Epilogue

Stardate June 12, 1992

Human bonding rituals often involve a great deal of talking and dancing and crying.
--Worf

I write this from a room at the top of the historic Hotel Oregon in McMinville, Oregon. I look out the window and see the gentle rolling hills to the south, deep green, some braided purple and brown with grape vines. Oregon wine country. In the streets below, people in alien costumes are dancing and laughing, drinking wine, eating hamburgers and ice cream. The late spring skies are soft violet, washed in clouds. Music floats up, rising like incense, and happy voices sing along.

Next to me, the bed is piled with pillows—Reid’s collection, his fortress. On the nightstand, two half-empty glasses of sparkling cider sit next to our tickets to the UFO Festival. Our official video contest entry number is a bookmark wedged in the middle of Reid’s “The Brain: The Whole Enchilada” book. An electric typewriter sits at the desk across the room, a sheaf of paper in the roller—white and clean, waiting for my words to strike.

I hear the shower water running and look over to the bathroom door--slightly ajar—an edge of soft yellow light. I touch my finger to Reid’s glass and then look down at my hand, the silver ring on my finger—an infinity symbol etched with “I love you”---and I smile. I hear the words being said soft to my ear in the drift of sleep, and I hear them crackling over the speakers of a walkie talkie, spoken in a shy, teenage voice from years ago, and I hear them clear and strong from yesterday’s ceremony—strong, certain words: “I love you” woven into the vows spoken in the vineyard with the warm, sweet wind blowing through, our hands clasped, our eyes never leaving one another.

You are too beautiful to ignore.
Each kiss is as the first
.
We quoted Star Trek and wore our Star Trek uniforms. Noah was best man, also in uniform, his hair oiled to a deep shine, his back straight, his face serious, but gentle—proud. My mother was there, and Damian—my dad. They stood side-by-side, hand-in-hand, smiling softly. Angus stood quietly in his mustard-gold tuxedo and ruffled shirt, his hands clasped respectfully at his waist. He blinked rapidly as Reid and I walked up the grassy aisle, arm-in-arm, to stand at the gazebo overlooking the vineyards. When we exchanged rings, I could see Angus duck his head down and wipe quickly at his eyes, smiling with trembling lips.

Grandmother Lucinda flew in from Florida. She wore a flowing floral dress and large sunglasses, and carried a cigarette stem holder between her fingers. She drank half a bottle of wine and went around hugging and kissing everyone within sight.

Before the ceremony, she had pulled me aside and whispered in my ear her secret of how she had brought Reid back to me those years ago. “It was you?” I laughed in surprise.

“And Damian, darling. We worked as a team. What? Don’t look so shocked, darling. We trailer trash women are tough. We have our means, let me assure you. The details are mere trifles. All that matters is that you are together, and in love, and everything glorious and splendid and just as it was meant to be. Yes it is, my darling.” She kissed me on both cheeks and shook her body in a victory dance, and then grabbed a wine glass off of a passing tray, lifting the glass to the sky with a smile before swallowing it down. “Congratulations, darling.”

When the ceremony came to a close—“I now pronounce you husbands to each other”---
we kissed softly and embraced as dozens of silver balloons were released in the sky. We sliced our Star Trek Enterprise wedding cake, licked the frosting off our fingers, made toasts with sparkling cider, and danced close and warm underneath a canopy of white lights. We made love in our soft hotel bed until the sky was pink with dawn, and our lips and cheeks were pink with the rush of our unending passion.



I know there is no place in this country that will recognise our union as legal or official. But that does not matter to me, because I will not place too much value in a system that chooses to selectively recognise expressions of love and devotion—sanctioning it only for the human population deemed to be “normal.” I will place value in the people who have made this official for us—the people who love us and respect us---who allow us our humanity and uphold it with dignity in the face of prejudice. That is the system I believe in, the one held together and guided by love.



The shower water stops, and I hear the shower curtain rings sliding noisily across the metal bar. I stand up and walk to the bathroom, peering in, calling Reid’s name softly. He looks over, a white towel wrapped around his waist, his skin and hair dripping, his eyelashes soaked dark brown. When he sees me, he reaches for my hand and pulls me inside the steam-warm bathroom. He kisses me long and sensuously. “Husband,” he whispers, and his towel drops quietly to the ground.

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A poem I found on the inside of one of the many  life-saving dark chocolate bars I ate whilst writing this story.......

by George Herbert

HOME

Is this real? Yes, it is real. It has to be real. The windshield wipers push the snow away to reveal the farmhouse sitting atop the hill, every one of its windows radiating warm yellow, its eaves hung with white Christmas lights, its two chimneys puffing out cottony blue smoke into the grey sky. My mother clutches my hand and gasps, “Luke, what is this?” The last time we saw the farmhouse alive like this was eight years ago before my dad died, before everything was removed, sold, and carted away. It seemed the soul of the house was irrevocably gone. The wood became skeletal bones, the windows lifeless sockets. But I could still hear the voices in there, I could still feel the tremor of emotions and memories when the wind blew through the hollow frame. I felt them with Reid. He was a witness to the faint life still there. We swam in Snyder Pond, in the shadow of the old house, and our wet and shining bodies acted as conduits for the quiet energy there. The dried and rotting paint fell in white chips that looked like snow. The screen door beat softly against the frame. The weeds rushed over the house like a frozen brown wave. But there was still life. There was still movement. There was still that deep, resonate blood claim that comes from many years of living on a sacred piece of land.

“I can’t believe this,” I whisper. The sight in front of us leaves us stunned for many minutes. I slow the car to a crawl, and then stop at the bottom of the driveway, staring up at the house, blinking in amazement. The house is white and fresh with snow, all the weeds have been cleared, all the shrubbery carefully trimmed. An evergreen wreath hangs on the door. The walkway is shovelled in a clean, wide path to the front steps, and lighted candy canes line each side in a sugary glow. I sit, holding my mother’s hand, drawing the warmth of this vision into my awareness. And then out of the corner of my eye, I see something moving in the field to the right of the house. When I turn to look, I suck in my breath and grab my mother’s shoulder. “Mom, look! Is that….?”

“Windy!” she cries. “Your horse, Luke….can it be? But we sold her so long ago….Luke, is it really her?”

I unfasten my seatbelt and open up the car door, climbing out and then running across the snow to the pasture below the house. I am breathing hard, my mouth open, half-laughing, half crying, as I approach the wooden fence. Windy turns her head quivers her upper lip and then shakes her dark mane when she sees me. “Windy!” I shout. I stand first at her side, letting her view me, and then I slowly move around to her front and hold out my hand, palm up. She wiggles her lips over my skin and then steps forward, pressing her nose to my shoulder and face, nickering softly. “Windy, you do remember me,” I whisper, stroking her strong, brown neck. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe it.”

My mother arrives, smiling and crying, shaking her head in disbelief. “Luke, this is amazing.” She moves her hand lovingly over Windy’s blanketed side and says, “Your dad always said it was one of the proudest moments of his life when you first learned how to ride Windy. ” She wipes away tears with the back of her hand and pulls me into a fierce hug. “Did he really do all this?” she whispers.

“Mom,” I whisper back. “I’d like to go inside…I’d like to talk to him.”

She slowly pulls away and looks up to the farmhouse, smiling sadly. “Honey, I don’t think I can go in. Not just yet, but if you want to…..if you feel you can……”

“I’d like to.” I turn to the house and take in a deep breath. “Just for a little while.”

The walk to the house is slow and thoughtful. Several times I stop, my heart quivering, my feet half turning me around to go back to the car, to go back to the red-scarred world of my sorrow and confusion, my lack of forgiveness, my stubborn pain, but then I remember Damian’s words in the note, the words of his apology, and I right myself and continue onward. The house is getting closer. I can see inside the windows now—a lighted Christmas tree, a flowing fire in the fireplace, a plate full of cookies on a white table. I can see the familiar brass address numbers—2531---to the right of the door, and the brass knocker with the ram’s head at the top. I put my foot on the first step, and the step creaks—old wood, strong wood. How many times did I run up and down these steps on a summer night? How many times did that screen door slam behind me? I take the next step and the next. I can hear footsteps in the house, careful footsteps, waiting footsteps. When I open up the screen door, I can smell the sweet spice of the wreath. Through the old, wavy window glass, I can see the pink glow of the living room, the hardwood floor, a new rug—white with an antique floral design. My knuckles hover over the chipped blue wood of the door. I pause and close my eyes. Damian’s angry face floats away. There is the sound of knocking, the vintage creaking of rusted hinges, and then I open my eyes and Damian is there, his lips held in a quiet smile, his dark eyes touched at the corners with salt tears.

“Son,” he says quietly. “Come in.”

He puts his hand gently at my elbow and guides me inside the warm living room. “I am glad you are here.” I feel my jacket being carefully removed from my shoulders, and then I am quietly ushered to the fireplace and handed a cup of eggnog sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg. A polite conversation ensues—basic statements and questions--comments on the weather, inquiries about health and school. There is uncertainty--long pauses, awkward glances, nervousness---and then as the snow begins to fall heavily again outside, Damian steps into the centre of the room, lifts his shoulders in a deep breath and says, “Merry Christmas, Luciano.” He sweeps his smooth, brown hand slowly through the air and says, “This is your present. This is for you.”

I look around the house, my bottom lip starting to tremble. “You mean….”

“Yes, Luciano. This is your farmhouse. It had been on the market for many years, left in a state of neglect, and so I purchased it. I still have many repairs to do, but it’s yours, son. Yours and Lily’s.”

“How did you….” I shake my head in disbelief. “How could you afford this?”

“I sold my business and took out a loan for a down payment. There was some help from friends.” He smiles to himself. “But that is not important. It is just money, son. It is just paper. What’s important is that you get to live the life you deserve.” He places his hand on my shoulder and smiles softly. “It is important that you know how much I love you, and that I am sorry for having hurt you so deeply.”

I move away a little and lower my head, struggling with the tumult of emotions in my chest. “I don’t….,” I whisper, sniffing back the tears. “I don’t really know what to say to all this.” I clutch my cup and press my eyes closed. “I mean, the last time we saw each other, we…..”

“I know,” Damian says quickly and sadly. “I know what I said. I know what I’ve done, and I cannot blame you if you find it impossible to forgive me for it. But I just wanted you to hear it from me in person, that I am sorry. I needed to stand before you and apologise. I needed to at least try to make amends, to try and be the father to you that I failed to be when you needed me most…”

“But why now? Why so suddenly?” I murmur. A log on the fire shifts, and the flames crackle and spark for a few seconds, finally settling back to their soft rushing. Damian puts his hand on the mantle and turns his eyes to the row of windows along the front wall. His brown skin and neatly-combed hair shine gold in the firelight. His body, slim and graceful in his fitted suit, moves in closer as he breathes in and says, “It was less of a sudden moment, my son, and more of a process. A process of many months, of many thoughts and realisations. I realised quite simply that my aggressive intolerance had caused great destruction in my life. I lost your mother and I lost you. Trying to change you, fix you, make you into something that you weren’t—that only represented possession, not love. Sometimes you cannot see the error of your ways until you have lost something very precious to you. When I read about the fire, I knew I could have lost you permanently, and it frightened me. Sometimes you cannot know the depths of your love until you have gone through such a loss, but I didn’t want to wait for something tragic to happen for me to come to such a realisation.” He reaches out to me again, placing both hands on my shoulders, his eyes soft and sad on my face.

“Luciano, I love you.”

“Damian,” I quaver. I close my eyes and nod, swallowing down the tears. And then, slowly, I step forward and into Damian’s arms, allowing his arms to collect me into a long, trembling embrace. I feel his hand cupping the back of my head, and the deep rising and falling of his chest as he draws in and releases sigh after sigh of relief. “Luciano. Luciano.”

I didn’t realise how much I had wanted to have Damian’s love until now. I know that he will not replace my dad, that my real dad is dead, and these are not his arms that hold me now. I know I will never hear my dad’s voice in this house and see his face smiling at the dinner table, and I will never hear the strong swing of his axe as he cuts firewood in the barn, or his quiet chuckling as he reads a book by the fire, and I know that I will not be able to share this physical connection with him as I share it now with Damian, but the ache of that reality softens as forgiveness washes through me, as the knowledge of Damian’s acceptance and generosity settles into my awareness, loosening the strain of anger and defiance—and adding itself to my new reality, a more hopeful one, even as I still grieve.

Damian proudly shows me around the house—shows me all the rooms he has painted—“I did yours first, Luciano—sky blue, just as it was when you lived here”---the floors he has sanded and polished, the windows he has washed and repaired. “There will be a lot of workers around for the next few months. You and your mother are still welcome to stay here during the process, but it will be quite noisy.” He explains the new heater system being installed, the updates to the electrical wiring, and shares with me his plan for the garden, which will be landscaped to look like the Maltese gardens he enjoyed as a child—with statues, fountains, gravel pathways, and carpets of bright flowers.

“I’m so overwhelmed,” I say helplessly as we walk through the upstairs hallway, looking in on all the rooms in progress. “Mom is going to pass out when she sees all this.”

“Luciano, I do have one more thing to show you,” Damian says as he stops in the middle of the hallway. “Those keys I left for you in the box. Obviously, one is the key to the house. The other one…..” He smiles and steers me into the room at the end of the hall, the one that used to be my Grandma Emma’s sewing room when she lived here. “Take a look outside,” he says.

I walk over to the window and peer down into the back pasture all covered in powdery snow. At first, I see nothing there, but then Damian points over to the left, and I lean forward, pressing my forehead to the cold window, scanning my eyes over the sea of white snow. And then I see it—parked next to the barn, an RV--half-covered in a beige tarp, blue and white paint, the top covered in a thick layer of snow. I turn away from the window, covering my hand over my mouth. “Oh my god, Damian. You’re kidding.”

Damian laughs and shakes his head. “It’s yours, son. And did you notice the name? ‘Trek.’ Fitting, isn’t it?”

“Damian,” I breathe. “This all had to cost you a fortune….I just can’t….”

“Shhh, son. Please, as I said before, money is just paper, just figures in a big bank computer somewhere. Do not worry about what this all cost.” He lightly shakes my shoulders and levels his eyes with mine. “Luciano, this is all yours to enjoy because you deserve it….after everything you have been through. You deserve it because you are loved.”

I turn back to the RV, feeling the tears burning behind my eyes again. It’s impossible to push back the longing to have Reid here to share this with me, to see the new RV, to make plans for next year’s UFO Festival as we sit by the fire, sipping egg nog and unwrapping presents and enjoying the lights on the tree. I don’t know if I can do this—sometimes it is even more difficult to feel happiness than it is to feel pain. Joy almost becomes a burden, another wound, a blaze to illuminate the emptiness that still lingers. I turn away from the window and grip the Star Trek pendant around my neck.

“You wish he were here,” Damian says quietly. “I understand, son.” The rest of his words are lost to the pressure and pulse of the tears that I am fiercely trying to hold back, still too ashamed to cry in front of Damian. My throat closes up, and all I can do is nod and hold onto the pendant as Damian’s comforting tone drifts through my consciousness in surreal and melancholy waves of sound. Finally, as he leaves the room, saying, “Excuse me, Luciano, but there is a quick phone call I need to make,” I allow myself to release a few of the hot-stinging tears, wiping them away roughly with the edge of my sleeve.

“Goddammit, Reid, where are you,” I say, pressing my hands to the window, my breath fogging up the glass. “Where are you. What the fuck are they doing to you.” I stare at the RV helplessly, and it begins to sway and bleed and rush away in drifts of snow and salt water. I wipe my eyes and turn away, walking quickly out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. As I pass by my old bedroom, I see Damian sitting inside on a tall stool, a walkie talkie pressed to his mouth. “Roger,” he says in the curling Maltese accent that he has managed to keep pure even after a decade of living in the States. I stop in the doorway, looking in on him curiously. A walkie talkie? My heart clenches as I remember all the nights Reid and I had communicated back and forth on the walkie talkies at the trailer park. Too many triggers—the RV, the walkie talkies, the snow, the blue-grey colour of the atmosphere, even Damian’s face---everything reminds me of Reid. Everything.

Damian looks up and flashes a startled smile.

“Luciano, I didn’t see you there.” He laughs and wiggles the walkie talkie around in his hand. “Still no active phone line, so I use these to talk to the neighbours---they’re long range.”

“Oh,” I say, lowering my eyes. “Yeah, I used to…..” I trail off, shaking my head dismissively.

“Luciano, are you are ok, son? You look pale,” Damian says in concern, rising from the stool.

As he approaches, someone begins knocking on the door downstairs. I say, “It’s probably my mom. She drove me here today, but wasn’t ready to come in yet, so she waited in the car for awhile….”

“She’s got to be freezing out there,” Damian says worriedly, glancing over my shoulder. “Why don’t you go let her in and I’ll put another log on the fire.” He escorts me out of the room, and we walk together down the wide staircase and into the living room. “Tell her to come in and make herself at home,” Damian calls over his shoulder as he heads out back to grab some wood.

I walk to the door, murmuring to myself, “Mom, Damian bought the farmhouse. He bought Windy and the new RV. All of it’s ours,” preparing myself for her reaction—will it be joy, fear, denial? I take a deep breath and turn the doorknob, slowly opening the door. A gust of cold wind blows in--a rush of white snowflakes, a shivering of wintry colour and atmosphere. I squint out into the blast of snow—no one is there. I wonder if the wind had just lifted the knocker the way it used to do on stormy nights, frightening me as a child. I step outside on the porch, looking around tentatively, seeing nothing. The person at the door is no longer there, if they ever were.

As I turn around and head back inside, I hear footsteps creaking up the wooden steps, softly crunching the fresh layer of snow that has collected there. I stop in the doorway and turn around again, smiling faintly, searching for my mother’s face in the cold landscape. But the figure standing on the steps is not my mother. It is someone else. A young man—I can’t understand it—his delicate features, his quiet blue eyes---I stare in confusion at his face, his cheeks touched pink by the chilled air. He waits calmly on the steps, looking up at me, his gloved hands lifted slightly, waiting. I see his mouth moving, his lips quivering. I hear my name, “Luke,” very softly, the sound of a snowflake drifting to the earth. And then my whole body begins to tremble uncontrollably, and my hand reaches out, shaking violently. I take a step forward.

Many years ago when I was a little boy, I had climbed up onto a tall stack of hay bales, and I had accidentally slipped and fallen off backwards, landing hard on my back. I remember for several seconds I lay there on the ground gasping, trying to catch the breath that had been forcefully knocked from my body. I remember the choking sounds aching deep within my throat as I struggled for that one precious swallow of air—that one mighty gasp that would bring life rushing back into my burning lungs.

I stand here now—my mouth trembling open--fighting to draw in a breath of air as I did then when I was lying helplessly on the ground—Only this time I haven’t fallen. This time I am not in pain, and my struggle is not one of fright. I let out a loud, strangled cry and rush forward, and the person on the steps also rushes forward, and suddenly we are crashing into each other’s arms—our arms crushing our bodies violently together, our bodies rocking back and forth, our bodies swinging, swaying. I feel myself being lifted, my body spinning around and around. I hear my name “Luke, Luke” and my own voice crying out, shouting, and finally my lips forming the sound so soft and warm and alive, “Reid” over and over, as I am lifted and spun around and around, the snowy air rushing over my burning face and burning tears. I swallow down the air, swallow down the sweet, warm scent of Reid’s skin, his soft hair, his gentle breath. Our lips join in quivering ecstasy, drinking in warmth and relief and the flowing passion and tenderness that never broke away, that never drowned in the deluge of pain.

Reid’s hands smooth over my face, my hair, my eyes. “Luke.” His voice breaks and he kisses me hard and fierce, gasping for breath, pulling my body closer until there is no space between us, no breath that is not shared, no voice that is not mingled. Our hearts rush together--strong, wild torrents of blood and release. My words tumble out half-formed, half-sobbed, child-like and repetitive, “You’re back, you’ve come back. You’re back. Reid. You’re here.” His sighs burst through my consciousness like daylight. “I’m here.” His eyes move over my face, illuminating—the flame of a burning candle. I feel his lips at my ear. “I’m here, and I’m never leaving again. Never again. I promise. I promise.”

Everything is said in duplicate—said again and again, the rhythm of reassurance. We kiss and cling to each other in the white curtain of snow. I feel Reid’s chest trembling, his soft voice, soft humour, “Yes, I am crying. I got my emotion chip while I was away.” I put my cheek to his warm tears and press my eyes closed. Time passes. We know this is real, this is permanent. We hold our lips together, passing life and emotion across the heated core. The snow falls--tongues of ice--but we do not notice. We walk slowly into the house, our arms about one another. We are ushered in, ushered home, by kind faces and gentle hands.

“I saved the best for last,” Damian says. “Merry Christmas.”

A whole lifetime seems to pass in the space of a day. Food, presents, music. The night falls. We lie by the fire, drifting into sleep. The heart and the fire simmer in bright embers. I can feel everything, there is no need for words. The whole universe is here, there is no need to turn and search the sky. There is no need for a heart to break, or a life to hang in the balance. Nothing wavers in the certainty of passion. The world isn’t divided anymore, waiting to be sutured back together. The pain means we have lived. The scars mean something, a map, a starry sky, a place that existed and changed, and will change again. We re-enter the world the way we came into it, crying out with full lungs, announcing that we are here, crying out against the strong shock of life, waiting to be loved.

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** AUTHOR'S NOTE: To ease my mind, I'd like to say that I was running out of time toward the ending here, so my apologies in advance if certain elements seem unrealistic, hurried, too much, too little, etc. ****

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A few more weeks pass, and all the wounds are healing. The tears are drying up, and the sun is staying higher in the sky and the nights are warm blue. Sometimes we cautiously sneak out to Snyder Pond and swim in the darkness, pushing our bodies quietly through the water, and emerging dripping wet and saturated with summer. We name the stars. We try cooking a dinner for my mother and Angus. We watch reruns of Star Trek and fall asleep on the couch in late afternoon drowsiness. And love softens it all.

Now I can look at the place where the Engager used to be and not crumple in pain. I can look at the date “June 10th” on the calendar, the day of the UFO Festival, and not feel like punching the wall or cursing God, or breaking down and giving up. The money pile grows-- $86.72. My mother quits smoking. We get a letter from the UFO Festival saying our entry has won second place, a prize of $50. A check made out to Reid Michael Oliver comes with the letter. An embossed image of an alien is printed on the check.

“Second place!” After receiving the news, we shout and jump up and down like little children in the middle of Reid’s living room. The furniture and walls shake as if in an earthquake. Angus appears, looking mildly concerned. “What’s going on?”

“Second place,” Reid yells, waving the check around. We are yelling so loud that at first we don’t hear the doorbell ring. We continue yelling and jumping up and down, and the doorbell continues ringing, and finally Angus says, “Shhh. I think someone is at the door.”

He walks over to the door and puts his eye to the peephole and then draws his head back sharply, his brow furrowed. He glances over to us nervously, and then slowly opens the door to reveal a man and woman in their late 30’s standing on the porch, their hands shielding their eyes from the sun. The man has red hair and a neatly trimmed beard of greying colour. His face is thin and shiny. The woman has blond hair tied back into a ponytail. Her cheeks are red and round like tiny apples. Her eyes are green and set far apart, and her mouth is small and painted a dark wine colour. She and the man wear similar clothing—beige overcoats, black slacks and loafers. Their expressions are quiet and serious, their bodies stiff.

“Angus,” the man at the door says crisply.

“Richard? Carolyn?” he replies hesitantly. “What…what are you doing here?” He does not move to invite the man and woman in. He stands with his hand gripping the doorknob, his body partially obstructing the view. I look over to Reid who is staring with startled and confused eyes at the couple on the porch. His hands slowly lower to his sides, and his lips move wordlessly. Finally, he says, “Mom, dad?” and at these words a chill runs through my body.

“Yes, son,” the man says, looking over Angus’s shoulder, and then he turns his gaze back to Angus and asks, “May we come inside?”

Angus steps away from the door, and Reid’s parents quickly enter the living room, their disapproving eyes looking around the house in undisguised distaste. The temperature in the room seems to drop 10 degrees. I feel myself moving away, unsure of what to do, where to stand, but Reid’s hand grips the top of my arm and holds me in place. He keeps his eyes staring straight ahead at his parents as he says through thin lips, “Mom, dad, this is Luke.”

They nod coldly in my direction, and then turn back to Reid.

“Hello son,” his mother says. “We tried to call earlier to let you know we were coming, but all we got was a disconnect message.”

“We had to change the phone number to an unlisted one because of….the media,” Angus murmurs, moving to close the door.

“Yes, we saw what happened on CNN, which is why we’re here,” Reid’s father says curtly. “We know it is sudden, but the circumstances left us no choice.” He stops and studies me coolly for a few seconds, and then clears his throat and says, “We should discuss this in private, Angus. We have some things we need to talk about.”

I look over to Reid, my eyes wide and questioning. Reid very slightly shakes his head, and then turns to his parents and says, “What is it that you want to discuss?” He keeps his hand gripped tightly onto my arm, my blood throbbing hotly past his fingers.

Reid’s mother steps forward, a polite smile on her face. “Reid,” she says holding out her arms. “A hug?” When Reid does not move, she drops her arms and her face darkens. “Son, I know it’s been a long time, and we’ve got a lot of catching up to do…” She trails off and looks over to her husband uncertainly, and the turns back to Reid, “but…..it’s very good to see you. You look well.”

I hear Reid swallow, and his grip on my arm tightens even more. “It’s been years. I don’t know why you would show up now.” His voice sounds hoarse, barely above a whisper.

“We were concerned,” his mother explains, her words spoken precisely, her tone patronising. “We saw the report on the news. We were worried. We’ve been trying to call. You didn’t get my letter?” Her eyes dart to Angus’s face, and then back to Reid’s.

“No, I didn’t,” he says.

“I sent one here about a week ago….”

“There’s been a lot of mail to sort through since the incident,” Angus says vaguely. “I’ve been trying to catch up….”

“Well, we felt it was imperative to come out here in light of what has happened,” Reid’s father breaks in, putting his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “We have been deeply disturbed by the turn of events and…”

“What part disturbs you?” Reid asks, his voice rising in volume. “The part where me and Luke could have been killed, or the part where I admit that I’m gay.”

“Son,” Reid’s father says, his jaw flexing. “We need to talk about this in private. We’ve thought long and hard about this, and for your safety’s sake, we feel there will need to be some changes made to your living arrangement….”

“Bullshit,” Reid says venomously under his breath. I have never heard him so angry. Louder now: “Bullshit, dad.”

Reid’s mother gasps and holds her hands up as if warding off a blow. “Son, please don’t talk to your father that way. We came here because we love you, and we are very worried about you.” Her chest heaves. “Reid,” she pleads. “We love you, can’t you see that? We want you to see….”

“See what?” Reid’s anger continues to build, his hand burning like a branding iron on my bare skin. “See that I’m in need of fixing? Is that it? Is that why you’re here? You wouldn’t have come here just to see that I’m ok. No, that can’t be it. You came here to fix me. You saw on the news that I admitted that I was gay, and you came here to fix me like I’m a fucking dog!” Reid is yelling now, the veins in his neck pulsing hot blue, his breath coming hard and fast. He turns toward me, whispering in a wrecked voice, “Let’s go.” I cling onto his arms and nod, tears spilling down my cheeks. “Ok,” I breathe over and over. “Ok. Ok.”

“You aren’t leaving,” his father says, stepping closer. He sets his jaw and looks at his son with stony, unforgiving eyes. When Angus moves to intervene, Reid’s father thrusts his hand up, palm outward, his nostrils flaring.

“Angus,” he says gruffly. “You need to allow us to handle this situation as we see fit. Reid is our son. Stay out of this. You’ve done enough already to allow this situation to escalate to the point it has.”

“I am not your son,” Reid says unevenly. “Our relationship ended years ago. Don’t call me your son.”

“The hell you aren’t!” Reid’s father erupts loudly. “I’m still your father, and you are still my son. And I need to do what I see fit to help you see the error of your ways. I will not idly stand by and watch my son go down a path of sin and depravity! You are a Christian, Reid. We baptised you in Jesus’s name. Somehow you have been fooled into thinking that this….this sinful lifestyle of yours is acceptable. You’ve been brainwashed and fed lies. And look what you’ve brought upon yourself because of it!”

“Shut up!” Reid places his hands over his ears. “Shut up!” His cheeks turn to flames. There is a sudden commotion where his father lunges forward and grabs Reid by the shoulders, yelling words that are lost to my rushing blood, to the confusion, and the helplessness, the noise and the anger. I lose my bearings—the room lists violently right, left, right. I see Angus’s mouth moving in slow motion, and then the cold, hard face of Reid’s mother closing in, eclipsing all the light in the room. I feel myself being pulled to the door, pushed outside, and I hear and feel the door slam and everything inside of me breaking into a pile of bones. I feel my lips trying to form a coherent thought, a pleading, a name: “Reid.” I feel the dull pain of my fists pounding on the door for many days.

I thought it was over. The damage and the hurt. I thought it was finished. But it isn’t. It never ended. It just continued on in another form, another violence. The misunderstanding moved into bloodlines and ripped us apart, vein by vein. I try to call Reid on the walkie talkie, but no one answers. I talk into the speaker all night. My voice is pitiful, broken and raw. It has ceased to be a voice at all. It is just the animalistic sound of my body and mind shattering in confusion and sorrow. “You there? Are you there?” No, no one is there. The speaker crackles and turns to dust.

Early in the morning I feel my mother shaking my shoulder. “Luke.” I hear a car engine starting up, and the turn of the engine turns like a blade in my stomach, and I let out a strangled cry. I stumble to the window and see a black Lincoln Continental gliding away from the Clayton. “No….” I stumble out of the room, down the hallway, into the living room, and then I am tearing open the front door and running in my bare feet down the steps. Splinters rip into my flesh. “Reid!” I hit the street and my lungs burst with fire as I run. “Reid!” The car picks up speed and turns sharply around a corner, and I hear the engine kicking into a higher gear, and I know it is useless, the chasing and the screaming, but still I run and still I yell, and soon my voice turns into choking cries, useless cries, and my feet begin to slow, and there is nothing I can do except reach out my hand, my fingers spread wide for a few trembling seconds before curling into a fist that beats itself against the thick, hard chest of the world, getting nothing in return.

***

Reid’s parents have taken their son to a mysterious destination called “Camp Victory.” Angus says they wouldn’t tell him the location, only that it was a rehabilitation camp that claims to have a 96% success rate with gays and lesbians. The camp is centred firmly in the teachings of Christ. It uses the light of Christ to cleanse the individual of all homosexual tendencies. It is a two-year program, very strict. No phone calls or letters or visitations. Many people have been cleansed and saved and then joyously returned to their families as normal human beings. 96%. This figure is a source of pride.

I pick up the walkie talkie and say, “Wait, Reid, wait. I didn’t get to say goodbye.” 96%. I lie in bed at night staring at the ceiling. My pillow is soaked through. I wake up and realise I am curving my arms around the slow-moving air thinking I am still holding onto Reid. 96%. I try to figure out what happened. Angus murmurs, “I should have demanded legal custody.” A hallway mirror shatters. My mother runs warm water over my thin body. Reid’s check floats to the floor when a door slams. The sun burns.

