Chapter 1: Best Friends

“Why are you crying?” Jamie asked, sidling up beside the strange girl as she sat alone on the swing set. She wasn’t swinging, she was just dangling her paw-like feet off the ground, gripping the chains with her clawed hands and looking sullen. The sounds of children laughing carried over from the other side of the playground, but she was not participating in their fun. The round, furry ears on the top of her head swiveled in his direction, and she looked up at him with a pair of green eyes like those of a cat.

“Who are you?” she asked, rubbing her runny nose with the back of her furry forearm as she sniffed noisily.

“I’m Jamie,” he replied, hanging from the metal A-frame of the swing set. He didn’t quite know what to make of this girl. She was short and pudgy, with a layer of fine, sandy hair that covered her body from head to toe. The blue sundress that she was wearing had yellow duck patterns on it, and her furry cheeks were matted with tears. A long, fluffy tail protruded from beneath the hem of her dress, trailing on the ground behind her as the swing rocked gently in the breeze. She looked like a little lion, Jamie mused. He had seen them in his alphabet book.

“Why are you crying?” Jamie asked as he released his hold on the metal frame, dropping down onto the grass.

The girl sniffed loudly again, wiping her pink, feline nose.

“Those other kids were making fun of me,” she mumbled, sparing a resentful glance across the playground.

“How come?”

“Because I have a tail,” she replied hesitantly, as though afraid that Jamie would follow suit if he noticed it. He leaned around the swing set to get a better look, and she turned her eyes back to the ground.

“That’s pretty cool,” the boy said. “I wish I had a tail.”

“You do?”

The girl seemed to perk up a little, her ears rising from her mop of blonde hair.

“All the best animals have tails,” he reaffirmed, starting to count on his stubby fingers. “Tigers, dinosaurs, sharks, snakes...”

“Snakes are just one big tail,” she giggled, wiping her eyes.

“Yeah, but snakes are pretty cool.”

Jamie couldn’t think of anything else to say, hooking his thumbs through the suspenders of the denim overalls that he was wearing as he bobbed on the spot. She seemed a little happier now, the girl watching him expectantly with her reflective pupils. Jamie didn’t care that she looked different, he just wanted to cheer her up.

“Want me to push you?”

She nodded, and he walked behind her, careful to avoid stepping on her tail. He placed his hands on her back, giving her a good shove, and she started to swing. Before long, Jamie had a good rhythm going, not wanting to send her too high. The boys made a game of seeing how high they could go, then jumping off, but the girls usually got scared if you pushed too hard.

“What’s your name?” he asked, noting that her fluffy ears had turned all the way around to follow his voice.

“Liz,” she replied, her blonde hair flowing behind her as he sent her into the air with another push.

“I’m six and a half,” Jamie stated proudly, “how old are you?”

“I’m six.”

“Is it your first day at school?”

“Yeah.”

“I was scared when I first came to school,” he said, giving her another shove to keep her going. “I didn’t have any friends at first. I can be your friend if you want.”

“You mean it?” Liz asked, peering back at him over her shoulder. “Nobody else wants to be my friend. The other girls teased me, they said I looked like a cat. They won’t play with me.”

“Well ... you do,” he began, continuing hurriedly as she began to pout. “But I like cats.”

She gave him a warm smile, then turned her head back around to face forward, starting to swing her legs in time with his pushes. After a few minutes, a gaggle of half a dozen boys made their way over to see what the pair were doing, Tyler at their head. Jamie didn’t like Tyler, he was a mean kid, and he was big. He liked to shove people and start fights at recess. He was always hogging the swing set with his friends, trying to send each other up and over the bar. Liz’s smile faded as she saw them approaching, her ears flattening against her head, her tail drooping.

“I want a turn on the swing set, Jamie,” Tyler said. He stood in front of Liz’s swing so that Jamie had to bring her to a stop to save from hitting him.

“There are two, you can use the other one,” Jamie replied as he gestured to the empty swing to their right.

“I said I want a turn,” Tyler repeated, more sternly this time. Liz’s lower lip began to tremble, and she looked as if she might start to cry again. She turned to look back at Jamie, unsure of what to do.

“Well, you can’t have a turn yet,” Jamie declared. “We’re not done.”

Tyler circled around behind the swing set and stood before Jamie, squaring up for a fight. He was a head taller than the smaller boy, but Jamie held his ground, growing angrier as Liz became more distressed.

“I said scram,” Tyler spat, giving Jamie a shove. He stumbled, but didn’t fall, staggering back a few paces. Liz slunk out of her seat and covered her ears with her fluffy hands, her eyes darting between the two boys as fresh tears began to roll down her chubby cheeks. Now they had done it. Jamie had just succeeded in cheering her up, and Tyler had undone all of his work. Jamie’s face reddened, his knuckles turning white as he balled his fists.

“Back off, Tyler,” he snarled.

“Or what?” the larger boy sneered. “You gonna go crying to the teacher?”

