Refuge - 1. Chapter 1: Bryan

University Library, Chicago, Illinois, Earth Analogue

“So, what’s that?” The husky tenor interrupted my thoughts. I looked up, blinked, and saw a boy pointing to the open book on the table.

The boy’s eyes widened and he stepped back. “Sorry,” he stuttered. “I shouldn’t have interrupted.” He must have thought I was angry.

“I’m not mad,” I said. “Just startled. Sometimes I get lost in my own head.”

The boy giggled.

“That,” I said, answering his question, “is a sea bear or Echiniscus blumi.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. “So, where does it live?”

“In a drop of water,” I said. “The sea bear is less than a millimeter wide. That’s a photomicrograph.”

“So, do you mean a microphotograph?”

“A microphotograph would sound better, but that means a tiny picture. This is a picture of a tiny thing. A photomicrograph.”

The boy giggled again. “So, are you a scientist?”

“A scientist and a science writer. I do research, I teach a couple of classes here, and I write scripts for TV shows.”

“Way cool!” he said. “So, do you make lots of money?”

“Well, enough to keep me in test tubes.”

He giggled again. “You’re funny.”

“My name is Paul,” I said, and raised my eyebrows.

“Um, Bryan,” he replied.

“Bryan, would you do me a favor?”

His nose flared and his mouth tightened. Uh oh, I thought. I may have crossed a line.

“What kind of favor,” Bryan asked. His voice had lowered nearly an octave.

“You’ve started every other sentence and every question with ‘so,’ ” I said. “The favor I ask is that you think about what you’re going to say, and try to say it without saying so.”

Now, Bryan’s eyebrows were raised. “I do? And why should you care?”

Now it was my turn to giggle. Well, laugh. At twenty-three, I didn’t think I should be giggling, even when talking to a twelve-year-old.

“Yes, you do, and I know it’s unconscious, and I know you’re imitating what you hear. And I care because I’m tired of hearing people talk that way and because …” I paused. “Because it may help you be a better communicator, and that’s important in many ways.”

The boy nodded. “Thank you. I’ll work on it.

“And thank you for telling me about the sea bear—Echiniscus blumi. I’ve got to go.”

He turned and walked away.

# # # # #

The next day, Bryan brought his schoolwork to the table, and asked if he might sit across from me.

“Sure,” I said. I started to say it’s a free country, meaning he could sit anywhere he wanted. I didn’t say that for two reasons. First, it would have been a flip answer to what I saw as a reasonable question. Second, I wasn’t so sure the country was very free, any more. The USA Patriot Act, passed in an orgy of fear and recrimination after the events of September 11, 2001, had been extended and expanded to the point that a positive photo ID was required in order to check out a library book. I knew that the checkout records were sent to DHS.

I told Bryan, sure.

We both worked quietly until Bryan’s pencil hit the table with enough force to make it bounce over the screen of my laptop and onto the keyboard. I backspaced over the j that had appeared on the screen, picked up the pencil, and lowered the screen.

“Bryan?” That’s all I said. I held out the pencil.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I don’t get this binomial thing! What’s it good for, anyway?”

“Do you mean the binomial theorem?”

He nodded.

“Are you multiplying or factoring?”

“Factoring? You mean after I figure out how to multiply these things I’m going to have to factor them?

“What’s factor, anyway?”

“Bryan, thank you.” He tilted his head and looked at me from the top of his eyes. “You asked three questions, four if you count the one-word question, without once saying so.”

He giggled and ducked his head into his chest. “I’ve been practicing.”

It took less than two minutes to show Bryan the FOIL method of multiplying a pair of binomial expressions: First-Outer-Inner-Last. He worked three problems, and then asked, “Why don’t they tell us this?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “What did they tell you?”

It turned out, they, meaning his algebra teacher, didn’t tell them very much at all. Later, I did some research and found that the binomial theorem, while still in the text books, didn’t appear on the standardized math tests which determined the amount of funding public schools received, and I understood why they didn’t teach it.

