Chapter Text
There's a guy named Dustin who sits next to Eduardo in multivariable calculus and who is convinced, based on nothing more than their brief conversations while they wait for class to start, that Eduardo needs more friends.
"Or at least a pet or something," he adds one morning, as other students filter into the lecture hall. "Do you have a pet?"
"I don't have a pet," says Eduardo, taking out his notebook.
"You should get one," Dustin says earnestly. "A dog. Or a cat. Are you a cat person? You seem like a cat person." He pauses for a moment. "Or even a fish. There's a pet store on Concord; you should check it out, I'm telling you."
"Dustin," Eduardo tells him. "I'm fine."
Because he is. He isn't lonely.
He just broke up with his girlfriend of three years, but she was psychotic. He doesn't miss her. And he's busy. He's a senior at Harvard. He's president of the Harvard Investors Association. He's in the Phoenix Club. He's maintaining a 4.0 GPA.
He doesn't need friends.
He certainly doesn't need a pet.
***
But one Friday evening, as he's heading home from Econ, he finds himself taking a different route than usual, finds himself walking 25 minutes out of his way and ending up on Concord Avenue.
He walks another block, until he's standing under the neon sign of a pet shop.
And in the window display to the right of the entrance, sitting cross-legged in what looks like a bed for a large dog, holding a book in his lap, is— a person?
No, Eduardo realizes after a moment. There's a collar on his neck, a pair of ears sticking up from his curly brown hair, and a tail curled gently around his knee.
A hybrid.
***
Hybrids are rare.
Eduardo can count on one hand the number of times he's seen one before in real life: twice he's encountered one out in the world, being walked on a leash by its owner, and once he attended a dinner party at his father's colleague's house, where two dog hybrids served as waiters.
Other than that, his experience with hybrids is limited to media portrayals.
There's a movie that came out a few years ago about a hybrid and a human who fall in love. Eduardo remembers that it won an Oscar, but he didn't watch it personally. It had sounded kind of unrealistic.
He's looked at hybrid porn on occasion, but it's never turned him on.
He's seen hybrids in the news from time to time, usually for committing a crime, and he's come across a few exposés about the mistreatment of hybrids: the unregulated neglect of hybrids by dealers, the lack of enforcement of laws meant to protect underage hybrids from sexual abuse, that sort of thing. But it always makes him sad to read about that stuff, so he tends to avoid it. There's nothing he can do to help, so why depress himself?
He wonders, vaguely, if the hybrid in this window display has been mistreated like that. He doesn't look mistreated. He looks clean and fed and uninjured, and his t-shirt and shorts— donations, probably; Eduardo has heard of charities that help clothe and provide enrichment for hybrids in pet stores— are in decent shape. There's nothing in the display case but the dog bed, a litter box, and a water bottle, but the hybrid seems content enough. And he has that book, so he's being entertained, at least.
Eduardo takes a step closer.
Taped to the glass of the window is a piece of neon orange paper, with information printed on it in Comic Sans.
Hybrid!
Name: Mark
Sex: male
Age: 20
Breed: feline hybrid
Personality: skilled, well-trained, clever, sassy
Sassy? Eduardo is touching the window by now, utterly transfixed. He taps at the glass, but the hybrid doesn't look up.
Maybe he doesn't understand. Eduardo knows that most— all?— hybrids are intellectually and developmentally inferior to humans in many ways, consistently scoring far below average on IQ tests and such, even if they're literate like this one.
He raps again on the glass, and this time the hybrid moves, angling his body away from Eduardo. He turns the page of his book and continues to read.
Eduardo sighs, ducks his head, and steps inside the pet shop.
***
He wanders around aimlessly, checking out the mice and the hamsters and the rabbits, but none of them catch his eye. Then he meanders over to the cats, and wiggles his fingers against one of the plexiglass cages, trying to get the attention of a cute tortoiseshell kitten. The kitten is uninterested.
Eduardo gives up.
When he leaves the pet shop, the hybrid is still reading.
Mark, thinks Eduardo, glancing again at the sign on the window. Skilled, well-trained, clever, sassy.
He wonders, vaguely, what color his eyes are. How soft his ears are.
Then he turns and walks away.
***
For some reason, he returns to the pet shop the next day, and this time the hybrid in the window is asleep, curled up tightly on the dog bed. Nearby the bed lies his book: a battered copy of The Odyssey. Eduardo wonders if the hybrid is actually smart enough to understand it.
He enters the store.
Absently, he heads to the "Hybrids" aisle, examines the collars and cages and beds and cans of food.
Then he walks by the cats, and the fish, and the birds, but before he knows it, he's back at the front of the store.
The hybrid is awake now, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest and reading his book. His curls are tousled in a way that makes Eduardo's stomach flip.
A little girl is standing by the case already, her nose pressed to the glass. She looks up as Eduardo approaches.
"I saw it go potty," she announces to him, then sticks out her tongue in apparent disgust.
"What?" asks Eduardo. He wonders where her parents are.
"I saw the hybrid go potty in the litter box, just like my grandma's cat does," says the girl emphatically. "Then it scooped litter on top to cover it up." She mimes digging with her hand, then points at the litter box in the corner of the display case. Eduardo stares at it for a few moments, at the uneven surface of the litter, then glances over at the hybrid.
He isn't reading anymore: he's watching them, frowning, his cheeks tinged pink. Like he's embarrassed. Like he knows what they're talking about.
Shit, thinks Eduardo, maybe he can even hear them. The glass probably isn't sound-proof.
"I think it should use a toilet," declares the girl, shrugging. And with that, she waltzes away.
Eduardo stands there, frozen.
The hybrid— Mark— doesn't look away, just holds Eduardo's gaze, his dark blue eyes narrowed slightly, his expression a potent mix of humiliation and anger.
It is not, in any way, the expression of an intellectually inferior creature. It's the expression of someone who resents being gawked at day in and day out, who resents being confined to a space like six feet long and four feet wide, who resents being forced to relieve himself in a fucking litter box, on display for anyone to see.
And Jesus, does he really only have one fucking book to read? Does he ever get to interact with other people? How often do they let him out? His collar looks too tight.
Eduardo lowers his gaze, breaking eye contact with Mark, suddenly acutely uncomfortable with the whole situation.
He doesn't want to be here anymore, doesn't want to think about this.
So he leaves the pet store and heads down Concord, resolving not to come back.
***
But he does come back, three days later.
And the display case is full of puppies.
He bursts into the store.
"Excuse me," he asks an employee breathlessly, "where's Mark?"
"Who?"
"Mark. The hybrid. The one who was in the window."
"Oh, we sold him. Yesterday, I think," says the guy disinterestedly.
"You sold him? Why?"
The guy lifts an eyebrow. "This is a pet store, man. We sell pets."
"But—"
Eduardo doesn't know what to say.
***
He buys himself a goldfish, and wonders why he kind of feels like crying.