I learn there are 14 Camp Victory’s around the United States. One of them is located in Hawaii. I choose to think Reid is there, by the ocean, the ocean in his eyes. I learn that blue eyes did not exist until just 10,000 years ago. Before then, everyone had dark eyes. I write a letter a day to Reid. I write by candlelight in my room. I write in the vacancy of the dead world and the dead world does not write back. I send all the letters to the Hawaiian “Camp Victory” on Honolulu Avenue, and I can picture these letters being tossed into a mound of white, unopened envelopes that shuffle in a continuous stream of lifeless bodies to the floor.

I write on a sheet of Reid’s Star Trek stationary in the afternoon shadows: “It doesn’t matter that there’s an endless ocean between us.” The piece of paper curls up at the edges in the breeze. I write, “It doesn’t matter. It’s just space,” and the paper blows out of my hand and down the street in the direction of the wind.

***

One night in September, Noah knocks on my door and asks if I want to come over to his house to watch a recorded episode of Star Trek. I am mostly silent as I walk with Noah to his place, a brown, pristinely manicured ranch-style home in the northwest part of town. Noah tells me that his father is on a government business trip in South Carolina and will be gone for a week. “Finally I can drop a crumb on the floor and not feel like I’m going to get my head cut off,” he chuckles as he opens the front door and ushers me inside. The house is empty, cold and hard, lacking in homey touches. Sterile. A large U.S. flag hangs heavily from a standing pole in the corner of the table-less dining room. Framed military medals and pictures of fighter jets adorn the walls. “Jet Noise: The Sound of Freedom.” A signed portrait of Ronald Reagan hovers over the fireplace. The couches and chairs in the living room are brown and clinical. “People say it reminds them of a recruiting office in here,” Noah sighs as he flips on an overhead light.

“Where do you eat?” I ask absently.

“On TV trays. My dad has to watch the news with everyone one of his meals. It’s ridiculous.”

Before we watch Star Trek, Noah demonstrates how to fold a U.S. flag military-style. “This may be the only skill I have that makes my father proud,” he says sarcastically as he smoothes his hands over the hard triangle of the flag. “He can’t stand it that I want to make films. He says filmmaking is for homos.”

We laugh, and as it always happens when I laugh these days, I feel a momentary stab of guilt that jars me back into my pensive mood. Noah looks at me for a few seconds and then quietly asks, “Have you heard from him, yet?”

“No. No one has.” I fumble with the button on my shirt and say nothing more.

“People at school are worried about you,” Noah says carefully, “and I am, too.” He disappears into the kitchen to retrieve a couple of cans of Coke, and when he returns, he says, “Coke ok?” and presses the cold can into my hand. I nod and take a grateful sip.

“Sorry if I brought up something you’d rather not talk about,” Noah says as he switches on the TV and VCR. “I know it’s been real hard for you.”

“It’s ok,” I say, my voice squeezing past the permanent lump in my throat. I swallow down some more Coke and then sit down on one of the uncomfortable chairs. “I should probably talk about it more than I do,” I murmur.

“I’ll listen,” Noah offers as he slides a tape into the VCR. “I think I’m a good listener.”

I clear my throat and smile awkwardly. “Well….I just wonder….I just wonder if that camp is really changing him.”

“The brochures I’ve seen for those kind of camps always look really cheesy,” Noah replies. “The pastors laying their hands on people’s heads and casting out demons and stuff. I don’t think that kind of crap works.”

“You think it’s just a bunch of hot air that they’re blowing around?”

“Oh yeah, definitely.” Noah says confidently. “I mean, didn’t you tell me that Reid’s parents sent him to one of those places before and it didn’t work?”

“Yeah. He didn’t talk much about what happened there, only that his parents sent him to live with his uncle after the camp had failed.”

“See? Those places are stupid.” The Star Trek theme begins to play on the television, and Noah pushes “pause” and turns around, repeating, “They’re stupid.”

The episode Noah has recorded is called “Remember Me.” Dr. Crusher is trapped inside a warp bubble, not realising what is happening until the Enterprise crew start disappearing around her, one by one. She is the only one who senses that something has gone awry. No one else finds it unusual that everyone is vanishing. “If there’s nothing wrong with me,” she cries, “maybe there’s something wrong with the universe!”

Maybe there’s something wrong with the universe. I drink down the rest of my Coke after the episode ends, and Noah asks if I want another soda or something to eat. “No,” I say. “No, I’m fine.” My eyes look vacantly around the room, and I feel Noah’s hand touching gently to my shoulder.

“You sure you’re ok?” he asks.

He moves in closer and lifts his hand to my face. I hear his words from far away. “You sure…..you sure you’re ok?” His touch turns into a caress. “I’m so worried about you.” His hands are broad, his knuckles are moulded far apart. His fingers are hard and masculine and disciplined. They are not soft and delicate. I remember Reid’s hands folding a paper crane one day after class---the way his fingertips slid over the paper, the way they smoothed down the creases and tugged at the base of the crane so that the wings would flap. I remember the paper wings against my skin, and Reid’s hands against my skin, and I remember his fingers on the insides of my arms, flowing up and down, light as breath.

For a moment, I fall into the caress, the clumsy, hard caress. I press my eyes close and tremble. This isn’t Reid, and I can’t distort the sensations enough to make it him, but I try. “Luke.” The voice is flat. There is no spark of deeper intelligence to cushion it. The voice is all out into the open, unrefined. American and hard. My name sounds harsh, a dull thud of the knuckle against a wooden door. “Luke.” I turn wearily toward the sound, and Noah presses his lips to mine, a cold-lipped, hard kiss with no soft moment to change this into Reid’s mouth covering over mine in passion. I push against Noah’s shoulders, and our lips come apart with a loud cracking sound. Noah’s voice quavers, “I’m sorry. I…I didn’t mean for that to happen. Luke, I’m sorry.”

I stand up and turn to the door. “I need to get going,” I say quietly. My mouth throbs painfully as if I have been hit there.

“Luke, I’m sorry. I don’t want to scare you away…..” Noah runs his hands through his hair and curses himself. “Damn, dammit.”

“Noah,” I say feebly. “It’s all right.” I lower my chin and shake my head slowly. “I’m not mad at you. I’m not upset.”

“I want to be your friend. I don’t want to mess that up.”

“You haven’t. I just have to go now. I just need to go.”

We look at one another for a few seconds, and then Noah’s shoulders slump and he says, “I won’t do that again, Luke. You have my word on that.”

There’s something wrong with the universe.

The U.S. flag quivers in the breeze in the corner. Ronald Reagan’s face darkens in shadows. I walk over to Noah and put my arms around his stiff, military body, around his body that does not feel like home, and I say, “It’s ok.” I can feel his breath sighing against my cheek and his heart beating fast and afraid. I can feel his hands hovering over my back, not sure what to do, not sure to succumb, not sure to resist, and before they can decide, I pull away and say, “Good night” and walk out the door, thinking dramatically and sadly, You’re a good guy Noah, but you are not him. You’re a good guy and a good friend, but no one will ever be him.

***

The assholes leave me alone now. Maybe they’ve had a change of heart, or maybe they’re just scared that they’ll end up in juvie hall like Shad did if they go too far. Maybe they feel sorry for me. Most likely it’s because of Principal Harmon’s crack down on school bullying. After the CNN news report, the school was flooded with angry calls and letters from parents, demanding an explanation as to why the principal would turn a blind eye to such blatant bullying. The school board even considered firing Harmon, but in the end they gave him a second chance. Awhile back he wrote formal letters of apology to my mother and to Angus for “failing your two upstanding young sons in a most grievous way.” I recall reading the letter with my mother, and then taking a Bic lighter to it and tossing it into the sink and watching it burn. “Asshole.”

Christmas is a few days away. It’s been almost seven months since I’ve seen or heard from Reid. It’s getting harder to hear his voice in my mind, and even though Angus has given me stacks of Reid’s picture, I struggle to see his face moving in three-dimensional flesh and blood. I bury my face in his pillow and blankets, the shirts in his closet—his Star Trek uniform--but his scent is disappearing. I clutch the Star Trek pendant in my hand and close my eyes, quieting my mind so I can feel him. His lips brush past mine and I shiver. “Luke….do you copy…..” When I open my eyes, I see snow falling silently to the ground, all white, all cold. Christmas lights sway in the wind.

My mother is up early, a cup of tea in her hand. “Baby, take my car today. It’s snowing hard out there.” She puts her arm around my shoulder and pulls me to her side.

“I feel like walking,” I say. “I’ll be all right.”

She releases me sadly and reluctantly. “Ok, but please bundle up. You have that scarf that Grandmother sent you?”

“I do, and I promise I will wear it.”

The newspaper office is grey and dark, a compound of prison-dead cement. Even the layer of fresh snow cannot brighten it. A scrambled line of footprints leads to the front door, and a rectangular cigarette butt receptacle covered in tiny little rocks stands outside the entrance. Crumpled butts lie half-buried in the mound of black sand on top. I pick up one of the least-used butts and press it between my lips, and then I go inside and begin rolling, rubber-banding and bagging my allotted stack of papers. The front desk is empty, and the building echoes with the loud clangs of the heater pipes. I finish preparing the papers and shove them in my canvas carrying bag that has grown shiny and grey with use. I leave quietly, and when I am outside, I pull a lighter from my pocket and light the cigarette, pausing to take a long, burning drag before I head out on my route.

“Baby, please don’t start smoking again.” My mother’s anxious voice follows me from house to house as I fling the newspapers onto porches and blow out cold streams of breath and smoke into the snowy atmosphere. I know I shouldn’t be smoking again, but I need something to take the edge of the constant pain and restlessness I feel. It’s either this or drinking, and I have dumbly reasoned that smoking is the lesser of two evils because even though it will probably kill me, it will just do it a lot slower.

I suck the smoke into my lungs and sigh it out wearily. I would never let Reid’s lips touch mine after a cigarette. I would never soil him that way. He’s so pure. I throw a newspaper hard onto a snow-covered driveway and watch it skid a path up to the garage door. I move onto the next house and try to make a basket with the newspaper into a hoop bolted above the garage. The newspaper dangles in the ice-covered net, and I laugh and move on.

I’m nearing Damian’s house. I feel next to nothing passing by his duplex now. I just fling the newspaper into his neighbour’s yard and continue on numbly. Months ago after I had put the rainbow flag on his lawn, I half-expected some sort of violent retaliation for my audacity. I thought the Engager fire was that retaliation, but I was wrong. There wasn’t even an angry phone call. Damian has remained silent ever since I left almost a year ago. The rainbow flag disappeared the day after I had left it there, probably thrown into the trashcan or burned or flushed down the toilet. I hardly feel anything at all. It doesn’t matter anymore. The pain just changes hands, the pain always part of the same system, creating some new wound that ends up being the same as the old wound, just put under a different brand, a different time, a different face, a different fear.

The neighbour’s duplex is strung with multi-coloured flashing lights. Many of the bulbs are burnt out or broken. Crumpled tinsel drifts over a naked plum tree in the yard. I toss the paper onto the porch and bend down to stub my cigarette into the snow. As I am bending down, I catch sight of something shiny sitting at the end of Damian’s driveway. I straighten up and squint my eyes through the falling snow. I look at the object for a long time before I can understand what I am seeing, and then I slowly approach to make sure I have not been mistaken.

I reach out my hand. A baseball-sized box wrapped in metallic red paper sits in the snow a couple of feet from Damian’s black 4 X 4 truck. There is a large silver bow on top of the box, and also an envelope. Written in careful letters on the envelope is a name. My name. “Luciano.”

For several minutes I stand at the edge of Damian’s driveway holding my hand out over the box. The snow continues to fall, faster now, covering me in a melting layer of ice. I stand trembling, unable to move. The box is starting to disappear, fading into drifting sheets of white. I glance over to Damian’s house. It remains dark and still and quiet. I look back to the box and finally crouch down and slowly gather it into my gloved hands—gently--- as if it is a wounded bird. It hardly weighs anything at all, but yet it feels heavier than a bowling ball between my shaking fingers. I carefully hold it to my chest and walk a little ways past the driveway, hiding myself behind a snow-dusted row of cypress hedges that separate Damian’s lot from the next house over. I look down at the box and my name. I don’t know how much time passes, but it seems like hours. A car passes quietly through the snow. I remove my gloves and then push my fingers under the flap of the envelope and pull out the card inside.

“Buon Natale.” The front of the card features an angel flying over the earth, strumming a golden harp in her delicate hands. Inside the card, the greeting reads: “Pace e amore a voi in questo benedetto tempo di Natale.” A folded piece of silver paper slips out into my hands. I open it and begin reading the message written in Damian’s small, slanted print:

Son, I know a single card will not make up for all the damage I have done to you in your life. But I needed to give you this card and this very important gift in the hopes that I can find a way to apologise to you for all mistakes I have made. I have seen you pass by my house daily for many months now, and each time I have wanted to open the door and talk to you, but the words have failed me. When I received your rainbow flag on my lawn, I told myself that I would find the courage to speak with you, but again, I hesitated. I was afraid, and so I waited.

But I cannot wait any longer. After I saw the news report about the fire, I tried to call, but your mother did not want me to speak with you. I understand her feelings. I know there is the restraining order still in effect, and so I have refrained from coming to visit you. This letter is the only way that I can reach you, and I hope you will accept my words of apology and know that I am sincere.

A week after you left the rainbow flag, I received an anonymous letter in my mailbox. The letter contained a quote from the television series Star Trek. The quote was this: “A father does not destroy his children.” Luciano, this quote speaks the truth. The person who left it is a very wise soul, and to him, I am grateful.

I realise most of my mistakes are unforgivable. Much time has passed, and you have felt great pain. I am ashamed that I have been the source of much of this pain. Words cannot suffice, but I say to you now: I am sorry, son. I am sorry for what I have done. And I hope one day you can forgive me.

Inside the box you will find the first part of your Christmas gift. I hope that you might wait until Christmas Day to open up the box, as there are a few more things I must do to prepare your gift. I hope it will not be too difficult to wait.

I have failed you in many ways, my son. I have hurt you and your spirit. I was not the father you needed and deserved. I lost that chance, and I will suffer because of that for the rest of my life. I lost part of my soul when you left, but I have never lost my love for you, Luciano. Not even in the worst moments when I was a monster to you. It was my own fear and self-hatred that I shamefully unleashed upon you. You were blameless and in need of my protection, and I was too corrupted to see that. My eyes have been opened. It may seem hard to believe after everything I have said and done, but know this to be the truth: That I love you. I always have and I always will. And I accept you for who you are. And I always will.

Merry Christmas, Luciano.

With love,

Papa.


I hold the letter in my shaking hands and read it again. I read the letter over and over until I can no longer make out the words through the silent, ink-flow of tears, through the violently trembling paper, and the half-sobbing, half-laughing breaths shuddering through my lungs. I wipe my face into my sleeve and then carefully fold up the letter and place it with the box in my canvas bag. I emerge from the bushes and blink into the white down-flow of the sky. I look over to Damian’s house. A light is on. A shadow moves behind the curtains. I hoist the bag up onto my shoulder and feel the tears rolling down my cheeks and dripping off my chin. “Dad,” I say softly. And then I turn around and continue walking down the street, looking back over my shoulder until the snow and the distance obscure everything, and the tears on my eyelashes freeze into little flakes of ice that shiver to my cheeks in cold fire.

***

Christmas Day. I wake up with all the blankets kicked off and my body cold and stiff. A Burl Ives record plays softly from the living room. I can see half of the Christmas tree from my door—pastel lights, gold garland, and homemade ornaments. The high-pitched drone of an electric beater starts up and continues on for a few minutes, and then stops, and Burl Ive’s jolly voice returns. I scramble out of bed, my heart pounding. I nearly collide with my mother in the hallway.

“Oh honey, I hope I didn’t wake you with the beaters,” she says apologetically, grasping me by the shoulders.

“No, I was up,” I say, hurriedly moving past her and into the living room where Damian’s box sits underneath the tree.

“I’m making pancakes. Chocolate chip. Remember we used to always have those on Christmas morning?” my mother says nostalgically as she follows me into the living room. She hugs me from behind and rocks me back and forth for a few seconds, saying, “I’m so glad you’re here, sweetie,” and then kisses me on the cheek.

“I’m glad I’m here, too, mom,” I say, my eyes fixed on the box. “Can I open some presents now, or do you want me to wait?” I move over to the tree and kneel down in front of the box, my fingers fidgeting on the legs of my pyjamas. My mother laughs from behind me.

“You’re just the same as you were when you were five. Always couldn’t wait to open the gifts.” She kneels down besides me and rests her hand on my shoulder. “You’ve been staring at that box for days now. Who’s it from, baby?”

“Oh, it’s just….” I trail off, not sure what to say.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she breaks in, ruffling my hair. “I’m just so glad to see a smile on your face. It’s been a long time.” She looks at me gently and then lowers her eyes. “Luke, how have you been doing with….you know, with Reid being gone.”

“I wish he were here,” I say quietly. “I sent him a Christmas card. A Star Trek box of chocolates.” I fold my hands together in my lap and push down the sharp tug of longing in my chest. “Anyway, I hope he got them.”

“I’m sure he did, baby.” She squeezes my shoulder and then leans over and pulls out a thin box from underneath the tree. “You can open this one now, sweetie.” She places the box in my hands and smiles. “I hope you like it.”

I carefully remove the paper to discover a hardback book entitled “Starship Engager.” I look up in surprise. “Mom?” I say as I open up the book and begin turning the pages. “This is the script!” I exclaim. “Printed out…and with pictures! How did you…...” I flip through the pages, scanning the script and looking at the photographs professionally printed in full colour on each page—the pictures Reid had taken with his Polaroid camera throughout our time spent working on the film project. “Mom, this is amazing,” I whisper. I move my fingers over the pictures, laughing tearfully. “Dammit, I’m crying again.”

“Oh baby, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” my mother says, hugging me to her side. “Sweet, sensitive boy!” She kisses my hair and gazes at the album with me. “It really did turn out beautiful, didn’t it?” she says. “A woman at my work owns a small book publishing company. She printed this up for me.”

“Mom, it’s great,” I say, slowly closing the book. “I’ll be able to look at it more…..later…..when…..”

“I know, baby. It’s too hard now. I know.” She embraces me fiercely. “He’ll be back, Luke. I know he will. I feel it inside my heart.”

The Burl Ives record ends, and my mother sighs deeply and touches her fingers to my chin. “But you know we can’t do anything else before the pre-pancake Christmas dance,” she says in a serious voice.

“Oh god, I had hoped you had forgotten that,” I chuckle, hiding my face in my hands. “But ok, I guess we have to do it.”

“Indeed,” she replies, getting up and walking to the stereo. I hear some tape cases shuffling about, and then the sound of the tape deck opening and closing, and finally, inevitably, the electronic beats of Wham’s “Last Christmas” moving through the speakers.

Soon, I am on my feet, hands grasped by my mother’s, and we are dancing around the living room the same way we have done ever since the song came out in 1984, and I had proclaimed it to be “the best Christmas song ever.”

“Remember when you said that? It was so cute,” my mother says a little breathlessly as she hops about.

“Mom, I think I was drunk at the time.”

“Oh shush, Luke. You know you love this song.”

“Actually, I do,” I laugh. “I do.”

Last Christmas I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away
This year to save me from tears
I’ll give it to someone special

We laugh and move across the floor, and the Christmas tree shakes and some ornaments softly fall to the carpet. I close my eyes and remember thinking that one day Reid would have to witness this and also be forced to participate. I had imagined his embarrassed face as I pulled him around the room. I could hear his voice, “I don’t dance. People with two left feet do not dance.”

I would say, “Shut. Up.” And yank him forward, hard into my arms.

A face on a lover with a fire in his heart
A man under cover but you tore me apart
Now I've found a real love you'll never fool me again

It would be dark out, the only lights the ones on the tree. And we would dance, and Reid would see that it could be fun—that there is no need to be embarrassed, it is exhilarating, it is silly. There is no need to be ashamed. The pink glow of lights would fall across his eyes and touch his lips, and I would take those lips full and slow into a simmering kiss, and the music would wash over us, and the music would never end, and neither would our kisses, and the slow-rolling movement of our bodies into one another….dancing……..

The song ends and I open up my eyes.

My mother claps her hands together and laughs. “Oh thank you baby!” She kisses my hand and goes into the kitchen to make the pancakes, and I return to the tree and pick up Damian’s box, holding it quietly in my hands. “It’ll just be a few minutes with the pancakes, honey,” my mother calls. I shake around the box and something clinks metallically inside. “You want orange juice or hot chocolate, sweetie?”

“Hot chocolate,” I murmur. Hot chocolate. Hot chocolate scars. I see Reid’s scars spreading on my own skin like cracks on a sheet of ice. “People used to think I had tried to commit suicide,” he once told me. “They think I took a razor to my wrists. But I didn’t. I’ve always wanted to live, even when things have gotten hard. I didn’t want to give up, even when things have seemed impossible.”

I tuck my finger underneath the seam of the wrapping paper. A small paper cut opens up on my index finger, and little pinpricks of blood ooze out.

“Do you think it’s weird that I like the taste of your blood?”

“No,” Reid said. He touched his finger to his bloody lip and held it out to me. I took his finger in my mouth and closed my eyes and felt the tang of his blood on my tongue. I could hear his breath quicken. “Ah… ah.” I will turn violence into pleasure.

I tear the paper off the box and open up the lid. Reid rolls over in his sleep and the sun burns in the sky. My mother comes into the living room and hands me the hot chocolate in a mug that says “Kiss me, I’m Italian.”

“You’re not Italian, are you?” Reid asked. “You said Damian called you ‘Luciano.’”

“He’s from Malta, that’s why. But my family comes from European stock. Mutts, I guess.”

“Luciano,” he said. His voice curled thoughtfully over the name and he smiled. “Luciano. You’re not a mutt.” He bit lightly at the side of my hand. “You’re too delicious to be a mutt.”

“Do you want to open up the box?” my mother asks and takes a sip of her hot chocolate. “I don’t think you can stand the suspense any longer.”

“Mom,” I say, looking down at the box. I sigh heavily. “Mom, this box is from Damian.”

“Oh,” she says, her mouth tightening. She clears her throat and takes another long sip of her drink. “I see.”

“He left it for me in front of his house. I go past his house everyday on my paper route. I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid you’d worry….”

She nods and looks at the box. “I have no idea what it could be,” she says absently. Deep creases form between her brows.

“He gave me a letter with the box,” I say. “A letter of apology.”

My mother nods again and looks down. “Well, I don’t know what to say….”

“I’ll just open the box now,” I reply quietly. “I’m sorry, mom. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my route.”

“You’re safe. That’s all the matters, isn’t it?”

My fingers move over the top of the box, and then slowly I lift the lid up, holding my breath as I look inside. I exhale. A silver keychain with two keys rests on a folded sheet of red tissue paper. I take the keychain and hold it up in front of my mother.

She draws in a sharp breath and says, “Oh lord, did he buy you a car?”

“I don’t know,” I murmur. I look inside the box again and see a small piece of paper tucked to the side. “There’s a note in here.” I hand the keys to my mother and open up the note. The paper crinkles loudly in the silence.

“What does it say?” my mother asks anxiously.

“It’s an address.” My voice is hushed with awe. I read and re-read the address, my heart drumming in my ears. “It’s our old address at the farm,” I whisper, looking up at my mother’s confused and shocked face. “It says ‘Come for a Christmas visit.’”

My mother takes the note from my hand and reads it in silence. “I don’t understand….”

We sit quietly for a few moments, lost in our thoughts, and then suddenly I stand up and hold my hands out to my mother, saying, “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Wh-what?”

“Let’s drive out there.” I jerk my head toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go see what’s going on.”

My mother shrinks away, her eyes quivering in bewilderment. “I’m not even dressed, Luke, and I….” She scrunches the top of her blue bathrobe in her fist and looks nervously out the window. “And it’s snowing out, and……”

“Throw on a sweatshirt and some sweatpants,” I say quickly, grabbing her hands and pulling her to her feet. “Let’s go.”

“Honey, this could be something unsafe! I don’t know if we should trust….”

“Mom,” I break in. “I just feel in my gut that this is ok. Trust me.” I pull her hands to my chest. “Can you trust me?”

“Yes, I can trust you, but not Damian. I can’t trust him after all that’s happened.” She draws her hands away and looks at me helplessly. “I don’t want you to go out there, Luke. Please. Let’s just stay here, open up our presents, eat pancakes….”

“Mom,” I say firmly. “I have to go.”

She runs her hands through her long hair and then begins pacing the room. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she keeps saying over and over. The telephone rings, and no one moves to answer it. The answering machine picks up, and then after the beep Grandmother Lucinda’s voice comes over the speaker, “Happy Christmas, darlings. I hope you have had your pancakes and are sipping hot cocoa and enjoying your gifts. Give me a ring when you have a chance. I’m dying to know what Santa brought you.” She chuckles mischievously. “I love you both.”

Across the way Angus is walking to his car. He wears a light blue suit with a white carnation in the lapel. He looks over to our house for a few seconds, a solemn expression on his face, and then opens the door to the New Yorker and climbs inside. The engine starts up loudly and idles for several minutes, fading as he drives away. My mother continues pacing, her hands on her cheeks. I pick up the keys from the floor and crush them in my fist and say, “I’m going mom, with or without you.” I crush the keys and feel them pulsing against my palm, and my mother murmurs, “I don’t know….I don’t know” as I pick up my brown winter jacket from the couch and shrug it on hurriedly. “Luke, wait,” she says. I pull on a blue knitted cap and walk toward the front door. “Wait.”

“I’m coming with you.” She sighs and puts her hands on top of her head. “Dammit, I’m coming with you.”

***

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

The final cut of our film takes all of the following weekend to shoot. When we are finished, we celebrate at Chuck E. Cheese, all of us in our uniforms, eating pizza, playing video games, snapping pictures. We drink soda and make toasts, each of us standing up and saying a few words as plastic pucks crash around air hockey tables, skeeballs rumble along inclined lanes, and costumed adults walk around passing out balloons to little kids. Worf gulps down his drink and roars, “Halleluiah! We are finished!” Dr. Crusher holds up her glass and says, “It has been a pleasure working with you all.” Noah stands crisply at the front of the table, lifts his glass with clean precision, and says in a commanding voice, “This was an awesome experience. I hope to do your hard work justice with my editing skills.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Commander Riker shouts, slapping Noah on the arm. “Job well done.” The group applauds loudly. Noah smiles, and then a serious expression washes over his face. His eyes darken. He clears his throat and opens his mouth to say something, but then he changes his mind and takes a long drink from his soda and sits down. Reid gets up next, thanking everyone for helping him. “One week left!” He holds up the UFO Festival Flyer and tells us that if the film and/or the float win, the money will go toward a group trip. “I’m taking suggestions,” he says and passes around his notepad so people can write down their ideas. As the notepad circulates, Reid motions for me to stand up. “Luke here is the real genius behind this production,” he says as I rise from my seat. I feel my cheeks flush as he praises my script and my writing skills. “He brought my idea to life. We couldn’t have done this without him.” Everyone claps and raises their soda glasses to me. “Hear hear!”

“Thank you,” I murmur. We clink our cups together and drink. The muffled plastic sound of our six cups joining together in camaraderie and friendship makes me smile until my cheeks hurt.

Reid can’t get away from the celebration fast enough. “Too many people. Too many kids and germs. I get antsy.”

“Did you see Noah’s face at the table?” I ask as we break away from the noise and chaotic lights of the arcade once everyone else has gone home. “He looked troubled.”

“But he always does,” Reid replies, grabbing my hand and breaking into a run toward my mom’s station wagon at the edge of the lot. “He’s repressed.” We run, our shoes slapping on the cracked pavement. People look at us confusedly—two teenage boys wearing Star Trek uniforms running hand in hand. What to make of it? Sometimes in public we don’t bother hiding anymore—because we are tired, or brave, or careless. Because we are normal….

At the car, I pull the keys out of my pocket and unlock Reid’s door first, holding it open for him chivalrously and then shutting it behind him once he is inside. “A gentlemen,” Reid says when I climb inside the driver’s seat. “Always refreshing to be in the presence of one.” We lean over the console and kiss. The hot, late spring air has flushed our faces, our breath and lips. The kiss is warm and languid, a slow-moving river of emotion. The light is soft and orange—“California light” Reid calls it—and colours our skin with twilight.

“Finally got your license,” Reid comments as I pull out of the lot, turning left onto King’s Boulevard. “It’s about damn time.”

I say nothing, but just grab and squeeze his knee, making him yelp and jump and laugh. When he finally settles down, I move my hand up his thigh, my hand quivering as he sighs and leans his head back into the seat. “Luke.” My name as a sigh. Slow, luxurious sigh. I glance over to his shining throat, exposed to the setting sun—the sensual down-flow of flame. I drive quickly, moving away from buildings and pavement and people, crossing railroad tracks and winding through narrow, broken-down roads. Reid leans over, takes off his glasses, and presses his lips to the base of my neck. The car trembles on the road. “Where are we going?” he murmurs.

“Somewhere…”

He smoothes his hand over my burning cheek, my damp hair, my neck. “Don’t get into an accident.”

I turn and kiss his warm mouth, a quick sip, and then move my eyes back onto the road. A sign passes: “Azalea Park—1 Mile.” Reid’s hands pass over my shoulders and arms. We pass into the night.

Out of the car and into the park, into the trees and the fading, dying Azaleas, dying earthly flames, even as the human passion intensifies. I need to feel Reid in the night, under the sky. I need to see his pearl shoulders exposed to the creamy air, and I need to put my lips to the insides of his wrists and feel the rush of his living blood against my mouth. I need to feel the grass and earth against my back, the grass between my toes, Reid between my knees, held still, drawn inward like the clean air pouring into my open lungs, drawn inward, like the first shuddering breath of life.

I need to feel this, I need to forget, I need to become--- because later it will be hard to feel anything. Later, after it all happens, there will be nothing but a hollowed-out, dried and useless husk, an unseeing pair of eyes, a couple of dead words floating in the dead world of what I couldn’t save.

I find the wide, brown beech tree, shade-soft and murmuring—my beech tree—the one I played under as a child, the one I used to tell my parents that I wanted “to marry.” I didn’t know until later about the legend of the ancient Roman named Pliny who devoted himself to a beautiful beech tree in Diana’s sacred grove. Believing the tree was a goddess, he would lie in its shadow, and kiss and embraced the tree, and pour wine over its roots. My parents would laugh as I threw my tiny arms around the tree and say, “Can I marry you?” They would laugh as I poured water over the roots of the tree so it would not be thirsty.

I bring Reid to the tree and put my arms around him. I give him my mouth and my kisses so he will not be thirsty. I lean with him against the trunk--the warm, sturdy trunk supporting us as we kiss and caress. All I can hear is “Luke, Luke” and his sighs and the blood moving in our veins. All I can feel is the blood and the warmth, the tree, and the cool night and the blue stars.

In the spring, the beech tree branches ripen with little brown buds. A long time ago, I would pull off the little buds and hold them in my infant hands. If I put a bud in my mouth, my mother would say, “No, no, Luke. Those aren’t for eating. Be careful.”