“No, I’m gonna beat your ass.”

Tyler seemed a little taken aback, then turned to his friends, starting to laugh. They joined in, the chorus of jeering children frightening Liz as she looked on.

“You trying to impress your new girlfriend, Jamie? Why don’t you marry her if you like her so much?” Tyler turned his attention to Liz, walking over to stand in front of her, cocking his head curiously. “What’s wrong with her, anyway? She got a disease or something?”

He reached out to catch one of her ears between his thumb and forefinger, giving it a tug, Liz wailing her displeasure.

“Hey!” Jamie bellowed, seeing red. “Leave her alone!”

Tyler relinquished his hold on the trembling girl’s ear and marched back over to him, shoving him violently to the ground. Jamie fell on his rear, skinning his palm, and kicking up a cloud of dust.

“Stay down, unless you want to get beat,” Tyler snarled. He turned his back on Jamie, making a beeline for Liz. “Go play somewhere else, freak.”

She shut her eyes and shook her head, her chest heaving as she sobbed, her fat tears leaving wet spots on the blue fabric of her sundress.

Jamie’s anger got the better of him, and he reached for a nearby rock, scrambling to his feet. He charged Tyler from behind before any of his friends could react, slamming it into the back of his head with a dull thud. The bully stumbled, then dropped heavily to the ground beneath the swing set, groaning as blood matted his dark hair. As he tried to stand again, Jamie caught him in the nose with a swift kick, knocking him back down. He gave the boy another kick to the ribs with his scuffed sneakers for good measure, then Tyler scrambled free, stumbling away towards the glass facade of the school building. Now who was going crying to teacher? The other boys scattered, not wanting to get into trouble too, Jamie dropping the bloodied rock at his feet.

Liz shuffled up beside him, sniffing as she dried her eyes on the collar of her duck-patterned dress. She hid behind him and reached out to take his hand. Her fingers were thick and furry, there were only four of them, Jamie feeling her coil her tail around his waist. She was clinging to him like a baby monkey.

“I’m sorry he scared you,” Jamie said. “Tyler is a bully.”

“I’m okay...”

“Want to go back on the swings?”

She nodded, smiling up at him.

Jamie loitered on the steps outside the science building as he waited for Liz. She should be finishing her exobiology class right about now. He rested his hands on the straps of his backpack, feeling the sun’s heat on his face as he listened to the wind rustle the leaves of the trees that were dotted around the campus. He could see the main building in the distance, an old effigy of red brick built in the collegiate gothic style, contrasting starkly with the more modern glass and steel that surrounded it. The small island of green lawns and twentieth-century throwbacks was boxed in by glittering skyscrapers that rose up into the air in every direction, dominating the skyline.

No two were exactly alike. Some were terraced, some twisted and misshapen like giant student art projects, others connected to their neighbors by glass skyways to create a kind of street high above ground level. They were all a kilometer tall or more, their innumerable windows reflecting the evening sun’s glow.

He heard the faint ringing of a bell, and a torrent of students soon came flooding out of the double doors and down the steps, eager to put the school day behind them. He picked out Liz in the crowd, her golden hair blowing in the breeze.

He remembered her as a kitten, when they had met that day at the swing set in the playground. She had been so short and chubby, covered in sandy fur from her head to the tip of her tail. As she had matured, she had grown out of her puppy fat, the coat of fur that had covered her body receding from her face and torso to reveal the caramel skin beneath. Only her forearms, her lower legs, and her tail still sported a covering of straw-colored hair.

Borealans were basically humanoid, a species evolved from a feline ancestor that had taken a fairly convergent evolutionary path. At least, that’s what she told him when her pink nose wasn’t buried in one of her textbooks. Her father was an ambassador living on Earth, and he had brought his family with him in order to learn about the local culture, putting his daughter through the human school system as part of his commitment. Jamie was now quite familiar with her parents. They were rather intimidating at eight feet tall, but their daughter’s infatuation with Jamie had seen them warm up to him fairly quickly, and they now treated him as a member of their family when he paid them a visit.

At seventeen years old, Liz was still short by Borealan standards. Her parents had promised her a growth spurt when she reached the right age, but she was lagging behind her peers at only five feet and six inches. Jamie, on the other hand, had sprouted during his adolescence. He dwarfed his friend at six feet and one inch, and he never missed an opportunity to tease her about it. She would probably have the last laugh when she reached the size of her parents, but for now, Jamie was a head taller than her.

She waved to him with a clawed hand, pulling the strap of her book bag over the shoulder of her turtleneck sweater. Jamie didn’t think of her as an alien, not really. He had known her practically his whole life. Her sense of fashion, her accent, her mannerisms – they were all so distinctly human that only her unusual appearance gave her away as a non-native. A few people still gave her shit about her planet of origin, calling her names like ‘fleabag’ or ‘whiskers’, but never within earshot of Jamie. He had made it abundantly clear that anyone who wanted to give Liz a hard time would have to answer to him. He was on the track team, and he was one of the largest students on campus. He wasn’t above knocking out a few teeth to keep the xenophobes off her back.