I did try to answer Bryan’s second question: of what use was this part of math?

“I remember using it in calculus and analytic geometry. I remember especially that factoring was important in discussing imaginary numbers. If I’d gone into engineering, I might have needed it. Since you don’t know what you want to do when you grow up, maybe you should learn it, just in case.”

“But I do know what I want to do!” Bryan said. “Well, not exactly, but I want to explore and discover and find new things.”

“You mean, exploring jungles and places like that?”

“No,” he said. “I know they’re all gone. I know that’s why the weather is so unpredictable and the air is getting harder and harder to breathe. I’m thinking about exploring under the sea … Earth is covered seventy percent with water, you know, and some of the deepest parts of the ocean are nearly eleven kilometers below the surface? That’s the Mariana Trench.”

His eyes lit with excitement, and I think he’d be talking still if the chime hadn’t sounded to announce the library’s closing.

# # # # #

The next evening I was immersed in writing when a cough pulled me back to the real world. Bryan stood across the table from me.

“Didn’t want to scare you like I did, before,” he said.

“Not scared,” I said. “Not scared of you, anyway. Just startled.

“You going to sit?”

He did, and opened his books and spread papers. I was about to return to my work when he spoke.

“Do you think I could be an explorer? Undersea, I mean?”

I thought for a moment. The only ones funding undersea research were a couple of oil companies, hoping to find enough oil to keep the world running for a few more years. But they were running out of places to explore. The Barbados Bust had taken all but two of the major oil companies down with it. And those two were on the verge of bankruptcy, taxed nearly into oblivion by the president’s “gotta pay your fair share” policy. And, pure research? No such thing, any more. If it couldn’t make money or a more powerful weapon—and quickly—no one had any use for it.

“There may be opportunities,” I said. “A couple of oil companies are still looking at the sea. The military does some stuff, but it’s all classified.”

“Maybe. You mean no, don’t you?” he asked.

“No. I mean maybe, but the chances are small. You’d have to prove yourself, academically, physically, mentally, emotionally. You’d have to stand out above your contemporaries. And, you’d have to have a lot of luck. Maybe.

“Bryan, please tell me I haven’t killed your dream?”

“Why? Why should I tell you, and why would you care?”

“Because I would never deliberately do something to harm you. I may have harmed you by accident, by being too forthright, by thinking it was more important to show off my knowledge than to give you encouragement.

“I have done a bad thing, and I want to be forgiven.”

Bryan closed his books. “I really didn’t have any homework, tonight. I just came here to talk to you. We talked. Thank you for that.”

He picked up his books, and walked away. I felt an ache in my heart. I looked into myself to see the reason for it. It wasn’t because of what I’d said to him; it was because I knew I would never see him again.

# # # # #

I was wrong. The next evening at his usual time Bryan appeared across the table from me. I was inordinately happy, and began the conversation.

“Hi, Bryan. I was afraid … I thought, I mean, that you’d not come back, after what I did yesterday.”

“You told me what I needed to hear,” he said. “You talked to me like I wasn’t a kid.

“Paul.” It was the first time he’d used my name. “Nobody’s ever talked to me before like you did. You told me what I had to hear. If you hadn’t told me the truth, it would have hurt more.

“What happened yesterday was a little hurt compared to what I’d have found later. I think it is time for me to find a new dream. I think I always knew that, but you made it clear.

“Oh, and I won’t forgive you, because there’s nothing to forgive. If you need to be forgiven, then you have to forgive yourself.”

“I understand,” I said. I closed the screen on the laptop. “May we talk about your dreams?”

Bryan and I talked until the chime sounded. That is, he talked, and I listened, interjecting an occasional um hum or question to let him know I was listening, and to keep him talking.