I guide Reid down to the soft ground and slide his Star Trek shirt over his head. I kiss his shoulders, his arms, and then I take into my mouth his little brown buds, the first I have ever tasted of them. They are sweet and sun-warm and fragile. They are like little baby shoots coming up from soft earth. They taste new. New life. Life preparing to open itself. I hold them and suckle them in my mouth, and Reid pushes his hands through my hair and lifts himself against me, and the wind pushes through the branches, and the branches lift themselves to the night.

We are anchored to the earth. My legs press against Reid’s, our bodies move. Reid rolls me underneath, curving me into his embrace, pulling me forward by the hips, connecting me to the strong, heated core of him. “Let me kiss you.” The orchard grass sways, and Reid’s lips drift over me, and all else drops away, a theatre curtain falling down over the world, silencing the world.

“Luke, Luke, where are you?” When you are a child, you often hide as a game. You hide so that the people you love will call for you and come and find you. There will be slight worry, and worried voices, and worried calling, “Where are you? Come here….come here.” You seek to be found.

“I’m coming,” you say, emerging from your hiding place. You are drawn into an embrace of relief. You have been found.

I close my eyes and lift my face to the night. “I’m coming.” Reid tightens his arms around me and sighs. Rushing night. My name drawn out long and low, a shooting star. We flow together. Our urgent love is innocent love, half-clothed again, halfway out of my shirt, my shoes still on. Reid’s legs and arms are shaking. My heart is pounding and my mouth is throbbing. I feel the cool air move over my bare stomach, the night air moving over Reid’s milk, siphoning away the warmth. I touch my fingers there in awe.

“This is larger than the both of us,” Reid says shakily. “What I feel when I’m with you.”

Can we handle it? We can’t stop trembling. We pull closer, sighing. “I can’t get close enough to you.” We embrace fiercely. We laugh in breathy little sighs. I hear little animals rustling around in the shrubbery, and the crickets and frogs, and now and then the mournful wing-rush of a nighthawk free-falling in the sky.

I needed to feel this, to remember this. Lip to soft lip. Soft eyes. Night eyes. Caressing hands. Warm body. Knees touching. Voices murmuring. Earth and grass in our damp hair. Fresh dirt on our knuckles. Salty skin. These are beautiful memories and will combat the dark blood wounds and the destruction of what is coming. If only I knew to savour this just a little while longer.

“I don’t want to leave, but my mom is going to wonder where we are.”

It is difficult to move the body after passion. The body wants to flow, not walk. The body wants to drift and dissolve, not push the legs and feet down hard to the ground in jarring steps. The eyes want to stay closed, and the mind wants to be drugged and dreamy, losing awareness of the intrusive outer reality.

My shirt slides over my skin, sealing Reid’s passion against me. Reid trails his fingers over his stomach, and the leaves shiver overhead. He dresses quietly, and then we are walking arm-in-arm over the wavy grass back to the car. We walk in silence in the dark night-dream.



Our bodies don’t have time to adjust. The assault comes out of nowhere.

I pull into the trailer park and see the flashing police lights knife-cutting the dark, strobing the surrounding trailers into skeletons, and I see the bursting flames and the violence of the flames. The Engager is roaring with fire, pulsating a demonic black smoke. Torrents of choking water blast against the horrible vision, but there is nothing left to save. I stumble out of the car, my jaw hanging lifelessly open. Reid crushes my hand and stares numbly into the gruesome fire. My mother breaks away from a crowd of stunned onlookers and crashes her arms around me. “Where were you? Oh god, Luke. I can’t believe it. I’m so sorry.”

She bursts into tears. I stand woodenly in her embrace, my arms limply at my sides. Reid’s hand still grips onto mine. I feel him shaking in disbelief, anger, anguish. Minutes ago we were shaking in passion. The fire ran through our limbs, burning in the vein. Now our faces flicker in the shadows of hellfire. I don’t understand what is happening. I watch little pieces of the Engager crumble away into sparking ash. All my writings are in there, everything I had ever written since I was a child. I kept them in a box in the small bedroom. The script is in there. My school books and homework. Small trinkets I had saved to remind me of my experiences with Reid—movie stubs, dried leaves, a lock of Reid’s hair I cut off while he was taking a nap one afternoon, notes written back and forth, the Polaroid pictures from our ritual at Damian’s. Our money for the trip.

I stand dry-eyed and numb, the fire and smoke burning my eyes. I hear someone asking, “Who did this?” A kid is crying somewhere. Firemen move in and out of my vision. My mother has her arms around my shoulders, and Reid still clutches my hand, but I feel hardly anything. Just a faint pulse of nearness, the rest vast emptiness. There is an intense burst of flame—a fireball—and for a second I can see part of the Engager’s side-panelling spray-painted in red with “FAGGOTS!!” Then it all melts into orange volcanic flow. People’s voices murmur, “Arsonists.” My mother tries to pull me away, but I feel my lips moving: “No.” She ties again, and again I say, “No.” I need to watch how it ends. Angus appears. His hand rests on Reid’s left shoulder, and his eyes look helplessly at the wreckage before him. Policemen herd people away. “Step back. Step back.” At some point, a heavy blanket is draped around my shoulders and a cup of water is gently placed in my hand.

Gaps in the flow of events leave me disoriented. I am aware of Reid’s arms pulling me away from the heat, questions from the police, notepads, more questions—our words recorded, and then Reid’s arms again around my shoulders. Later--my mother turning down the blankets of my childhood bed and her hands placing a cool cloth over my forehead. Then there is a stretch of blackness that feels cold and hollow—a long tunnel with no opening----that gives way to Reid’s head resting on my chest, his arms slack and warm in sleep around me. I can smell the smoke in his hair.

In the morning we wake up at the same time. It is my kicking and gasping that brings us back to awareness. I sit up, looking around in fear. Reid quickly puts his arms around me and holds me tight against him. “We’re all right,” he says. He kisses me on the cheek, and then on my lips, and his lips are cold, a cold and smooth little sea stone pulled up from the ocean. Relief.

My mother has taken the day off of work, and so has Angus. They are sitting in our kitchen now, coffee mugs in hand, dark circles under their eyes. A lit cigarette rests in a glass ashtray on the table, smoke rising to the ceiling. When my mother see us shuffling into the room in our rumpled uniforms, she crushes out the cigarette and stands up, smiling sadly. “Boys, do you want anything to eat?” For the first time ever, I hear Reid say, “No.”

I want to know what happened. I want all the details, but no one knows anything. The police are investigating. They are out there now, sifting around, talking in droning voices, squinting at the charred remains. What will they find? My heart beats suffocatingly—who is behind this? Damian? Noah? The football players? The culprits line up in my brain, and I shrink away listlessly, brooding and dark and tired. Angus awkwardly pats Reid on the shoulder and tries to say something comforting. He smiles in his ineptness, and slowly brings the coffee cup to his lips. His hands shake.

Later, Reid pulls me into the darkened hallway, his hands on my shoulders. “Luke,” he says softly. “It’s going to be ok, I promise. The most important thing is that no one was hurt. We’re safe.” I can see our reflection in the hall mirror—Reid speaking to me softly, leaning close to my face the colour of dust.

A single tear falls emotionlessly from my eye. “We’re safe,” I say hollowly. “But we’ve lost everything.”

“No we haven’t.” Reid shakes my shoulders gently. “We’ve lost only material things.”

I nod mechanically, then hang my head. “But you don’t understand,” I whisper, closing my eyes. “We aren’t safe. If they’re capable of doing that, then what next? Don’t you get it? Don’t you see?”

“They’ll find who did it.”

“But will it stop then. Will it?”

Reid can’t answer. He rubs his hands over his tired face and slumps against the wall. I glance over at him, realising that all this time I’ve been putting him out of reach, a creature far above me, something impossibly beyond my realm. This experience has made him human in my eyes—as fragile as I am, as frightened as I am. Someone in need. Someone who I am equal to. No more above. No more below. Just human and equal. I pull him toward me. “We don’t have to think about it anymore right now.” We go to my room and fall into a deep, exhausted sleep until early evening. I wonder if Angus is all right with this—with our closeness, our togetherness. It’s all out in the open now. The fire has done something good. It has burned away the hiding place. The bones are exposed—the structure, the roots. This is who I am. This is who Reid is. Something has to come of it, the revelation. At least in the company of those we love, we do not have to hide. Cruelty has stirred everything to the surface.

This is the disturbing way of nature—violence begetting beauty. The earth cracks open, and new life flourishes. Fire blazes through, and the earth is cleansed. Secrets are revealed. I cannot understand such a strange, violent God and his ghastly mechanism for growth—suffering, fear, terror, loss. When I wake up from our nap, a synchronicity: My radio alarm goes off, playing Depeche Mode’s “Blasphemous Rumours”

I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours
But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humour

God has forgotten what it is to be human. “Fuck you, God.”

I try not to be angry. I don’t want to add anymore ugliness to the ugliness. I let Reid sleep as I walk outside and stand in front of the smouldering heap of ash and melted plastic and crumpled metal that used to be the Engager. I find a few things—the Brim coffee can with some blackened coins inside, a melted portion of the command deck plexiglass with a few designs still visible, a water-logged road atlas remarkably intact—our highlighted route from Illinois to Oregon smeared in fluorescent green. There is a jagged section of the Engager siding—the part that featured the name of the RV. It has been spray-painted to read: “Engayger.” I look at it a few seconds and then start laughing. I don’t know what kind of laugh it is—sad, sadistic, ironic, demented. My face feels like it has been punched over and over, bruised and sore, and my throat is red and burning, but still, I laugh. Some tears flow and mingle with the ash and the laughter. I pick up the piece of the Engager that has made me laugh and cry, and I carry it home with me. It’s hot and burns my hands, causing some blisters to form, but I hardly notice.

***

At school the next day I see Noah in the hallway, and before I can even think about what I’m doing, I have his shirt collar in my fists and I am shoving him hard against the rows of metal lockers, and I am yelling in his face, “Did you fucking do it? Huh? Did you?”

No one stops me at first. They just stand and watch me pushing Noah up against the lockers, shouting in his face, accusing him of destruction and violence. Noah blinks rapidly and winces as I shout. He turns away, but I slap his face back so that he is looking at me. “I want to know if you did it, you motherfucker!”

“No, I didn’t.” His voice sounds hoarse. It sounds like it is coming from the throat of a very old man. “I swear, I didn’t.” He looks scared and helpless. His body is slumped and submissive, no longer military rigid, no longer military controlled. Kids surround us, watching in wide-eyed silence. I look at Noah’s face and see for the first time his black eye and bloodied lip, and for a second, I wonder if I have caused these wounds. I wonder if I am so delirious with anger that I cannot remember the hurt I have inflicted.

But then Noah says, “On my way home from Chuck E. Cheese’s, a kid jumped me and beat me up. His face was covered with a ski mask so I couldn’t see who he was. He broke the video camera and smashed up the video. He came out of nowhere….”

A pair of hands quietly pulls me away from Noah. Noah brushes off his jacket and shirt, brushes away my harsh confrontation, and turns away slowly, his fingers fumbling at the combination lock on his locker. “Sorry,” I mumble. “Sorry.” Noah does not acknowledge me and continues moving the dial of the padlock—left, right, left, never getting the combination right. The crowd disperses.

“They found out.” Reid’s voice comes from behind me. I turn around sharply.

“Who? Who was it?”

“A kid named Shad.”

I put my palm out on the cold metal surface of the lockers to steady myself. “Shad? Shad Hancock? Are you sure?”

“Yes. The police called our parents. Angus called the school office to let me know. It was definitely Shad.”

“I heard that, too,” Noah says quietly. “But I thought it might just be a rumour. I guess not.”

“Shad!” I struggle to believe it. “There’s no way. He’s not a violent person….I mean…..we were friends and…….”

“It’s the unfortunate truth.” Reid looks at me sadly, and the turns to Noah and says, “I am sorry for the brutality that was senselessly inflicted upon you.” Noah shrugs wearily. He sniffs and looks away, clenching his jaw.

“It’s over with,” he says flatly. “Could have been worse.” He glances over to me and says, “I’m sorry about what happened with your RV.”

“And I’m sorry for…..”

“Yeah, well, it’s understandable,” Noah cuts in. “Everyone’s on edge now.” He opens his locker and pulls out some books and stuffs them into his backpack. He takes a VHS tape from the locker and holds it out to me. “I always make copies of my work. This is the Starship Engager film.”

I take the tape in amazement. “You mean…this is the whole movie. The final cut?”

“I stayed up all last night and edited it. I hope it wins,” Noah answers quietly. “Good luck.” He shuts his locker and moves down the hallway, and I stand staring at the tape in my hands, reading Noah’s thick, block-lettering on the cover:


I hand the tape to Reid and stumble into the boy’s bathroom, locking myself into a stall and breaking down—throwing my arm across my face and crying like a little child, deep, silent, swallowing sobs. After a few minutes, I hear the bathroom door open and Reid’s voice, “Luke? Luke?” He comes to my stall and knocks softly, saying my name many times before I can answer.

I unlock the stall latch, and Reid squeezes in, shutting the door behind him. He puts his hand on my shoulder and asks if I am okay. “Yeah, I’m all right.” I wipe my face on my sleeve, and take in a few shuddering breaths. “Sorry. I’m sort of an emotional mess right now.”

A couple of kids enter the bathroom, talking loudly about a test they just flunked. The urinals flush, the taps run full blast, the sharp clangs of the paper towel dispensers reverberate against the whitewashed walls, and then the door squeaks open and closed, and all is silence again. Reid puts his arms around me, and we hold one another for several minutes. “I have to thank Noah,” I murmur into Reid’s shoulder. “I have to thank him.”

“We will.”

“I promised myself I would never resort to violence again. I promised I wouldn’t be like Damian,” I say helplessly. “But I’m just like him.”

“No you aren’t.” Reid gives my body a gentle shake, and little drops of my snot and tears drip onto his soft shoulder. “Shhhh,” he says. “Shhh,” like a parent soothing a child. He sways our bodies from side to side in the cramped stall. People come in and out, some of them talking about what happened to the Engager, and from outside, a muffled bell rings, but we do not move. We hold each other, and I cry, and Reid tells me that everything will be all right. He says that we will send the videotape express mail to McMinville, and next year we’ll drive together to Oregon to attend the festival. “It was not meant to be this year,” he says. “But we will be there next year.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Counsellor, I am sure.”

The kids stare at us as we walk down the hallways. “We saw what happened on the news.” Some of them come up and express their sympathies. Some of them make snide remarks. The hours pass like a razor blade cutting across my skin. When the final bell rings, I burst out of Biology and shove my way through the tangle of bodies in the hallways. I find Reid, and we run all the way home, needing to expel the angry and sad energy in our blood. When we enter the trailer park, we see a CNN van amongst a herd of local media vans in front of our houses. A crowd of people has collected, a ring of human faces, necks craning to see what is happening. Reporters stand in front of the ruined Engager, talking into microphones and looking sternly into the cameras pointed at their faces.

“You’ve made national news,” the woman who had paid me in cookies says. She leans forward on her walker and shakes her head. “I’m sorry for what happened, dears.”

“I think they’ve spotted us,” Reid whispers, glancing over to the news team. One of the CNN reporters, a middle-aged man with a helmet of thick brown hair, trots toward us, his cameraman jogging behind him. “Hello!” he calls, waving his hand. “Mind if we ask you a few questions?”

We stand uncertainly in the middle of the street, our backpacks slung over our shoulders, our faces flushed from running. Before we can decide what to do, the reporter is in front of us, adjusting his earpiece and nodding toward the cameraman. The questions come quickly, spoken professionally through dentist-whitened teeth, “It has been released that the alleged arsonist was a fellow student who attends your school. He is also reported to have attacked another student before setting fire to the RV. The police are handling these incidents as hate crimes. Can you talk to us about why this particular student would have committed these acts?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mother and Angus running toward us. Angus reaches us first, pushing his way past the reporter and placing his arm protectively around Reid’s shoulders. “He can’t discuss this with you,” he says briskly, pulling Reid away. My mother approaches me and takes my hand. “Luke, baby, let’s go inside.”

“Wait,” Reid says. He steps away from his uncle and faces the reporter. “I want to answer the question.”

“Reid,” Angus says sharply. “It’s not a good idea to talk with them right now.” He lowers his voice and holds out his hand, beckoning Reid to come with him. “It’s dangerous.”

“I know,” Reid replies quietly. “But it doesn’t matter now, uncle. They already know. And if they don’t they soon will. And I’m sick of hiding.” He looks at the reporter and says, “Shad Hancock did this because I’m gay.”

“Because we’re gay,” I break in, taking Reid’s hand. My hand is cold and shaking inside of Reid’s warm and pulsing grip, and my chest feels hollow. I can do this. Open your eyes, stand up and live. The reporter’s eyebrows drift upward, and then settle back down as he waits for me to continue. “Shad used to be my best friend,” I explain shakily, “but when he found out I was gay, he stopped talking to me. I had no idea he would do something like this. I had no idea he hated me that much.” My mother comes to stand next to me and gently places her arm around my shoulder. Angus steps back, quietly acknowledging his nephew’s wish to face the media and the shattered wall of misunderstanding and shame.

“Had you seen or talked to Shad prior to this incident?” the reporter asks. More reporters appear, each of them holding out a microphone emblazoned with their station’s logos and call letters: WTVU Channel 2, WRON Channel 4, WPIX Channel 5, WBHK Channel 44.

I lean forward toward the hovering swarm of microphones and say, “No, not for a long time. That’s why it’s such a surprise.”

“He had never given you trouble before?” a WPIX reporter asks.

“No, not that I knew of. Plenty of kids bullied me at school, but I didn’t think Shad was among them. We really had no interaction with one another after our friendship broke up.”

“It’s reported that he didn’t act alone,” CNN says gravely. “Two other students allegedly helped him plan the attacks.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Rich Conklin and Jeremy Winklehausen.”

Reid and I exchange glances, and then Reid says, “We had a run in with them earlier in the year.”

The questions continue, the answers come numbly, automatically. Later, we watch the various news reports—we watch our exhausted faces and listen to our exhausted answers. The soundbites bleed into my sleep: “A peaceful northern Illinois town rocked by a shocking hate crime” “Two students preparing to attend the UFO Festival in McMinville Oregon were devastated to learn that……” “Teenagers Luke Snyder and Reid Oliver say that because they are gay, they have been the targets of incessant bullying at Oakdale High. The principal has done little or nothing to……” “Noah Mayer among the victims of……” In the morning, I toss these soundbites onto silent porches, and my hands turn black with ink.

Letters of support and letters of hate arrive. Flowers and rainbow flags are placed at our doorsteps. Church leaders come by, some to console us, some to rehabilitate us. Local members of PFLAG volunteer their time to help clean up the charred remains of the Engager. I keep what is salvageable, including the atlas, which I tack up to my bedroom wall above my bed. It will hang there for many months afterwards, a crumpled map to a future that never came to be.

The police keep a 24-hour watch on the trailer park for a week. Reid stays over every night. We sleep in my twin-bed, our arms about one another, our faces pressed close and warm. “The whole town knows we’re gay now,” I whisper. “But I still feel like we’re hiding.”

“Can we think of it in a different way?”

The image of the chrysalis comes to my mind. I cup my hands together in the dark and hold them above our bodies as we lie side by side in the bed. “I should think of it as a cocoon. Caterpillars in a cocoon. Transformation sometimes happens in secret.” Reid kisses the chrysalis of my hands, and we fall asleep.

My mother is afraid for our safety. She buys deadbolts for the front and back doors to our trailer, and also window alarms that stick to the windowpanes with suction cups. She asks if Angus can escort us to the post office so we can mail our video to the UFO Festival Committee. When we walk into the building, people look at us intently, some of them with sad and apologetic expressions. I have found most people to be sympathetic. Many hands have touched my shoulder gently, many voices have said, “Sorry,” and many eyes have quivered in regret. I try to turn away from the hard faces, the hard and cold words, but sometimes I feel a morbid need to expose myself to them full force. I need to see if I’m still brave.

During the last week of classes, a group of people stand outside the school holding signs that say: “God hates fags.” “Repent” and “Homosexuality is a sin. Leviticus 18:22” Normal looking men and women—people I probably know, but now all their faces look the same. Just angry and ignorant and scared. When I walk by, they don’t even realise that I’m their target. They hand me leaflets explaining why God hates homosexuals, and they smile in their camaraderie and their comfortable knowledge of the truth. As I walk away, Principal Harmon emerges and ushers the group off of school grounds. “Leave or the police will be called.” He waves his hands. “Move on. Leave.”

“Free speech,” someone shouts. The signs float away. I crumple up the leaflet in my hand.

After the last day of class, Reid reclines with me in my bedroom, and I read aloud to him from “The Age of Innocence.” I read because it keeps my mind steady, keeps me from dwelling and worrying. The curtains are drawn to the late afternoon sun. The light filters into the room in a calm, hazy blue through the cotton fabric. Reid lies with his head in my lap, and I stroke his hair and read quietly from the book. On the bedspread next to our sock-feet is a pile of money from my newspaper route and Reid’s lawn mowing efforts. $36.18 “Just think of how much money we’ll have saved up by next year,” Reid has said hopefully.

I turn the pages of the book carefully because the book is an antique and was my Grandma Emma’s, the only book of hers that I still have in my possession. All the rest were burned in the fire. Reid closes his eyes and drifts into sleep, and I keep reading until I am too tired to concentrate, the words slowing to murmurs as my chin sinks drowsily to my chest……

“I want—I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that—categories like that—won’t exist. Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole life to each other, and nothing else on earth will matter.”

She drew a deep sigh that ended in another laugh. “Oh my dear, where is that country? Have you ever be there?” she asked.

***

Before we mailed off our film to the contest, we had made another copy so that we could invite the crew over to watch it with us. But the parents are afraid to have their kids come over to my house, and so no one accepts the invitation. No one except Noah. He arrives at 3 o’clock sharp dressed in his Star Trek uniform, a bag of pretzels and a two-litre bottle of Pepsi in his hands. “My dad thinks I’m out shooting hoops,” he says as he walks in. “He’s had me on lockdown ever since I was beat up.” He sits the pretzels and soda onto the coffee table and says, “And I’m fucking sick of it!” laughing humorously as he flops down onto the couch. “Bastard.”

“Hey, glad you could come,” I say. “Sorry about your dad.”

“Yeah, well, he’s the biggest homophobe on the planet.” Noah takes in a deep breath and runs his hands over his knees. “Listen, I’m sorry for before when I was acting kind of weird around you guys. I was just afraid because of my dad. He’s pretty hardcore. I have to admit, the guy scares the living shit out of me.”

Reid walks into the room carrying a bowl of buttered popcorn. “Well, I am gravely sorry that I misjudged you, Noah, mistaking your nervousness for bigotry. I am also sorry about your father and his hardcore attitude.”

“Me too,” I say.

Noah chuckles to himself. “I can’t wait until I tell my father that I’m not joining the army after I graduate. I plan on being in another time zone when I break the news to him.” He rips open the bag of pretzels and pops one into his mouth, chewing on it thoughtfully. “It’ll almost be as bad as when I finally tell him that I’m gay.”

My eyes fly open, and I hear Reid draw in a sharp breath. “You’re gay?”

“Yeah, surprise surprise. You guys probably already knew that. Shad sure did.”

“Well, one can never know for sure,” Reid says carefully, handing me the popcorn bowl, “but we did wonder.”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to announce it at the Chuck E. Cheese gathering, but I chickened out at the last minute.” Noah holds up his hand and smiles goofily. “So anyway do we exchange the secret handshake now, or….”

“Will the Vulcan salute do?” Reid asks, lifting up his hand and splitting apart his fingers. We all make the sign and laugh.

“Wow, Noah, that was pretty brave of you to….come out to us,” I say, offering him the bowl of popcorn.

He frowns and shrugs his shoulders. “After all the shit that’s happened, I felt I needed to do it. I mean, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t anyway, right?”

“Yeah,” I laugh. “It seems that way.”

I had misjudged him. I vow to be more careful when making assumptions about people, to be more sensitive and aware. It is important that I remember this, remember my own pain in being judged, and not be so quick to jump to conclusions.

Earth-shattering news shatters the earth, and then eventually everything goes on normally because it has to. This is another one of those strange laws of nature. We watch the film, laughing and joking the entire time. We rewind certain parts that we think were especially good or especially bad. We cringe when we see ourselves on the screen. We compliment each other’s acting skills. “This is going to win the contest. I mean, look at that—that’s Oscar-worthy material right there.” We eat all the popcorn and drink all the Pepsi, and then say goodbye, and everything, for that brief time, seems as it was before—unharmed, light and innocent. At least more so than it is now. The police cruisers vanish, the Engager still sits out in the lot, in a few days we’ll be driving to McMinnville, Oregon…..nothing’s changed.

Peace sometimes denotes where trauma once happened. Noah’s accepting presence, Reid in my arms each night, Angus referring to me as Reid’s “boyfriend”—peaceful and reassuring things have cropped up after the destruction. Trauma tumbles everything together—in a forest fire, deer run alongside cougars in their escape from death. The desire to live is the great equaliser. I want that kind of peace, that kind of truce, that kind of natural blindness, to continue on indefinitely, but apart from a painful source, even if it can only exist in our private world, separate from the culture at large.

It hurts so much to have lost the Engager. It was a part of my dad, part of a living memory. So many important things were in there, so much of my life. I cry for the loss, sometimes inconsolably. Reid says pain lets you know you are alive. A doctor would be troubled if an injured person felt no pain—if no feeling ever returned to the area that had been wounded. He is stronger than me, but he humbly denies it. He argues that I am the stronger one because I feel things intensely—I do not run away from emotion. When I cry, he takes little sips of my tears. He makes a chart of all the different flavours and tells me that the sweetest ones are the ones I cry when I reach the height of passion.

“When will I see you cry?” I ask him late in the night, in the shadows and the summer night air moving in through the open window over my tear-damp face. He always laughs and quotes Data: “If you prick me, do I not leak?”

“I don’t know what happened to all my tears,” Reid says. “I don’t think I was born with any. So I will just have to take yours and add them to myself.”

“You didn’t even cry when you got these?” I say, lightly kissing Reid’s scars, and he says, “No, not even then.”

“I think I will see you cry one day.” I kiss his scars and his soft mouth and his soft hands. I tighten my arms around him and sigh. “But I hope only out of happiness,” I say.

***

“I want you to have something of mine,” Reid says a week later. “My Star Trek pendant.” He takes a silver chain from a plastic Star Trek box on his desk and puts it around my neck. Antoine watches curiously from the bed, erupting into loud purrs when I hold the pendant up for him to examine. “Look Antoine. It’s a Federation badge necklace,” I explain to him, and then turn my eyes to Reid, smiling. “It’s awesome. Thank you.” I lift up the pendant and study it for a few seconds, and then Reid says, “Look at the back. There’s some writing.”

I turn the pendant around and slowly read the inscription: “Humans do claim a great deal for that emotion (love).” I look up again, my heart beating faster. “Humans do, don’t they,” I say quietly.

Reid takes in a slow breath and absently runs his hand over Antoine’s fur. “Yes….they do…..”

I feel my body turn to fire as Reid takes a step forward, his eyes fixed deeply to mine. He opens his mouth and tries to say something, but his words fumble against one another, and he sighs and play-slaps his face, saying in exasperation, “Reid. Stupid. Stupid.”

A let out a small, nervous laugh. “You’re not stupid.” I lift the pendant to my lips and kiss it, and then press the pendant to Reid’s lips and say, “I love it.”

“I do, too,” Reid stammers. “I mean…you do?”

“I do.”

We look at one another shyly, and then Reid places his hands softly on the sides of my arms and bends forward and kisses the pendant as it rests against my chest. I sigh and touch my fingertips to his hair. When I lift his face upward to kiss his lips, he murmurs against my mouth, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Counsellor, but I need you to go home right now.”

My heart sinks and I pull back in confusion. My breath comes shallowly.

“No, no,” Reid whispers, kissing my trembling mouth. “Just trust me. You’ll see.” He kisses me again, a languid, soft and reassuring flow of passion. “Trust me.”

When I am back at home, I hear the walkie talkie crackling from my bedroom, and then Reid’s muffled voice comes over the speaker. “Luke? You copy?”

I run to my room and find the walkie talkie underneath my pillow. “I copy.”

There is a long pause, and then, “Well, I thought it would be easier this way, but……”

I sink down on the bed. The anxious thoughts come uncontrollably….he’s breaking up with me. He was too afraid to tell me in person. He gave me a parting gift, something to always remember him by. The trauma of everything got to be too much, and he’s breaking up with me. The pendant. The obvious message: Humans give too much weight to that fucked up emotion called love. I wipe my hand over my eyes, taking in a painful breath. My mother appears in the doorway, her face questioning. “Luke? Are you all right baby?”

“Mom,” I say, waving her away. “I need some privacy right now.” I can barely hold back the tears.

“Baby…”

“Mom, I’ll talk to you in a second.”

Reid’s voice comes back from the dead. “Luke, you still there?”

“ Yes.” My mother disappears, and I fall over onto the bed, my face in my pillow. “Just say it,” I whisper. “Just say it and get it over with.”

Another long pause, and then, “Ok, I will.” Crackling. Rustling. “Luke….I love you. Over.”

I jump up and bang my knee on the nightstand. A glass of water spills.

Reid’s voice comes nervously. “Did you copy that?”

“Roger,” I say through numb lips. The walkie talkie slips out of my hand and my face explodes into a smile.

“Luke?” Reid calls from the floor.

Three seconds later I am bursting into his room and flinging my arms around him and crushing my mouth to his, and I am saying over and over, “I love you, too. I love you.” And Reid is laughing in surprise and kissing me back and saying, “Wow.” My passion is violent—his glasses steam up and drop crookedly over his face, his lips are kissed purple, his hair explodes. I push him up against his wall, up against a poster of the Next Generation crew that rips at one of the corners, and I crush his face between my hands, smooshing his cheeks together, laughing breathlessly. In the commotion, Antoine scrambles off the bed and runs out of the room in bewilderment.

“This is a very….interesting reaction,’ Reid says between kisses. “But I like it.” He embraces me and says, “I like it and I love you. I love you, Luke.” He smiles.

“There, I said it,” he says.

***

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

The school-world goes on the same, not understanding the change, not understanding the walls that have come crumbling down. Maybe after the dust settles, people will open up their eyes and see, or maybe they won’t, but I’ve taken a step, and that’s the important thing. Not all revolutions are recognised by the powers that be.

A kid tapes a picture on my back depicting a dripping penis heading towards an arse. People snicker as I walk around the hallways, and then I am surprised when Julie (Dr. Crusher) comes up from behind and rips the picture off, showing it to me before she crumples it up with a sigh, saying, “Complete jerks. Sorry, Luke.”

We walk to class together, talking about our practise film shoot that will occur after school today. Julie unzips her neon green and pink blazer and shows me that she is already in costume. “Cool,” I say as I toss the offending picture in a hallway trashcan, and then I unzip my jacket to show her that I am also wearing my costume. We laugh. Before we head into home economics, Julie puts her hand on my arm and says, “Luke…..I just wanted to say, well…….” She blushes and lowers her eyes, smiling in her embarrassment. “Well, I just wanted to say that I don’t care if you’re gay. I think it’s cute and pretty awesome. And I made this button for you with my Badge-A-Minit. I hope you like it.” She presses the button into my palm and then trots into the room, seating herself at the front of the class. I stand in the doorway, looking down at the pin, which reads: “2QT2BSTR8.” A smile spreads across my face, and as I pass by her desk, I mouth the words, “Thank you” and clutch the button in my hand.

