Between a Bear and a Hard Place(57)

She stuck a finger in her hair, twirling a dirty curl around it, and even with the grunge and muck, her auburn curl sprung back defiantly. “Anyway,” she said, playfully, “I was just wondering if either of you knew anything about why I could suddenly do that. Turn into a bear, I mean. Because before I met you, my skill set included years of research experience, using vastly complicated laboratory machines, a PhD from a damn good molecular biology program, and a lot of experience with Microsoft Office and a bunch of spreadsheet programs.”

They were both staring at her, eyes wide open and mouths sort of hanging there in disbelief.

“Yeah well, now my resume includes ‘turns into a bear; can murder gasmask wearing orderlies at fake hospitals,” she said with a wry look on her face. “So, what of it? Is it some latent talent I had buried deep inside that only came out when we you two gave me all kinds of wild orgasms? Sorta like, I dunno, rolling your tongue into those weird ruffles?”

Stone and Fury looked at each other, and then back at Claire. Stone had a gruff frown on his lips, while Fury was kind of grinning. “What do you mean, orderlies?” the shorter, thicker bear, asked. Somehow he ignored the rest of what she’d said.

“In that hospital,” she trailed off for a moment, wondering why they hadn’t remembered any of it. Supposedly they’d been there, or at least, underneath it, so why the hell did they seem so clueless? “I ripped a bunch of orderlies apart. Look, I can do it again if you want – the bear part, not the killing gasmasks part.”

Fury kind of wanted to egg her on, obviously, from the way he was grinning, but Stone put a hand on the other bear’s shoulder, and gave him a stern shake of the head. “That isn’t possible,” he said flatly. “You’re not one of us.”

“Yeah, you think?” Claire laughed, though bitterly, and got back up off her stump-seat. “Or hey maybe, you could, I dunno, pretend to give a shit about something other than your weird fetish with acting as serious as possible all the time? And, maybe – just maybe – that could involve cluing me in on some tiny part of what’s going on right now? With me? Remember, I just fell into this weird world a few weeks ago. You’re already writing my curiosity off like I’m an idiot for even having it.”

It was Fury’s turn to be in command. “I don’t know,” he said, with honesty that Claire hadn’t much expected. “I just don’t know. Stone doesn’t either, no matter what he says. He’s as lost as I am, and that’s why I wish we could just... well, like you said – get over all this shit, and act like grownups.”

A month passed, then two. There wasn’t anything that changed with Claire, or with the bears, except that every time they shifted to go somewhere, she did too – albeit slowly and with a lot of confusion, and frequently with some embarrassing clothes accidents. They got braver, brasher. Eventually, that meant they even went back to her little house so she could get some clothes and even got a few of Cleo’s toys and let her sleep in her own bed for one night.

They couldn’t stay any longer though. There was too much fear of being found out. Though they did stop off at a Walmart to pick up a slightly crappy replacement for her phone. Luckily she’d had the presence of mind to salvage the SIM from her old smashed one.

That was the worst part, really. The fear, the not knowing.

Claire lived most of her life before the bears in fear from one thing or another. Now, at least, she thought, she knew what she was afraid of.

Then again, it had been two months where she’d just been running. No one had called her, no one had tried to find her. At least, if they had, she didn’t know about it. That was maybe worse than anything. Being an anonymous shadow, just wrapped up in a new world where no one cared or wondered. But, she asked herself, how often did anyone care or wonder while she was back in reality? How often did she get exciting invitations or phone calls to go out to exotic restaurants or wild parties before?

The answer was almost as awful as her current fear – not very often at all.

Still, the fact that she never called Nick – cute little ginger-headed Nick – bothered her. She wanted to do it, to get in touch with him, if nothing else, so he’d know that she didn’t skip out on him because of anything to do with him. She remembered that sort of thing happening to her, and didn’t want to make anyone feel that same sinking, acidic, hopeless feeling of being left alone for no good reason.

So one day, she did just that.

The phone clicked as though it was going to reject her call with yet another “this call has no tower to take it” message, but then a few seconds later, the goddamn thing started to ring.