# # # # #

Bryan and I continued to meet every weekday night at the library. Sometimes, we barely spoke. Sometimes we worked together on one of my projects; sometimes I helped him with his homework.

An October snowstorm had caused the university to suspend classes, but the library remained open. Bryan shrugged off his coat, slapped his hands together to warm them, and asked me, “What’s wrong?”

“Why do you think something’s wrong?” I asked.

“Your lips are pressed together so tightly there’s no color in them.”

“Could be I’m just concentrating on something,” I said.

“No, when you’re concentrating, you scrunch up your forehead. This is different. It’s something else.”

Bryan was right. It was something else. It was anger. One of my TV scripts had been rejected, not on scientific grounds, but because it discussed proofs of evolution and disproved two of the central arguments of the creationists. (There are, indeed, transitional fossils, despite the creationists’ denials; and, the theory of evolution is, indeed, testable and falsifiable.) The network was afraid of a backlash. After nearly every woman’s health clinic even remotely suspected of providing abortions, abortion counseling—even contraception—had been bombed by right wing, self-proclaimed Christians, I understood the network’s reasoning. I didn’t approve of it and I didn’t agree with it; but I understood it.

I gave Bryan the short version of what I was thinking. He asked if he could see the script.

“I’ve never read a script, before. I read your blog, though. You say a lot of interesting things.”

“Thank you, Bryan. May I email you a copy of the script?”

Bryan was quick to reject that notion. “No, I … I’m not allowed to get email from people my father doesn’t know,” he said.

We agreed that I should post a copy in the cloud. I gave him an address and a password. And forgot all about it.

# # # # #

Around Thanksgiving, things got rough in the city. Flash mobs, brought together by social media and instant electronic communications appeared seemingly at random on major streets. Random, except that the mobs always seemed to form near stores carrying expensive stuff like clothes and electronics—and the stores always seemed to get looted.

“Bryan? Do you have a safe way home?” I asked one night. “It’s dangerous on the streets, even on public transportation.”

“Yes. My father is on the faculty. We live on campus.”

I was reassured by what he said. I wished, later, that I’d picked up on how he said, father. It might have saved some pain and grief. However, it also might have kept the good that happened from happening.

# # # # #

Two days later I saw Bryan again at the library. I had been there the next day, but Bryan wasn’t. Today, he was sporting a very black eye and a bruised cheek.

He sat down across the table from me, but didn’t say a word.

“Hi, Bryan,” I said. “What happened?”

“I fell down the stairs. I hit my face on a doorknob. I am clumsy,” he said. The husky tenor was nearly a soprano. He looked down and to his right. I knew from his voice tone and body language that he was lying. There are some unusual perquisites to being a science writer. I had written a couple of programs about body language and police interrogation techniques, and knew what to look for. I had known Bryan long enough to know what his normal responses were. These were not normal.

I was afraid of crossing another line, but did so, anyway.

“Bryan? For the past several weeks, I have thought we might become friends. Friends tell each other the truth.” That’s all I said. Now, it was up to him.

“So, you think I’m lying?” he said.

“I think you’re not telling the truth. I won’t say, lying, because that’s an ugly word, and friends don’t call each other ugly things.”

The boy was quiet for a long time. I looked back at the screen of my laptop. It had gone dark … the mandatory energy conservation program had put it to sleep. I was about to hit a key to wake it up, when Bryan spoke.

“You must not tell anyone, ” he said.

He didn’t ask me to promise, and he didn’t ask it as a condition of telling. I nodded. That seemed to be good enough.

“The sperm donor who calls himself my father hit me.”

A lot of anger, there, but also a sense of resignation, as if he believed there were no other way to live, and no other way to show anger.

I nodded again, hoping that would encourage him to keep talking. It didn’t. I asked, “Bryan? Will you tell me why he hit you?”

“He caught me masturbating.”

“More than that, I think.”

The boy’s eyes, which had been looking through me and the wall behind me and maybe past the entire city of Chicago, snapped into focus.