People are always surprising me, and in this case it was a good surprise, just like it was with my mother and her unquestioning and loving acceptance of her queer son. I had judged Juile to be a difficult, sometimes abrasive person, but she was the only one in the hallway who had taken the initiative to remove the humiliating picture from my back. She gave me her homemade button and her support and kindness. In these small ways, but great ways, my dignity as a human being is recognised and reinforced. This is the first time in a long time I have felt this at school, if ever.

Our practise filming takes several hours. Certain scenes require numerous takes because Noah needs to experiment with the best angle and lighting for a particular sequence. He walks around carrying a large video recorder held on his shoulder like a boombox. His face wears an expression of official seriousness, and he talks very little except to tell us where to stand and how we should move and what kind of emotions we should try to express in the scene. He also reminds us to call him “Buck” if we forget and accidentally refer to him as “Noah.”

We all crowd into the Engager for the shots on the Starship. Inside, we squeeze past each other, bumping shoulders and elbows, as we get into our positions. The pages of our scripts crinkle in the muted confines, along with throat clearing, giggles, and sniffs from residual colds just leaving our systems. Everyone seems impressed with the way I have transformed the RV into a command deck, and they look around with smiles and wide eyes of admiration, saying, “totally awesome”, “radical,” and “tubular,” and patting me on the back and shoulders. We rehearse and film in the Engager for an hour-and-a-half-- “cut!”-- “take two”--“try it again”---and get better as we go along.

Outside, we film some “planetary” shots. We go to the edge of the trailer park where piles of dried pine needles overflow rusty metal scraps, and record a scene where we first encounter our shadow selves on the planet Dooel. Between scenes, I exchange shy glances with Reid, wondering if he is thinking about the two nights ago when we rode our bikes to the old farmhouse so I could show him my childhood stomping grounds. I hadn’t been there in years—too afraid of it, the emotions and longing, the memories and images behind it. But with Reid there, I had found the courage and the desire to return. We held hands as we walked the dirt road up to the house--dark and silent house--all the windows cold and black—closed, dead eyes. Weeds rose shoulder-high around the porch, and an abandoned and gutted car—a creaking metal skeleton in the wind—sat in a crumpled pile off to the side. “I guess it’s been vacant for some time,” I whispered, clutching Reid’s hand. A nervous quiver ran through my stomach, and also a great sadness and regret. “My dad used to sit on that porch swing and read the paper.” I pointed to the swing, which trembled with ghostly groans in the evening breeze.

“It must have been a nice place to grow up,” Reid had commented. “I can see you here. This is your territory.”

We walked all around the house, surveying the lifeless façade. The memories seemed frozen and obscured in the wavy, dark glass of the windows. But I could still feel them aching through like the sound of music playing from far away, or from under water. “That was my room, up there. I was afraid of that big oak tree during storms. It looked like a monster waving its arms in the wind.” Reid laughed. “I’ll protect you,” he said close to my ear, and a shiver of warmth ran through my limbs.

I lead him to the Snyder pond, still smooth and serene, a gentle, watery eye of the earth looking up to the sky, absorbing the distance and the mystery. “You must have swam in here all the time when you were little,” Reid said. He picked up a pebble and tossed it in, and the water rippled in longing and remembrance. Boyhood memories rose to the surface with a sigh.

“Yeah. The summer nights were heaven here,” I said. “The crickets and the frogs, the stars and the moon. The water was so warm, like bath water. You could float in it for hours and never get cold. The waterskippers would dance around your arms as you drifted by, and sometimes deer would come up to the edge to take a drink. They would look at me with their big, curious eyes, and then disappear back into the trees.”

“Maybe we could come up here and swim in the summer,” Reid said excitedly. “If no one is living here by then…..”

We put our arms about each other and looked down into the water. We looked into our moonlit reflections, our two selves replicated in milk-glow, our bodies quivering in the watery underworld. And then we had kissed, and our water selves had kissed, and all was warm and soft and certain—Reid’s plush mouth, and his caressing hands that pulled me to the earth, and his night-darkened eyes studying me peacefully, and the living, autumn-tinged scent of him that flowed over my skin like sun-warmed sand. We lay in the springy grass, side by side, face-to-face, enjoying the vision of reflected desire, enjoying the moon-silver on our skin and lips, and in our eyes.

In the young days, all is new, and there is an unhurried wonder and exploration of new things. There is a calm and thoughtful savouring of a novel experience, a first experience. In the grass, in the shadow of my childhood home, I touched Reid’s face, and I moved into his eyes---I kissed his strong mouth, and it was all new. He pulled me closer and lifted my wrist to his lips and kissed there, drawing all the blood from my heart to that heated point, pulsing warmly. He kissed my fingertips, suckled them to fire. He kissed my arms, my neck, my shoulders. I drew him over me and pushed my hands through his warm hair, and then suddenly, beyond the pond and the enclosed night, we heard a car rumbling up the dirt road to the house. The engine died and doors slammed. Male voices came through the air as broken syllables--- “saw” “es—passing” “bikes.” The sounds grated against the serenity, split it apart on hard edges.

We froze and looked at one another anxiously, wide-eyed, and then slowly broke apart and crawled forward on our bellies like soldiers crawling over a rise. We slinked up the soft-sloping hill and looked upwards toward the house. Dark figures were examining our bikes. One of the figures grumbled and spit and lifted its head to look around. It said to the other figure, “They’re still here” and coughed loudly.

We dropped our heads down, breathing heavily. “There’s a trail leading back to the road. It’s behind us, through the trees,” I whispered urgently. I grabbed Reid’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “I’ll lead the way,” I said. We ran hand-in-hand past the pond, and as we ran, Reid asked in a halting, breathless voice,

“How…did….they…..know…..we….were….. …..here? Who……are….they?”

“I don’t know.”

We slipped through the entrance to the forest, and my feet moved nimbly over the trail, my feet having memorised this path from the many hours I had spent walking it as a child, and as I ran, I could hear and feel Reid stumbling behind me. I could feel him pulling me back to slow the pace, but I was afraid, and kept plunging ahead, my throat and heart and lungs throbbing in fear. “They’re not following us,” Reid finally said, trying to reach me with his words. “I’ve been checking.” When I didn’t slow down, he said again, louder, “Luke, it’s ok! They aren’t following us,” and he had pulled hard on my hand, anchoring his feet to the ground and leaning in the other direction, so that I was forced to finally come to a rough stop. My teeth were chattering and sweat dripped down my face and stung my eyes. Reid clasped my shoulders in his hands and said, “Luke, we’re all right.” He said this many times until my vision cleared, until I could see his concerned, pale face and gently-moving lips saying, “It’s all right. We’re safe,” and know that it was true.

The forest moved in like a softly-swishing curtain, pulling itself around us in a protective circle. The stars came reassuringly through the haze, and my breathing and heart rate slowed as I put one hand to the trunk of a tree and the other to Reid’s shoulder. “Sorry,” I murmured. “For a second, I just thought that it was……..but it wasn’t.”

“You thought it was Damian?” Reid guessed.

“Yeah, but it wasn’t him. I would know his accent anywhere.”

“So we’re safe then. It’s all right.”

“Maybe the neighbours called when they saw us here. Nosy neighbours.” I laughed nervously, and then Reid had asked, “Can I give you a hug?” and I smiled and said, “Yes.” The embrace was strong, strong as night. The fear flooded out of me, replaced by relief and the familiar, comforting presence of the forest and the reassurance of Reid’s arms.

Reid had said bravely, “I would challenge Damian to a duel if he ever came after you, and of course, I would win. I’ve got a phaser.” I laughed again, and took Reid’s hand to guide him along the trail.

“I hope our bikes are still there,” I worried as we continued on. “We can check in the morning.”

We walked hand in hand through the trees, and every now and then Reid would point to a constellation and tell me what it was. He talked about UFO’s and quasars and dark matter. He talked about the brain. He said, “This is so bizarre, but when people have the connection between the two sides of the brain severed, they can’t see the right half of a person’s face, even if they’re looking right at it. But they don’t even notice it. It’s not a problem for them. I’ve been trying to figure out what that means about consciousness---It seems that it’s not something whole in the brain—it’s not a cup that information gets poured into. Is our consciousness localised? Why is the brain divided like that?” He speaks animatedly and swings our joined hands back and forth.

I said, “Maybe the brain is just a physical receiver, like a radio, and when it’s broken, it can’t tune in anymore to the conscious reality of the world, of existence. Maybe consciousness is truly outside the brain, but in a physical body we can only experience it through the brain.”

Reid had looked at me thoughtfully, and I had smiled shyly and said, “Well, I’ve been thinking about these things since my dad…..died.”

The forest faded into open grassy expanses, and then to the road, silent and dark, dark with telephone poles and metal reflectors and signs. Only a few cars came along, edging by us slowly, washing light over the stubbled fields on either side of the road.

We reached home, quickly separating our hands as little kids and their parents walked past, nodding hello, mumbling “Good evening.” There were too many people out—the first nice night of April---so we had to say goodbye as we used to do before our first kiss—the Vulcan hand salute and “See ya later.” The sound of a tin can being kicked around accompanied me as I turned and walked up the splintering wooden steps to my house. At the door, I glanced back to see if Reid had gone inside yet. He was waiting at the door like I was. We smiled, waved, and then disappeared. I felt the unkissed kiss on my lips for many hours.

Later in the night, Reid had called me on the walkie talkie. “Luke, I’ve got the bikes. They were leaning against the side of the house.”

I sat up in bed, holding the walkie talkie to my mouth, my voice bursting out in whispered surprise. “What? How did you get them back here?”

“I walked them back. It only took a half hour. It’s not that far.”

“Wow, Reid! Thanks.” There was a slight pause, and then Reid’s voice had come back over the speaker, soft and staticky and nervous. He had said, “I was wondering if……well, if you needed any company tonight. You know, because of what happened earlier, you might be….scared?”

“I am.” I smiled, closing my eyes. “Come over.” Within moments, Reid was quietly opening the Engager door. I felt the vehicle wobbling as he walked to my room and pushed himself through the tiny doorway. “Hi.” We laughed shyly, and I lifted the corner of my blanket and patted the lumpy mattress, beckoning Reid to join me. He was wearing flannel pyjamas covered with tiny Starship Enterprises. Even in the dark, I could read the white block letters underneath the printed images: “Engage!” and “Make it so!”

Reid had a clamshell travel alarm clock in his hand, which he sat on the nightstand delicately. The hands glowed a faint green. “I set the alarm for 6 am so I can sneak back home before my uncle gets up,” he explained. He laid back down and put his arms around me, breathing softly against my neck. I ran my fingers through his hair and gently kissed his lips, which tasted of mint toothpaste. Our toes wiggled next to each other. I couldn’t help but to remember the times in my youth when I had clutched a beloved stuffed animal to my chest before falling asleep. The feeling of Reid in my arms brought that same sense of comfort, warmth, and security. I felt the urge to call him “teddy bear,” but it was probably too soon for such things.

“Thank you for coming over,” I had whispered in our warm cocoon—the last thing I remember saying before falling into the deepest sleep I had had in years.




We wrap up the final scene for the day and walk back up to Reid’s house, talking amongst ourselves about the filming. Noah says he will work on editing the film over the next couple of days to show us a rough sample of what the finished project might look like. He seems as excited about this as everyone else is, even saving up money from his job at Taco Bell to buy himself a Star Trek uniform and the official Lieutenant La Forge eyewear. I figure I was too quick to judge him the way I had done when we had first approached him for the film. He’s not quite a friend, but he has been growing on me, in a disciplined, military-polite sort of way.

He is the last to leave of the crew, and as he is waiting outside for his father to come pick him up, I walk up to him and make some small talk, and then I manage to ask him the question I have been waiting to ask him for many weeks now. I have debated for a long time whether or not to ask, but I can’t seem to rest until I know the truth. “Buck,” I say uncertainly. He turns to look at me, his eyebrows raised.

“Yeah?” He pushes his shoulders back and turns his gaze back to the road. “What?” He inches away from me, using his feet to push his duffel bag with him. Of course. He doesn’t want to stand to close to the gay kid. Being gay is like having cooties. Being gay is an airborne disease, spread by talking. He moves away and stands straighter, firmer, a true military son. “Yeah, what is it?”

“I was just wondering if you had ever……if you were ever part of the group of kids bullying me.” The words come out quickly, perhaps incoherently. I hope he has understood me so I will not have to ask the question again. His jaw shifts and his eyes narrow. The collar of his jacket slaps lightly at his neck as a breeze kicks up from the east. There is a long period of silence. Noah’s face remains stony, but I can see his eyes moving back and forth as he ponders his answer. “No,” he finally says. “I wouldn’t do that.” He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. The late afternoon light glints off a faint sheen of sweat on his brow.

“Ok,” I sigh. “Sorry if that was a rude question.”

“Not a problem.”

A rust-coloured Jeep Cherokee moves down the street slowly, disbanding a game of hopscotch being played by four little girls with colourful beads woven in their thick, dark braids. Noah bends down and picks up his duffel bag as the Jeep approaches. “That’s my dad. See ya around,” he says and quickly trots toward the car. His father stops in front of Reid’s house and nods in my direction. He has a square face, grizzled with scruff, and his eyes are dark and hard. His hair is buzzed short with military severity. As Noah opens the car door, he smiles briefly, revealing a row of straight teeth that are large and grey and remind me of those of my old horse, Windy. His smile is neither friendly nor welcoming. It is more like the smile of a person who delights in seeing innocent things suffer. I feel a chill run through me and turn away, and as I walk up Reid’s steps, the Jeep engine roars loudly from behind.

Back at Reid’s house, Angus has brought out a plate full of hamburgers. When I come inside, he holds up the plate and says, “There’s plenty here if you’d like to have supper with us, Luke.”

I stay for dinner and also dessert—peanut butter ice cream---and then later I sit in Reid’s room, working on the last scene of our film as Reid plays Tetris on his TV and Antoine naps on the bed, his paws tucked under his chin.

“Why were you talking to Noah earlier?” Reid asks casually, wiggling around his thumbs on the video game controller as he manoeuvres a purple “T” between a block and an “L.”

“Actually, I sort of confronted him about bullying me. He says he wasn’t part of it.”

“You believe him?”

The Tetris music continues on quietly in the background. The shapes fall slowly, shifting around in orientation, and then zoom into their locked positions. I shrug my shoulders and sigh, not sure what I really think. “I guess I believe him,” I answer. I wonder if it is true what Reid had said about Noah—if Noah is really gay. If he is, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a father like his. I only saw him that once, but there was something about him that seemed so angry—agitated anger, like that of a caged and restless lion.

“You don’t have a crush on him, do you?”

Reid’s question makes me burst out laughing. I look over to Reid who is still playing his video game, his expression unchanged. “Are you kidding me?” I laugh into my hands and shake my head. “No, I do not have a crush on Noah.”

A few moments of tinny, computerised music pass, and then Reid sighs and says, “Forgive me for that brief episode of immaturity and male possessiveness,” as his screen fills up with shapes and explodes. “I do my best to keep those baser of human reactions to a minimum, but sometimes I am overwhelmed by the sheer biological momentum of their forces.”

“In other words, you’re apologising for being jealous.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“It’s cute when you’re jealous.” I walk over to Reid and drape my arms over his shoulders, kissing him on the cheek and the earlobe. “So be overwhelmed by your biological forces more often,” I whisper.

Just then, Angus appears in the doorway, and I realise how dangerously careless I have been and what I have done, and I straighten up quickly, clearing my throat and folding my arms across my chest. My cheeks burn as I say, “So yeah, that was a good game. You’re right—the ‘T’s’ do change colour as the screen gets filled up.” The senseless words tumble out of my dry mouth as Angus averts his eyes and purses his lips. Reid swivels around in his chair and stands up.

“Hey Angus,” he says nonchalantly. “Do you need something?”

Angus pats the doorframe a couple of times with his palm and smiles a closed-mouth smile, a smile without smiling. “Just wanted to tell you I’m calling it a night.” He looks at Reid and says in a meaningful tone, “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah, Luke was just getting ready to head home,” Reid answers quickly. We stand side-by-side, stiff as statues. I can hear our hearts beating, our breath shaking. I stand, trembling like a child waiting for his punishment. Angus seems to grow bigger and darker in the doorway. Does he know? Will he tell Reid’s parents? His face is a wooden mask, hiding everything.

“Ok boys.” The clouds suddenly pass and his face softens into a genuine smile. “Good night.”

After he leaves, we wait for 20 minutes, shuffling the script around, talking about nothing, and then we quietly shut the door, and turn toward one another, our faces pale.

“Do you think he suspects?” My voice quivers. “I’ve fucked it all up.” The word just slips out, and I apologise for cussing, and then I run my hands nervously through my hair, saying, “I’ve messed it all up,” under my breath as Reid taps his lips with the tips of his folded hands.

“No, you haven’t,” he says decisively. “Angus is a weird one. I can never figure out what he really thinks about the whole gay thing. I think he knows there’s something between us, but he doesn’t know how to handle it.” Reid sighs. “He’s conflicted.”

“But will he tell your parents?” I persist. I can feel tears pressing hotly behind my eyes, and I bite my lip, willing them away. I have always been too emotional. My emotions frighten people away. I think of the times when I was a child, crying during a sad movie at school—Watership Down, The Red Balloon---and how all the boys had moved away from me as if I had shit my pants. I know this is different—this is Reid—but I still do not want to appear weak and overly dramatic. I swallow down the tears and lean my forehead against the cool wooden panel of the door.

“I don’t think so. Don’t worry,” Reid tries to reassure me. “I’ve been with Angus for six years now. He’s like a father to me at this point. We’re close. I’ve heard him lie to my parents before, telling them that I’m dating girls so they would stay off my back. I think we can trust him.”

I nod, my forehead rubbing up against the door. “He just looked so startled…..”

“Yeah, well, like I said, he’s got that Mormon stuff in his head. That doesn’t disappear over night. It’s like Catholic guilt. Sometimes it takes years.” Reid pulls me away from the door, pulls me into his arms. “We’ll be ok.” We sway in the embrace. Our Star Trek badges click together magnetically.

“We will be ok.” I echo Reid’s words. I have to believe them because it is too frightening not to. Because I am already attached. My heart is on my sleeve, my heart is in my throat. I think I am in love with Reid. I can’t remember my life without him, even though it’s only been two months. It’s that strange time warp thing again. Can Einstein explain it?

We had pricked fingers the other night and smooshed them together so that our blood mingled, hot and sticky. We did this out in a field behind the trailer park, sitting on a concrete slab spray painted with graffiti. We cut our fingers with a pocket knife and hooked them together. We were like little kids, making blood-brother bonds and pledging allegiance to our deepening sense of togetherness. Love makes you a little child again. You return to that place of intimacy, the intimacy and permanency of blood.

Our blood is mixed now. There is no going back. Our souls are mixed now. I can’t go back.

***

The Engager explodes onto the street at a brisk 14 miles per hour. “She works!” Reid yells. “Victory!” We slap palms together and laugh in disbelief. Reid hits the horn in a staccato beat that sounds like “Shave and a Haircut.” Cars move nervously to the side of the road.

After a week’s worth of repairs and a new set of tires, the Engager is now alive, functioning, and moving along the street for the first time in eight years. The funds for the Engager’s overhaul have come partly from our combined work wages, and partly from generous donations from Angus and my mother. It feels like a miracle to be moving along the streets, the cool mid-April air blowing through the open windows and across my face, the loud rumble of the engine quivering beneath the soles of my shoes. Reid grins in the driver seat, his fingers tapping excitedly on the cracked and faded steering wheel. It feels like we are miles above the earth, looking down on all the matchbox cars and toy people, and the, thin grey veins of the road.

Childhood memories flood through as we make a slow and lumbering celebratory lap around the block. I remember falling asleep to the tottering motion of the Engager on hot summer afternoons as my dad drove along Route 1 to Cedar Lake, Indiana. I remember drinking Dr. Pepper and doing crossword puzzles on the dinette table, chipping a tooth on the counter during a sharp turn, waking up at night and seeing the stars and moon following us overhead. I remember asking my mother, “Can’t we just keep driving forever?” and how it sometimes felt to my impatient and eager child’s mind that we had been.

Reid manoeuvres the Engager through a narrow street with cars parked on either side. “Boldly going where no man has gone before,” he says as we inch along. A beat-up orange Datsun patiently waits for us to pass through before continuing on down the road. On the corner, a tall Tulip tree is bursting in full bloom next to an abandoned two-story ghost house. “Look at that,” I say, pointing. Reid nods and honks the horn. “Hey ghosts,” he yells out the window. “Pretty tree you got there. House could use some fixing up, though.”

We drive around the block twice, and then roll back into the space next to my house. The empty lot looks strange—like a raw socket where a living tooth used to be. I never thought the Engager would be extracted from that blackened, weed-choked space again, but here we are, engine roaring, wheels turning, horn blowing. It’s an emotional moment. “Goddamn,” I say under my breath. “All be goddamned.”

After Reid turns off the engine and unbuckles his seatbelt, he slaps the dashboard and says, “In a month-and-a-half we’ll be driving this thing cross country. How do you like that?” He grins and shakes my knee vigorously. “I mean, can you believe it?”

“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” I smile. “It almost seems too good to be true.”

“Oh, but it is true,” Reid assures me. He climbs out of the driver’s seat and pulls me up to my feet. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, putting his palm on the small of my back and dragging me slowly forward. I laugh and say yes, yes he can kiss me. He always asks, and I always say “Yes, but you don’t have to ask,” and still, he asks, sometimes shyly, sometimes urgently, sometimes humorously, sometimes tenderly--just another one of his many endearing personality quirks that I love.

We kiss softly and then deeply and sweetly. When I am kissing Reid, I feel like I am tasting the fleshy pulp of an exotic fruit, soft and rich and warm. The flesh is rose-coloured and full of nectar. Sometimes it is spicy. Today it is like sugared milk on my tongue. We kiss and kiss, safe within the protective fibreglass walls where so many thoughts and memories and life experiences have lived and continue to live. I like the way Reid draws out the kisses, draws forth the sweet juices of passion. I like the warm mingling of our breath, and the gentle sounds of the kiss, like rain touching to clear water.

We hold each other in the small RV bed. The sun is going down and soon our parents will be home. Kids are yelling outside, playing whiffle ball and riding bikes up and down the street. I kiss Reid behind the drawn curtains. Yellow light seeps through and makes our skin the colour of old sepia photographs. I touch my lips to Reid’s neck and feel him shift closer to me. He strokes my back and my arms with his fingertips and sighs. I ask if I can unzip his jacket, and he nods, helping me pull down the zipper. He half-sits up, squirms out of the jacket, and then lies back down, pulling my face to his for another long kiss. Our bodies press close and begin to move over one another in a way that is new and sensual and more intimate than anything we have ever done.

Reid murmurs to my ear, “Should I stop?” His breath is fast and halting, hot on my cheek. I shake my head and begin kissing his jaw and his neck. His sighs become louder and turn into soft little throaty whimpers, and I press my eyes closed, trembling in the pleasure of that sound. We move together slowly, the way an ocean wave moves ponderously over low, smooth rocks on the beach. I lose track of my body and feel only heat, emotion and movement. After a few minutes, Reid gently pushes me onto my back, and now he is over me, caressing my face and then pulling my flannel shirt over my head, my upper body exposed to the fading light and to Reid’s silent gaze. He looks down at me, his eyes serious, but soft. “Your skin is beautiful,” he sighs, touching my bare chest.

I reach up my arms and pull him against me. Both of us are shaking. Both of us are aflame. We continue kissing, and the kisses grow deeper, and our bodies grow warmer, and we move faster, pushing our bodies against each other, our hips, our legs, our chest, hands, mouths. At some point, almost unconsciously, I remove Reid’s shirt and fling it away. It falls to the floor with a quiet swishing sound. The exposure of his creamy skin intensifies my desire. I drink it in with my eyes and my mouth, the salt and heat of it, the rushing blood of it, the earthly beauty of pale colour and pale fire.

There is a moment where we smash our mouths together in a surge of passion. Our teeth knock accidentally, and I soon taste the clean warmth of blood. The air is soft-violet now, hazy and drifting. My hands draw Reid further against me. I feel him, all of him, against me. I carefully move my fingers along his thighs. He sucks in his breath and moves faster. This is the closest we have been, the most passionate we have been. I wonder if he is all right with the fact that we are loving half-clothed. It does not seem unnatural. There is an innocence to our careful approach, a patient and slow unfolding that comes in stages. There is a luxurious savouring and tasting, an unhurried exploration of our bodies drawn out over many days and nights. The desire is heightened by the promise of what is yet to be revealed.

Reid moves faster, and his movements feed the fire that trembles between our damp and breathless bodies. I push up against him, and he cries out. This is the first time I have ever heard his voice rise above normal speaking volume. His voice rings through me like the reverberating echo of my own desire. I lift into his movements and mix my passion-cries with his. A startling sense of peace washes over me. I forget about shame and guilt and grip my hands to Reid’s solid hips and move underneath him, finding strength in the reassuring sturdiness of his bones. At the pivotal point in our collective desire, we flow our mouths together, kiss, and then tremble out our release, the strong passion waves mixing us together, blood, bone and skin. My consciousness edges away, eclipsed by the deeper consciousness of the body. Reid’s quivering, heated frame drapes over me, a sun-warmed garment clinging to my flushed skin. Words do not come. Our breath rushes out in hot little pants. Our sweat mingles. Our kisses consume.

Time passes. We caress one another and murmur little sounds in our throats. Our blood calms, our breathing slows. Reid touches his fingers to the corner of my eye and says, “You’re crying.”

“A little. Does it bother you?” I wipe at my eyes and grow suddenly shy.

“No,” he says. “Not at all. I just want to make sure you are ok?” He lifts my hand and kisses it. “Did we go too far?”

“No,” I whisper. “It was just really intense, in a good way. An amazing way. I cry at intense things.” I kiss his lips softly. “We didn’t go too far.”

We hold one another, continuing to absorb into one another long after the height of our passion has come. I didn’t know that this could happen, this continuous flow of togetherness even in stillness and wordlessness. I tremble and close my eyes, my body still registering the rushing currents of fulfilled desire.

The rattling motor of my mother’s station wagon suddenly cuts into our warm closeness, and we sit up slowly, looking around the room, wondering what time it is. Reid finds his Star Trek digital watch on the floor and says, “6:45.”

“Wow,” I reply. “We were…together for over an hour-and-a-half, but it seemed like no time passed at all.”

“It’s that time warp thing that happens when you’re…..” Reid tries to figure out the “right” way to describe what has occurred between us.

I say, “When you’re making love. That’s not too cheesy sounding, is it?”

Reid laughs. “No. I always thought ‘having sex’ sounds like ‘having a sandwich.’ We weren’t having sandwiches. We were making love.” He kisses my shoulder thoughtfully.

We reluctantly climb out of bed, find our shirts, and slip them over our still-heated skin. We change into fresh pairs of jeans that I have pulled from the tiny closet in the bedroom. The jeans I have given Reid are slightly baggy on his thin frame, requiring a belt to keep them from slipping down over his hips. “We need to get some meat on your bones,” I tease, sliding a belt through his belt holes and kissing the corners of his salty lips.

“Would it be too crass to say ‘I only need you on my bones?’” We laugh softly. We laugh in a daze. Did it really happen? I look in the mirror as I quickly smooth down my tousled locks with some water. Do I look different? It seems like my face, my eyes, my skin should reveal the fierce shock of desire that has coursed through me. My cheeks and mouth are flushed, a fruit ripened by need. Another person’s passion has entered my blood, changed my blood, flowing in intermingled bliss with my own. A certain strength and wisdom comes of that, a closer understanding of meaningfulness, a closer understanding of the hidden parts of the self.

On our way outside, Reid throws his arm around my shoulders and pulls me against him. He looks around, and then kisses me hard on the lips. The darkness makes us feel safer, and we take advantage if it like two silvery owls high in the trees. No one is about, and the early spring night flows overhead like a cottony blue sheet, hiding us from the world, covering us over, so we can steal a quick kiss from the heated mouth of desire on our way back home.

***

In the morning I remember the voice in the dream: “Stand up, open your eyes, and live.” I’ve opened my eyes and seen Reid, seen goodness there, loyalty, understanding and affection. Passion. I’ve lived now more than I have in years--more living than hiding. I’m no longer half-dead, apologising to the world for having ever been born. This is real. Reid is real. The days are real. It is beautiful. Fucking beautiful! And I want to stand up—take a stand. Peacefully. It has to begin at the source of the fear.

Reid grips the rainbow flag in his hand and waves it slowly back and forth. We straddle our bikes, waiting. “This is his house, then,” Reid says, pointing with the flag toward Damien’s duplex. He looks at the neglected façade and shakes his head sadly.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” I say. “I’m sure he’s sleeping, don’t you think?”

“I say it’s a safe bet at 5:30 in the morning,” Reid replies.

We study the dark windows, the decay of the wood panelling. The grey chill of the mid-May morning and the dreary death-smudge of the duplex makes us pull our jackets tighter around our bodies. I take a paper from my basket and toss it onto the porch of the blue-nosed woman next door, throwing off some nervous energy with the snap of the paper leaving my hand. Down the street a car starts up, idles for a few moments, then takes off wearily toward the main road.

Reid nods toward me and says, “Well, I guess we should continue as planned before it gets any later.” I nod back and grip my fingers around the handlebars. This will only take a few minutes, I tell myself. A few minutes and a lifetime of emotion.

Reid says if there’s one thing human beings will never lose in the face of science, it’s the need for ritual. “Ritual solidifies the experience in the brain—makes it more real.” He told me that I needed to have a ritual of making peace with Damian, even if it was just one-sided. “You need to do something symbolic to help you feel like you’re taking a step forward.” I thought of the flag, the moth’s wings, my dad. I wanted to make it simple—just put the flag on Damian’s lawn—no note, no words. Just stab the flag into the dirt like the astronauts stabbed the American flag into the moon to say: “I was here. I put this flag here to remind myself that I actually took that giant leap forward for humankind.”

I take the flag and dismount from my bike. Reid watches silently as I walk toward Damian’s lawn, kneel down, and push the skinny flagpole into the ground. I lean back on my haunches, surveying the flag as a person might survey a complicated, exhausting job just completed. The flag looks dim—almost black and white—in the half-light. I don’t know what I feel—proud, relieved, hopeful, sad? I stare at the flag a long time, trying to let this moment sink into my bones, trying to imagine what Damian will do when he walks outside and sees this blatant gay symbol quivering in the wind on his front lawn. I’ve tried to make this not matter to me, his acceptance or lack of acceptance, but my mind keeps mixing Damian up with my real dad, keeps wanting to put Damian in that role so the void will be filled. I want to hear Damian say, “I accept you son,” because I know that my dead dad’s lips will never speak such words. Maybe one day this desire will fade. Maybe it won’t.

