Bruce and Danny Chapter 11: A Busy Summer

By: Ash Cinder

            Summer had begun, and I was spending it with all my friends in my neighborhood. Angie, Tyson, Owen, Josh and I hung out almost every day of our vacation. Playing video games, seeing movies, we were doing everything we could together.

            It made me happy to see that Josh was getting along so well with my other three friends. He’d made a lot of progress from where he was a few months ago, where he was too nervous about Anthros to even come over to my house. Now we were having sleepovers at each other’s houses and riding bikes in the park.

            But on days when I couldn’t play with my friends I always turned to my dad hoping he’d have time for me like he usually did. It was hard not to want to horse around with your dad a lot when he was a big Kodiak bear. But ever since summer started, he just seemed to be busier. He always seemed to want to play with me, and even would take a few minutes some days to do it, but for the most part whatever he was working on was really important and was what he was focusing all his energy into.

            I looked in his office and saw him working on his computer as usual. I walked in, hoping that he might have time to play with me this time.

            “Hey dad.” I greeted, walking up to him holding onto his arm gently.

            “Heya buddy.” Dad looked down at me, ruffling my hair gently with his large paw.

            “Do you think you could play with me for a little bit?” I asked, petting the soft fur on his arm.

            He looked down at me with a warm smile, but sad eyes and I already knew how he was going to answer.

            “Uh, I’m sorry son, but I’m still really busy. But, I was talking with Owen’s dad earlier and I can take you to play with him later if you want.” He patted my head.

            “Okay.” I said, trying not to sound too disappointed. “I guess that’s okay.”

            “Alright, give me a few minutes and I’ll take you over there.” He said, turning back to his computer.

            I walked out and back to my room, hoping dad was actually going to do his little trick of sneaking up behind me and lifting me up, ready to play with me for a little bit, but to my disappointment nobody came up behind me. I sighed and went in my room, putting on my shoes and waiting for him to take me to Owen’s.

I kind of missed dad and how he used to play with me all the time. I loved hanging out with the four main friends I had, but I loved how me and dad used to wrestle together and stuff like that. Heh, that was always fun when your dad was a big old bear. At the time, I wondered what he was so busy with, I couldn’t imagine it had to do with keeping our family together.

            I hated seeing Danny look so disappointed when I told him I couldn’t play with him. It broke my heart that I’d barely gotten to even hug him since I’d started helping the group, which was going by the name of Interspecies Families of Texas.

            Even though I’d wanted to play with Danny as much as I had before all of this, I couldn’t stop focusing on the group. I felt like if I didn’t give it my all in helping them, this bill had a chance of passing and I was going to lose him. I just couldn’t risk that, working for this group and planning on the trip to Austin somehow put my mind at ease.

            I seemed to join at just the right time because they really stepped up their campaign around the time I joined. I think this was probably due to me being a columnist and using my position to draw more attention to them, and the issue they were combating.

            They were planning on heading to Austin in a few weeks to try and testify before the Texas government there and make their case against this bill and I was looking forward to joining them. Emma was being very encouraging. She tried not to show her worry about the bill passing, maintaining her optimistic nature, but I knew she was just as unsure of the future as I was. But we weren’t going to tell Danny about any of this, he didn’t need to be worrying about the possibility of being taken from us.

            After a few more minutes of working on my next editorial, I got an email from Roger messaging me with more information about the trip to Austin. He told me about the hotel they’d be staying at, what their talking points would be, and how much each person going would need to shell out.

            I’d been talking with Matteo and Troy, the two I’d met at the first meeting, and we were talking about rooming together for this trip. They both really wanted to go too. Grady agreed to have Danny over for a couple of hours and play with Owen while I got meet up with them today. I shut off my laptop and went to Danny’s room to get him.

            “Alright buddy, ready to go to Owen’s?”

            “Yeah.”

            We walked downstairs to the front door.

            “I’ll be back, hun,” I called to Emma, “I’m taking Danny over to play with Owen.”

            “Okay, be careful.”

            As we drove over to Owen’s house, I looked in my rear view mirror at Danny, it still bothered me that my activism was keeping me from playing with him like I used to be able to.

            “Hey Danny,” I said, “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to play with you as much as you or I would like to, I know I’ve been really busy. But I promise it won’t be forever.” I gave him a wink in the rear view mirror.

            “Okay.” He said, giving me a little smile.

            “Summer’s still going to last a few more months so we’ll have plenty of time to do something cool once I’m finished with what I’m working on.”

