heart crept up on him. She was sincerely the prettiest girl he had ever seen, there was no hyperbole either. He felt everything submit to her -- that lone stranger walking.
Her cute, unnaturally bushy coyote tail, her purple hair, her purple... most things on her body. He adored the color purple, but felt it wouldn’t go well with him even as self-proclaimed darkly styled as he was. He was corny in a sense that he’d truly believe that love at first sight existed and he felt that this was his moment to feel it.
"W-who is t-t-t-that?" he asked Zara; his personal tree of knowledge. He would be hard-pressed to find something she didn't have a rudimentary knowledge of. (Or at least an opinion of)
"Her?" she raised an eyebrow and looked outside at the girl. "Oh, that's Vera. She's a total poser, but she's cool. I have her in English class and she really likes my writings on why men are just deformed women."
"Z," Lana sighed extensively. "If you don't like men so much, as you keep saying, why do you even have a boyfriend?" she crossed her legs in a sort of ‘caught you in your hypocrisy’ pose.
"For sex.” She responded bluntly. “Also, not my boyfriend, I prefer the term 'life-mate' but whatever. It's genetic coding, even if we aren't actually doing it, our brains nurture us with comfort when we have a mate around who is willing to do it... basically I hacked my own brain to make me happy by having a 'boyfriend." Z responded snobbishly, closing her eyes in victorious condescension. "Tell me, why don’t YOU have a boyfriend if you think guys are so unique and great?"
"I never even... ugh," Lana shook her head. "Besides, I'm not into guys like that, if I find the right one maybe but--"
Hunter drowned them out in his mind, staring at the girl as she passed by; his brain hyper-focusing on her name. “Vera... what an old sounding name.” He giggled to himself. He could swear that somewhere in his lineage, he had a great great great great grandmother named Vera. He figured it might have been short for something more modern like Veralyn... but then again... that wasn’t even a name.
Then, interrupting his train of thought, she had slipped on a slick of ice. He saw it happen like slow motion: she was hugging her backpack, looking toward the fields when... BAM! Her feet almost comically shot back from underneath her, both knees slamming the cement and her hands along the slick of ice that had just shamed her.
"BATHROOM!" Hunter almost screamed as he darted to his feet; leaving his beloved guitar with his two rivaling friends.
"That's fine, Hunter, but please take the pas-" but before the teacher could finish, Hunter was already outside.
He sprinted, nearly slipping himself, to get to Vera with her entire bag spilled out everywhere. There was a litter of pencils, markers, papers, books, make up, and etcetera around her that she had barely a time to acknowledge.
Her knees hurt like fuck and the only thing she had to be grateful for was that at least no one had been around to see her fall clumsily under her feet like some-kind of clumsy slob.
As she raised her head slowly, though, she noticed Hunter who slid up to her. He was cute, oddly the first thing she noticed, and he had a goofy scarf and cool hair. Weirdly enough, he reminded her of someone she knew from long ago -- but that felt like a lifetime so she brushed off the thought. Her brain couldn't put a name to his face though, but he looked a little bit younger than she was. How adorable... but unfortunate that he had to see her be the clumsy-ass one.
"L-let me h-h-h-help you" he said and, without an answer, began to gather her things up.
"Where did you come from?" she asked with a suspiciously raised eyebrow. Noticing that there was no one else around, it must have been her unlucky day to get this almost-camouflaged dog boy to come rushing out to her aid after seeing her show off her lack of grace and dexterity.
"M-my class... it's o-o-o-over there, I saw you f-f-f-fall!"
"Oh... you saw that, eh..." She smiled sheepishly and felt like a nerd as she knocked her messy bangs aside from instinct.
"Wow... You have really p-pretty eyes," He said; fixing his grey eyes to hers. “Heterochromia?”
Vera puffed her cheeks. She was asked that question way too much. “Not really. A lot of the time, heterochromia is just two separate colors in a single iris – what I have is just a weird thing, I guess.”
“Oh! E-Either way... I like the p-purple one a lot.”
