Vince pushed his dirty blond fringe out of his eyes, but there was no point. His hair only had two stages. It was either so greasy it clung to his face (multiplying his spots) or so dry and wispy it did nothing but hang straight into his eyes. He'd washed his hair an hour earlier, so he probably had a good two hours until he was a greasy mess again.

There was no way he could be any age but fifteen. At no other point was the human body such a disgusting disaster. Vincent Norton's voice had finally stopped cracking, and he was growing hair where a man was supposed to grow hair. Thin, light blond hair that looked more like dandelion fluff than proper hair. It added to the general disgusting quality of his short and chubby frame. Everyone promised it would get better, but Vince was feeling less than confident. That was one of the many reasons why he alternated between crying and throwing things.

No one could look at Vincent Norton and think he was an adult. He was a poster child for the ravages of puberty.

"So, Vincey," Bob Fossil leered. "I see you're eighteen. You know, that's an adult where I come from."

Vince didn't ask if Mr. Fossil meant America or Vietnam. He mentioned both places frequently.

"Well, sixteen is an adult here," Vince pointed out. He never knew where Mr. Fossil was going with any of his statements. The man just seemed to say whatever popped into his head.

"I see," Fossil said with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows. "You'll be working under Howard Moon. He's a dick! He's an ugly, disgusting fox bummer, and he smells like foot cheese sandwiches! I think the two of you will get along. He's one of our best keepers, but if you tell him I said that, I will have to kill someone."

"Me or Howard? Or just some random person?" Vince asked out of curiosity.

"What are you talking about?" Fossil roared.

"Nothing."

Fossil grabbed an intercom and bellowed, "Howard Moon, get your filthy, fox-bumming ass to my office! There's a sweet piece of... new employee you need to whip into shape."

Vince's hands were sweating and he felt self-conscious about the way his zoo uniform was clinging to his belly, but he was excited to have a job. And mildly flattered that someone, even if it was Bob Fossil, thought he was attractive.

xxx

"Is this a joke?"

Vince fell in love with the voice before he even saw Howard. It was a rich and masculine voice. He had just enough of a Northern accent to sound exotic to a boy who had never left Shoreditch.

When Vince turned to look at Howard, his mouth fell open. His new supervisor was tall, dark, and handsome. He was a bit of a shambles, with his shirttails hanging out and his stubbled cheeks, but his eyes were dark and kind, and his hair was roguishly curly and disheveled. Vince hadn't quite worked out if he liked girls or boys or both, but he knew he liked Howard. He could feel himself blushing and breaking out in hives. Vince stared at his trainers and willed Howard to look at him and see something desirable.

"Are we running a preschool?" Howard asked. "This kid does not have a degree. I'm guessing he doesn't have his GCSEs, either."

Vince gave a guilty start, but stayed quiet.

"His paperwork is in order, Moon! I'm in charge here, not you. I don't care about your fancy degrees or your fancy dungarees. You are a piece of shit, Moon!"

Vince cringed at the verbal assault, but Howard looked bored. It seemed to be typical of their exchanges.

"Come on, then," Howard sighed. "I'll have you shoveling animal dung like a pro in no time."

xxx

Vince's parents should have been right. He shouldn't have been able to get a job or live on his own without finishing school. When he had dropped out (not that he'd done anything official; he'd just stopped going), he had fully expected to go crawling back to his parents as soon as Leroy got sick of putting him up in his flat. Instead, he answered an ad in the paper.

Zoo Keeper needed. No experience necessary. Know-it-all dickheads who get a boner for jazz fusion need not apply.

Vince did not know what jazz fusion was, so he applied. He was interviewed by a tall and strikingly handsome Black man, with a disconcertingly reddish-blond mane of hair and a tremendous mustache, who introduced himself as Dixon Bainbridge. He only asked Vince a handful of questions, none of them about animals, and gave him a job and a uniform. He was told to report to Bob Fossil and instructed, "Whatever you do, do not let him dance."

Bainbridge had asked a lot of questions about Vince's parents and if anyone cared where he was or what he was doing. Vince was mildly concerned that he was about to be murdered, but anything was better than going back to school.

xxx

Vince followed Howard closely (repeatedly stepping on the back of his shoes). Even when he was yelling at Vince and calling him a berk, Howard looked quite handsome. He had a mustache, which should have been creepy, but Vince liked it on Howard. It made him look like an old-fashioned movie star.