Everyone knew about the races of the multi-species Coalition to which Earth belonged at this point. It was taught at length in classes on xenobiology and alien cultures, and you could scarcely watch a minute of a news broadcast without seeing an alien, but to have one actually living among humans on Earth was a novelty to which not everyone had become accustomed. Outside of the military, few everyday people ever crossed paths with them.

Liz trotted over to his side, waving goodbye to a few of her classmates. She looked up at him with those reflective, green eyes, adjusting her bag.

“Hi, Jamie. You done with your classes?”

“Yeah, I finished last period, but I thought I’d wait around for you.”

She gave him a warm smile, taking his hand as the pair began to walk. She kept up with the taller boy easily with her long, loping strides. Her parents had told him that Borealis had a higher gravity than Earth, but despite Jamie trying to get her interested in sports in order to leverage her natural strength, she was a total bookworm. The only physical activity that she seemed to enjoy was Aikido, some far-East martial art that she said was good exercise, but that he suspected she had taken up because of her problems with bullying in her youth. She took classes at a local gym every Wednesday, and she was getting pretty good at it, from what she had told him.

Like many second-generation immigrants, her culture of origin held a certain fascination for her, and it made Jamie wonder if it made her experience of life any harder to be so far removed from it. Her parents certainly seemed to have brought much of their culture with them, their house was filled to the brim with strange pieces of art. He had seen decorative tapestries made in a stilted, almost medieval style, busts of important figures from their homeworld, even odd pelts from unidentifiable alien wildlife. Their residence was like an alien museum, one that he always enjoyed exploring when the opportunity arose.

“You want to get some food?” Liz asked, Jamie nodding his reply.

They left the college campus, passing beneath the arched gate at the entrance, heading in the direction of the residential area where Liz lived. There was a diner on the way where they liked to stop after school. It was usually fairly quiet, and the staff there knew Liz, so they rarely encountered any rubberneckers.

The bases of the skyscrapers formed what seemed like canyon walls of glass and metal to either side of the wide street, the sidewalk separated from the road by rows of silver bollards. The lanes were clogged with rush-hour traffic, the cars stacked bumper to bumper as their occupants tried to get home after a long day of work. Jamie could see some of them through the tinted windows, idly tapping at tablet computers as they waited for their nav systems to spring back to life. A few of the vehicles began to roll forward as one of the stoplights turned green, moving like a shoal of metal fish, communicating with one another over their shared network to optimize the flow of traffic.

The sound of a mag-lev train passing overhead drew Jamie’s attention, and he glanced up to see it zipping by, its track weaving between the skyscrapers and the pedestrian walkways that networked their upper levels. Above those still, he could make out a few shuttles cruising through the air, leaving white contrails behind them as they ferried people and goods to and fro.

Jamie and Liz preferred to walk rather than to ride the buses and trains favored by the other students. It was nice to take a break from the rat race, to enjoy some fresh air, rather than being packed shoulder to shoulder like sardines in a can. There were never too many people crowding the sidewalks, despite the slew of road and air traffic. Anyone who wanted to travel long-distance would take a car or a train, while people could usually run errands or shop for groceries inside their own building without needing to set foot outside.

The pair walked hand in hand beneath the rows of trees that lined the street, their colors changing from green to rich shades of red, orange, and brown as the seasons turned. Liz kicked through the piles of shed foliage gleefully with her paw-like feet, crunching the dead leaves underfoot. Although she had adopted human clothing styles, she never wore shoes. Whatever boots they might be able to make that would fit her would probably only draw further attention to her.

They soon arrived at the diner, located on the corner of a block where two of the roads intersected. It had a large window that faced out onto the street, the flickering, neon sign in hues of pink and blue a deliberate throwback to vintage styles. Jamie opened the door for Liz, and she ducked under his arm, making her way to their preferred booth at the back. They were on a first-name basis with the staff here, and that put the girl more at ease. She was always on edge whenever they went somewhere new, where people might stare at her.

A waitress walked over to take their order, clad in a pink, knee-length uniform with a white apron tied around her waist. It was as quiet as Jamie had hoped today, and they were the only couple in the diner. Well, he probably shouldn’t use the word ‘couple’. They had been best friends since childhood, but they had never been romantically involved. He had often thought about it, but for all the similarities her people shared with his own, he didn’t know whether their species were even compatible. How would he even broach the subject? What would her parents say?

Jamie was pretty popular with the girls on campus. He was tall, athletic, he played sports. Much to the dismay of his female classmates, he only had eyes for Liz and remained staunchly celibate. Rumors circulated about how he and Liz were an item, but he wasn’t sure that anyone really believed them. It was all just juvenile teasing. In his eyes, Liz was still the little girl who he had found crying in the playground, someone who needed his protection, his friendship. He couldn’t bring himself to risk spoiling that relationship.