Balto and Nikki - Young Love

24. The Big Chance (written by Nikki)

Hello, my dear friends. A challenging time lies behind us. We are now in the middle of April. Spring Break, to be more exact. Well, an extended Spring Break. Usually, this would be a time for parties and happy gatherings. But not this year. Not for the Howling Musketeers. Over the last few months, our theater group had to go through endless rehearsals and vocal exercises. We read Shakespeare's works so often, that I dreamed about them almost every night. And if this time was already hard for me and my friends at college, you can perhaps imagine how hard it was for Balto. My brave little wolf. Honestly, I thought more than once, it would be the best for a sensitive boy like him to quit. I don't know where he found the strength to go through all this.

Last week, we were back in New York City. As we have mentioned it in our last entry, our theatrical group got an invitation to a competition of several colleges.

This was special insofar that Anthros like us are still not seen often in plays outside the Anthropomorphic Community. Sure, groups from Stark College have been invited to such competitions before. But even though our school enjoys a good reputation and many anthropomorphic actors have graduated from Stark, none of the groups were able to win any of these competitions. I have seen videos and read various articles about these earlier contests. Our groups were always more of a joke for everyone, a break filler. At this point, I doubted that we would have even the slightest chance. I mean, we had to perform in a city of humans. The judges were humans. The ugly face of racism is still there. Balto had to face it twice during our first stay in New York City. Fortunately, he seems to have forgotten about it. Or maybe he just never thought about it as much as his mother and I did.

Currently, we are in our little house at the lake. Our parents allowed Balto and me to spend the rest of Spring Break here, to find some rest. It is so quiet out here. During the night, you only hear the wind, the waves, and the sounds of the forest. Balto is sleeping deep. Even an artillery attack wouldn't wake him up.

I wasn't able to close my eyes yet. My thoughts are running wild, my brain just refuses to shut up. My little wolf is mumbling in his sleep. I wonder what he is dreaming about. Perhaps about our future, or about last week's play. Like every night, Little Balto is standing next to the bed, watching over Fluffy like a guardian angel.

Somehow, it is crazy, that I have known this boy all my life. We grew up together, played together. I watched him taking his first bath, and I also watched him making his first steps, even helped him a bit with them by holding his hands. There are several videos of us from that time, they are so cute to watch. We were both so innocent back then.

When I started babysitting him, I honestly never thought that we would ever become a couple. But even back then, I felt something special between us. You know that feeling when you know something is there, but you can't figure out what it is? Hell, I was about twelve or thirteen back then. I admit that I hate myself now for being so stupid at the time. I had boy after boy, and they all just played with me and pretended to like me, just to get into my panties. Then it happened. Dad had just kicked the last of these false friends out of our house, when Christa asked me to come over the next day, since she and mom wanted to go out. I never took money for babysitting Balto. I never wanted anything for it. He was like my little brother, and spending time with him was always a nice thing for me to do.

We had a pleasant evening, watched a movie, ate pizza. Around midnight, I put him to bed. As I left the room, I turned around to take another look at Balto, how he snuggled up in his blanket. And there was this feeling I talked about.

I shook my head and left the room to take a shower. That Balto had secretly watched me shower several times was no secret to me.

The other night he had left some, let's call them, evidence on the bathroom floor. I didn't tell him that I knew of him peeping on me. This time, I wanted to catch him in the act.