            “Cool!” He smiled more.

            “I promise I’ll be done before the summer’s over.”

            We pulled up to Grady’s house and got out of the car, walking up to the front door and ringing the doorbell. Grady greeted us at the door.

            “Hey there, Bruce. Hi, Danny.” He said, looking down at my boy.

            Danny smiled and waved up at him.

            “Come on in, Owen’s waiting for you in his room.”

            “Be a good boy, Danny.” I said, rubbing the top of his head.

            “I will dad.” He said, walking inside.

            “Hey, thanks for looking after Danny for today, while I take care of some stuff.” I said to Grady.

            “No problem,” The husky said, “Owen always loves having Danny over to play. You doing okay though?”

            “Yeah, I’m just working on kind of a big project and have been kind of busy. I don’t really want to talk about it yet, but that’s why I needed you to have him over today.”

            “Yeah? Well, no problem, man. Go do whatever you need to do.”

            “Thanks Grady, I’ll probably be back around six.”

            “I’ll see you then.” He waved goodbye as I headed back to my car.

            I always liked going over to Owen’s to hang out, going into his backyard and spending the day on his swing set, just swinging back and forth and chatting with each other or playing hide and seek in his big backyard.

            Today I told him how my dad had gotten busier the past few days and didn’t really get the chance to play with me as much as he used to.

            “That’s too bad.” Owen said, swinging next to me.

            “Yeah, I know my dad’s probably doing something important, I just hope he finishes it soon, so he can wrestle with me or something.” I said. “Does your dad ever get like that?”

            “Sometimes, but not a lot. It’s never like it’s forever, he always plays with me eventually.” He said.

            “Okay, and he did say on the way here that he’d be done before summer’s over, then we could do something cool.”

            “See, and while he’s working we can still play together, right?” He asked.

            “Yeah!” I agreed, high-fiving him.

            We kept swinging in a bit of an awkward silence before I asked Owen,

            “Hey, Owen… do you or the others ever get teased cause you hang out with me and Josh?”

            “Uh… sometimes, but not a lot.” Owen said. “Why, do you?”

            “I get teased a lot, for having parents that don’t look like me, and for hanging out with Anthros after school.”

            “That’s dumb.” He said.

            “I know, it shouldn’t matter what my parents or friends look like… I get called a ‘pet’ sometimes at school.”

            “Pet?”

            “Yeah, like they see me as a pet feral dog or something. Because my parents aren’t human like I am.”

            “Sorry that happens to you at school.” Owen said. “I get teased sometimes, but it doesn’t sound like it happens as much as it happens to you.”

            “It stinks.” I said.

            “At least it’s summer, and that means you won’t have to see all the people that pick on you for a while.”

            “Yeah.”

            “And if I ever see anyone messing with you, I’ll bite ‘em!”

He snapped his teeth together in an attempt to be threatening, making me laugh.

“I think you’d get in trouble for doing that.”

“They’re the one’s who’ll be in trouble, I’ll tell Angie to scratch them with her claws while I’m at it.”

I giggled and gave him a playful push, accidentally knocking him off the swing.

“Oops!” I said.

“Ow!”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He laughed, letting me help him up.

            When I got back home, I decided to see if Emma wanted to meet Matteo and Troy at the restaurant I was meeting them at. Even though it was kind of short notice, she said yes and we both drove over to a little Mexican place called ChaCha’s and met up with the Rhino and buck.

            The two were already at a table when we arrived and waved us over.

            “Hey!” Troy said.

            “Hey guys, this is my wife, Emma, I decided to bring her along to meet you.” I said.

            “Hey there, nice to meet you two.” She reached out and shook both their paws and stat down across from them.

            “Damn, if we’d have known you were going to bring your spouse, we would have brought ours.” Matteo said.

            “Sorry, it was kind of last minute.” I said.

            “Nah, it’s cool though, glad to meet you.”

            “You too, glad I could meet some of the people with this group that my husband’s been telling me all about.” She said.

            “You should come to one of the meetings sometime, we do good work.” Troy said.

            “It sounds like it, it’s good to see that people are standing up to this thing that could affect families like ours. It’s just awful to think that people are willing to draft something like this.” She said.

            “It’s disgusting.” Troy said.

            “Have they said anything on why exactly they’re doing this?”

            “So far, they’ve mainly focused on it just making interspecies adoption illegal and acting like it wouldn’t null our parental rights. When asked about the vague wording that implies this they either dodge the question or assure people that that’s not their intentions.”