"This is Bollo. No one knows how old he is or where he came from. No paperwork at all. It's like he came for a visit one day and got locked in a cage," Howard explained. He had one foot up on the edge of Bollo's cage and spoke in a grand manner, like he was an actor in a fancy play.

"Bollo not like to reveal age. Good to keep some things to self."

Vince looked around to see who had spoken.

"Am I boring you, Little Man?" Howard asked testily. Vince snapped to attention, his cheeks pinking at the nickname. He'd always wanted a nickname that wasn't horrible and offensive.

Vince tried to focus, but someone kept speaking over Howard is a deep and raspy voice. Vince tried to tune the voice out, but he was getting a serious craving for a banana.

"Can spotty, chubby boy understand Bollo?"

Vince looked at the gorilla and then tried to suck in his stomach.

"What's going on, Vince?" Howard asked, no longer looking irritated. His face was so close to Vince's, Vince could smell the unsweetened tea on Howard's breath.

"I thought I heard someone say..."

"Hey, doughy boy. You hear what Bollo say?"

"I'm not doughy!" Vince yelled. "I been trying to lose weight..."

"Are you talking to Bollo?" Howard asked.

Vince tried to think of something to say, something not crazy and that might make Howard fall madly in love with Vince and want to kiss him and... Vince wasn't sure what he thought about what would come after snogging. That could get a bit scary, even if he was wrapped in Howard's strong arms and feeling safe and wanted.

Howard snapped his fingers in front of Vince's face.

"Wake up, Little Man. What is going on?"

"I don't know," Vince answered honestly.

"Bollo give you good tips to get rid of spots if you bring banana."

Vince turned to the talking gorilla and yelled, "Quit making me self-conscious! It's me first day, I'm nervous enough."

Howard looked from Vince to Bollo and back to Vince.

"Can you understand what he's saying?"

Vince kicked at the ground and mumbled, "S'pose so."

"Ask him what Jack Cooper has been saying about me."

xxx

"This is the keeper hut. The keeper hut is a very special place," Howard explained as he gestured toward the modest space. "This is where we come to unwind and share tales of..."

"Shoveling dung?" Vince supplied.

"Shoveling dung is an essential task, Little Man. Nothing is more important than the health and well-being of our animals. We are their keepers, and no job should be too big or too small for us," Howard explained in a grand manner. Vince was 100% sure he would be stuck with all the dung shoveling from that day forward. Howard had done a little of the work to demonstrate proper technique, but clearly fancied himself an important person in need of an underling to whom he could delegate.

Vince would happily shovel dung for Howard. His love for Howard was the kind of love that could only come from a chubby, spotty, fifteen-year-old loser. Vince's plan to win Howard's heart (or at least his libido) was to simper and grovel. When he wasn't looking at Howard, his feelings seemed pathetic, but when Howard tried to widen his little eyes and spoke in his grand way, Vince only had enough dignity to not actually swoon.

Vince sat on a lumpy sofa while Howard made tea. Vince hadn't packed a lunch because he was desperately trying to lose weight, and he was starving. When Howard brought out a very boring-looking sandwich and a tin of biscuits, Vince was afraid he'd start drooling.

Their hands barely touched as Howard handed him half of his own sandwich, but Vince was grateful his jacket was a bit long and was hopefully covering his sudden erection.

"You'll be needing to pack a lunch, Little Man. You're a growing boy."

And with his kind and paternal words, Howard had jabbed an ice pick into Vince's fragile heart. Howard saw him as a child.

"I'll be sixteen in a couple weeks," Vince retorted. It was more like seventeen weeks, but he certainly wasn't a little kid.

"I was eighteen when I started working here," Howard replied calmly. "And I was 5'11". I've grown three inches since then. You've got growing to do. You'll change."

Vince was staring intently into Howard's eyes and nearly jumped when another keeper entered the hut. It was Judy from the Spider Villa. Howard had pointed her out from a distance, and Vince had thought she was very pretty and looked like a nice girl. Then he saw the way she looked at Howard and the way Howard shyly ducked in her presence, and Vince found he hated Judy and everything she stood for.

While Howard and Judy exchanged awkward pleasantries, Vince did his best to be friendly as he imagined Judy getting a nasty spider bite that made her face swell up and her lovely blond hair fall out. He wouldn't wish any real harm on her—just a period of being really, really gross.