"Yeah, well, I'm colorblind in the red one, so it gives me really bad cluster headaches." She felt bad at how bitchy she must have sounded but, then again, her eyes were no new compliment, she heard it all at this point; every dumb line. Whenever she admitted to her cluster headaches, she heard every other dumb line too: "Oh Vera, I would move Heaven and Earth to release you from such torment" or "Oh, if only it was me to be damned with that curse" or the ever-popular "But you are so beautiful" blah blah blah.
"That sucks." he said honestly and flatly; slightly disarming her cynicism. That caused her to smile and she tried to desperately hide it with her hand. No one had ever just said 'that sucks' so naively and honestly.
"Yeah... it really does suck." she admitted with a smile and was greeted back with his.
"I r-really like the patch on your b-backpack too, that's actually my f-f-f--" he looked rather upset; gesturing in the hopes that Vera would finish his sentence for him. She just looked at him with a funny stare. "F-f-favorite band!" he said almost suddenly; looking for something to engage her with as he finished gathering the last of her things.
"You do?" she asked, almost puzzled, looking at the Nine Inch Nails patch on her backpack, it was always the kind of thing most people read out loud and then looked at her with confusion. "What about Tool?"
He nodded eagerly and stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth as he dug his paw into his pocket to show her his wallet embroidered with the third eye logo.
"They’re like my th-th-th-third favorite band!"
He stood first and held his hand out to help her. She took it with slight hesitation. She wasn't really used to seeing some kid run from his class to help her, but here he was.
"C-can I walk you to class?" he asked warmly.
"You're being awfully nic—“ she cut her suspicious self off. “I'm Vera..." She said; noticing that he was still holding her backpack.
"I'm Hunter, my dad s-s-super-wanted me to be all b-b-butch and stuff... he used to buy me toy guns for C-Christmas every-... oh eheh... s-s-sorry... I ramble sometimes." He said almost cartoonishly kicking at the ground as they started walking close and slow toward her class. It was in the 800 wing so she was comfortable knowing she would have a few good minutes with this kid.
"I think it's really cute... and I think you have a very cute name... but are you for serious going to carry my bag?" she was very amused that he was doing that, though her internal radar was confused.
It was confused because normally when a guy carries her bag for her, she can start to feel him being a douche. She would always ignore this and act charmed, but her little teenage douche-dar would just keep beeping. This guy, however, seemed more naive and genuine. Whatever it was, it kind of worked because she was enjoying herself.
They both drug their feet; trying to extend this time, she could feel how totally absorbed in her he was and it was too good a feeling to let go. It's one thing when she knows someone is acting a way to get something, it's another to be empowered like this.
Hunter loved this feeling too. Vera was sweet and nice and really liked all of the things others wanted him to fix about himself.
"I love your stutter, I used to do that too." she said almost at random.
"Oh... I'm t-taking a speech th-therapy... L-Lumina... uh... my s-sister... told me that, when I was a b-b-b-baby, she hit me in the mouth with a d-door and that's why I st-stutter." He said shyly looking down. Vera noticed something that made her bite her lips in inner excitement. He was blushing! It was awesome to see that she made a boy blush. (while leaving her clothes on)
"Well don't, I think it's really cute and it makes you extra... you." She said earnestly feeling like that was a correct thing to say even if they had known each other for less than a 10 minutes.
As they approached her class, she noticed the line of students sitting out front. Her math teacher was always flighty and she could already assume they simply hadn't shown up today. Vera distinctly imagined the assistant principle scattering his brain to find a substitute for the abandoned math class and this thought made her giggle audibly. She gently stopped hunter.
"Okay, I can take it from here, my class hasn’t even started yet it seems so I'm in double luck." She said with a cheesy smile, facing him directly as she took her bag.
"Double luck?" he asked vacantly; stumbling into what she hoped he would say.
"Pshhh... me meeting you was my first luck!" she pushed her bangs aside once again. “Ehehe... was that too corny? I’m told I can be a cheeseball sometimes, I’m sorry.”
He found himself tongue-tied and simply refused to open his mouth to even attempt a response yet. He stood rigid with his fur growing to volcanic levels of heat from this tension he was going through.
"Are you okay?" She titled her head.
"C-can I walk you to your next c-c-c-class... I m-mean after this one..." He stuttered out, finding that connecting coherent words together around Vera was getting more difficult than before.
