Free Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) by Kyell Gold

there with them. They’d never really called to him that way even when he had been. And Taric called back, too. “I got yer back, fluffbutt,” he’d say, or “Comin’ at ya,” when he threw to first. Sol had lost that this year, had retreated into himself, and then the shower incident had just made it worse. Watching Taric slip so easily into his role made his chest burn with envy. If he had another chance, if they let him back out there…he could do it. He could be part of the team again.
    To one side of the field, the cheerleaders practiced their routines. The breeze dug cold claws under his fur as he watched them. One of them, a deer, pranced through her moves with clockwork precision. It wasn’t hard to imagine her in a red and gold bustier, the sun glinting off the metal stands like electric lights. Sol could almost hear a rhythmic xylophone in his head.
    He realized that he’d been staring at the cheerleaders for a full minute or more. It wasn’t such a bad thing for him to do, though, was it? If he were interested in them, how long would he stare? If they were boys, showing off tight abdomens, dancing in costumes… He jerked his head to the side. That’s what he’d been thinking about in the shower, last December. That image, too, had gotten pretty real.
    He pushed those thoughts away and stared toward the stands. A smattering of students sat, several boys watching the cheerleaders, and a red fox and mink sitting apart from them. A steady breeze ruffled his fur, holding the last chill of winter and the moist promise of spring, as he watched the team practice again.
    After a moment, the coach tapped him on the shoulder. “Go on out and take your practice, Wrightson.”
    “Mr. Zerling,” Sol said. “What would it take to get the starting spot back?”
    The coach’s ears dipped. He shook his head. “Wrightson—”
    “If I work really hard,” Sol persisted. “If I clean up my fielding. I know I have to work on my decision-making.” The coaches had used those words, clean up and decision-making , over and over for much of the off-season.
    “Work on your plate discipline, too.”
    “Yeah, sure.” In his mind, Sol pushed away the agony of countless hours spent with a bat, waiting for the machine to hurl the ball toward him. “Like, over the next month? For the Lakeside game?”
    “I won’t make no promises.” Mr. Zerling watched Taric dive for a grounder and throw it to first, the kind of throw that Sol had heard announcers in the majors call a “frozen rope.” He didn’t think he’d ever thrown anything more than a slightly chilled rope. “And I’m tellin’ ya, it probably won’t happen. That ’yote’s pretty good. Reminds me of Carquinez.”
    “Thanks, Mr. Zerling.” Staying longer would probably reveal that he had no idea who Carquinez was, so Sol trotted out to the field. He took up a spot on the opposite side of the field from Taric, between another wolf and a deer. He fielded for half an hour, then went to the batting cages for half an hour after that.
    The exercises, far from inspiring him, left him mostly frustrated. The drive to oust Taric carried him only so far without the support of the team around him. Earlier this year, when he’d first started drifting apart, he’d supplanted his real teammates with daydreams and stories. Now, when he was really trying to pay attention to practice by himself, it was horribly dull. His mind kept wandering back to Jean and Thierry and the Moulin Rouge, but he pushed the gold and red patterns away, until it occurred to him that if only the other guys could see him daydreaming about a female dancer, all the “fag” talk would go away. Then he snorted a laugh and swung hard at the next ball, and missed it by a mile.
    He stayed on the field until everyone else had gone inside, as much to get the extra swings in as to make sure everyone else was out of the shower by the time he went in. Problem was, Taric was taking extra batting