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"Matt..." The cheetah's amber-orange eyes unfocused as he said my name, as if he were tasting the word. For the life of me, I could not figure out his accent. "That's a good name. Short for... Matthias?"

"Matthew, actually." I reached down into my backpack beside me to find my pen and homework from the weekend, the latter of which I'd finished directly before bed just last night. I may or may not have been kept up a little late last night trying to get my character to the level cap in a game I'd recently been binging on... "And you're Tony?"

He sat up a little bit straighter, and flicked his ears forward. Mrs. Langford was just making her way to the front of the classroom to begin the period. "I am Tony. Short for..."

I had to comb my mind and memory. Tony, Tony... "Antonio?"

Happy grin showed bright white fangs made even more so by the yellow-gold of his fur. He'd already gotten his things out for the class, and now sat with his paws folded on the desk in front of him. "Antonio. But nobody calls me that. Not even my mother."

"No?" Antonio - that's Spanish, isn't it? Mexican? I don't know. I once had a teacher in middle school who was French. "What does she call you, then? My mom calls me Matt. Or sometimes Lee, actually. That's my older brother's name."

My ears first perked forward once Mrs. Langford started talking - "good morning, class! All of you turned in your projects over the weekend except for two, who I'll be talking to later this period, and..." - and then to the side again when the cheetah continued. I glanced over: he'd sank back in his seat a little bit, and now rolled his pencil back and forth between his fingerpads. His claws, curved and sharp, remained half-out - do cheetahs even have retractable claws?

"Ah..." Little round pink tongue briefly flitted out over his lips, and he swallowed. "Mamá most often calls me - 'Tonio, or..." Here, his little round ears half-folded back, and he met my eyes for a quick moment - and looked away. "...gatito."

A bit unsurprisingly, that_was where the accent came out the strongest. It was like he changed the way he formed the words, tongue moving faster and with more precision, his _T's coming out crisp and even, his slightly-smooth voice following through on the last syllable... hell. Imagine how it's gonna be when I tell Tyler: hey, I made a new friend, and get this - he's freakin' bilingual... "Gatito?"

"Gatito. It means, um..." Tony swallowed again. "Little cat. Ah... kitten."

At this, I couldn't help but grin in return and stifle a little giggle. I thought I could see the pinkish blush tint Tony's ears and cheeks, and his whiskers twitched. "You don't look like much of a kitten to me."

"Yes, well... always your mother's kitten. Or-" He motioned at me. "Perrito."

"Puppy?"

"Puppy. You are a wolf?"

"Dingo. You can tell by the coloration, and the ears."

Tony leaned forward in his seat again, this time to grab whatever Mrs. Langford had passed back through the rows. The person in front of me didn't wait for me to take it, and instead just dropped the stack onto my desk. "Aah. Dingo. My sister was with a dingo once. Mother didn't like that."

"No? Why not?"

This time, it was the cheetah's turn to chuckle. While passing the stack of papers back behind him, he flicked those amber eyes up towards me again. "You will not get offended?"

"'Course not."

"She said... she said dingos are, ah, how do I... coyotes that spent too much time rolling in dirt."

"Ha! What's wrong with coyotes, then, huh?"

"Ah, nothing, nothing... I knew a coyote once..." Tony leaned in to write his name on his paper. I watched as he did so: he had a smooth, flowing hand, about what I'd expected, for whatever reason. "Green eyes. Bright - that is the word? - bright green. Um... was a few years ahead of me at another school I had gone to. Guapo. Cute? We spoke a few times, but... ah... I had to move away."

"Oh, yeah? What was her name?"

Tony stopped writing in the middle of his last name, pencil tip still pressed to the paper, but then continued a moment later. I looked up again: Mrs. Langford had made her way back to her desk with two students, and I'd entirely missed what she'd told us to do with this. Across the center top of the paper, though: Partner Assignment: Constellations.

"I never caught it."

"Ah. Shame." 'For the next month, you and one partner will go outside after dark and look up at the sky, and document the constellations you can see and their changes in position from the beginning of the month to the end. Because of our proximity to a nearby city, you will really have to look hard to see much! There is more there than you think.' "Y'know, I... I recently broke up with my girlfriend..."

"Oh? I have not had a girlfriend."

"It's not all it's cracked up to be." Another glance over to Mrs. Langford's desk showed that she'd finished with those goddamn slackers - how dare they not turn an assignment in on time! - "At least, not if she's actually freakin' crazy."

"Do you like anyone now?"

'Bonus points will be given to those who travel away from the area and put in the effort to document above and beyond the listed requirements, with pictures. Photographing the night sky is far different from taking a photo in the daytime!' "Well. No, I don't think so. I hadn't really thought about it... kind of just want to coast along, you know?"

"Coast along?"

"Yeah. Just go with what happens."

"Mmm."

Tony lifted his paper off his desk, orange eyes scanning back and forth over the instructions. I watched him for a moment; there was just... something about him, something about the way he spoke and how, once or twice, those eyes flitted over to me and then back to the paper in a fraction of a second.