When I finally get up and leave the flag, Reid opens up his palm and reads a Captain Kirk quote he had written there with a permanent pen. He reads: “The prejudices people feel about each other disappear when they get to know each other.”

I dig into my jacket pocket and find a crumpled Safeway receipt where I had written a Q quote on the back. Carefully, I unfold the receipt, smooth it out against the top of my leg, and then read: “If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughta go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid.”

After I read the quote, my eyes start to sting and water. I sniff and cough, and then say, “So I guess that’s it then.” I feel like I’ve swallowed an anvil and it’s lodged itself into my throat.

“If you don’t mind,” Reid says, pulling a Polaroid camera from his backpack. “It’s important to document these momentous occasions.” He lifts the camera to his face and snaps two pictures. The bright flashes of light burn the flag’s colours across my retina—the flag like a match flame flaring up when struck with intention. We hold the square pictures in our hands, waving them around as the image develops. After a few moments, the tiny flag appears in a sea of grey grass. The fender of Damian’s 4 X 4 glints in the background. Reid puts his arm around my waist as we stand in front of Damian’s duplex and look at the flag in our pictures and the flag on the lawn. We say no parting words and eventually just continue on down the street, leaving the flag to speak for itself.

I finish my paper route in half the time with Reid helping me. Back inside the Engager, Reid asks me to hold out my arm. He takes his permanent pen out of his jacket pocket and says, “Since it’s Saturday and we don’t have gym class, no one will see this.” He bends over and begins writing on my bare skin. As he writes he murmurs, “You won’t believe that I’m actually writing something that does not come from Star Trek.” The pen and his fingers bring goosebumps to my skin. I watch the words form, the ink running coolly into my pores. I watch Reid’s thoughts cover over my flesh, and when he’s done, I look at his writing, his small, precise little letters, and smile:

“The fact remains that just making love to the same sex doesn’t actually make you gay, queer, or anything of the sort. It merely makes you human.”

“So Counsellor, it was a very human thing we just did last night, wouldn’t you say? So how can your stepfather, or God or anybody be so violently displeased by something so utterly human?”

***

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

The entire school has decided that Reid and I are lovers. They steal away the careful development of that awakening and make it something to ridicule. Now in the locker room when the guys pass around their skin magazines, they don’t even bother handing them to me. They say, “Luke ain’t into pussy. He’s got his faggot boyfriend, remember?” Crude drawings depicting Reid and I engaged in various sexual acts appear in my locker between classes. Reid has received similar pictures. My mother eventually goes to Principal Harmon with me to complain about the drawings. Principal Harmon shifts uncomfortably in his tweed suit as he examines the pictures in the harsh lighting of the office. He looks like a reluctant investigator shuffling through a stack of grisly crime scene photos. “Let’s just try to ignore these,” he says huffily, tossing the drawings in his trashcan. As he ushers us out of his office, he adds, almost apologetically, “But come back if things escalate.”

I feel a strange sense of envy for the relentless motherfuckers at school. They’ve all along had a definition for me, for what I feel, for what I am, and in their teasing and ridiculing and bullying, there is no denial and there is no question. There is no waffling. They have made the decision even as I have lived in fear of it. They have announced the decision and acted upon it, sometimes brutally, but always with a fierce certainty and loyalty to their conviction. Because of this, they are, in certain ways, better than me. They have felt no need to hide themselves in shame as I have. They have felt no need to apologise for their crass and backwards sensibilities, or seek refuge in the dark maze of denial and repression. And because of this, I hate them and envy them, their assuredness and their dumb courage.

“This is our world,” Reid says, shutting the door to his room. “Forget about those idiots. They can’t define us.” He holds a bag of frozen peas to his lip where a basketball “accidentally” hit him in P.E.

“Fuckers,” I say. “Sorry for my language.”

“A most fitting word, though,” Reid sighs, putting down the peas and opening up a pouch of Fun Dip. “Sugar is the only thing that helps in these matters.” He licks the sugar stick and wiggles it around in the pouch to collect the powdery candy.

“I’m sorry about what happened in P.E.,” I say. Reid hands me the other sugar stick and tears of the unopened grape pouch for me. We eat the Fun Dip and commiserate. We go through an old yearbook I brought over and scribble over the faces of the offending assholes. We write word bubbles by their pictures and make them say ridiculous things. “Forgot to take my Ex-Lax.” “This is your ass on drugs.” “Jock itch—a very real problem.” We chuckle evilly. Even with swollen and bloody lips, we can still laugh.


My mother continues to visit the school to express her concern about the bullying and harassment, but her worry is largely ignored. “I’m so sorry you have to deal with this Luke,” she says sadly. “I’m sorry the school is not taking this more seriously.” Sometimes I hear her crying into the phone late at night to my Grandmother Lucinda who lives in Florida. “They’ve been so cruel to him, mother.” She paces the room, and I see her shadow moving beneath the doorframe. I hear her soft words, “…new friend at school……they don’t deserve…..” and then her soft laughter as Grandmother says something to cheer her up.

“It’s so good to see you with a friend again, baby. You seem so much more relaxed,” my mother says, noticing how much time I’ve been spending with Reid over the past few weeks. She likes to say, “He’s such a nice young man. Very handsome.” She continues inviting Reid over for dinner, and each time her meals seem to get more elaborate, more experimental. She has started preparing ethnic dishes—Indian curries, Asian stir-fries, Italian stews. She makes large portions and continually replenishes our plates, especially Reid’s, who normally has three or more servings of her latest creation.

I ask Reid where he puts all of the food. “You’re so skinny,” I say, and Reid shrugs and conjectures that it is his high metabolism rate, a true genetic blessing.

We stay up late on the weekends honing our script, playing video games, watching reruns of Star Trek, eating weird combinations of non-food items like Cool Ranch Doritos dipped in ketchup, or Velveeta-wrapped pickles. We goof around with his uncle’s old IBM 5150 XX when he’s asleep, trying to write simple programs in command prompt. We start cleaning up the Engager, wiping all the surfaces down, patching up the linoleum, polishing the wood, vacuuming up the cobwebs. We do our homework together, we shovel snow for the old folks, talk about childhood memories, arm wrestle, ride bikes downtown on the sunny days, go the movies. Reid starts teaching me how to play chess, and I teach him how to play the clarinet. “I didn’t know you played a musical instrument, Snyder,” Reid says appreciatively as he examines the silver keys of my clarinet. “Quite commendable.”

“I’ve been playing since I was 10-years-old. I used to be in the high school marching band for awhile,” I say.

“And why not anymore?”

“You know…things just kind of got messed up when I was living with Damian. I stopped practising. Couldn’t really concentrate on the music anymore.”

“A shame,” Reid sighs. “I am sure you are aware that music develops brain function, Counsellor Snyder. It activates speech centres, improves and prompts memory recall, and can even strengthen gait and coordination.” Reid blows through the mouthpiece, coaxing a sharp squeak out of the clarinet. He pulls the instrument away from his mouth, frowning. “Although at the moment, it is evident that nothing is being activated inside my brain besides a headache,” he mutters.

“You need to tighten your embouchure,” I chuckle. “Curl your bottom lip under and press it flat to the reed. Bite your top teeth gently down on the top of the mouthpiece. Yeah, like that. Now make sure the reed is nice and wet. Press your tongue to it a little, and blow, but try not to puff out your cheeks.”

Reid does as instructed and tries again, and this time a tentative, airy “G” note emerges from the clarinet. I praise him heartily, drawing a pleased smile from his lips.



He is beautiful, a smooth statue of milky marble. A noble face, sculptured lips, serene, but alert eyes. I have contemplated his elegant, measured, and thoughtful movements, feeling helplessly coarse and clumsy, undefined, and undignified, next to him—but he does not appear to mind the discrepancy I perceive between our breeding. He laughs at my jokes. He extols me for my writing abilities. He treats me as an equal. I grow more relaxed with him by the day, less concerned about our differences. The differences become exciting, a revelation.

Waiting. I find myself waiting…..We fall asleep one night watching “Howard the Duck.” Our hands rest near each other’s on the bed. We wake up to a rushing screen of static, our faces shy and searching in the blue electronic light. A storm crashes violently against the Engager. The wind groans demonically through all the cracks and holes of the slowly-rotting vehicle, and thunder booms overhead. “Yes, I am scared of thunder storms,” Reid admits, gripping a pillow tightly across his chest. He presses his eyes closed, and I reach out my hand to touch him, to comfort him, but when he opens his eyes, my hand falls nervously back at my side. Waiting. Still waiting.

One evening as we are eating Top Ramen inside the Engager, Reid notices two bottles of my anti-rejection medications sitting on the counter. “Cyclosporine and Prednisone?” he asks. He holds up the bottles and shakes them around. The pills rattle inside with the sound of dice being thrown on the cosmic craps table of a troubled past. “These aren’t yours, are they?”

“They are,” I reply self-consciously. I had forgotten to return the bottles to the cupboard this morning, and because of this oversight I will need to explain to Reid why I take the medications. I am filled with dread at the thought. I had hoped that I could keep this part of myself in obscurity.

“I don’t have my medication reference book readily available to help me identify the purpose of these pills,” Reid says contemplatively. “What are they for, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“They’re anti-rejection drugs,” I sigh. “I had a kidney transplant two years ago.”

“What happened?” Reid asks in surprise.

“My dad’s death. That’s when it started.”

Reid is confused. “When what started? And your father…dead?”

I explain everything. My dad’s aneurysm. The first burning, bitter sip of wine at his funeral. The sip that turned into a glass that turned into a warm, easy escape from the desperation of loss, that turned into several years of regular stealing from my mother’s wine cabinet, and then darkened into blackouts and flunk-outs and expulsions from school, and my mother’s pleadings and breakdowns and shattered heart, and then her eventual turn to the bottle herself when my kidney became infected and it appeared there was no hope for my survival, not without a donor. Through shadowy, mob-tie means never fully explained, Damian somehow managed to purchase a kidney in Mexico that was a match, and the resulting transplant was a success, and I lived. I explain the dramatic, embarrassing and heart-wrenching turn of events as honestly as I can. I explain, in unflinching detail, the complete dysfunctional, fucked up trailer trash spectacle of it all.

Afterwards, Reid is silent for a long time. He holds onto the bottle tightly, as if testing the solid reality of what he has just heard. Finally, he speaks. He says, “That’s a hell of a story, Counsellor, and I am glad you have come out of all of this in one piece.”

“Look at you. You are all right now. You might not have been. You might not have been, and that’s all that matters.”

***

It is early in the morning when I go into my bedroom closet and pull out the small rainbow flag from underneath a pile of folded jeans on the floor. I hold the flag carefully in my palms the way I used to hold the night moths that I would catch with my dad on warm summer nights at the farmhouse. Mostly we caught the common Grey Moths that would rest on the bleached-out wood of our property’s fences, but occasionally we would find interesting specimens like the orange, poppy-coloured Regal Moth, or the exotically spotted Giant Leopard Moth. My dad taught me how to hold the moths without damaging their wings. He explained to me their scientific names, what kind of plants they ate, and how they were thought to navigate by the light of celestial bodies. I was fascinated by moths as a child and used to wrap colourful blankets around my shoulders and skip around the yard, pretending I was a moth flying my way home by the light of the moon.

I look at the colourful flag in my hands and think of the delicate wings of a moth, and I think of my dad, and I wonder what he might say if I placed this flag in his hand, not unlike the way I might place a fragile moth in his palm, telling him, “Dad, I think I might be gay.” Would he hold the flag in his hand, mindful of its delicate nature, or would he be careless and destroy the flag and the understanding it might come to represent. Would he find the flag to be beautiful, or would he think only of the destruction it might cause to the fabric of his life. Maybe he would hide the flag as I have been doing, only pulling it out in the safety of darkness, in the safety behind the closed door. He might grapple with the flag, both attracted to and repelled by its presence. He might not know what to do with the flag, and decide to set it free so that it can find another place to rest or to hide. These are the things that I think about as I hold the flag in my palms, and then carefully put it back under the pile of jeans and close the closet door.

Because of my paper route, I have grown used to getting up before dawn, and I continue to do so even on the weekends when I can sleep in. Right now it is probably 6 or 6:30 in the morning, and outside I can hear some of the devout church goers in the park opening their car doors and starting up their engines so that their windows will be defrosted by the time they are ready to leave for the 7 am service. I can hear old men clearing their throats and I can hear the querulous chatter of old ladies and the whining of little children who wish to be in their warm beds, and not out in the glassy-cold void of a sunless late March morning.

My mother remains asleep in her bedroom on the other side of the trailer. I walk quietly into the kitchen and open up the cupboard to retrieve a box of instant oatmeal, disappointed to find the only flavour left is plain. I hunt around for cinnamon and honey to add some extra flavour, but we are out of both, and so I must deal with the oatmeal on its own. Listlessly, I tear open two packages, pour the contents into a green plastic bowl, and then set the kettle on the stove to boil some water. As I am waiting for the water to boil, I flip through yesterday’s crinkled newspaper and find the comics page. I read through my favourites, work on the a few of the word puzzles, and when the water is ready, I mix a few splashes into the cereal and then head outside, bowl in hand, to the Engager.

All last night I worked on decorating the interior of the Engager so that it will resemble, as best as possible, the command deck of the Starship Enterprise. I have purchased several sheets of plexiglass from the hardware store, and have screwed them onto the overhead cabinets, painting them with various computerised lines, shapes, digits and displays. Behind them I have wired clusters of blinking Christmas tree lights that I found in our storage closet in the trailer. I’ve also laid out some old carpet scraps Reid had found behind a carpet store the other day—red and blue—the colours blanketing the floor of the Enterprise’s main bridge. On top of the counters and the fold-down dinette, I’ve secured pieces of plexiglass and am now at work decorating their surfaces with a thin brush and some paint. In between strokes, I eat my oatmeal and drink from a bottle of orange juice, and I think about that day several weeks ago when Reid had said “Luke” in his precise and deliberate way. I think about the sound of my name on his lips, my name touched to his mouth and to his life.

I work for two hours straight, take a break, and then work a half hour more. It is now 8:30 in the morning, and the sun has started to pierce the snow-saturated cloud cover, sending warm light beams the colour of candle flame slanting through the eastern windows of the Engager, giving everything inside an almost spiritual glow. Outside I notice Angus’s Chrysler Fifth Avenue cautiously backing out of the park space by the Clayton. It idles in front of Reid’s house for a few moments, and then takes off slowly down the road. Minutes later, the door to the Engager opens and Reid steps inside, rubbing his hands together briskly and blowing into his palms to keep warm.

He says, “I saw you were up. Hope it was ok that I didn’t knock, but I have good news about a potential mechanic—someone from my uncle’s work who….” And then he stops and looks around the Engager, turning himself in circles and whistling and saying, “Hold. The. Phone.” He turns around and around, murmuring, “This is stunning, Counsellor. Stunning. I am speechless.” He unwraps the scarf from around his neck and slowly lifts the wool cap from his head in a manner of someone respectfully removing a hat in front of the U.S. flag. “You did all this in less than a day?” he asks in disbelief.

“You think it looks good?” My tone is self-effacing. I bite on the end of my paintbrush and smile shyly.

“Good? Good is not the word, my friend.” Reid remarks, shaking his head. “Hold on a minute,” he says as he jams his hand into his coat pocket and pulls out a small paperback book entitled ‘Vulcan Dictionary.’ He thumbs through the pages, finds what he is looking for, and declares, “The appropriate word is ‘vaksurik’ which means ‘beautiful’ in the Vulcan language. Counsellor, this command deck is vaksurik.”

“Well, Commander,” I reply, grinning and blushing, “to that compliment, I say…” and here I take the dictionary from Reid’s hands and find the translation for “thank you.” “To that I say ‘shaya tonat.’”

“Vu dvin dor etwel.”

We laugh and fall into a shy silence, and then Reid takes one of my paintbrushes from the sink and says, “I can help out for a few of hours if you want. My uncle went to church. He’ll be gone until noon.”

“I thought he had sort of fallen away from the church,” I say, confused.

“He has, but every now and then he’ll get on one of his church kicks where he goes to services for a few weeks in a row. I think he misses the rituals and sense of belonging.”

“What’s it like at a Mormon service?” I ask. I have always been curious about the traditions of different churches. Awhile back, I wanted to write a book called “52 Weeks, 52 Gods,” a sort of journalistic documentation of my attendance of a different religious service each week of the year—just one of the many book ideas that have fallen to the wayside over the years. “Do Mormons do the bread and wine thing like the Catholic church?” I add a couple more touches to my artwork on the plexiglass. I feel Reid’s presence like a heater that suddenly kicks on, blowing warm air over cold limbs, frightened hearts.

“Yeah,” Reid says, “but I don’t think it’s as fancy as the Catholic Church’s ritual. They serve the bread on these weird metal trays, and instead of wine, they give you little thimble-size cups of water. There’s a bunch of singing, some sermons, then two hours worth of meetings and Sunday education. I found it to be, frankly, quite boring.”

“And I thought an hour was bad,” I reply, shaking my head. “We used to go to church with my stepfather. You know, the Italian Catholic thing. I was always a little bit afraid of the crucifix at the front of the church—all that blood and suffering. I remember on Holy Thursdays, we would have to kneel down in front of the cross and kiss Jesus’s bloody feet. I passed out once as I was kneeling down.” I chuckle at the memory, and Reid laughs along with me.

“You really are a sensitive kid,” he comments with an amused smile as he twirls the paintbrush between his fingers. “No stomach for violence.”

“I’ve had my days,” I answer darkly. “I’m not proud of some of the things I’ve done.”

“With your stepfather?” Reid asks hesitantly. His paintbrush glistens red and looks like a lit cigarette. I hunch over the table and drag my brush along an already-painted portion of the design.

“Yeah, with him. It was wrong……”

“Sometimes people have to fight back,” Reid says understandingly. “Defend themselves.”

“Maybe, but I didn’t like that side of myself when I was living with Damian. I felt like a different person, someone out-of-control, a short fuse. I felt like an animal sometimes.” I begin drawing a green design in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger and realise my jaw is tight and my lips are pressed hard together. Reid leans his elbow against the counter and looks at my thoughtfully.

“I think I know what you mean, Counsellor,” he says. “There were times in Berkeley where I felt that way. After that kid threw the hot chocolate on me, it was like another side of me was born. Primitive and raw. Angry. I think it’s the survival instinct we have as humans, the impulse to defend ourselves and our lives by any means possible. When we’re faced with a threat like that, sometimes our primal brain takes over. Fight or flight, as they call it.”

“I guess that’s true,” I acquiesce, “but it’s still scary that that part of ourselves can get so strong, isn’t it? I mean, as an evolving species, we should be moving away from our more brutal, animalistic natures, shouldn’t we?”

“Idealistically, yes,” Reid says. In the distance, a car backfires and some dogs start barking and howling mournfully. Reid looks over to the door, listens for a few seconds, then continues. “Our brains are big enough, endowed with the higher functions of reason and foresight, but still, we are basically animals by nature—like those howling dogs---crying out when something scared us. We’ll probably be acting as such for awhile yet. Look at some of the species in Star Trek. They are light years ahead of us in technology and science, and yet some of them are even more primal and violent than we had ever been in our history as a species.”

I nod thoughtfully. “Do you think, then, the way out of this violent fate is for us as a species to move away from human emotion? To be more logical and less emotional?”

Reid stands up and puts his hand to his chin. He walks to the front of the Engager and stares out the windshield for a few moments, and then very quietly he says, “This will sound completely out of character for me, but actually I say no, Counsellor, because I do believe that there is something to be said about these human emotions. I sometimes think that the universe has evolved to feel and understand itself through emotion. Truthfully, I think a universe devoid of feeling would be quite unpleasant and terrifyingly empty. To lose the phenomenon of emotion would, to me, be a de-volution, not an evolution. I would think it very disheartening for the world to lose sentient beings who can deeply feel things….who can feel the universe and cry for it and laugh for it and fear for it…..even love for it……..”

Reid continues gazing outside, his hands now behind his back, and in the haloed glow of morning sunlight, he appears as if he is lightly floating in place, not quite solid, not quite real. I regard him quietly for a long while, appreciating his words and insight, his statuesque beauty, and then I take up my paintbrush and slowly add more colour to the tabletop. I say softly, “I agree with you, Commander.” The Engager totters a little as Reid turns around and walks over to where I am sitting.

“It’s because I am such an agreeable person,” he replies with pretend smugness.

“Agreed,” I smile. I become acutely aware of Reid standing behind me, observing my work. I can feel his warmth, and I can hear his soft breathing and the slight rustling of his winter coat. He watches me for a few more seconds, and then leans over and picks up a bottle of paint, reading the label aloud.

“’3D washable paint. Dries raised so that your artwork pops. Non-toxic and washes from hands, face, and almost every type of clothing. Hmmm, interesting.’” He sits the bottle down and dips his paintbrush into a blob of red paint I have squeezed onto a plastic plate. I can see the scars on the insides of his wrists as he moves the bristles around in the paint. I can feel the scars burning across my skin.

“What can I help with?” Reid asks, straightening back up.

I turn my head and begin saying in an unsteady voice, “Well, you could…..” and then all at once Reid pushes the end of his saturated brush against my cheek and bursts out laughing.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he says gleefully and continues to laugh, hiccupping with the intensity of his amusement.

The paint drips down my cheek to my neck and then trails its way under my jacket collar. I lower my head, biting the surprised smile on my lips, and then I whip around and smash my brush into Reid’s unsuspecting face. When I see the bright green smear of paint on his nose and chin, I chortle and go in for a second attack, but Reid intercepts and drags his brush through my hair, wiggling it back and forth over my head like a needle on a lie detector test.

Without hesitating, I take my brush and return the favour, coating Reid’s red curls with the green paint. Reid removes his glasses and launches another assault, giggling uncontrollably. We laugh until we are out of breath as we assess each other’s handiwork, and then continue on, reloading the brushes, attacking, smearing the paint around, eventually abandoning the brushes and using our hands. I am shaking with laughter, and I am shaking with excitement and also fear. My paint-soaked hands slide over Reid’s face and arms. Our fingers grapple and lock, and then release. I feel like I am in the centre of a cyclone. The blood rushes in my ears, and my body jostles about in our playful mock-fighting as if buffeted by fierce winds. My breath is thick and fast in my throat. All I can see are Reid’s colours and then the periodic white flash of his teeth in laughter.

“Be careful of your artwork!” Reid gasps as we wrestle each other and knock up against the table. His momentary distraction allows me to go in for the kill, and I take a gob of blue paint in my hand and rub it all over his hair, his cheeks and the back of his neck. The retaliation comes swiftly. Reid grabs my wrists, locks them together, and pulls my hands above my head. We look at one another, out of breath, our mouths panting, our faces smeared. We look at one another, and the laughter drifts into quivering breaths. There is a long pause, a waiting and an unknowing that ensues. My arms begin to tremble almost violently, and my wrists throb in the grasp of Reid’s warm hands. I see his eyes and eyelashes, flecked with colour, so close and human and intricate. I feel his body shifting, his breath shifting, and I feel the meaning and the intensity in the shift. I step forward, lowering my arms, and when I do, Reid’s hands slip away with the feel of a silk cloth running over bare skin.

“What a mess,” he breath-laughs, turning away slightly. Then he smiles and raises his eyes to mine, waiting. His face glistens, covered in paint, all of his features accentuated by colour.

“A mess,” I echo quietly. My heart moves hot and fast in my ears, drowning out all other sound. I lift my hands and hold them, trembling, a few inches from either side of Reid’s face. His eyes do not break away or even blink. I close my eyes to their intensity and lose my breath for a moment, and then finding my courage, I open them and meet his gaze again. Reid’s eyes surge over in blue. There is hardly any space between us, hardly a breath. My legs shake with the urgency of breaking emotion. I move forward without any thought to the delicate movement. I am falling forward slowly, and my hands close in, gently, and I hold to Reid’s face with my fingertips, and I hold to his eyes and his soft eyelashes, and to the slight tremble of his mouth, and to the careful and respectful way he closes in to my embrace. Our lips touch, linger, drift apart, and then flow back together again, lightly pressing to each other, astoundingly sweet and astoundingly powerful. The air quivers warmly between the chaste, careful kisses. I can feel the soft curve of Reid’s mouth over mine, his breathy sighs, and even through the wet tang of the paint, I can taste his richness, earth-deep, warm and brown like sand. Our eyes close. Reid’s hands are at my waist, resting just above my hips, lightly, like a fresh root grazing the land. I feel his hands pulling me forward, and it is as if I am being carried along by a slow-moving wave.

“Is this ok?” Reid whispers, kissing my cheek, holding his lips there.

“Yes,” I breathe, my eyelashes fluttering. He moves his kisses to my brow, my closed eyes, the corners of my mouth. I tremble and sigh and bring my lips to his--his lips and warmth flooding me with desire.

I had no understanding before of what it meant to feel passion. I had excluded myself from that experience. I had feared it and misunderstood it, and I had condemned myself for my confusion surrounding it. But there is no confusion now. There is only the purity of feeling and breath, and the clean and tender heat of blood-warmth and desire. There are only our hands holding to each other’s bodies, as if to anchor us to the earth, as if to assure ourselves of our still-physical nature, even though it seems like we are dissolved now, more feeling than being, losing cognitive awareness, but gaining depth and force and strength of emotion as we continue to kiss one another softly.

This is what it must be to be truly human and truly alive—this emptying of the self to the other, this slow dissolution of the perceived borders, the clattering thoughts and deeply-held inhibitions. This is what it is—to feel the kisses flow like wine through the vein. To feel them flow with the force and blood-certainty of existence.

The understanding comes easily. I feel Reid and I understand. We kiss a parting kiss and open our eyes and see things differently. Everything appears brighter, more defined. Our colours mingle—red, green, blue. Reid says in a voice of bliss and relief, “I have been wanting to do that for a long, long time.” He touches my cheek and looks at me carefully. “I just want to be sure you are ok with what happened.”

“I am.” I smile quietly. “I think I’m more ok than I have been in a long time.”

“Because we can go back to how things were before. I am prepared to do that….”

“No,” I say. “Look at me. Look at my hands.” I hold my trembling hands up and say, “I’m shaking because of how strongly I feel about you, Reid.”

Reid sighs, closes his eyes and smiles. “What a nice thing to hear.” He takes my hands and places them flat against his chest and says, “Can you feel how fast my heart is going?” He unzips his jacket and pushes my hands inside to his chest as hot as a radiator. “I guess I’m not a robot after all.”

I hold my hands to Reid’s chest and feel the strong currents of his blood moving underneath my fingertips and along my limbs and into my consciousness. I feel his vulnerability and emotion. I feel more close to him than I have ever felt to anyone in my life, and it is intoxicating and sensual and exhilarating. It is honest. It is human.

“You said you don’t trust anyone,” Reid says softly. He breathes in deeply and places his hands over mine. “Have I changed your mind at all?”

“You have,” I answer. “I trust you.” I move my hands from his chest up to his shoulders, and Reid says, “This isn’t something to hide, is it?”

“Only from people who don’t understand,” I say. I find his lips and kiss them again—shivering, emotional kisses. Reassuring kisses. Suddenly hiding does not feel as cold and tomb-like as it did before. There is someone to confront the darkness with, someone solid to feel in the blankness of isolation. I draw Reid closer, pulling him against me, pulling him warm and flush with my body. “Why didn’t I do this sooner,” I whisper against his cheek. I can feel him tremble and take in a long, shuddering breath. He murmurs into my shoulder, “I’ve never really been….hugged…..it’s overwhelming.”

“I feel safer now,” I sigh. Reid nods, and we say nothing for a long time. We embrace one another and align our breath into a calm and reassuring rhythm, and after awhile, I realise more deeply the meaning of this experience--how I have welcomed a new sense of myself with it, and how the fear and angst are fading, bleached to a softer hue by exposure to a more honest and human light. I can feel the stone rolling away from the entrance to the tomb. My body will no longer be inside there. It is somewhere else now, resurrected from the long, drawn-out agony of misunderstanding, hatred and fear.

***

The next evening I climb into the driver’s seat of the station wagon and push the keys into the ignition. My mother sits in the passenger seat and buckles her seat belt. We will be making a run to Safeway to pick up some bread, milk, eggs and ground beef, and because I am driving, we will also be adding to my driving hours for my learner’s permit. I am only three practise hours away from being able to apply for my license, but it feels like three years.

“You look so happy today, Luke,” my mother observes. She pinches my cheek and asks what all the smiling is about. I shift the car into reverse, check the rear view mirror, and try to hide my red face as I turn to check my blind spot. My mother is not a nervous passenger and so does not flinch when I narrowly miss scraping our mailbox as I back out of the carport. She adjusts her seatbelt and says I’m doing a great job.

“So tell me, baby. What’s got you so happy today?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just feeling good,” I answer casually. A couple of dogs--Australian shepherds--begin chasing the car, biting at the wheels, but eventually lose interest when I pick up speed. The snow-studded tires crunch along the dry asphalt. Overhead, the sky is deeply saturated with blue, violet and orange, and etched with the calligraphic patterns of the trailer park maples and pines. My mother leans forward and turns up the radio and smiles. “The Promise” by When in Rome plays mildly in the background, and my mother taps her fingers against her knees and murmurs along with the tune. “Well, you look radiant, baby,” she says in between lyrics. “Like you’re in love.”

I laugh and grip the steering wheel. The emotions surge, and I laugh again. The fading day glints low across the dirty windshield as I make a left onto 4th Street. I can feel Reid’s lips sealing themselves over mine, a deep, red seal, like the kind on old letters.

I’m sorry but I’m just thinking of the right words to say
I know they don’t sound the way I plan them to be

My mother is humming now to the song, but I can feel her attention focused and waiting on what I will say. I check left, right, left, at a stop sign and continue onward.

But if you wait around awhile, I’ll make you fall for me
I promise you, I promise you I will

We are almost to Safeway. Cars move along the quiet streets with their headlights throbbing and sweeping like fire torches passing from hand to hand in the dark. I slow down for a woman crossing the street with two crying children on either side of her. The brakes are touchy and we jolt a little as we come to the stop. “I should get those fixed,” my mother says absently. My chest presses up against the seat belt, and I think of Reid pressed up against me in the embrace, and my heart quivers in flames.

I need to tell ya
Gotta tell ya
I’ve gotta tell ya

In the Safeway parking lot, I ease the station wagon into a spot near the front of the store. My mother praises me for the job well done and pats me on the arm. She says proudly, “You’ll pass your driver’s exam with flying colours. I can already tell.” Her voice is husky from all the years of smoking, and also her nostalgia and tender sorrow. “My baby, all grown up.” She sighs and presses her lips together, her chin wobbling.

“Mom, don’t cry,” I say softly. “Don’t cry.” Tears roll down my mother’s cheeks, grey and watery, and she wipes them away with an apologetic laugh.

