Chapter 9 #2
“Oh.” I scramble for the right reply to that. “Cool. It has lots of fours” is what I come up with.
“That’s me as Aragorn,” Nick says, nodding at a piece of artwork pinned to the fridge with a magnet. “From Lord of the Rings.” It’s a pretty decent marker drawing of a man with a giant head and beard and a comparatively tiny body.
“Super impressive,” I say very seriously. “With very accurate facial hair.” I turn to Kira. “You must be really proud that your dad is such a good artist and drew an amazing self-portrait.”
“I drew it,” she says indignantly. “But a long time ago when I was little. I can draw a lot better now.” She turns to Romily and issues a command: “Both of you come in my room, okay? I wanna show you my OCs.”
I’m so accustomed to passive-aggressive requests from my mother that I’m shocked into submission by Kira’s directness.
Romily and I dutifully follow her as Nick reminds her to say please when asking grown-ups to do something.
She responds by telling him he’s not allowed to come in.
Kira swings her bedroom door open, and it hits me that she lives in this apartment’s version of my room.
It’s the office—with its identical beige carpeting and mirrored-door closet, but the walls have already been reskinned with posters and framed pictures.
Nick must have unpacked her room first. She’s going through a transitional phase—the hallmarks of tween interests fighting with childhood toys for real estate.
Every surface is covered by a stuffed animal, naked Barbie, discarded piece of jewelry, oversized hoodie.
I see a few tubes of tinted lip balm that I assume is her first entrée into makeup.
Kira directs us to sit on the floor across from her.
“I’m gonna show you my characters.” She has her dad’s dark, expressive eyes but with light auburn hair and a heart-shaped face. I wonder if her mom is a redhead.
She produces a thick drawing pad from under one of the floor piles.
Flipping to the first page, she starts talking at us: “This is Lucas. He has purple in his hair and his power is reading minds. He’s kind of quiet, but he’s also nice.
He’s Lana’s boyfriend, but when he tells her bad stuff about his life, she doesn’t listen to him or give him back anything positive, so he’s sad about that. ”
I blink at a page almost soaked through with marker ink, featuring a very large head on top of a pair of tiny shoulders. “Lucas” has anime-style eyes and does indeed look like a sad boi with purple in his hair. Fourteen-year-old me would’ve gotten along well with nine-year-old Kira.
“Who’s Lana?” Romily asks.
Kira stares at us like it’s utterly ridiculous that we don’t know who Lana is.
She lets out a huge sigh and flips a few more pages so she can explain the backstory of why Lana doesn’t give Lucas the attention he craves. I notice that all her characters have various combinations of fluffy fox tails or horns or wolfy ears.
“Oh,” I say. “Are they furries?”
Kira glances up at me. “What are furries?”
Romily and I look at each other, silently asking, Do you want to field this one?
“Well,” I say, being careful with my words. “Some people are…really, really interested in animal characters. Some of them dress up in animal costumes.”
“Whoa, really?” Kira says, sitting up straighter. “They dress up?”
Romily nods. “Yes, but only about twenty-five percent of all furries own partial fur suits. The most common item is a tail—”
“I want a tail!”
“—according to the International Anthropomorphic Research Project.”
“Why do you know that?” I ask. While I’m no stranger to obscure internet research rabbit holes, Romily’s ability to retain statistical data on niche topics is unmatched.
“That’s so cool,” Kira says before breaking into a shout. “Da-ad!”
Nick cracks her door open and pokes his head in. “Everything okay?”
“Dad.” Kira stands up. “Do you know about furries? Can I get a tail?”
“A furry?” He looks at me, eyebrows raised, but not particularly alarmed.
“It’s a fetish for only ten percent of the fandom,” Romily says.
I shrug helplessly at Nick. All I can picture is Kira typing Am I a furry? into her tablet’s search engine.
“Tell you what,” he says. “I’ll do a little more research so we can talk about it, okay?”
Kira looks back down at her drawings and adds thoughtfully, “Actually, some of my characters have feathers or scales, which isn’t the same as fur, so maybe I need to be my own thing.”
“Then there’s your answer,” Nick says, shooting me the tiniest little relieved grin as Kira gives him a hug around the waist.
It’s such a precious father-daughter image that I don’t even clock her ulterior motive:
“Can I have des-sert now?” Kira asks in that very specific singsongy whine that kids seem to think helps them get their way.
“Did you fill out your reading journal? Mom’s taking you to the library tomorrow.”
“I know what I’m gonna write,” she says without answering the question.
“Then you better get it done now if you want ice cream. That’s the deal.”
“What kind of ice cream?” Romily asks, following Nick out of the room.
I pick up one of Kira’s drawings, tracing over the heavy black marker outlines with my index finger.
“Are you on Discord?” she asks.
“Aren’t you a little young to be on messaging apps?”
I get an indignant sound in response. “All my friends are. My dad lets me use his phone.” She reaches up onto her bed to grab a tablet with the handle and the purple case. “Here. Put your name in.”
Kira hands me the tablet, open to the Add Friend screen on Discord. I consider it. This would definitely be a talking point in a Dateline investigation should, God forbid, something happen to any of us. On the other hand, I guess this means a kid likes me enough to start a chat with me. Win?
I type in my username.