            “Even if that’s not their intentions,” I said, “It’s implied, and could theoretically legally happen because they don’t specifically state it in the draft that they’ve shown the press.”

            “Exactly.” Matteo said.

            “Most news outlets say that the main guy who drafted this piece of shit is Sam Levine.” Troy added.

            “Ugh, I know that guy. He doesn’t have the best track record in terms of human and Anthro relations.” I said.

            “He’s the guy who said that Anthros and humans should stay in separate neighborhoods and has continued to argue for separate schools for them too.”

            “Does he really have that much contempt for us that he’d be willing to rip children away from their parents?” Emma asked.

            “Wouldn’t surprise me.” Matteo said. “Probably thinks, in his twisted mind that it would be for the greater good to give them to parents that look like them, instead of the ones that raised them.”

            “Terrible man.” Emma said.

            “Yeah, but it looks like our waiter is coming over now.”

            We all ordered our food and some chips and salsa and told each other more about our kids.

            “We already know so much about Danny, from your columns, but I don’t think we’ve spoken about our kids much.” Troy said.

            “Well, my daughter Marlene is human, like yours.” Matteo said. “She’s the sweetest little thing, just turned nine two months ago.”

            “Mine’s a sweet little fox.” Troy said. “She’s starting high school this August.”

            “So, you both have daughters.” Emma said, taking a sip of her water.

            “Yeah.” Matteo said.

            “Maybe we could introduce our kids to each other sometime?” Troy suggested.

            “Maybe, but I’d kind of like to keep Danny out of all this, I don’t want him to worry that he might get separated from us.” I said.

            “Yeah, I understand that.” Troy said. “So, you gonna take Emma along to Austin with you in a few weeks?”

            “Oh, I probably won’t go.” She answered. “Someone has to stay with Danny, after all.”

            “Yeah, I’ll probably go alone.” I said.

            “Well, you’re welcome to room with us.” Matteo said.

            “It’s not even time to go yet and I’m already nervous about testifying before the senate.” I said.

            “It definitely won’t be easy, they’ll work to discredit us as people who are worried over nothing, probably even attack our character.”

            “Yeah, it’s going to be tough going up there, but I still want to go.” I said.

            “But at least we won’t be facing them alone.” Troy added.

            “I just hope it makes a difference.”

            “I think it will.” Emma said. “You’ll give a face to the issue.”

            “That’s part of the idea.” Matteo said.

            Once our food was brought out we continued to chat a bit, I let Emma get to know them both, and they took to her well. But soon it started inching more towards six and it was time to pick up Danny. We said by to Matteo and Troy, paid our bills and headed back over to Grady's.

            Once six o’clock was starting to roll around me and Owen just sat around his room watching some cartoons and playing with some of his superhero figures.

            “I’m glad that Josh has been hanging out with us more and more, I like him.” Owen said.

            “Really? I’m glad, I hoped you guys would.” I said. “He was so scared of coming over every time I asked him.” I pointed out.

            “He was?” Owen asked, confused. “Why?”

            “He said that he just hasn’t been around very many Anthros. He told me his neighborhood doesn’t really have any.” I explained. “I don’t really think any of the kids at school do either.”

            “Well, I think you’re the only human in our neighborhood too. I see some humans at the park sometimes, but not a lot.”

            “Yeah, you’re right.” I said. “Plus, I guess Anthros could be a little scary to kids like me if we haven’t been around them a lot. You guys are a lot bigger than we are.”

            “So you’d better watch out then.” He said with a grin, holding up his paws.

            We were interrupted by Owen’s bedroom door opening and his dad poked his head in.

            “Hey, Danny, your folks are back, time to go home.” He said.

            “Okay.” I said, standing up. “Bye, Owen.”

            “Bye, Danny.”

            We picked Danny up from Owen’s house and took him home. He ended up falling asleep in the car on the way home, and I had to carry him back inside. I managed to wake him up long enough to get dressed in his pajamas, brush his teeth and put him to bed.

            I tucked him into bed, gave him a kiss goodnight and turned off the light. As I stepped out I looked back at my son asleep in bed and the fearful thought crossed my mind of losing him, of coming home to an empty room in a few months. I couldn’t let that happen to Danny or any other kid, I needed to fight when we went to Austin.

            I slowly closed Danny’s bedroom door, determined to fight for my son when the time came.

My Patreon Editors

Michael E. Dunlop

SekkeAnubis

VitaminBoB