“Oh I know I’m so silly. I get so silly over things like this.” She pulls a crumpled tissue out of her purse and dabs at her cheeks and her eyes. The tissue becomes soaked with her sad-happy tears, and she clutches the soggy remnants of it tightly in her hand as she speaks. “But you just seems so happy, like you used to be when you were a little boy, all smiles and dimples, running with your little bare feet in the summer grass. Do you remember, baby? You used to love being chased in the corn stalks and tickled on your tummy. Your dad would toss you up into the air and you would squeal and laugh and ask him to do it again. And then he would take you to the wooden swing on that big old oak tree and push you back and forth, and you would say, ‘Higher daddy!’ You were so precious!” She finds another crumpled tissue in her purse and blows her nose loudly into it, closing her eyes and then trembling a smile. “You still are!” Her voice breaks, and she apologises again for her emotions and reminiscing, but I tell her she has nothing to be sorry for.

“Thank you, baby.” The tears continue to fall.

I squeeze her hand and feel my confession squeezing at my chest. People walk by the car with shopping carts clattering against the rough asphalt. Car doors slam, trunks open and close, and the loud crinkling of paper and plastic bags wafts through the air. I hold onto my mother’s hand. Our held hands rest on the console between us, and every now and then I will feel my mother’s fingers grip a little tighter to my own.

“Mom,” I say. I want to share with her what has happened. She has told me that she will love me no matter what. She has told me I am still precious, that I am her baby, and I always will be. I need to know if this is the truth. I believe that it is.

“Mom,” I say again. She looks over to me and smiles. The memory of Reid’s kiss warms in my body like a swallow of dark, red wine. I take in many deep breaths, and my mother continues to smile and hold onto my hand that now trembles beneath her fingers.
A cart bangs into the back of the car, but we don’t acknowledge it, and neither does the perpetrator. “Luke,” my mother says. “What is it?” Her eyes quiver in the red glow of the big Safeway “S” on the side of the building.

I turn away and look out the windshield and watch the automatic doors opening and closing, letting people in and out of the store. My body shakes, quick little shivers as if it were cold. When the Safeway doors stop moving, I say, very quietly, “Mom, I’m gay.”

There is a long, loud sigh, like a strong gust of wind, but I don’t know if it is me or if it is my mother, or if it is both of us—the held-in breath, the waiting, the exhalation of uncertainty, rushing out over the lips through the confessed words “I’m gay.” It is done. I’m out. I. Am. Out. I feel my mother’s other hand covering mine, squeezing my circulation like a blood pressure cuff until the blood beats hard against my skin.
She lifts my hand, swings it back and forth slowly and then kisses it. “I know, baby,” she whispers, “and I’m so glad you told me.”

I turn my head quickly and look at her in surprise. “Yes, I know,” she repeats. “And it doesn’t change anything. I love you. I will always love you.” She kisses my hand again, and my mouth falls open, words trying to form, but nothing comes.

Finally I say, “You already knew,” and she nods and says she has known for a long time. She was just waiting for me to come to her. She was waiting for me to feel ready. “I didn’t want to take that away from you. It’s a personal decision to come out, and I knew it had to be on your own terms,” she explains. She pulls me into a fierce hug, the stick shift crushing into my side. “Oh sweetie, I love you.”

“I love you too, mom,” I say into her shoulder. I sigh and relax into the embrace. I feel like Sisyphus releasing his impossible boulder and letting it roll and crash and explode down the mountainside. It is satisfying to hear the enormous weight of the rock shattering into dust and rubble. I begin to cry.

“We have so much to talk about,” my mother says as she smoothes her hand over my hair and cheek. “I’m just so proud of you, my beautiful baby boy.” We cry together for a little while, and then we wipe our eyes with powdery fragments of old Kleenex, sniffling and laughing in the face of a new era.

We enter the store with red and swollen eyes and runny noses. We fill a hand basket with our groceries and talk about Reid. My mother asks me if I have feelings for him, if we have feelings for each other, and I say yes and start smiling uncontrollably as the whole world opens up for me in the middle of Aisle 9.

“He is such a nice young man,” my mother says as she pulls a package of Wonder Bread from the shelf and drops it into the basket. “He’s good for you.” The conversation moves along normally—no hesitations, raised eyebrows, angry accusations, displeased looks. In the space of an hour, in the space of one accepting smile and gentle embrace, years of turmoil rush away. The normal becomes heightened—a shopping list checked off, groceries scanned and bagged, coins placed in an open palm—all of it seems like a miracle. I feel like I have been invited back to the human race.

At home my mother decides she will make a meatloaf and asks me if I want to invite Reid over. She cracks two eggs into a large, glass bowl and then adds a pound of raw ground chuck and a cup of Heinz ketchup and begins smooshing the mixture together with her hands. When I confirm that Reid will be coming over at 7:30, she smiles.

Later, I see her pull a cellophane-wrapped single white rose from a plastic Safeway bag. I had not seen her purchase the rose, but then I remember that she had run back into the store to grab an Enquirer, and realise that she must have bought it then. She unwraps the rose and places it in a green vase covered in diamond-shaped patterns of cut glass. The rose is covered in dew, as if it has just been plucked from a garden early in the morning. “New beginnings,” she says, sitting the vase in the centre of the table. “Kind of a nice symbol, isn’t it?” I look at the rose, feeling the white petals and the glow of the petals, clean and invigorating, inside my blood.

Later, I will take this same rose and offer it to Reid, saying, “Not too sentimental, is it?” and he will say, “I have been studying the art of romance lately, and I need to practise.” He will pull off one of the buttery white petals and place it like the holy Eucharist on his tongue, and then take my hands and draw me forward to taste the rose and the sweetness of his mouth, murmuring, “Have I learned well?”

***

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It is nearly midnight on a Friday night, but we are still wide awake and alert. We have just finished counting out our combined stashes of money. After four weeks of shovelling snow and throwing papers and the occasional grocery store run for an elderly person who doesn’t want to brave the treacherous streets, we have amassed $239.54. We dump the money onto the Engager bed and take turns rolling around in it as if we are millionaires. It almost feels like we are. Some of the bills stick to our clothes and then fall off onto the floor, along with a few coins that roll under the bed. The atmosphere is one of glee. We throw wads of crinkled, dirty bills into the air and let them rain down over our heads. We say hopeful things like, “Maybe in another month’s time we can afford to hire a mechanic for the Engager.” We clink our soda cans and drink to the pile of money on the bed.

I am wearing my new Star Trek uniform that I have ordered from a catalogue for $18.95 plus $2.95 shipping and handling. The Uniform is grey blue to denote my status as counsellor. My Federation badge glints in the low lamplight. Reid presses the badge on his uniform and says, “Data to Captain Picard. We seem to have come into a strange money cloud off the starboard bow. How shall we proceed?” I press my badge and say, “With caution. Money clouds can often be a disorienting trap. Keep shields up as we enter. I want a full scan run on the cloud--what kind of currency is it made up of, the dimensions and density.”

“Aye, Captain,” Reid says, tapping his badge again.

We chuckle to ourselves and begin collecting the money and returning it to the coffee can. “I can’t believe you hit that one lady in the face,” Reid snickers as he dumps a handful of quarters into the can. “Sounds like it served her right.”

“Yeah, I guess it did,” I laugh. “But I felt so bad!” I chuckle again, remembering the way her glasses had been knocked crooked on her face.

“You sure you didn’t do that on purpose?” Reid teases.

“No!” I say as I playfully tousle his hair. I sit back quickly, my hand and arm on fire. I’ve never touched Reid intentionally before—not like this—not with friendly affection. It came out of nowhere, my playful gesture. Have I offended him? I look away, pretending to absorb myself in the collection of the money. I can feel Reid’s eyes upon me. He has stopped collecting the money and sits quietly, looking at me for a few moments, then he slowly resumes his task of putting the money into the coffee can that sits between us in the centre of the bed.

“Anyway,” he laughs quietly. “It’s a hilarious story. I wish I could have seen that.”

I nod, my cheeks warming. We push our hands through the wad of bills, and sometimes our fingers touch, and suddenly, I feel Reid’s hand grasping my own underneath the blanket of money. He holds onto my hand, his eyes lowered to the bed. His fingers are warm and soft and burn into my skin with the strange fire of pleasure. I do not move my hand away. I do not breathe. After several moments, Reid slowly begins to lift my hand upwards toward his lips. My body trembles as he leans forward and places his lips onto the back of my hand. I can feel his soft breath on my skin. I can feel the way his lips move with his kiss, the slight pressure of it, like the edge of a bird’s wing fanning over my hand. I suck in my breath and close my eyes, absorbed into the sensation, and then all at once, I am ripping my hand away and shoving hard and fast against Reid’s shoulders. He falls backwards onto the mattress and stays there, unmoving, as I stand up and walk away from the bed, running my hands through my hair, pacing back and forth, my heart clenched and in pain.

“I’m sorry,” I say in an agonised whisper. “I just can’t…..”

Reid straightens up and smoothes the front of his uniform. He clears his throat and then in a voice full of misgiving, he says, “No, Counsellor, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was inappropriate of me, but I’m glad we got it straightened out.” He gets up from the bed and shovels the last of the bills into the can. “I hope this incident will not interfere with our friendship,” he says, keeping his eyes fixed to the can.

“It won’t,” I say. My throat burns.

“Good. Then I shall say goodnight. Goodnight, Counsellor.” Reid nods crisply in my direction and then leaves the room. I hear the door opening and closing, and then his footsteps crunching through the packed-down snow along the trail to his house. I stand in the room for a long time, holding the hand that he had kissed to my chest as if I am cradling the body of a deeply wounded, or deeply loved, creature in my arms.


***

Days pass, and then the weekend comes. It’s as if nothing has happened, nothing has changed. Reid exhibits no tension, no awkwardness. He talks to me just as he always has. He wears the uniform. He drinks Coke. Watches TV. I begin to wonder if I have just imagined the occurrence in the Engager, but the hand he had kissed still feels warmer than the rest of my body. I still remember his quiet lips like rain on my skin. I couldn’t have imagined this, but yet there is no acknowledgement of the gesture to confirm otherwise. I am confused and even hurt by the way we are handling the situation, but I am too afraid to say anything. I am too afraid to know what I want or what I feel. I want to apologise for my harsh reaction, but the apology never comes. It continues on like this for many days.

Saturday is the day of our first scheduled rehearsal. We all meet, scripts in hand, at Reid’s place at noon. All of the recruited actors are here except for Noah. There is a sense of anticipation, nervousness, and curiosity among the group as they shuffle into Reid’s living room and seat themselves on the orange couch, the floor, and the naugahyde armchair in the corner. I am on the couch next to Reid, and already I am trembling at his nearness. The script quivers in my hands as I take roll call and then ask everyone to stand up and assume their positions. Trevor Keating (Picard) and Will Jackson (Worf) are wearing uniforms they have bought from the same catalogue where I have purchased mine. Julie Anderson (Dr. Crusher) and Lenny Opfer (Riker) wear black slacks, solid-coloured shirts, and badges that I have cut out from cardboard and spray-painted silver and gold. Will has the most elaborate costume. Across his chest he wears a wide silver band made out of dozens of bottle caps. He has sculpted from clay Worf’s brain-like ridges on top of his head, colouring them rich brown with acrylic paint. “I’m even growing a goatee for this part,” he says proudly. We all stare in admiration.

As we are preparing to read through the first scene, Reid’s Uncle Angus enters the living room carrying a plateful of grilled cheese sandwiches. This is only the third or fourth time I’ve seen Angus, even though I’ve been coming over weekly to watch Star Trek on Reid’s television. Angus has the same red hair, blue eyes and fair skin as Reid--thin like him, too. He looks how I imagine Reid will look in 20 years, except he’s several inches shorter than Reid and has a beard and wears polyester suits from the 70’s.

Angus places the sandwich plate on the laminated burl coffee table and says, “Help yourself, kids. There’s more in the kitchen if you need extras.” He nods hello to me as he wipes his hands on a mustard-coloured cloth napkin he had been carrying in his pocket. “How’s it going, Luke,” he says pleasantly. He waves toward a chess board set up on a TV tray to the right and asks if Reid has suckered me into playing a game with him yet.

“No, not yet,” I laugh politely.

Reid says, “Most people find chess incredibly boring, Angus. I wouldn’t want to put Luke through that agony.”

I glance down at the script, smiling shyly. This is the first time I have heard Reid say my name. He has always called me Counsellor or Mr. Snyder, or just Snyder, but never Luke. Coming from his lips, my name sounds like an interesting foreign word that I have never heard before, and I find myself wanting him to say it again, like an eager parent who wants to hear his child repeat that first precious word. But Reid turns his attention back to the script, motioning for Angus to leave as he calls out, “All quiet on the set,” and I must wait until another time to hear my name spoken again.

The afternoon moves on. We eat the sandwiches, drink pop, and practise the first two scenes for an hour. Reid stands in for La Forge until we can find a suitable replacement. Everyone does fairly well with their lines, although Julie complains that she does not have enough “screen time.” She stops in the middle of one of her lines, smoothes her hands over her thick red hair, and proclaims that her character has been more neglected than anyone else’s. She questions whether or not this because she is the only female character in the script, and if her lack of lines isn’t a subtle form of sexism, a way to subjugate women in positions of power.

“But you see, you play a pivotal role later in the script. See, right here,” Reid explains patiently, pointing to a scene where Dr. Crusher overcomes her shadow-self’s deepest fears of inadequacy and saves Captain Picard’s life. “You’re basically the hero who saves the day,” he says.

“I guess,” she sighs, looking unconvinced. “But I still think I should have more action in the beginning.

In the middle of the third scene, someone knocks on the front door, and when Reid opens it, Noah walks in wearing a militaristic-looking uniform. “Sorry, this is all I had for now by way of uniforms,” he says breathlessly as he chucks a rucksack onto the floor. “I guess I decided I could star in your film, but only if my name is changed to protect my identity,” he adds. “Anyway, I’ve been learning how to edit film and direct and stuff, so I thought maybe you could use some help that way.” He stands alert as if waiting for a military order, shoulders back, legs straight, his razor-nicked chin lifted upwards toward the ceiling.

For a moment, there is an uncertain silence, and Reid and I exchange looks, not sure what to do. Then Reid steps forward and says, “Very well, Mr. Mayer,” and smiles professionally as he hands him a script and ushers him into the room. “We Xeroxed an extra-large print copy for you so you can easily read the words in case your eyes are still giving you trouble. We’ve just started scene two. This is where you meet your alter ego, the one who has no math or engineering smarts and is content to work a janitorial position cleaning toilets at a local school.”

“Right on,” Noah says, grabbing the script almost violently and skimming through it. He stops on a certain page and frowns. “But how are we going to have two of me in these scenes?”

“That’s where your editing skills might come in handy,” Reid says. “We decided that it would be more intriguing to have the same actor play the two different roles. We would film the scene in two parts, one where we are acting as our real selves, and the other as our shadow selves. Maybe you can help us figure out the best way to do that.”

“All right,” Noah replies eagerly. He flicks the script a couple of times with his middle finger and smiles briefly with his mouth closed. “But like I said, only if I’m called by my alias during this whole production.” He cracks his knuckles and then yawns and readjusts his groin area.

“What is your alias, then?” Reid asks.

“Buck Wildcat.”

A few snickers escape the group, and Noah looks around the room, glaring. “Shut up! Just shut up!” His voice cracks with anger and pubescent strain.

“All right, all right, let’s settle down,” Reid says calmly as he holds up his hands to silence the crew. “We will all from here on out refer to Mr. Mayer as Buck Wildcat. Understood?” He turns his head from side to side and looks everyone in the eye. When he meets my eyes, we share a bewildered smile.

“Aye aye captain,” Trevor says in his clipped English accent, and a few of us chuckle good-naturedly.

I try to decide if I have misjudged this Noah kid. Maybe it wasn’t him that I had seen in the group of assholes bullying me that one day at school. And if it was, maybe he’s had a change of heart. He seems like a wildcard, though, an angry person. My gut doesn’t settle right at the sight of him, my sense of security breaks down. I watch him closely for the rest of the afternoon, and after we are done practising and all the kids have left, I approach Reid and say, “I don’t think I trust that kid Noah. I don’t think it’s a good idea we have him as part of the film.”

Reid makes a tepee out of his hands and presses it to his lips in contemplation. He sits in the naugahyde chair and swivels himself back and forth as he thinks. “You can sense things that I can’t, Counsellor…” he begins thoughtfully.

“Luke,” I cut in. “You called me Luke today when you were talking with your uncle about chess.”

“A momentary lapse of etiquette, Counsellor Snyder, one that I assure you won’t happen again.”

“No,” I say quickly. “No, I want you to call me Luke. I want you to call me by my first name.”

I stand before Reid embarrassed, uncertain and afraid. Our eyes meet fleetingly, and then I look away and grab my script off the coffee table, pretending to study it intently. Reid rises from the chair and walks over to my side. He says in a quiet voice, “I can call you Luke, if you want.”

“It’s…it’s ok. Counsellor is fine. I was just…” I bluster, shuffling through the script. From somewhere in the back hallway, a door shuts, and I clear my throat. “Anyway, about Noah….your opinion on that, Commander……”

Reid steps away, his hands behind his back. I can feel his sudden distance the same way I might feel one of my limbs being torn off. “I can understand your concern about him,” Reid responds diplomatically. “I myself am not sure he is to be trusted, especially considering that he might have been a bully toward people different than himself.”

“I don’t know……maybe we could give him a trial run…..” My suggestion sounds doubtful.

“He might genuinely be interested in participating……” Reid ponders. He walks over to the front window and rests his hands on the windowsill. “It’s hard to know the motives of human beings sometimes…..It all boils down to a matter of trust in many cases. Sometimes blind trust.”

He turns around and folds his arms across his chest. “But I know that it is difficult for you to trust others. You have been given plenty of reasons not to.”

“I’m working on that,” I say quietly. I absently pick up a cold grilled cheese sandwich wedge from the coffee table and take a tentative bite. “I guess we can just keep a close eye on him. Give him the benefit of the doubt for now…..” I stuff the rest of the sandwich in my mouth and feel my jaw crack as I chew.

“I will trust your judgment on this one, Counsellor,” Reid says officially. “I know I have expressed my own share of doubt about Noah, rather unkindly as I recall, but I’m rethinking things, trying to approach this scientifically. I’ve done some equations, and according to my estimates, it appears there is about a 13% chance Noah might be a problem. What do you think about those odds, Counsellor?”

I laugh and shrug. “Not bad, I guess.”

“Well, we’ll trust those odds for now and see what happens,” Reid says. He walks over to the coffee table and takes a sandwich for himself. He tears off little pieces and chews each piece quietly and thoughtfully. “By the way,” he says in-between bites, “Who was it that you thought you saw Noah picking on? Is it anyone I know?”

“Uh, no…no, it was just some kid. I don’t think he even goes to school here anymore,” I stammer, looking away, hiding again. The Grandfather clock chimes the Westminster tune and then gongs four times. I bite nervously at a hangnail on my right index finger. I thought I was ready to be more brave than this. Hadn’t I been challenging myself for weeks now riding past Damian’s house, preparing myself for a confrontation, preparing to assert myself, defend myself? I realise that my morning forays into Damian’s shadowy world have been some sort of trial, a kind of self-designed psychological exercise to prepare me to confront my fear and own who I am in the face of certain ego-death. Obviously, I have failed this exercise. In the heat of my inner battles, I have forgotten everything I have practised, forgotten what I am fighting against and why. The righteous battle cry has been lost to the din of the collective prejudices and misunderstandings of the world. The rainbow flag I secretly bought two weeks ago at a PFLAG meeting downtown remains hidden in fearful obscurity at the back of my closet, and so do I.

I look at Reid and see someone who has emerged from the societal battlefield as a victor. He has been told by his family and the culture at large that he is essentially a plaything of the devil, an unfortunate specimen of humanity, a sexual deviant who has been willingly tempted away from God’s eternal reward by Satan himself. Yet in the midst of the bloody ruckus of condemnation, rejection, unkind words and unkind feelings, Reid has not forgotten his own personal protocol. He has not forgotten himself. He has faced the threats bravely and refused to apologise or hide in shame. He has the scars, and the strength and inspiration from those scars, to prove it.

One afternoon about a week ago, Reid had rolled up his sleeves and shown me several pale, slightly raised and irregularly-bordered portions of skin running from the middle of his inner forearms down to the tips of his elbows.

“They look like blisters,” I had said.

“Scars from hot water burns,” Reid had corrected me. “When I was in the eighth grade, a kid from school had thrown a scalding cup of hot chocolate at my face when he found out I was gay. Luckily, I saw it coming and was able to shield myself with my arms. Some of it splashed on my face, but only a tiny bit of a scar remains near my jaw.” Here, he had turned his face and pointed to a small pinkish line curving from his right ear to his jaw line.

“Jesus!” I had exclaimed, staring in horror at the scars. “Did it hurt?”

“I strangely did not feel a thing. The doctors said it was because of the natural pain-fighting endorphins that kicked in after the water had hit my skin.”

“What about that kid? Did he get in trouble for what he did?”

“Expelled from school. My uncle tried to press charges, but the police bought the kid’s defence that he was just playing around and had thought the cup was full of cold water. Nothing ever came of it. My uncle decided to immediately removed me from that school and enroll me in another one.” Reid pushed down his sleeves and then had shocked me by saying that he was glad that the kid had assaulted him with the hot chocolate. “That day in the emergency room, I realised what I wanted to do in my life was become a doctor. I wanted to help save people’s lives, and I had never really understood that clearly until that moment.”

“A doctor? Wow—that’s awesome,” I said admiringly.

Reid had touched the scar on his jaw and replied, “’It would seem that evil retreats when forcibly confronted.’ Yarnek of Excalbia said that, stardate 5906.5’ I confronted the evil of the act. It retreated. And now I want to be a neurosurgeon. I want to fix people’s brains. Hot chocolate lead me to this pivotal decision in my life. Can you believe it?”

“Yes, I can. But hot chocolate has never had such a profound effect on me, I am afraid. You put the rest of us mere mortals to shame, Commander.”

“Oh I am mortal, dear Counsellor, terribly so at times. Of that I can assure you,” Reid countered, affecting a polished and proper tone of speech. And then he had cracked open a Coke, and taking a hearty swig, had burped loudly afterwards to prove his point.



Thinking of that moment when Reid had revealed his scars, I feel suddenly exposed and inferior in the presence of his calm, intelligent, and proud demeanour. I gather the pages of my script and say, somewhat clumsily, “Well, I guess I’ll see ya later, then.” I feel unworthy of standing before his scarred body in the way someone might feel unworthy standing before the cross and the bloody wounds of Christ. I do not know how to regard Reid in these moments. He seems superhuman in a way, hovering somewhere just above the normal realm of the human condition. Is it his manner of speech, his frighteningly clever mind, the rational, scientific way he sees the world, his seeming mastery over the baser emotional triflings of humankind, his erudite and regal features, startling in their demonstration of classical beauty? It must be all of these things, combined in one inspiring and intriguing figure more intricate and puzzling to me than this weird universe full of unknown mysteries. I can’t completely fathom the depth and vastness of what I’m seeing in Reid. I can only wonder and appreciate it for the enigma that it is and how it is radically changing my life, my mind, my soul.

On my way out the door, I hear Reid speaking to me from across the universe. His voice turns my body around the way a bright star turns my eyes skyward to pinpoint its location. Reid stands at the Grandfather clock on the other side of the room, one hand resting at his side, the other pressed flat against the polished, pale-wood of the clock as if he is feeling for its heartbeat. He seems to sense the sudden distance between us, and as if throwing out a rope to draw me back over to his side of the world, or to take another gamble and swing himself back into mine, he says, “You don’t have to go so soon. I haven’t said anything wrong, have I?”

“No.” I smile and shake my head. “I’m just….tired I guess.”

Reid looks at me quietly, a half-smile on his face. Is he thinking about that night he kissed my hand? He believes he has offended me, and I’ve done nothing to suggest otherwise. But he hasn’t offended me. He’s opened me up, challenged me, dragged my fears out into the light. Not forcibly, but with the quiet force of his presence. I want to tell him, “It’s ok that you kissed my hand.” I want to offer my hand again to his lips in a sentimental display of old-fashioned romance. No one this day and age does that—kisses hands. You see that in black and white movies, but this is happening now--this is happening in my life—in colour--with Reid. My hand throbs as if I’m holding my heart in my palm. I’m scared. I’m on the threshold. I could walk over to where he stands right now and leave behind the old and tired ways, all the denial and uncertainty, but I waver at the door.

Reid allows me my hesitations. He lets me retreat and says, “I’ll call you later on the walkie talkie.”

But at the last moment as I disappear out the door, he adds, with a voice of knowing and gentle persistence, “Luke.”

I smile long and late into the night.

***

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

Two days have passed, and the snow has fallen to the height of our knees, and the sun remains buried in the grey clouds of winter. We have tramped down a wide, icy path between our houses, and we have spent many hours brainstorming and typing and correcting and reading our script. Reid has titled it “Star Trek Phase II: The Other Half.” Our story involves the Starship Enterprise encountering a strange planet where the crew is confronted with replicas of themselves, only these replicas are the “shadow-halves,” the darker, misunderstood, or feared sides of their personalities. For instance, a crewmember who grapples with a secret propensity towards violence, will meet his shadow self, a brutal and aggressive amalgam of his darker nature. These difficult encounters will force the crew to face and understand—to embrace, overcome, change or accept---the more troubling aspects of their humanity.

We act out various scenes as we sit in his room, a large metal bowl full of popcorn and a purring Antoine between us, cans of soda pop fizzing nearby. We do our homework in-between scenes, and when 4 o’clock approaches, we call it a day and part ways.

I am glad for the break from school, a reprieve from the bullying. I am glad for Reid’s company, his quirky, distracting ways. He wears his Star Trek uniform and badge and teaches me the terminology and history of the show. He says, “We need to get you a uniform.” We pore through his Star Trek catalogues and decide we will need to get part time jobs in order to save up money to purchase props and uniforms, and also to pay for airfare and lodging for the trip to Oregon.

“I think we can do it,” Reid says confidently. “We have to be there in person. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

We start shovelling snow from people’s driveways and walkways on the second day of our suspension. One of the old ladies who hires me chooses to pay me in cookies. She pats me on the head and says, “You are such a sweet boy,” and hands me a tin of homemade sugar cookies. “I’ve even frosted them,” she says proudly.

Reid has fared better. By the end of the second day he has $20, compared to my $10 and a dozen cookies. “What can I say? Women like a man in uniform,” he explains as he stuffs a cookie into his mouth.

On the third day we work on a pivotal scene where my character faces a grossly overweight and gluttonous version of himself. “On the show, Counsellor Troi’s one indulgence is sweets. She loves chocolate, so I thought it would be fitting that your character will be met head on with the more sinister side of dietary indulgences,” Reid explains.

“So we’ll need an overweight person to play this other version of myself? That could be a touchy issue,” I sigh as I scribble some notes in the margins of the script.

“I see your point,” Reid concurs. “Maybe we could just stuff someone with pillows. My uncle has a million extra pillows in the linen closet. I think it’s that Mormon thing about stocking up on supplies.”

“Good idea,” I say. I shuffle through the pages of the script and then ask, “So, what could Data’s darker side be? Do robots have such a thing?”

“I’ve been thinking about this a great deal,” Reid says, cracking open a Coke. “I think for Data, his dark side would involve misuse of power. As a machine, he could technically have unlimited access to information that could put him in control of the crew and the ship. Without the human restraints of conscience or morality, he could be the ultimate bad guy.”

“A sociopathic robot,” I say, nodding. “That’s perfect.”

We go through a list of possible candidates for actors. “I’ve done some research,” Reid says, handing me the list. “These are kids who are pretty mellow. I don’t think they’ve been involved in any of the bullying going on. Correct me if I am mistaken.”

LIST:

Captain Picard: Trevor Keating. Just moved to Oakdale from England. Intelligent, well-spoken, fitting accent.

Commander Riker: Lenny Opfer, a no-nonsense kid, suave, cocky. Enjoys soccer and chasing girls.

Lieutenant Worf: Will Jackson. Strong, intimidating looking, but a good-natured guy.

Dr. Crusher: Julie Anderson. Red-hair. Always talking about how she wants to go to medical school. Perfect match.

Commander LaForge: Noah Mayer. Recently suffered an eye injury from a fireworks accident and must wears strange, futuristic looking glasses to protect his vision in bright light.

“I think everyone on here is clean,” I say. I glance down to Noah’s name and feel a tremor of uncertainty, but I push it away.

“You never did tell me what your punishment was for our little infraction at school,” Reid says after we have finished discussing the list. He looks over to me expectantly and adds, “I hope it wasn’t severe.”

“Nah,” I say, shaking my head. “It was pretty much like yours. An early curfew, but also no video games and no TV.”

Reid considers this a moment and then sighs. “I guess it could have been worse, but I’m sorry all the same.”

“You don’t have anything to apologise for. I feel like I should actually be thanking you,” I say, somewhat shyly. “I mean, I’ve never stood up to those assholes before. I’ve just let them have at it day in and day out.”

“It was like that back in Berkeley,” Reid says. “The kids were merciless there. I even switched schools once because of the bullying.”

“Man, that’s rough.” My chest hurts as I think about Reid being taunted and abused. And now it’s followed him to a new school, all because of me. His secret would have been safe if he hadn’t decided to befriend me.

As if reading my mind, Reid says, “It’s inevitable, Counsellor. It doesn’t matter how well-hidden I keep the truth, how deep in the closet I stay. Somehow they always find out, but I can’t put my life on hold because of them. I can’t cut myself off from people and the world. I have to keep living my life in a way that’s honest and true to who I am, even if that means I suffer the consequences of other people’s bigoted attitudes. It’s been the same thing for marginalized people throughout history. The only way it gets better is to stop being ashamed.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I say quietly. “You’re right.” I lower my eyes and feel disappointment tightening my gut. I have been weak. My confusion and fear have made me weak. I go over Reid’s words in my head. He speaks honestly and plainly. He speaks in a human way, a way that makes sense, a way that answers questions, a way that makes it all seem so simple. But yet it is not simple, and the questions come endlessly, and all remains jumbled in my mind.

I feel now we are the characters in our script, two figures looking at one another across the divide. Reid is the side of me I am running away from, the side of me I do not know how to face, the side that has been presented to my mind as something dark and deviant, an assault to morality. But in the embodiment of Reid, this side shines enticingly and brightly. I look at it and wonder, as Eve must have wondered, Is this beautiful thing before me really a forbidden fruit? And I am the broken-down mirror-half of Reid, the frightened shadow in hiding, the cowering and confused dynamic of a tortured mind. I am everything he has had the courage to leave behind.

Reid looks at me and reads my mind again. He says, “Counsellor, you know that shadows, or darkness, only occur when there is light. This is what I have told myself during the worst of it.”

The cooking timer we have placed on Reid’s desk starts buzzing, our signal that our time is up. The day is over, and we must retreat back to our own space. Tomorrow we will return to school and most likely to the same bullying and problems that were there the day we left. But I have an ally now, and after three days of camaraderie, things don’t seem as hopeless as they were.

We shake hands and give the Vulcan salute, and then I am alone again, walking the packed-down trailway to my house. My mother will be home late tonight, so I start dinner, a foil-wrapped frozen lasagna that bakes for one-and-half hours at 375 degrees in the oven. As I place the lasagna on the metal rack and close the oven door, I realise my hand is still throbbing warmly from Reid’s handshake. I look down at my palm, my fingers. It feels like my hand has been cleansed. I remember a time when this hand had thrown its first punch at Damian, the only time I had tried to defend myself against his assaults.

