PREPARED

She was supposed to be home five hours ago.

The night was calm and cool outside the car windows, even as Keli's mind raced in step with her brown-furred palm bouncing on her thigh, in step with the flash of the city lights streaming by outside. Everything felt hyperreal to the rabbit-girl: the touch of the nylon seat, the controlled in-and-out of her breath, the occasional muttering of the driver, cloaked in shadow. All that she was, was focused in here, was focused on the simple question what happens next? And right now, the answer was simple: get her friend home. But still the far edge yawned away from her.

The wolf-girl beside Keli sniffled, still curled around her knees, but at least with her head up, gazing out the window. What she was thinking, Keli struggled to imagine. Asa's fur was still ragged, tangled with shreds of leaves, her pink headscarf askew around her shoulders. Her bookbag was loosely set beside her. Keli clutched her own backpack to her chest and mentally inventoried its contents for the third or fourth time. First aid supplies; toolkit; tape and rope; her own keys; rainjacket; the rations ... oh, right.

Keli unzipped the top and rummaged around, retrieving from the top one graham cracker. "Here--more."

Asa looked down at the cracker in her white-furred palm. After a moment, she gingerly took it and bit off the tiniest corner. Keli was still grateful to see that much. There had been a frantic dash around the drugstore earlier, one of few stores still open, trying to find enough food to be "technically a meal". Then they'd sat outside, putting the artificial day to their backs, and listening to cheering bar rounds off Asa's phone. They'd seemed to wrap the wolf up like a blanket, pulling her upright--even as their echoes disappeared fast into the cold night.

"This it?" the driver asked, pointing out a turn up ahead.

"Yeah." Asa said.

Pulling in to the apartment complex gave the impression of venturing into a cave, as an overhang of concrete and unhealthily-pale yellow lights blotted out the dark sky. The car grumbled to a stop. Asa clambered out and onto her feet, followed by Keli dragging her pack. Two shadows against bright lights: one short but sturdy, doing her best to keep her tall ears from pinning back; one tall but bowed, chewing on her lip. The quiet rumble of the city at night once again surrounded them, as did a smoky-familiar aroma of gasoline and cigarettes.

The car trundled off, huffing heat through Keli's dark leggings and deep into her fur. Her whiskers wavered as she worked her jaw, nose twitching. "Well. Shall we give it a shot?" She straightened the edge of her ratty SCREAMERS! tee then gestured grandly to the entryway.

Asa nodded weakly.

Despite being metal and wired more than a stereo cabinet, the first door turned out to be easy--the wolf-girl called a number, punched in a code through her phone, and a harsh buzz announced their welcome. The inside was all polished concrete and white walls, with occasional black-and-white nonsense pictures to break up the quietly-humming nothing-space. A few bugs flitted in to chase the near-blinding brightness.

"The office is just around here ..." Asa slipped ahead and around a corner. There was the firm sound of a doorknob that was not gonna work. As she came back into view, the lights didn't leave a single shadow on her weary face. "I'm sorry."

"It's all good." Keli reassured, letting easy confidence boost her like a shot of ... well, anyway. A nice, physical problem--that she could take. "Let's see what I can do."

The problem, indeed, seemed somewhat straightforward. A door, third floor, hollow metal. Its keys ... somewhere on the other side of it. A handle--she lay back on the floor to test its height--about an arm's length up. A gap beneath the door tall enough for about a finger and a half. Keli started to disassemble her bag, laying out what she had. The tape was obviously a necessity--she set it to one side. Her plastic cutlery, only kept because of that one time they scored hero points with her mom, a promising shaft, especially with those markers. Maybe that length of rope could convince it to bend up?

Asa sat cross-legged in front of the growing array of stuff, her brows lifted and her tail wagging gently through her skirt. After a few minutes, she shifted to lying down, but otherwise maintained her patience. She offered to help a few times, but given the poor girl had confessed to not sleeping in days--and had the darkened eyes to prove it--Keli turned her down. It only took about seven minutes to get the first draft ready. Keli checked it against her arm-length, then nodded, and stuck the end under the door.

When it was just the tips of Keli's fingers gripping its end, she began to tension the rope. They both watched the door sharply. She could feel it wavering on the other side--bending to and fro like grass in the wind. It bumped against the door, and from the sound her image got a little sharper. It was a careful balancing act, upping the tension slowly, readjusting her grip constantly. The seconds dragged into minutes, and her confidence started to melt. Many more curses came to mind than she felt comfortable saying. Keli grit her teeth and kept going.

"I'm gonna see if there's any locksmiths." Asa went for her phone. Keli noticed something was starting to give way--a loose joint somewhere turning the wavery feeling into bending further and further away for the goal. She made one more shove upward for the handle ... and the stick snapped. She wormed it back from under the door, both halves. Asa swiped around on her screen. With judicious application of some tape, a folding trowel, and a few pencils, Keli fashioned a reinforced but noticeably heavier contraption.

It certainly drove much heavier: much more eager to slip through her fingers, much more hesitant to bend up and away. She worked for about a minute before Asa broke the silence. "Nobody." She announced despondantly, slumping back down onto her side. "Not within an hour's drive."

"Alright, we'll keep doing this the hard way." Keli was grimaced in concentration, but she swore, "We will get you in here tonight."

The way proved to be hard like a sheer cliff. Keli went through two more generations of stick design before turning to her own phone to pull up lockpicking videos. But she didn't have the tools, or even anything that resembled them, and Asa couldn't think of any part of the building they could access that would grant them even a paperclip. So it was back to the attempted handle-grab, as midnight turned over to one in the morning with the distant chime of church bells.

Keli kept at it doggedly, even as her ability to form thoughts started to fade. Asa was fading too, her chin sinking down onto her arms, her eyes drifting closed. The carpet was starting to look awful encouraging to Keli too, before a jolt ran through her and she finally realized what call she had to make. "This isn't working." She let the stick drop, and slid it back out. Everything felt so much heavier all of a sudden. "Let's just head down to the couches."

The wolf-girl nodded and started to rouse herself. Keli repacked her kit, then the pair followed the yellow carpet path to the elevator downstairs. The beeps of the elevator were the only break to the silence. On the ground, Asa showed her to the lobby area--a wide room of grey stocky couches and metal chairs broken with the occasional taste of honey-gold wood as table or shelf. There was a bathroom, and Keli headed for that to brush her teeth. Yet another way she was grateful she'd brought her full kit to what was supposed to be just an afternoon game.

By the time she got back to the main area, Asa seemed to be fighting hard towards sleep--scarf wrapped up tight around her head, eyes closed with a stiffness that suggested force. Keli retrieved her rainjacket from her bag, settled on the neighboring couch, and cast the jacket over her knees as something of a blanket. She knocked a cushion down for a pillow, and, almost on instinct, pulled the bag up on top of her. Its weight was heavy and comforting against her chest, smelling faintly of grass and sweat.

Worries still swirled inside her, and putting the hood over her face to block the light only made them more turbulent. Most were easily answered and dismissed--her friend was safe, they'd made it through the night, and things seemed to be on the upswing for tomorrow. But others refused to leave court--what's the long term, what if you aren't there next time ... and quiet but insistent: "Is this what it's like to be an adult?"