Yet again I looked up at Mrs. Langford. There was no way that this was all we were doing today, unless she'd said something else... everyone else had taken their textbooks out. I guess we were supposed to be reading a chapter, too?

"Tony."

"Mm?"

"How about you?"

"How about I what?"

Wait. He'd just_gotten here. Today was his first day. "Do _you like anyone?"

Slight hesitation, though after a second he visibly tried not to show it. Funny how that works. "I used to. Then I moved. Then I used to again. Then I moved again..."

"I'm asking about now. You haven't been here a day yet, but - I mean, you have to have seen someone you wanna get to know. Right?"

The cheetah set both the paper and his pencil down, and looked at me full-on. "Someone I want to get to know?"

"Yeah. I actually moved schools a few years back, and - lemme tell ya - I had a crush my first day. I'm just curious. You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

Before he answered, he leaned over to pull his book out from the basket hanging from the chair. I took the chance to do the same, and looked around to see if I could figure out the page number.

"Yes. I think so."

"There it is. Ain't high school if you're not crushing on someone, right? So - you said you moved. Does that..." ...God, I'd spent so many class periods getting lost just looking at the pictures in this textbook. Sure, it wasn't all just look at this planet and look at this star; this was a legitimate astronomy course, where we had to learn the physics behind planetary orbits and how the light waves propagate through space and all of that... "...does that happen often? I mean - are you okay with me asking?"

Tony shrugged, continuing to avoid eye contact. Maybe I'd pushed a little too far. "Money. That's what my mother says. But I don't... don't want to talk about that right now."

"Yeah. Yeah, sure."

Our conversation ended there - so the rest of the class period was a bit awkward. The cheetah's tail flicked and swayed around behind him for a while, occasionally bumping against my chair or my own leg, which made me jump a little bit every time. When I'd gotten about halfway through the chapter that I assume we'd been told to read, however, Mrs. Langford made her way back up to the front of the room and called for our attention, to let us know that it was time we start talking with our partners for our constellations assignment.

"This is not a divide-and-conquer assignment," she made certain to tell us. I kept my ears perked to listen to her while still scanning over the chapter; this class was built so that the book reinforced what she taught in class, so it was nothing we hadn't already seen before. "This is a partner assignment so you have someone to check your work against. I've intentionally left it open-ended, too, since I want as much description from you guys as possible. For instance: at nine PM, can you see Orion? Which side of the sky is it in? What angle does the line drawn from Betelgeuse to Bellatrix make with the horizon? That kind of thing. As for your partners - that's up to you. I want you to spend the last ten minutes of class today talking with each other and discussing how you'll stay updated, and your plan for the assignment..."

I was one of those people who usually hated when the teacher told us we could pick our own partners, since this was a class in which I didn't have any real_friends, so there was nobody that stuck out to me to go and ask, and - it's not like anyone came to _me, either, unless we just happened to be the last two left... but today, however, it felt as though my brain had made the decision without my consciousness knowing.

Looked like _he_had the same idea, too. Even before I leaned over to look at Tony, he had already half-turned in his seat to face me, too.

"Wanna be partners? I'd like to get to know ya better, man."

At hearing this, the cheetah's ears and whiskers visibly perked up, and his amber eyes brightened. His tail stirred behind him. "Of course! Um - do you -?"

Here, I leaned over, slid his paper closer to me, realized I didn't have my pencil, leaned back to grab it... and scrawled out my number. "Alright. I don't really have, like... any plans, ever, so I should respond when you text. Have you - were you in another astronomy class, back at your old school?"

Tony slid his paper back towards himself once I'd finished, and inspected my phone number for a minute. "Yes. For a little while. I know enough that all of these terms are familiar..."

"Well, if you ever need help with something, just let me know, okay? Whether it's here or in any other class. I know what it's like to be the new kid at school, and how stressful that can be..."

When he next turned to me, the smile across his muzzle was one of genuine gratitude and enjoyment. I imagine that was kind of like what I looked like when I got my calculus exam grade back last semester, and found I'd gotten twenty-six points higher than I'd expected.

"Ah! Gr- I mean, thank you, Matt. I think I might... might hit you up on that offer later... oh, um - tomorrow morning, will you be in the same place? Same place that you were this morning."

I shrugged. "Probably. Why? Need somewhere to hang out?"

"Well. Yes. And, um..." Tony swallowed, and shifted in his seat again. It was kind of hard to hear him over the sudden jump in volume of the room, with everyone else talking among themselves about probably everything except the assignment. This _was_high school, after all. "I... do not know my way around this school yet. Do you think you could - walk me to my class tomorrow? If it's okay with you."

For some reason, he seemed a little more nervous than I felt like he should, for just asking to help him find his way around. It was a bit... I don't know. I can't think of the word. Endearing? Kinda. I don't know.

"Oh, yeah! Yeah, sure. Tomorrow - Tuesdays and Thursdays, first period - I'm just a library aid. I _would_offer to show you around before classes start, but... you were here this morning. You know how this place gets."