He had come home from work one evening and as usual, was in a grim mood, a mood that darkened further when he discovered that I had yet another black eye from the kids at school. He had cornered me in the kitchen and started shouting in my face that I was a degenerate, a scourge. He had pounded his index finger against my chest as he said this, just as the kid at school had done right before he punched me in the face. My reaction was based on reflex. I was reliving that earlier moment at school, and my body followed suit, behaving with its own mind, its own intelligence of survival. My fist had come up silently, connecting in slow motion to Damian’s raging face. Time stopped for a moment, freezing Damian’s stunned expression, his bulging eyes and half-opened mouth. I tried to move away, to run, but he caught me by the arm and landed a blow square to my jaw.

I fought back. I wept as I fought, throwing punches, receiving punches to the face and body. We exchanged blows for a full minute, and then I had broken away and escaped outside. It was late summer, still light out, still warm. I ran along the streets, spitting blood onto the sidewalk. I ran, crying and bleeding, and people stared as I passed. They moved out of the way, silent and bewildered. I continued running until I reached Old Town, where I found an open public restroom and went inside to wash my face. The sink turned red with blood. My eye was swollen and purple, a bruise within a bruise. I stayed out all night, slept on a park bench, woke up to the sound of pigeons cooing softly at my feet. I walked to a payphone and considered calling my mother, but every time I reached the last digit of her number, I hung up. I didn’t return to school for five days, until the worst of the bruises had healed. I forged a signed note that said I had come down with the stomach flu. I knew I could always catch up on the homework, I could always make up for lost time. But I could never get back all the days I had wasted living with Damian. They were smoke, they were the burnt-black charred remains of a disintegrated life. I kept sifting through the ashes, hoping I would find something worth saving. I kept hoping there would be something left that I could take away from the wreckage.


I look down at my hand that feels warm and soft from Reid’s friendly handshake. I realise this is the first time since my dad that I have had non-threatening physical contact with another man. I look at my hand almost reverently, and place my other hand over it, as if protecting the sensation of kindness there. The memory of Reid’s handshake has a weight to it, and it settles over my hand like a glove. The weight of compassion is different than the weight of violence. My hand had felt crippled and heavy, as cumbersome as stone after my altercation with Damian. It throbbed in violence for days. My hand throbs now with the blood-warmth of friendship, with the gentle weight of acceptance. It feels like this hand has never known ugliness and cruelty and pain. It feels like it has never been clenched in defence, or held up in fear to protect the body from harm. It feels like what I imagine a newborn’s hand must feel like, soft and new, reaching out to the world in wonder, hoping to be touched, hoping to be felt and received.

***

Our friendship grows, despite the limited time we can spend together outside of school. The bullies have backed off for now, leaving us more freedom to move about the campus in one another’s company. Still, we are careful and watchful. The lull in bullying is unnerving. I wait in trepidation for the volcano to blow, aware that the gods will need to be appeased with another sacrifice soon. But for now, we make use of the relative calm, and during the lunch hour, we work on preparing the script and recruiting actors. All but one of the people on our list has agreed to be a part of the film. Noah Mayer is hesitant and wary. He says, “I think it might be dangerous to get involved.” He is afraid of the football players, and also of associating himself with me. “I have a reputation to protect,” he explains. “Plus my father is a military man. He would kill me if he thought I was…..”

“Yes, I understand,” I break in. “Believe me, I do.”

“Anyway,” Noah continues on, stuffing his hands into his acid wash jeans, “I’ll have to think about it.” He walks away briskly, his dark, buzz-cut hair glinting like sharp little rocks in the sun.

Reid approaches me and says, “Counsellor, Mr. Mayer is gay, and that is why he is afraid.”

I turn around in surprise and ask him how he knows this.

“Gaydar, my friend. Gaydar.”

I look at Reid quizzically. “Gaydar?”

“Yes, the uncanny ability of gay men to recognise their own kind, even if the person in question is still deep in the closet. We just know.”

I swallow hard and look away. “You just know, eh?” I ask unsteadily.

“Indeed, my friend. Indeed.”

Reid sits down on a picnic bench to the left of the school entrance and begins unwrapping a Hoagie sandwich from his lunch sack. I slowly lower myself next to him, staring out into the ice-covered parking lot that gleams richly as if a thin veneer of gold covers the pavement. “And gaydar is usually always accurate?” I ask, still looking out into the lot.

“It is not 100% foolproof, but I would say it is accurate about 90% of the time, at least,” Reid says matter-of-factly, his mouth half-full with meat and cheese and pepperoncinis. “Not everyone has gaydar, but it’s something you can develop over time. The more you embrace, understand and participate in the gay community, the better you get.” Reid tears off another large bite of his sandwich, chews it mightily, swallows, and then says, “I mean, do you ever notice that the guys who are the most homophobic always have the best gaydar? They’re too deep in the closet, too afraid, to even realise their own sexual orientation. Their fear is what makes them lash out at others of their own kind. I wouldn’t be surprised if our Mr. Mayer hasn’t wrastled with some gay kids during his time here at this school.”

I lean my elbow on the table top and tuck my chin down, trying to dredge up a memory of one of the fights I was in earlier in the year. There had been a large circle of people around me, pushing, shoving, ripping my backpack off my shoulder. Someone had kicked out their leg and tripped me as I was trying to get away. Someone who had emerged quietly, almost ghost-like from the tight circle of abuse. As I was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, I had turned my head, trying to see who had kicked me down, but I could only see his retreating back—the blue t-shirt, acid washed jeans and high-top converses absorbed back into the crowd.

“I think he has,” I say hoarsely. “I might’ve…..seen him.”

“I sense he’s one to hide behind others, ashamed of his own shame. Rather rat-like, wouldn’t you say?” Reid asks, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “It might be best to find another LaForge for the film. I’ve been experimenting with those unusual-looking banana clips girls wear in their hair. If you lay them across your face, they look remarkably like LaForge’s visor, especially the silver ones. We could easily fit another actor with that prop.”

Reid continues on discussing actors and props and scenes, and I stare out into the crisp sheen of parking lot ice in the noonday sun, thinking about rats and how they hide in dark sewers, and how I have been one of these rats, how I have been lurking around in these same, dark sewers. I have been beaten and abused and covered with scars, but still I am a rat, running with a pack of diseased individuals, using their aggression to keep me in hiding. I am still a part of them, unable to break away and leave the sewer. I have come to depend on the aggressor, to depend on him to define and destroy me, to keep me where he has told me that I belong. I have complied, and continue running with the rabid individuals with their angry, wild eyes and wild words, down the dark, damp passageways, carefully situating myself so that I am always the pursued, always the victim. Instead of joining the ranks of the aggressors as Noah has done, I have offered myself as a continual sacrifice to them, a holy target for all of their latent fears and prejudices and disappointments. I run, and I am as sick as they are. I move along the same cold tunnels. I move along, not brave enough to realise there is something beyond the sludge and dark of my prison. Or I have lost the reason for my running, and continue on blindly, my eyes seeing nothing, my brain questioning nothing.

Reid shakes my arm and asks me if I’m all right. He waves a hand in front of my face and then offers me a sip of his Coke. “You look pale, counsellor,” he says, placing the Coke in my hand. “You should get some sugar in you.” I take the Coke and bring it to my lips, sipping at it, grateful for the bubbling coldness in my throat.

“Thank you,” I say, handing him back the can. “Sorry, I was just thinking about things.”

“Deeply absorbed,” Reid comments, tapping the rolled-up script against his open palm. “You experience your thoughts so viscerally. It’s fascinating to behold.”

“I wish I didn’t sometimes,” I murmur, glancing over at Reid who is watching me with an amused smile. “It gets in the way of things.”

“On the contrary,” Reid interjects, waving the script around. “You have glimpses into people’s psyches that not everyone else does. Your insights move things out of the way, so the rest of us can take a peek inside. You’re kind of like a brain surgeon of the human psyche, wouldn’t you say?”

I laugh. “That sounds prestigious,” I chuckle, growing warm beneath my jacket collar. “I never really thought of it like that before.”

“Don’t be so self-effacing, Counsellor Snyder. I’ve read what you’ve written in this script, and it’s brilliant.. You are a writer, my friend, up there with the likes of Twain and Hawthorne and Poe. Some of your work I would say is even Shakespearean, my friend.”

“The Cliff Notes versions,” I mutter, and Reid punches me in the arm.

“Stop! Take the compliment, you imbecile.” Reid takes a long swallow of his Coke and wipes his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. “Take a compliment when it is given, and allow your mind to be nurtured by the praise. Confidence in your abilities will lend itself well in your future endeavours as a writer.”

“Ok,” I say self-consciously, smiling down at my heavy snow boots. “Compliment taken and accepted.” I look up again and focus on the sunlight piercing through the cloud cover, and I remember what Reid had said about light and shadows. When light pours through the manhole and into the dark tunnels, most of the rats shy away, retreating back into darkness. But I’ve taken the step to sit out in the sunshine, to eat my lunch in broad daylight, in view of all, something I haven’t done in months. Maybe not all rats have to avoid the light……An epiphany ensues……

I am offered the Coke again, taking a longer sip this time, and as I drink from the cold metal of the can, I cannot help but to think that my lips are touching the same place Reid’s own lips have touched, and that it is only the mysterious ordering of time, the separation of events along the space time continuum, has kept our lips apart, kept them separate. If things were arranged differently, if two events in time could overlap, then our lips would also overlap, touching to the metal and to each other at the same isolated moment in the three-dimensional loop of spacetime. I drink long and slow and thirstily, my lips hot to the metal. If I indulge in this thought and sensation, then I break away from the dark. If I close my eyes and allow my imagination to continue on unimpeded, I can feel this metal dissolving away, replaced by the tenderness of a soft, intelligent mouth, and I think that this is what a kiss must be—this ability of the imagination to overcome the restraints of physicality, time and space, to draw two separate worlds together, unifying them in a moment of improbability or uncertainty that gives way to the assuredness of sensation, intent and desire, to human emotion, which I have always believed is the one thing in the universe that will never be fully explained or contained or annihilated. Human emotion—love---the binding force that makes the impossible possible.

It seems to me at this moment, as I touch the metal to my lips and feel the trembling musings of my imagination, that God must have done the same thing when he created this world. He must have taken a thirsty drink from the wellspring of life and understood that not all thirst could be quenched in the same way, and thus made love limitless, free-flowing from every source, so that all could find their own unique supply, even if that love came from within one’s own mirror half—the love of man for man, or woman for woman. I want to believe this to be true. It is difficult not to, in the sunlight, in the soft violet shadow of a friend who speaks gentle truths at a picnic table in the middle of a schoolyard. It is difficult to see anything sinister or depraved in such thoughts, even though I have been told for so long now that I must.

***

Someone is knocking loudly and persistently on the Engager door. It is early on a Tuesday morning about two weeks into my punishment. I sit up in bed and look around confusedly. It is still dark out, the sky frozen solid into deep blue. I glance over to my clock—4:35 am. Who could be calling at this ungodly hour? The knocking continues, and slowly, reluctantly, I crawl out from the warmth of the bed and shuffle to the door. “Who is it?” I rasp, squinting and rubbing the back of my neck. The cold air stabs my face like a knife. I shiver, considering the possibility that it is Damian on the other side of the door. I stand back a little and ask again, louder now, “Who is it?”

“It’s Commander Oliver,” comes the muffled reply.

Relieved, I immediately open up the door and look down at Reid bundled up in his blue puffy jacket, a brick-coloured scarf covering half his face. “Sorry to wake you,” he says through the scarf, his eyes looking up into mine. “I just had this idea that couldn’t wait.”

“Come in—it must be 10 below out there,” I say, stepping back and making way for Reid to climb inside. He pulls himself up the stairs and walks into the kitchen/living room area, turning around in a circle, looking around the small space. “Why didn’t I see this before? It’s perfect!”

“What’s perfect?” I ask, squeezing past him and flopping down on the small couch across from the fold-down kitchen table. I pick up a blanket from the couch and wrap it around myself to ward off the cold.

Reid smiles and wraps his knuckles on the fibreglass wall. “This RV. It’d make a perfect command deck for a Starship. I mean, even the name of this rig is perfect: The Engager!”

“You mean, we would make this into a set?” I ask, looking around dubiously. “How?”

“With our imaginations, Counsellor. Have some vision!” Reid strides to the front of the RV, his back facing me, his arms held out wide as if he is embracing the view before him. “These huge windows can be covered with black paper and painted with galaxies and stars and planets.” He turns around and grips his hands on the swivelling brown vinyl front seats. “These are the command chairs where the Captain and Number One sit,” he explains. And then he moves along into the kitchen/living room area and trails his hands over the counters and the walls. “We can cover these with plexiglass painted to look like futuristic computer screens. We can even rig up Christmas lights behind them to simulate the glowing buttons and dials of the command deck systems.”

“Hey, yeah!” I chime in, standing up and looking around excitedly. “I think it would be pretty straightforward transforming this place now that I think about it.”

“You got some artistic skills under your belt, Counsellor?” Reid asks, folding his arms and glancing around the room, still pondering the possibilities.

“I doodle a lot. I’m good at cartoons. I’ve taken an art class,” I answer tentatively.

“That’s good. Very good,” Reid says absently. “And I’ve got another idea to run past you, Counsellor…..”

He walks back to the front and sits down into the driver’s side seat. He places his hands on the steering wheel and gazes outside into the inky darkness. “Counsellor, what size gas tank does this vehicle have?”

“I think it’s a 30 gallon tank.”

“Diesel?”

“Yeah.”

“You happen to remember the mileage per gallon this thing gets?”

I think back to the days when me and my parents would take trips to the resort town of Lake Geneva and spend a few, peaceful nights camping out in the RV alongside the lake’s shores. We would drive the quiet, curvy country roads for 100 miles, singing songs and making up stories the whole way, and then reach the lakeside by late afternoon, where we’d park and have an early dinner of roasted hot dogs and beans, followed by all the s’mores we could eat. My dad would always be proud of how economical the Engager was on these short journeys. He’d say, “On a good stretch, she can get 20 miles per the gallon, Lily,” and then he would pat the dashboard lovingly, the way a man might pat the flank of a horse who’s given good service. I remember how diligently he had taken care of the Engager, polishing it up on the weekends, working on its engine in his spare time. Whenever the Engager got a chip or a dent, he would sand the spot down, hammer it out, and patch it up. He kept this rig looking brand new for years. People would actually hire my dad to detail their RV’s for them, they were so impressed with how meticulously he took care of his own vehicle.

I sigh and look around the dusty, faded interior, the scuffed linoleum, chipped counters, and ripped upholstery of the Engager as it is now, knowing my dad would be deeply disappointed with its current state of affairs.

“My dad used to say this could get 20 miles per gallon on some stretches,” I finally say.

Reid makes a little “hmm” sound in his throat, and then pulls his weathered notepad from his pocket and begins writing something on one of its pages. After awhile, he looks up and says, “According to my calculations, and using an average of 17 miles per gallon as a base rate, with each gallon of diesel fuel costing around 89 cents, it will cost us approximately $27 for each full tank, or $27 for every 510 miles we travel.” Reid stands up and taps his bottom lip with his pencil. “Now, the distance from here to McMinville Oregon, according to my atlas at home, is roughly 1,782 miles, one way. That would mean we would need about 3.5 tanks of gas--one way--to reach our destination, costing us an estimated $95 in diesel fuel. Round trip, we would need 210 gallons of fuel, give or take a few gallons, and a total of $190 to pay for it. Of course, there will be some toll charges, food and beverage costs, et cetera, but when I have compared these expenditures to the price of airline tickets, which would ultimately have us each paying close to $430 for round-trip airfare, I have come to the conclusion that driving to the UFO Festival is the more economical choice.”

“You mean, drive this thing all the way to Oregon?” I ask uncertainly. I rub my hands over my eyes and look around sleepily. “We haven’t even gotten our driver’s licenses yet, and besides, I don’t think this thing would make it, Commander. Hell, I don’t even think it’ll start up.”

Reid pulls out his wallet, flips it open, and lifts out a plastic card. “I already have my license, Counsellor. I’ve had it almost a year.”

“No shi--I mean, no kidding.” I look at the license—at Reid’s calm, unsmiling DMV photo laminated in a little square at the corner of the card—and raise my eyebrows.

Reid meets my questioning gaze and says, “I was held back in kindergarten. They thought I had a learning disability because I never talked. Anyway, that makes me almost a year older than everyone else in my grade level. So yes, I already have my license. It’s a California license, but it will do.”

“They thought you had a learning disability?” I chuckle and shake my head. “That’s crazy.”

“It was torture having to repeat kindergarten, let me tell you,” Reid sighs. “Anyway, I’ve already checked with the DMV, and a regular license is sufficient to drive a Class C motorhome.” He puts the license back in his wallet and turns back to the dashboard. “When’s the last time this thing was driven?” he asks, running his index finger along the top of the dash and examining the grey layer of dust that has collected on his skin.

“It’s probably been eight years,” I say glumly. “Right before my dad died. I remember him saying that he needed to replace the timing belt and the oil pump, and also my mom said that when the Engager was towed here, the right front CV boot was torn. There could be more damage in there that I don’t know about. We could be looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of repair.”

“Damn. I wish I would have taken auto repair last year instead of woodworking. Oh well, we’ll just need to find a mechanic willing to help us, maybe work on trade,” Reid says, undaunted, talking more to himself than to me as he jots down some more notes in his notebook. “You don’t happen to know any mechanics, do you?” he asks, chewing on the end of his pencil.

I squeeze the sides of my forehead between my thumb and fingers and sigh loudly. “Unfortunately, I do,” I say. “My stepfather.”

***

I decide it is out of the question. “No way. No possible way,” I repeat over and over as Reid tries to think of ways that we might be able to enlist Damian’s help, ways that would keep me entirely out of the equation. “But don’t you see?” I exclaim in exasperation. “I would never be completely out of the picture. He knows this is my mom’s house, and this is our Engager. There’s no way my mom would want him anywhere near the property now that there’s a restraining order against him. He’s not allowed to come within 500 feet of us or our property at any time. And even if that weren’t in effect, he wouldn’t be welcome here anyway. Both me and my mom want to forget the asshole ever existed.” I say this vehemently, but with a pang of regret. No matter how horrible past--the black and ruined hopelessness of it all--I still harbour an aching, helpless loyal-love for Damian, one that causes great conflict and confusion—what did we call it in psychology—“cognitive dissonance”—discomfort caused by conflicting ideas, beliefs, emotions. I feel “cognitively dissonant” toward Damian. It’s an ongoing issue.

“I did not know it was this serious!” Reid says in surprise. “I just thought you’d had a falling out with him. I didn’t know you were actually frightened of him—enough to get a restraining order.” Reid stands up and walks over to where I am hunched over the dinette table, my face in my hands. “Counsellor, once again, I have misread your emotions and have failed to understand the gravity of the situation. I ask you to forgive my clumsiness in these sensitive matters.”

“Commander!” I sigh. “Please. You couldn’t have known. I didn’t tell you about Damian until now.”

“Still,” Reid says. “I kept pressing even though you were clearly distressed with my idea.” He sighs loudly and tosses his notebook onto the table, as if in disgust. “I seem to be missing a sensitivity chip that others have readily at their disposal.”

I let out a small chuckle in spite of myself. “Now you really sound like Data,” I say. “But considering that robots can learn the ins and outs of emotions, I don’t see why you, a human, wouldn’t be able to. As you’re always telling me, give yourself some credit, Commander. You aren’t a heartless automaton.”

Reid laughs quietly and looks down at his hands. “If I only had a heart,” he sings quietly to the tune of the Wizard of Oz song.

“If I only had the noy-ve,” I pipe in, standing up and doing a jig like the cowardly lion had danced along the yellow brick road. The Engager totters and squeaks from side to side. We chuckle and settle back down into dinette seats, facing one another in the dim light.

“So,” Reid begins, folding his hands gently over one another atop the table. “It looks like we’re back to square one. Earning enough money to get to Oregon.”

“The Greyhound,” I say, leaning forward a little. “Buses are pretty cheap, aren’t they?”

“I suppose they are,” Reid says, not bothering to disguise the disappointment in his voice. “I just wish there were a way we could make this work!” he says urgently. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the UFO Festival flyer and pushes it toward me. “$50 extra dollars for the winning parade float. Could you imagine winning both the film contest AND the float contest?” He looks at me expectantly, his eyes shining with excitement. I am momentarily disoriented by his young, shining eyes that seem to replicate across my line of vision they way the sun duplicates itself as a ghostly silhouette after you look at it and blink. His eyes are making me think impossible things, dangerous things. I look away, and his eyes follow me. They stay behind my closed eyelids, burning like two blue flames of light.

“Maybe I can think of something,” I murmur. I can hear the dry scratchings of Reid’s pencil on paper. I can feel his excitement and determination as he writes.

“I’ll be brainstorming, too, Counsellor,” he says decisively. “Between the two of us, we just might come up with something.”

***

The paper route starts early, 5 am. I deliver to 40 houses each morning in Southtown, right off of Highway 99. I deliver to the poorer neighbourhoods, to the run down homes with broken fences, tall weeds, and rusty kid’s toys in the yards. Some of the houses are kept up nice, and they stick out like a baffling jewel in the mire, but most of the homes look like my house—old, weathered, ready to give up and die. I understand these homes and can relate to them. They feel real to me, they feel human. I do not understand the well-manicured homes that look as perfect as sugar. They seem like they are from a different world. No one ever appears to be at home in those places. Housekeepers and gardeners will come in and out of their doors, but never the owners. It is as if the entire house, along with the owners somewhere inside, have been dipped into formaldehyde. They are like ghost houses and ghosts perfectly preserved in time.

I throw the rolled-up, plastic-wrapped newspapers gingerly onto the oil-free driveways of the well-kept homes, and then I move on to the shit-faced homes, and toss the newspapers casually onto lopsided porches and stained driveways. I have specifically requested this particular neighbourhood as a way to test my courage. I wonder if at 10 cents per delivery that it is worth it, but then I think of Reid’s conviction, and I know that it is.

I hadn’t ridden my bike in maybe two years. I use it now to go from house to house, slinging the papers in wide, easy arcs over fences, over dog’s heads, over dead, ice-covered lawns. My bike is a 1973 Schwinn Supersport—burnt red paint—that had been my dad’s. The tires are thin and don’t fare well on the icy roads, but they do ok in the slush and snow, slicing through the watery ice like a knife. I’ve learned to make my turns in wide and slow arcs, to brake straight, to stand up on the pedals when going over a slick patch of ice, and all other manners of tricks to keep me from crashing against the wintry roads. I wash the road salt off my bike after each run, knowing that if I don’t, the bike frame and chain will be thrashed and rusted and soon rendered worthless. When the weather is severe, I walk instead of ride, but then it takes me an extra 20 minutes to do the route, and that means an extra 20 minutes out in the freezing temperatures. I try to ride whenever I can.

My mother does not know that I have chosen a route in Damian’s neighbourhood. I tell her that I deliver over in the Sky West area where all the fancy homes are. She says I should be getting some nice tips in that area. She is proud of me for working so hard, for staying sober and for quitting smoking, and for studying so diligently and earning all B’s this past quarter. She had made me a special dinner after seeing my latest report card—ham and potatoes with candied carrots, and a chocolate cake for desert. “Please invite Reid over, too,” she had said. And so I had, and we had all three of us eaten the special dinner in the dining room by the warm glow of candlelight, with the soft sounds of 1001 Strings playing from the record player in the background. My mother had asked Reid many polite questions and did not stare at his uniform and shiny Federation badge. She seemed genuinely interested in him, and enjoyed his stories of what it was like living in California. “I’ve always wanted visit California,” she sighed wistfully, tucking her napkin into her lap. “It’s sunny all the time there, isn’t it?”

“Most of the time,” Reid had answered, helping himself to his third serving of potatoes. “But we did have a big windstorm once in 1983 that knocked a tree onto our rooftop.”

“My goodness! No one was hurt, were they?” my mother gasped, holding her hand to her chest.

“Fortunately, me and my uncle came out unscathed. We didn’t even know the tree had landed on our house until the morning, when we woke up and went outside to see its large trunk leaning over the house. It was quite the sight.”

My mother has begun inviting Reid over to dinner several times a week, and naturally I don’t object. It is good to have another presence at the table, a new kind of energy and dynamic. I think my mother appreciates Reid’s company as much as I do. She seats Reid and me next to one another at the table, our placemats practically overlapping. Being this close to him, from time to time our feet or knees will accidentally touch, and I will feel a sudden flush of emotion and sensation, stronger than anything I had ever felt with Shad. I will come away from the meal in a slight daze, thinking about the feel of Reid’s knee or shoe against my own, and marvelling over how one small touch can have the power to incapacitate me as much as is does. I indulge more in these thoughts than I ever have before. I do not censor them as stringently as I have in the past. With Reid’s steady friendship, it is becoming more difficult to think of myself as revulsion. Around him, I feel more normal than I have in years.

I am earning roughly $20 per week on the paper route. I put the money in an empty Brim coffee can beside my bed in the Engager. Each morning I count the money, and then head out into the chilled air to start my route. Each morning I tell myself that this will be the morning I see Damian. This will be the day I knock on his door and confront him, or maybe just try to talk to him, depending on how he reacts. I do not know what I will say to him, or what exactly I am looking for, but I have told myself I will never resort to physical violence again, not even if he hits me. I will not want give him the satisfaction of my slow and sickly descent into the fury of destruction and deviance.

I wonder if Damian thinks about me. I wonder if he is sorry for all the shit he’s said and done over the years. Most likely, he is probably glad that I am out of his life, and he is glad for the restraining order that cleanly sanctions his continued absence from my life and the life of my mother. I do not think he has tried to call since that first night I left his house, and no letters have come. The painful lump I get in my throat when I ruminate on these things always surprises me. I thought it wouldn’t matter. I thought I wouldn’t feel anything at all. It would be easier, less “cognitively dissonant” if I didn’t.

I ride my bike through the dark and empty streets, pulling the newspapers one by one from the front basket attached to my handlebars. The slush hisses against my thin tires, and the newspapers land with a dull thwapping sound on the wet walkways and driveways and porches. A few dogs bark threateningly from inside the darkened homes, or rattle against their yard chains if their owners were heartless enough to have put them outside this early in the morning. “I hope your doghouse is heated,” I always whisper when I pass by these shivering animals. When I remember it, I bring dog biscuits with me to feed to the dogs who are forced to endure this cold weather on lockdown.

This is the third week of my route. It is early March now, but the earth is still frozen and white with snow and ice. I have passed by Damian’s house 12 times. I have seen his beat up 4 X 4 sitting like a blackened skull in the driveway, and I have noted the drawn drapes that never open, never move, and the pile of frozen cigarette butts overflowing the various glass ashtrays sitting on the porch, the way the butts twist grotesquely like bleached and broken bodies strewn all over the sagging wood porch.

I have lately been bold enough to stop in front of his house and sit there for a few moments, my legs straddling the bike, as I think about all the times that his badly-painted front door had slammed and shaken the whole foundation of the house, how often I had thought the entire structure would just collapse, just fold up into a pile of broken-up lumber like in those Popeye cartoons when Popeye had shut the door too hard. I think of the useless yelling, the breaking glass, the week-long silences that seemed worse, more torturous and painful, than the shouting ever could be.

I think of better times, too, the early days before things started deteriorating with my mother, the days when Damian had seemed like a decent, friendly, even compassionate guy. My mother had needed a shoulder to cry on after my dad’s death, and Damian was there, the mild-mannered New York Italian auto mechanic who had fixed her car’s oil leak and later would try to fix her broken heart with chocolates and box wine and day trips into the city. It hadn’t taken long. Soon my mother had a diamond engagement ring on her finger, and then a wedding ring, and then all at once we were moving into Damian’s single-wide Fleetwood in Whispering Pines Mobile Home Park. I didn’t object to any of this. I was too numb to care.

Damian thought he could get on my good side with baseball, football and basketball. This was the way American guys bonded, through sports. He would take me out to the basketball courts and play one-on-one with me until we were both winded and sweating and too tired to move. On certain nights we would go to the batting cages and hit slow pitch line drives one right after the other until it felt like our arms would fall off. Other nights Damian would just toss around a football with me in the middle of the street. I didn’t particularly enjoy these outings, but it felt good to have some sort of father figure in my life again, someone who I thought I could trust and depend on. Damian would never be my dad, but he seemed to make my mom happy, and that was all that mattered to me at the time. It was the most important thing.

I hadn’t realised how much of an asshole Damian was until a couple of years after my dad’s death. It started with his raging jealousy and ended with his explosive temper tantrums that often involved destruction of property, but miraculously never edged into physical assault toward my mother or myself. That would come later. Windows would shatter. Dishes broke. Every door had a punch hole in it by the time my mother kicked Damian out after six long years of wedded torture. The agreement was she could keep the single-wide, and Damian got the Cutlass Supreme he had bought for her on their first anniversary. The split was fairly amicable. There were no custody battles, no disputes about the distribution of money. We just mutually disappeared from each other’s lives—me and mom in the Fleetwood, and Damian in his rented duplex across town.

My mother needed something other than the single-wide to help her cope with all the shit from the last six years of her life. Wine and cigarettes and the occasional bottle of Jack Daniels always seemed to do the trick. For many years, she was never sober, never coherent, never dressed. I couldn’t say much different for myself because I had actually been a teenage drunk for a couple of years, only sobering up after a kidney infection threatened to subtract me out of the equation. My mother never quite got it together, though, and eventually she lost her job, her bearings and her dignity, and then she lost me.

I don’t know why I took off when I did. I don’t know why I seemed to forget everything that had happened with Damian and had made the unforgivably insane decision to go live with him in his broken-down bachelor pad in Southtown. Maybe it’s because he had never laid a finger on me despite his proclivity toward violence, and somehow that was enough to redeem him in my clouded eyes, that was enough to make him the better option. Maybe it’s because he diddled around with his mob connections to get the kidney that would ultimately save my life, and I felt I owed him. Maybe it was because I couldn’t bear to see my mother killing herself with booze, and I would rather be in the storm of Damian’s wrath than in the swamp of my mother’s broken and ruined life---because I loved her too much and couldn’t witness her dissolution. Because it was my fault—my kidney, my negligence and my useless stupidity---and what was happening to her was too real, and I was too immature to know how to handle it. Or maybe I was running away from my dad’s death after never having figured out a way to face it, and my mother’s hurt face and hurt life was just my father’s death happening over and over again, hour by hour, day by day, and I couldn’t cope with the trauma of that experience, and so I took the easy way out and ran.

I don’t know what it was. All I know is that I made the decision, and I lived with that decision for a year, and I am still living with it now as I sit here in the freezing March twilight, my gloved hands gripping the handlebars, my eyes numbly gazing into the gaping wounds of Damian’s blackened windows, my teeth chattering, the lump in my throat threatening to choke me as I try to swallow it down.