“I was looking at a picture …” His voice dropped so low I could barely hear him. “A picture of Justin Beeber. I’m queer.”

“Justin Beeber?” I said. “Good choice. There are probably a million people, girls and boys, who every day masturbate thinking about him or looking at his picture.”

“Huh?” He paused. His eyes swept back and forth. He was thinking.

“Good choice? You think it’s okay for a boy to masturbate while thinking about another boy?”

The line I was about to cross was a Rubicon, but if I could help this kid, it would be worth it.

“Yes, Bryan, it’s okay and not unnatural for a boy, especially around your age, to have same-sex fantasies and to engage in same-sex experimentation. Your sexuality may not become clear until you’re sixteen or eighteen. You’re about twelve, right?”

“No. Eighteen,” he said. “And I know I’m queer.”

I experienced an epiphany. “Bryan, you are short of stature, you have no facial hair, nor any on your arms. I have assumed you were perhaps twelve years old. You talk to me as if you were older. But I never realized that you were so much older.”

“Yes,” he said. “My father is Chinese; my mother, Laotian. They are both small, therefore, I am small. Sometimes it bothers me that I am not tall, like you. Sometimes it bothers me that I cannot grow hair on my face or my body. Sometimes it bothers me that people treat me as if I were the twelve-year-old that I appear to be.

“But you never did this. You never talked down to me, you never treated me like a child, even though you had every reason to believe I was a child. Thank you.

“Oh, and you have no facial hair, either, but I know you must be more than twelve.” He giggled. It was a brief giggle, but it was a giggle.

“Bryan, I have another favor to ask,” I said. “Please don’t call yourself, or anyone else, queer. That word is loaded with negative feelings. You can feel the hurt when you say it, and when you say it about yourself. It’s one of those ugly words that friends don’t call each other—or themselves.”

Bryan nodded. “I don’t like gay, either. Too many people use that word in a bad way, too. Those guys who do Southpark have made it mean bad. And homosexual sounds too much like a scientist.” He blushed. “I don’t mean that in a bad way.”

I laughed, and Bryan giggled again. Now, I thought, we can talk more easily.

The laughter and giggles open a faucet, and Bryan talked non-stop. He told me about growing up in the harsh home of a “Tiger Father.”

“My mother divorced him, and returned to Laos. My father is so determined that I succeed academically and physically that he allows nothing to interfere. He plans every moment that I am not in school or at the library. He drills me in the morning; tutors drill me in the afternoon and on weekends. I attend martial arts classes seven days a week from four until six. Weeknights, he has an evening class, so I may go to the library. The few hours I spend here are the only free time I have. And he quizzes me on what I did, and sometimes makes me show my homework.”

“What about your friends?” I asked. I was almost afraid to do so. I was right to be afraid.

“I have no friends. I have study partners with whom I eat lunch on school days. I have sparing partners at the martial arts class. I know their names, but nothing else about them.

“The only reason I have time to talk to you is that I am smarter than he knows, smarter than he thinks I am. I can do my homework, even the extra that he assigns, in half the time he thinks I should. That gives me nearly two hours a day to talk to you.”

At 8:45, the chime announced the imminent closing of the library. Flash mobs had closed streets the past two nights, and one had managed to get on campus; I asked Bryan if he had a way home.

The camaraderie we had shared disappeared and his face turned to stone. “I’m not going home. The next time he hits me, he will kill me.”

The boy’s body language said he was telling the truth. His fear seemed real.

“Bryan? May I call a friend who will help you?”

“Is he a policeman?”

I shook my head.

“Is he a social worker?”

Again, I shook my head.

“Is he a priest?”

“No.”

“What is he?”

I crossed my fingers. “He’s a god,” I said. “He is Asclepius, the Greek god of healing.

“Friends tell each other the truth,” Bryan said.

I looked directly into his eyes. “Yes, we do.”

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