He nodded. "Yes. So many people... so many smells. My last school had a quarter the students. Maybe less. And this school has a quarter the hallways..."

That actually made me laugh. Now, something told me I'd enjoy knowing this cheetah.

~ ~ ~

I don't know why, but part of me expected and even wished to receive a text from him as soon as I got home that night, or an hour later, or an hour after that, but... every time my phone did buzz, I checked it hoping to see a number I didn't recognize with the message hey, this is tony! or hi, matt? This is tony from class or something like that, but then instead, came back a little disappointed every time.

It was already something I couldn't really explain. What was different about this cheetah that made me want to - I don't know - be his friend? Was it just that: that he was a cheetah? Tyler a jackal, my ex a dog (labrador retriever - read: literal bitch), some of my older circle of friends from elementary and middle school an otter, a she-otter, a wolf, another jackal, also female - who was _really_damn hot and also had a personality almost perfectly in line with Ty's, which made me wonder if they were siblings for, like, three years before I actually asked...

But never a cheetah. Never gold fur and shadow spots, never amber-orange eyes like that. Or - hell, maybe it was because of that accent, so clearly Spanish now that he'd actually told me. Ours is one of those schools where kids only take the foreign language classes because you need two years of it to graduate, and then those two years aren't enough to get you anywhere near conversational. So of course, anything even close to being the real thing is often viewed as awesome and unique and whatever.

Wouldn't surprise me if, by the end of the week, my one phone number in his contacts ended up being joined by... oh, at least four others from various girls. And I'd be behind him all the way, man.

By the time my self-appointed bedtime rolled around - I try to get nine hours a night, but usually end up with between six and seven - I still hadn't received a message from a new number, so I just figured he'd forgotten or something. Oh well; there was always tomorrow. He did say he'd show up to chill with Tyler and me tomorrow morning.

I think it'd be great to assimilate him into our little friend group. Hard to say now, but it did seem like he had a good sense of humor, and a lot to talk about if we could just get him to open up. A bit quiet, a bit shy... maybe that was just new-student anxiety. I can understand that. I bet Ty would like him, maybe.

Again, hard to tell. Hardly knew this cat.

Sometime during the night, though, I did end up getting a text message, and I did end up reading it (apparently: it wasn't until I checked my phone on the bus the following morning that I realized it was there), and I think maybe that influenced my dreams a little? I don't know. It's not often I can remember much of my dreams, but that night I do recall Tony being there, smiling that way he did and saying something, but I couldn't figure out what.

Whatever, right? While on the bus I tapped my foot against the floor and kept my eyes directed out the window, watching the houses and the trees and the other cars as they passed on by, vaguely aware of the familiar scenery on this same route that we took every morning. The driver had the local mix station on, playing the same set of five songs that played every hour for the past however-many weeks; some of them _were_catchy, the first twenty times you heard them. Then they just get annoying.

I didn't want to plug in my headphones and listen to my own music, though, especially as we came closer to and then eventually stopped alongside the school. Just as it had felt back at the bus stop with all five of us standing apart and saying absolutely nothing to each other, today had decided to continue yesterday's trend of warming up. The first real day of spring would be coming up in a week or two, with spring break (thank God) the following week, and - everyone I know has had enough of cold weather. I was still in the middle of shedding my winter coat. For a few weeks there, showers took about twenty minutes longer than usual because of that.

Well, at least it was Tuesday. That meant tomorrow would be Wednesday, which in turn meant that the week would be half-over. You've gotta think like that if you wanna get out of high school without going half-insane. You gotta think about all the _good_things, the things other than the three homework assignments due later in the week, the two quizzes today and test tomorrow, the presentation next Monday and the project due Friday, whatever else... and instead focus on getting to see your friends and talk to your favorite teachers, and then - the best part of the day - go back home.

I mean, I can _say_all of that stuff. But at seven AM I'm almost always too tired to bother carrying any of that out, and instead I just slump my way over to our usual hanging-out spot, drop my bag and sit down there, head resting back against the lockers and eyes closed. It was only the constant noise of everyone else in the hallways and the ever-changing scent on the air of people passing by that kept me from drifting off.

Tyler had been hit by the morning malaise, too, giving me little more than an upward nod in greeting before he looked back down at his phone. Still, though, the same tickling anticipation that had plagued me through half the night lingered in the back of my thoughts, and led me to continue half-leaning forward and looking around to see if the approaching footsteps belonged to a certain cheetah, or to perk my ears and try to hear his accented voice over the crowd...

Funny thing, though: I was spending so much time looking other places that I didn't even realize it when he did walk up, until he slid down right next to me and his back rattled the lockers. The noise actually startled me, and when I swung around to face him - the first thing to hit me was his scent, gentle, cool with a hint of something else, something I couldn't quite place. Every time someone walked by, their passing motion ended up wafting a little bit more of it over to me.

Feels damn weird saying it, but it wasn't an unpleasant scent at all.

"Hey," he said, just as he had in class yesterday. And, just like yesterday, I suddenly felt a lot more awake.