He didn't want Howard eyeing up girls. He didn't want Howard's little eyes on anyone but Vince. When Judy left, Howard glanced at Vince and turned red.

"No way, Howard!" Vince teased. "She is well out of your league."

Howard frowned. "Sometimes I think Judy and I are soul mates. Perhaps we met in another life..."

"If you did, they you must have borrowed a bunch of money off her and not paid it back, 'cause she has got some major hostility towards you!" Vince lied off the top of his head. He felt a little bad when Howard seemed to be taking him seriously, but Vince couldn't help himself any more than he could stop eating Jelly Tots. He was a slave to his urges. His mother said it was all part of growing up, but Vince was fairly certain he was pure liquid evil. And fat.

Howard returned to chattering about the zoo, and Vince half-listened as he tried to stare at Howard in a casual way. The Northerner was attractive, but Vince wasn't sure what was drawing him so strongly. Vince normally fancied more androgynous people, like Bowie and Joan, and Howard was pretty masculine. Vince also liked cool people, and Howard was the very definition of square.

But there was something larger than life about Howard. He was like the Doctor from Doctor Who; Howard was in a specific time and space, but he was not of it. He was clearly too good for the zoo, and yet he was treated like dirt by the people and even the animals. Only Judy seemed to see what Vince saw.

He asked Howard what kind of spider would make a person's face swell up like the Elephant Man. Of course, Howard had an answer.

xxx

"Quit trembling, you'll change its sex," Howard ordered. Vince wondered if anything Howard said was really true. He seemed to have a lot of strange knowledge at his fingertips. They'd already sung to an enraged llama and Howard had demonstrated how to ride a porpoise. No one seemed to notice the animals were talking, and Howard kept insisting that Vince had a very special gift because he understood them. Occasionally, he'd catch Howard looking in the direction of one of the speaking animals, clearly sensing it was communicating, but since he hadn't gone after Jack Cooper with a cattle prod, Vince assumed Howard really didn't understand a word being said.

Vince had never heard an animal speak before, but he'd always wanted to. He'd used to stare at animals in the zoo and try to send them psychic messages.

"Motherfuck! How do I get out of here?"

Vince searched for the source of the tiny voice.

"I'm in the lion's den, you spotty git! Get me out of here before he wakes up!"

Vince looked into the lion's 'den,' an inhumanely small cage with bars. The lion was sleeping. In the corner, a field mouse was trying to scrabble his way up towards the bars, but the sleek metal gave him no purchase.

"Howard, there's a mouse stuck in the lion's den. What should we do?" Vince asked.

"Save him, you dumb fuck!" screamed the mouse.

Howard jumped into action. He sent Vince to the other side of the cage to act as a distraction, in case the lion woke up as he snatched the mouse up by his tail.

"Thanks, mate," the mouse sighed, happily climbing into Howard's pocket. "What a fucking day I've had. Your partner is useless."

"Hey!" Vince protested. "I'm the one who heard you yelling."

"What? You wanna medal?" the mouse sneered, poking his adorable face out of Howard's pocket.

Howard headed to the Petite Animal Boutique and placed the mouse into a hutch.
"What are you doing?" the mouse squealed. "You can't lock me up! I've got 178 kids at home... So, there's just food and water in here all the time? And exercise equipment?"

Vince watched the mouse jump on the exercise wheel and then turned to Howard.

"Why do we need a field mouse display? Ain't they just running around?"

Howard shrugged. "We need all the animals we can get. This zoo is falling apart."

"Can I get some music in here?" squealed the mouse. "You know, something to keep my energy up, so I can really go for the burn."

Howard looked at him strangely as Vince placed his walkman and headphones on top of the hutch and blasted some Moby.

"Fuck yeah!" the mouse squeaked as he picked up his pace. "I am going to be ripped!"

Howard shook his head. "You have a real gift, Little Man."

Vince wasn't sure if Howard was being serious or sarcastic, but he blushed anyway.

xxx

That night, Vince took Mr. Bollo's advice. He mixed two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar with water and honey and drank it and then dabbed the vinegar onto his spots. Bollo swore it would help his skin and his waistline.

Vince went to bed imagining himself clear-faced and slim, and how Howard would see him in a different light.

Maybe Howard would make a move. Maybe they could snog in the keeper's hut. Vince fell asleep fantasizing about life with his new boyfriend and their future vague sexual activities.