"Well... okay! That would be nice, Hunter."
They stared at each other for a moment and Vera knew, absolutely knew for a fact, that he would kiss her. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, slightly puckering her lips. At least that’s how these things normally went. Now she just hoped he wouldn’t kiss her and do what most other boys did... but... wait.
Nothing.
When she opened one eye, she could see him sprinting as fast as he could, back to his class, with an eager pip in his step. Even if she wasn't kissed -- it was good to have a sweet guy talk to her. Even if he did remind her of her own self a year back.
~
All of the students exiled from the warm class looked miserable. They were already cold from waiting for the past 15 minutes, but now they looked pissed off too. Everyone’s malicious glares zeroed in as Vera approached and, suddenly, the whispering started. The whispering quickly begat conversation and conversation led to Vera almost physically feeling a tonal shift in the air.
"Why did you have to get caught sucking Mr. Brighton’s dick, Vera?" A girl spat out at her bluntly. "Now who is going to coach the volleyball team?"
"Yeah, could you have sucked on Gregor's old wrinkled cock” A boy taunted. “I have a geometry exam today and you could have gotten him fired instead!"
"Wha... I don't..." Vera met their glares. She was certainly smart enough to see everyone had mob mentality and ganged up on her.
"Dude, Vera's too fucking stupid to even be in the Geometry class” another boy raised his voice, “Dur, what is a dimension... is dat when I forget da-mention I like da cock?"
An uproar of laughter commenced and Vera’s jaw nearly dropped. She knew what people whispered about her, she knew there were rumors and she certainly knew that almost every guy she had been with had to have ratted on her, but this is the first time a group ganged up on her.
Her hands started shaking as she clutched her bag tightly to her chest. She had no idea how to react to them and remained frozen in indecision besides a stuttered gasp for an answer: "Wh-What did I do?" her voice was almost too weak to be heard.
It didn't matter. Maybe one or two of them would have been sympathetic, but as a group, they didn't care. Some of them might regret it but by that time she would have already been mashed up and devoured emotionally.
"Hey, Vera," Another boy called out. He carried a familiar face and had a very lean build. She remembered this spaniel because he, last year, had pulled her into the boy’s bathroom after buttering her up with some compliments. She remembered how she was shamefully fucked against a filthy stall.
Her heart sunk when she saw that even he joined the crowd that wanted to burn her. “I know you can’t get off the D for more than 4 hours at a time – but seriously – at least stick to doing the students. You don’t need to ruin the teachers’ lives too.”
“Plus!” yet another girl joined the slaughter. “Those weird fucking moles on your ass don’t really make things better. You should seriously think of getting your weird body off of the internet – we don’t really want to accidentally stumble on it, kaaay?”
Her knees trembled. Her moles where something she was crushingly ashamed of, and now, it didn't matter that she was insulted, it mattered more that everyone suddenly knew about them.
"Fuck you!" She retaliated.
"Yeah, leave her alone, jeeze, you don't want her to commit suicide or anything because then our yearbooks would end up loaded with pictures of her... this isn't the internet, we don't need more pictures of Vera." A girl crudely interjected.
"Fuck you, too!" Vera stumbled looking at her own shaking self in a reflection from off the darkened window.
"I wonder if she got Mrs. Scott fired a month back... did you get caught fucking her? Or, how about we just figure out what teachers you haven't fucked.”
"Leave me alone! Please!" she begged. It was all she could do. "I never had sex with any teachers!" It was as if this was all a nightmare. This over-exaggerated and constant bombardment of her self-image was like nothing that has ever been thrown at her before.
To be honest, to herself at least, she knew this was all her fault. This reputation she had was because of her ignorance towards pulling her shorts down so easily. She knew she was easy to seduce with compliments on her looks and that was her downfall. Even if she pledged to start a new leaf – she knew she couldn’t just ask for her dignity back like a reset switch.
The crowd’s bloodlust was sated because they had made her bawl. Huge globs of runny snot and tears dribbled from her nose, and she slumped into the ground shaking and sobbing like a child. She wanted to either wake up or have someone, anyone, come over and hold her. She got neither. Everyone she ever had sex with played over and over in her head like one slapping orgy and she suddenly felt like she deserved the ire. She was a loose fuck-up.
She managed to calm herself down after a few minutes as the rest of the class seemed disgusted by her, but whatever, she deserved it now. She crawled like an animal to the line and sat in the back, fully aware they still whispered and they still stared. In reality some of them did feel bad, and opted to stop because of this, but fuck them, it didn't matter.
25 minutes after the scheduled class starting time; they were finally let in by the vice principle.
"Sorry about that,” he apathetically said, “Your teacher had an emergency, so please, take a seat and either read or work on homework for the rest of the period. Everyone will get full credit for the period and we apologize for making you all wait in the cold for so long." Everyone took their seats and began shuffling out books, but, once the authority stepped out, almost everyone pulled out cell phones. As Vera did as well, she briefly saw the text from her friend, Kas, that she had missed:
"dnt come to school today, sweetie : ( it looks like people are blaming you for that jerk that got fired."
She turned off her phone and pulled out her homework; determined to at least distract herself, before she broke from all of this drama.
Behind her, she could hear snickering from two girls, two-once-very-nice girls. They began giggling and talking about Vera. ‘Vera loves cock, she once blew seven guys, sometimes during lunch she set up a stall in the girls room where boys lined up to fuck her’... so on and so on.
It was devastatingly relentless.
Huge drops of tears fell on her homework as she silently listened, for the rest of the period, to vicious lies and some even harsher truths.
~
She nearly sprinted out of class the moment it ended. She didn't want to look any of them in the face and didn't want any of them to follow her. She was ready to put everything behind her, absolutely everything. She would finish today, go home, call Kas, and cry her eyes out. If she hadn't have died by tomorrow from crying, then she would tell her mom to fuck off because she had the flu and spend all of the next day crying.
It was startling when a winded Hunter sprinted up to her; slinging his guitar case over one shoulder and his backpack over the other with his goofy gray scarf flashing in the wind like a heroic cape.
He nearly dropped everything when he noticed how pink and puffy her eyes were.
"What’s w-wrong?" he asked intently; still trying to hide himself catching his breath from the long sprint. He had especially cashed in some of his goodwill with his teacher to get out a few minutes before the bell just so he would make it.
"Nothing... some... people... were picking on me... that's all... I guess it got to me a little but I’m alright." She lied to his face and forced a smile. She was ready for him to fuck up with a line of fake sympathy or something.
"Oh, well, my mom always says... 'If s-someone is making f-fun of you it's because they are j-j-jealous... or something"? He said with a bright smile.
She gawked at him in disbelief for a solid moment as other students walked right on by.
"That... is the stupidest advice anyone has ever said..." she said bluntly. "That's so dumb -- it really shouldn't have made me feel so good.” she giggled a little bit.
“Yeaah...” Hunter rubbed the back of his head, “...but it does ch-ch-cheer me up when I think about it”.
They remained quiet in an interval of awkwardness until Vera, who normally wouldn’t be the one to do this, broke the silence. “Do you... uh... still wanna walk me to my class?”
“Oh!” Hunter extended a hand to her and she backed up a little from reflex. “Want me to c-c-c-carry your bag, then?”
“I think you already have enough on your bag this time, dude.” She giddily replied as she started on her way to her next class. “Plus, just because you’re a guy, doesn’t mean you have to carry my bags all the time”.
Hunter followed soon after. “It’s a ch-ch-chivalrous thing, though!” he replied, “Isn’t it?”
“I think chivalry is deaaaad, but fine.” She took her bag off and gave it to Hunter who started immediately showing signs of struggle as he tried his best to remain standing with the 3 heavy bags pressing down on him. “You're too funny. I can’t stand it.” Vera reached over and took her bag back with a sly grin on her face.
“C-Can’t knock a g-guy for trying, though.” He tried to recover from his embarrassing attempt at being a macho man.
As the two of them proceeded to Vera's next class, she couldn't help but face forward and sneak some peeks at him from her peripheral. This guy was such an oddball... and it really was bizarre just how much he reminded her of herself when she was so desperate for love.
She smiled at the thought of them being friends. (At least as starters) "I appreciate it though." she finally answered him.
Perhaps today wasn't all that bad.