I ask myself why I am here, why I am doing this. Do I think I can make amends with Damian, make some sort of peace? I rock back and forth on the bike, breathing hard. I need his help, is that it? I want him to help with the Engager so we can take it the festival and enter the parade. I want to do this for Reid. I want to do this for myself. I want Damian to accept me. I want to bring my dad back from the dead. Damian is not my father, but if he can accept me, then it will be like my dad coming back from the dead. Damian and I will bond over the rusted engine of the RV, just like we used to bond over the broken-down engines in his shop. He will say, “Luciano, hand me the 10 millimetre—no, the open-end one. Yes, that’s it. Good job, son.” Or, “Bring me the locking pliers, would you Luciano?” just like he did back in the day. We will sip soda pop from glass bottles and wipe our grease-stained hands on the blue paper shop towels, and we will toss nuts and bolts into canning jars and crawl underneath the RV on our backs, squinting up into the oily innards of the vehicle, and we will rub shoulders and laugh or cuss when things go wrong, and at the end of it all we will pat each other on the back and say, “Job well done,” our white teeth gleaming from our soot-black faces. This is what it will be--a sanitised version of the past, all the decay removed. There will only be the father and the son. There will only be the good memories sticking like sand to a wound, obscuring the wound and the pain of the wound.

A woman who lives in the duplex next to Damian opens up her front door, pokes her head out and appears to sniff the wind with her large, blue nose. She sees me parked on the sidewalk and shouts in a nasally whine, “Hey kid, where’s my paper? I’ve been waiting for ten minutes for you to throw the goddamn thing on the porch. Do I have to come outside and get the fucking thing myself or what?”

I come out of the stupor and thrust my hand into the basket and pull out one of the hermetically sealed newspapers. The plastic wrap crinkles sharply in the cold air. “Sorry,” I mumble as I toss the paper in the direction of her house. I end up using too much force and the paper sails past the porch and hits the woman directly in the face, knocking her glasses askew. The woman is stunned. Her mouth drops open and her face turns bright red. I turn away quickly, pushing my feet hard off the slick ground and pedalling fast, fishtailing a few seconds before I gain balance and traction. I hear the woman shouting obscenities after me, and when I glance back over my shoulder, I can see her pale fist shaking in the air like a trembling flame in the dark.

***

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

A week passes. The nightmares shift into harmless images, or into no dreams at all--dry sand drifting through a wasteland in need of repair. I work on the script after school, sometimes during class when the teacher isn’t paying attention. Reid has made me a cassette tape of music from the Star Trek Next Generation soundtrack. The tape is neatly labelled and each song is listed in tiny lettering on the paper insert in the case. He says to listen to the tape on my Walkman for inspiration while I am writing. I try to concentrate on the script and the music, but my thoughts often drift to Reid and the many questions I have about him. I write and listen to the music, even when the batteries have worn down and all the songs are slowed and warbled like goth ballads.

I make a list one day when I am sitting in Pre-Calculus, watching Reid out of the corner of my eye. I write my list on a piece of wide-ruled notepaper:

Some Observances:

He can raise one eyebrow by itself.
Very straight, white teeth.
Hair appears dark brown when wet.
Large vocabulary.
Drinks a lot of soda.
Prefers ham over chicken or beef.
Quotes a Star Trek character daily, favourite is Data or Spock
Dislikes germs.
Washes hands frequently.
Answers questions in class that no one else can.
Carries a $20 bill folded up in a triangle in his wallet at all times.
Recycles.
Likes the comic strip Garfield.
Slightly afraid of large dogs.
Believes in reincarnation because Harry Houdini did.
Is comfortable and accepting of self.
Smart.

I fold the list into fourths and put it in my pocket. Mr. Bishop’s voice drones on and turns into the Charlie Brown cartoon voice for adults. I can feel when Reid looks over to me, and I can also feel the other kids’ eyes roaming around like submarine scopes on the lookout for danger—or maybe I’m just imagining things, tired and paranoid.

Reid passes me a note. He pushes it underneath my hand as I am scribbling out a quadratic equation. When no one is looking, I open the note underneath my desk, then slowly pull it forward, looking down at the words: Official Countdown: 99 Days Left Until UFO Festival. I nod over to Reid and smile, and then Mr. Bishop’s unnerving voice booms loudly, “Hand me the note, Luke.” His laser eyes must have seen me opening the note, but how? When I don’t move, he says it again, louder, and I can feel all the bodies in the room shifting around to look at me, and I can feel my skin pulsing and sweating, and then I hear Reid’s voice saying, “Sorry, Mr. Bishop. I just handed Luke a piece of paper that had fallen out of his pocket, and he was nodding in my general vicinity—which in this case would be Quadrant 1-- to thank me. I didn’t mean to cause a disruption to your class.”

Nervous giggles undulate through the room, and Mr. Bishop grumbles, “Fine. Fine,” and then turns and stabs the board with a piece of chalk. “X equals 10!”

After class I walk with Reid into the safety of shadows behind the woodworking trailer. I say, “Thank you for covering my ass today in Pre-Calculus.” I clutch my books to my chest and avert my eyes like a shy schoolgirl.

“Think nothing of it, Counsellor,” Reid says. “It was none of Mr. Bishop’s business about our exchange. None at all.”

We stay in the safety of shadows and talk about the script for twenty minutes. I think Reid somehow understands that we need to hide, that there is reason to be wary of the other kids. I take for granted this seeming understanding and don’t warn him that he needs to be careful around me. I am selfish and do not say, “Watch out. Watch out for those motherfuckers.” I sweat and panic underneath my calm demeanour, wondering if I should break off the friendship before the avalanche of suspicion and hostility buries him along with me. I can see us swimming in the murderous snow, trying to keep ourselves afloat, trying to find a pocket of air—a pocket of kindness or understanding---so we can survive. But the deluge is relentless, and we will drown. We are overpowered and will perish.

I want to throw caution to the wind. I had been more sure of it that afternoon at Reid’s house. But today when he casually sits next to me in the cafeteria, I can feel all the heads turning all the eyes staring. I can feel the sneers burning across their faces. The air seems to move like a wave full of whisperings. And it is only a matter of time before that wave smashes us up against the jagged rocks of accusation and prejudice. I need to say something. I should just get up and walk away, throw a stick at him—“I hate you. Go on and leave, you dumb dog”—even as I ache to have the friendship, to know what it is to be a part of the human race again.

Reid pushes a stack of papers toward me and tells me he’s edited the first ten pages of the script. He behaves normally and talks comfortably, moving his fingers over the words on the page. He behaves as if he does not feel the unbearable tension in the room. I glance over the script without seeing any of the writing. The cafeteria walls close in, squeezing together all the prying eyes and wooden faces into an ugly mask of suspicion and fear.

“Let’s go outside and read it there,” I suggest apprehensively. When we get up, I see two football players rise up from their seats a few tables down from us. They hover there, waiting to break apart from the mask and follow us outside. I didn’t expect things to move along this quickly, but I am not surprised. As we begin to walk toward the door, the football players lock on and move forward. I can hear them laughing in their muscled throats.

“Reid,” I say under my breath. “When we go outside….” I glance behind me. Yes, they are still following. I can’t see their faces. The enemy never seems to have a face. It’s always just shadows. “When we go outside,” I continue. “I want you to punch me.”

Reid laughs confusedly. “What?”

“Just listen to me. I want you to punch me, pretend like you’re fighting with me. Pretend that you and I went outside to settle something man-to-man.”

We reach the double doors to the outside courtyard, and Reid pauses for a second. “You want me to punch you,” he says.

I look back and see the shadows are just ten steps away now. “Yes,” I say. “Punch me. Kick me. Do what you have to do to make it look like we’re fighting.”

We push the bar on the door in unison. It makes a loud clanking sound, and then we are outside in the crystallised air, walking silently into the open courtyard, our footsteps combining with the sound of kids laughing and talking as they smoke their cheap cigarettes and huddle against the cold. The old man was right—snow’s coming. The grey clouds hang low and dark, and I can feel the icy threat of the weather mingling with the icy threat of the football players, and I start to shiver. Reid slows and looks behind him. He finally sees the danger.

“They’re moving in fast,” he warns. “Who are they?”

I do not answer. I stop short and grab his arm, wincing as I shove him hard in the direction of a picnic table. He stumbles and hits up against the bench, throwing out his hands to stop himself from falling. I can hear his palms slapping against the wood of the table.

“Faggot!” I yell. The football players chortle appreciatively as they come up beside me. They fold their arms across their chests and eye Reid’s bent-over body.

“Going against your own kind?” one of them taunt, his flabby mouth glistening with saliva. “You guys really are a bunch of freaks.”

Reid turns around and takes a swing at me and misses. Whether or not that was on purpose, I do not know, but his attack does not feel convincing. I start to sweat. I can feel the football players pressing in like an advancing wall. I grab Reid’s shoulders and push him roughly backwards. I feel like I am holding fire in my hands. I can see his eyes looking at me with a mixture of wonder and fear. I try to calm myself, but I’m trembling so hard I can barely keep a grip on his body. “Leave me the fuck alone,” I grit between my teeth, pressing him up against the concrete wall of the cafeteria. Reid’s backpack slips from his shoulder and falls to the ground with a dull thud.

“Ooh, lover’s quarrel. So hot!” the other football player jeers. “You homos aren’t convincing anybody.”

Reid’s glasses are askew. He looks at me hard and lifts his chin slightly. I can feel his warm breath on my face. I can see his smooth cheeks flooding with colour. “Open up my backpack,” he hisses. “Grab the phaser.”

A few of the cigarette smokers have come over to observe the situation. They watch as I spin around and lift Reid’s backpack off the ground, jerking at the zipper frantically as the football players close in, one of them clutching at my arm. I shrug him off, and he spits out, “Homo,” and slaps me on the side of the head.

Phaser. I don’t have time to think about what Reid means. I just rip open the backpack and thrust my hand inside, my fingers wrapping around something that feels cold and smooth—something that feels like a gun. My mouth goes dry. The football players are kicking at Reid’s shins. The one with the flabby lips, receding chin and rodent-like eyes pulls Reid’s glasses off and hurls them on top of the cafeteria roof. He laughs and spit flies from his mouth and lands on my cheek.

Reid inches toward me. “Pull it out,” he says hurriedly.

“Did you say, ‘Pull out?’” the football player with the square jaw and ape-like brow ridge goads. The onlookers chuckle nervously. “You are all a bunch of sick fucks,” the ape continues on, hulking his enormous body over us. “You need to have someone teach you a fucking lesson.”

As he grabs my shirt collar, I yank the object out of the backpack and hold it up with unsteady hands. The ape abruptly releases me and takes a step back. He and his friend exchange surprised glances, and then fix their eyes on me, their expressions uncertain. The gathering of kids around us murmur their astonishment and confusion.

Reid’s voice wafts through my adrenaline-soaked mind. “It’s real, and we won’t hesitate to use it if you touch us one more time.” He sounds eerily calm, confident even. I look down at the object in my hands, my heart in my throat. I have no idea what I’m holding. It looks like some kind of futuristic gun with a small cylindrical muzzle about the width of a pencil. The thick, two-tone grey and black barrel slants upward from the handgrip, and as far as I can see, there is no hammer or trigger—just a button on the edge of the handgrip. I lift the weapon higher, pointing it directly at ape’s chest. His chest rises and falls rapidly with his hard, loud breaths. He looks like he is ready to lunge forward. His hands twitch at his sides.

“I wouldn’t recommend coming any closer,” Reid cautions in the same calm voice. “Wouldn’t be in your best interest.”

The other football player—the one with the rodent’s eyes—scoffs. “That’s a motherfucking toy,” he says confidently, but his eyes are full of fear.

“50,000 volts of power is hardly what I would consider a toy,” Reid replies coolly.

Someone in the crowd exclaims, “It’s a gun, for god’s sake! The kid’s got a gun!” The group backs away, and some of the kids break into a run and head for the cafeteria. The two football players inch backwards, masking their fear with laughter. Their faces are pale.

“Whatever,” ape says casually. He elbows rodent in the side and jerks his head to toward the cafeteria. “Let’s go,” he says. “These freaks aren’t worth our time.” They turn around slowly and begin walking toward the building, every now and then glancing over their shoulders with nervous eyes. I keep the phaser trained on their backs to hasten their retreat, and when they are finally inside, I lower the weapon with shaking hands and collapse onto the bench of one of the picnic tables. I feel like I might pass out or throw up, or both.

“Are you all right?” Reid asks as he sits down besides me.

“I don’t know,” I rasp. “It depends.” I hold up the phaser weakly and shake it around. “This isn’t real, is it?” I ask as I stare at the weapon in my hands.

“No, it’s a replica of the classic Star Trek phaser pistol,” Reid says. He runs his hands over his face and says, “I bought it from a memorabilia catalogue.”

I nod silently, my shoulders sagging in relief. A few seconds ago, this thing felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. It felt like it was dragging my arms and hands, my whole body, to the ground with its enormous weight. But now, it feels much lighter, like a balloon that will float away from my grasp if I let it go. I hand the phaser to Reid and glance around the empty courtyard in the blue cold. The rest of the curious onlookers have scattered away, leaving us alone at table. A light snow begins to fall. The flakes look like dandelion seeds drifting lazily to the ground, covering us with their sparse, white feathers.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you,” I say apologetically, glancing at Reid’s hands. “Your hands….I’m sorry……”

Reid waves my concern away. “I’m fine. This is my fault anyway,” he sighs, stuffing the phaser into his backpack. “I’m sorry to get you involved like this.”

I look over to him in surprise. “What do you mean? This isn’t your fault. If anything, it’s my fault. I should have warned you.”

Reid shakes his head. It’s as if he didn’t hear me at all. “I don’t know how they found out, but they did.”

“Found out what?”

“That I’m gay,” Reid answers wearily. Snowflakes fall from his eyelashes and melt down his face. I stare at him for a long time without saying anything. I stare at him with my heart pounding and my breath caught in my throat. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out, no thought will materialise, no words will form. The snow continues to fall, faster now, colder now, and then the hard clang of the cafeteria doors slamming open, followed by the sharp clap of footsteps on cement, breaks the silence and the spell of Reid’s admission, and all at once we are being ordered to stand up and put our hands above our heads. There is a blur of sound and movement, an exchange of bewildered looks as we grasp the situation. The police—someone must have called. All I can see are the officer’s badges and guns and wide-open mouths yelling at us to freeze. We are handcuffed--cold metal cuffs jangling unnervingly in the stunned silence--and told to stand “spread-eagle” while we are frisked. Reid’s backpack is searched. The phaser is examined and determined, with a grunt of displeasure, to be a toy. We are admonished severely and then marched down to the principal’s office, down the fluorescent-lit hallways lined by gawking faces, angry, scared and confused faces, and then pushed through a doorway and ordered to sit down and wait, to be quiet and wait for the principal to call us in.

“Mr. Snyder. Mr. Oliver.” In the principal’s office we are interrogated and admonished some more. The phaser is held up in front of us like a flashcard for a few seconds, and then lowered back down to the desk. “I am sure you boys realise the gravity of this situation, and the negligence of your actions,” Principal Harmon says sternly, folding his wrinkled hands on top of his mahogany desk. “As you know, the police were called to campus,” he continues gravely. “They will have another word with you after we are done here.” He leans forward, sighing loudly. “Now, boys, I realise you were being harassed by Rich Conklin and Jeremy Winklehausen for, ah, for….well…..for something that is a private matter and none of their business, and they will be in detention for the rest of the week for their antics. But gentlemen,” and here Principal Harmon leans in even closer and lowers his voice to a gravelly whisper as if he is divulging a great secret, “you must understand that violence is not the answer! Not even pretend violence.” He clutches the phaser and wraps it against the desktop like a gavel. “Unfortunately, I must suspend you both from school for three days for brandishing this toy as a weapon. This will go on your record, and your parents will be notified.”

I stand up quickly from my chair. “Principal Harmon, please contact my mother only.”

“Pardon me?”

“My mother. Please only contact her. I’m not living with my stepfather anymore.” I stand before him, my fists clenched at my sides, my heart spasming.

Principal Harmon shuffles through some papers on his desk and tells me to sit down. The overhead fluorescent office lights reflect dimly off his bald head as he bends over the papers, examining them closely. “Very well, Mr. Grimaldi. We will contact your mother only,” he assents, pushing the papers aside, and then turning to Reid, he says, “Here are your glasses, retrieved from the roof, unharmed, Mr. Oliver. We will be contacting your uncle about this afternoon’s incident.” Reid takes his glasses from Mr. Harmon, slides them quietly onto his face, blinks once and says nothing.

The two police officers are escorted into the office, and talk to us for twenty minutes about the dangers of carrying fake weapons around. They say with tight mouths and tight expressions, “Even a water gun can prove to be deadly,” and tell us the story of a Chicago teenager who was shot dead after brandishing a water gun at officers in a convenience store. They ask us if we understand the seriousness of what we have done, and we nod and apologise and say we will never do it again. We are told the phaser will be confiscated and destroyed, and then we are released with forms to take home and have signed by our guardians.

Reid is the first to speak on our walk home. He says, “Counsellor Snyder, I am sorry for the trouble I brought upon you. I asked you to trust me, and now I have breached that trust. I understand if you wish to disassociate with me immediately, especially if what I revealed to you in the courtyard makes you further uncomfortable in my presence. I would not begrudge you for making such a decision.”

I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and turn to Reid. I want to say, “You are crazy. I wouldn’t dream of not being your friend after something like that,” but instead, all I can do is clear my throat and say, “Did you see the looks on their faces?”

Reid stops walking and backs up a few paces. When he reaches me, I say again, “Well, did you? When I had the phaser pointed at them, did you see their faces?”

“I did,” Reid says, a small smile coming to his lips. “Pardon my French, but it looked like they were about to shit their pants.”

We look at one another and then burst out laughing. “That alone was worth the three day’s suspension,” I say in-between raspy, but cleansing laughs. Reid nods his agreement, chuckling as he hoists his backpack higher on his shoulder. “And worth all the grief we will no doubt get at home,” he adds with a sigh.

“Listen,” I say as we continue on walking. “This really isn’t your fault. It’s mine. They were after me. They’ve been after me for months now. Practically the whole school has been after me for as long as I can remember.”

Reid expresses his surprise. “After you? But why? You haven’t bothered anybody, from what I can tell. You seem like a kid who keeps mostly to himself, am I right?”

“That doesn’t matter to them. It’s because……” I pause, unable to continue. I am too afraid to speak it aloud—the real reason. The reason for the black eyes and vandalised lockers and lunch room taunts, for the social snubbings, disgusted looks, the hate letters, threats, and hallway scuffles. I am too afraid to reveal the source of it all. And in light of what Reid had had the courage to share with me earlier, it seems ridiculous and even wrong to be afraid, but somehow I am still confused, still fighting, still running away.

I can feel Reid looking at me, waiting. He presses, “It’s because of what, Counsellor Snyder?” and I shrug and say, “I don’t know….I guess…..I guess it’s just because they’ve always picked on me. It’s like an old habit. You don’t know how it started, but it’s there, and it’s almost impossible to break it.” I grimace in my frustration and fear.

“I see,” Reid says quietly. “But you heard what they were saying. They were calling us freaks and homos. And that’s because of me. Somehow they found out about me, but how? I’ve only told one other person in my life besides you that I’m gay, Counsellor Snyder.”

“Who else?” I ask as guilt wells up in my chest. I do not know where my courage is, my integrity. Did I lose it all with Damian? What am I fighting? Why is there so much fear? I should be able to say to Reid, “It is because they think I am gay,” and yet, I remain silent. I still am afraid of the label. I shy away from it as if the mere mention of the word will make it true. And if it were true…..Somewhere in my battered mind, there lies a festering belief that if I am gay, then I am an abomination to God. The belief rages like an oil fire in the desert. Damian had told me half a million times that I was as good as shit on the bottom of his shoe if all the rumours were true. And in many ways, I came to believe him. I stopped trying to figure it out and just started running. After awhile, it doesn’t matter where the bombs are coming from. You just need to get away from them, get away and stay alive. There’s no time for contemplation when you’re afraid. You run, or you die. This is how I’ve handled the rumours, the accusations--always outrunning them, trying to hide and blend in. Until today. Until Reid and the phaser.

Reid sighs and kicks a pebble on the sidewalk with his shoe. “The only other person I told was my mother. I thought she would understand, but she didn’t. She told my father, and he decided I needed to be immediately ‘rectified.’ My parents sent me to a Christian gay-to-straight camp when I was 10. When that didn’t work, they chose to send me to live with my uncle in Berkeley. Like my parents, my uncle is a devout Mormon. The Mormon church’s stance on homosexuality is, and I quote, ‘that it is a sin against God’s eternal law of chastity. The temptations of homosexuality come from Satan who wants to destroy people and make them miserable like himself. The Mormon church offers hope in the form of repentance where a person can become clean again from the spiritual death caused by committing sexual sins’ unquote.” Reid looks over at me, shrugging. “So there you have it in a nutshell, Counsellor Snyder. This is the real reason why I’m living with my uncle. It’s not because my parents were murdered, although I do admit, sometimes it does feel like they are dead. They can barely look at me, let alone talk to me these days. They are very disappointed in me, in my progress, or lack thereof. I guess they’ve pretty much disowned me.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I want to tell Reid how much I understand and can relate, but I hold back—always holding back-- only adding, “I know that must be painful.”

“I try not to feel anything about it,” Reid responds flatly. Like Spock says, ‘Insults are only effective where emotions are present.’ Sometimes the only way to survive is not to feel.”

“So what does your uncle say about all this?” I ask. “Is he angry with you because you’re gay?” A flash of Damian’s enraged face skitters across my brain. His clenched fists. The bulging veins in his neck.

“My uncle has turned out to be pretty cool, actually. It’s surprising, really. When I first moved in with him, he was really strict. He monitored all my activities, chose my friends, forced me to go to church and abide by Mormon practises and beliefs. He was really militant about it. But then, over time, things started changing. I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because he found out how much we have in common. Or maybe it’s because he’s sort of fallen away from the church over the years. At any rate, we’ve become really good friends. I’ve never tried to hide who I am from him, and I think he respects that. I mean, he still doesn’t like the fact that I’m gay, but it’s become a non-issue for him. We just don’t talk about it anymore.”

“I guess that’s a good thing?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Reid,” I begin uncertainly. I stuff my hands into my pockets and look down at my feet as I walk. The snow continues to fall, slow and white and clean, and now an inch covers the ground. Our feet make crunching sounds as we move over the sidewalk. “Reid, I was just wondering……how you knew…..you know, how you knew that you were gay.”

“How does anyone know anything about themselves, Counsellor Snyder? That kind of knowledge is inborn, part of your mental fabric. It’s like knowing whether or not you like strawberry ice cream. For me, it was simple. I felt attracted to boys, not girls. I didn’t question it. It seemed natural to me.”

“You weren’t scared by your feelings?”

“No. I just thought it was perfectly normal to be drawn to whomever you were, boys or girls. I didn’t know people thought it was a sin to be attracted to the same sex until my parents informed me that it was.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

“Alone.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It would.”

We reach the trailer park and stand at the entrance, looking up into the falling snow. Reid shifts his backpack to his other shoulder and then holds out his tongue to catch a couple of icy flakes there. He swallows them and says, “It never snowed in Berkeley. Not once. It never snowed in L.A. either, were I used to live.”

After some time, we continue on into the park, leaving a trail of grey slush behind us. Our feet are dragging. The school has called and left messages with those in charge of us. We wonder what will happen when we open the doors to our homes. I look behind me and consider avoiding my house for a few more hours, possibly staying out overnight somewhere, but I know that’s ridiculous. I have no place else to go, but I don’t want to face my mother and her wounded face and disappointed tears. I don’t want to see the fear in her eyes.

Reid stands in front of his house and grips his backpack. He says, “I don’t know what my uncle is going to say to me. I just hope he doesn’t report this back to my parents.”

“Maybe you can call me on the walkie talkie after you talk to him,” I suggest, trying to buy some more time. I don’t want to go inside yet. I want to talk more, I want to reveal the truth, the questions and the fears, but all I can think of is Damian’s red face and pulsing temples. All I can say is, “Call me on the walkie talkie” and kick the freshly fallen snow with my shoe.

“I will,” Reid replies, his eyes still on the blue vinyl of the Clayton. His jaw tightens. “Good luck.”

We glance at each other and then part ways. I walk up the front steps to my house and put my hand on the doorknob, and then turn around to see if Reid has gone inside yet. He has also paused on his doorstep, and now turns around to look back at me. I raise my hand and wave, and he waves back and then disappears. My chest burns. Before I go inside, I open my mouth and catch a snowflake on my tongue, but the cold trickle down my throat does nothing to quench the fire. I don’t think anything ever will.

***

My mother opens up the folding ironing board, pulls a wrinkled shirt from the laundry basket at her feet, and drapes it across the board. She slams the iron onto the shirt, almost violently, and begins vigorously moving it back and forth across the fabric. The board shakes and creaks with each pass of the iron.

“You could have been killed,” she blurts out after ripping the shirt off the board and replacing it with another. An unlit cigarette hangs from her lips and bobs up and down as she speaks. “Luke, you could have been shot dead.” She continues the frantic ironing, her face a dark frown of worry and exhaustion.

“Mom, I’m sorry---”

“What the hell were you thinking?” she asks, grinding the iron into the shirt and scorching the fabric. “I mean, how could you do something like this Luke?” The shirt is beginning to smoke and the ironing board is wobbling chaotically, threatening to collapse to the floor.

“Mom!” I yell out, reaching over and yanking the iron’s plug from the wall. “You’re going to start a fire in here!”

My mother continues her chore, oblivious to the fact that I have unplugged the iron. She rips the cigarette from her lips and shouts, “I don’t get it Luke! How could you put yourself in jeopardy like that? Your life? Your education?” Tears start to collect in her heavily-mascaraed eyes, and she wipes at them with shaking fingers. “I just don’t get it, Luke,” she quavers.

“I’m sorry mom,” I say, softer now. “I didn’t mean to cause this big of a problem. It’s just that the kids at school—they’ve been bullying me for months. I should have told you earlier……”

“And so you think it’s right that you pulled a gun on them?” She flings her cigarette onto the carpet, then covers her face with her hands.

“Mom, it was a toy.”

Her hands fly away from her face. Her eyes are dark and wild and smeared. “It doesn’t matter, Luke! They thought it was real. The police thought it was real. You could have been killed!”

My mother walks away from the ironing board and stands in front of the living room window, her back facing me, her arms folded across her chest. Her shoulders rise and fall dramatically with her sighs. Outside, the snow rushes in at a hard slant and collects at the corners of the windowsill. The lighting is bleak, like the inside of a morgue. My mother looks thin and vaporous in front of the window, the outline of her body diffusing into the shifting sky. She disappears into the snow.

”Mom,” I say helplessly. “I need you to try and understand. They were…..they were calling me a homo. A fag. They’ve been beating me up for months, stealing stuff from my locker, pushing me around, threatening me. I’ve been letting them do it, mom. I’ve never tried to stand up for myself.” I bite my thumbnail and then run my hand through my hair as I watch her frozen silhouette bleeding into the grey. “Mom,” I say. “I had to stand up for myself.”

“Is it true then?” Her voice comes as a whisper. She turns around to face me, her eyes swimming in black makeup tears. “Is it true?” She steps toward me, her arms falling dead at her sides. Her lip quivers as she speaks. “Are you gay?”

I do not answer her at first. I stare at her and the black tears and quivering lip. I stare and say nothing, my jaw tight and aching with the pain of held-back words. I look away, and then down, and then back at her trembling face. She asks again, “Luke, tell me. Are you gay?”

The word clatters like a rock in my mouth. I choke on it as it comes out. “No,” I say. Her face twitches. “No, mom. I’m not gay.”

“You’ve been suspended,” my mother murmurs, clasping her hands together and raising them to her lips, as if in prayer. She breaks apart the hands and the prayer, slapping her palms on top of her thighs. “Damnit, Luke!”

I walk out of the room and down the hall to my bedroom. I shut the door behind me and feel like I’ve sealed myself into a tomb. I stand staring at my door for a long time, as if the cheap wood will reveal something, will somehow help solidify my thoughts. I can’t help thinking, I’ve done it again. I’ve denied it again, just as I always have, and maybe always will. In the kitchen, I hear my mother banging pans together. They sound like clashing gongs in my brain.

The walkie talkie on my bed beeps, immediately drawing me away from the door and my thoughts. Reid’s voice comes over as a tired drone. “I’m grounded for three weeks. Curfew at 5 pm, but thankfully my parents were left out of this. How did you fare?”

“I don’t know yet,” I reply into the speaker. “My mom’s still trying to calm down.”

“She’s pretty angry?”

“Yeah, more angry than I’ve seen her in a long time. What about your uncle?”

“He was upset to say the least. Disappointed and concerned as well. Surprised.”

“It was just a toy,” I mutter as I slump down onto the bed. I take my finger off the transmit button and say, “A fucking toy!”

“My punishment does not include a ban on television, or a ban on seeing you, Counsellor Snyder,” Reid says after a few moments of silence. “That means we can still watch Star Trek and still work on the script after school and on the weekends.”

“Yeah,” I sigh. “Sure. We can do that.” The casual tone of my words does not match the enormous sense of relief that floods my chest. I sit up and look out the window in the direction of Reid’s house--the Clayton--where Reid is sitting right now in his bedroom, pressing his finger to the walkie talkie and speaking these words to me, telling me that his punishment does not entail an exclusion from my presence. Such a punishment might have been for the best. Such a punishment might have been the only way the school would get off our backs, the only way Reid could stand a chance to fit in. But I am glad and relieved that this was not the punishment given. It is dangerous to feel this glad. This is the kind of gladness that moves beyond the routine happiness of having a friend.

I stand up and walk over to the window and run my fingers along the yellowed muslin curtains. I press my forehead against the cold windowpane. My breath steams up the glass. I lift my right fingertip to the fog, and absently I draw a shape. I breathe onto the glass and draw more shapes as Reid talks over the intercom, telling me about his script ideas and how he has a word processor for ease of typing, but that he might switch to using his uncle’s computer and dot matrix printer, if he is allowed. “I’ll ask after all of this dies down,” he says. I nod without saying anything, and then my mother’s voice calls through my door, “Luke? Luke, are you in there?”

“I’ll catch you later,” I say into the receiver, and then drop the walkie talkie onto my bed and turn around to face the door.

“I’m here,” I call out.

The door opens slowly, and then my mother appears, her face flushed and damp, washed clean of all her makeup. She offers a shaky smile and enters my room, her arms slightly extended.

“I just want you to be safe,” she says hoarsely, lifting her arms higher. She steps forward and pulls me into an embrace. “You’re my baby boy,” she murmurs into my hair. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t lose me, mom,” I say in a small voice. “I promise.”

“You know you can tell me anything, Luke,” my mother says coaxingly, and then with conviction: “Anything….and I would never judge you.” She steps back, her hands resting gently on my shoulders, and gazes intently into my eyes. Her face is sad and tired and hopeful, trembling with compassion. “Luke,” she says, “you know I would love you no matter what. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yes mom,” I say, looking away. My heart pounds. She believes the rumours. She’s heard them from the school, from me, from Damian. I cannot look her in the eye. I feel her hands squeezing my shoulders. I feel her worry, her love, her desire to keep me safe. I know she is sincere, and yet I can say nothing because I am afraid. I am afraid of what the other kids have condemned me for, and I am afraid of the very nature of my soul, and I am afraid that I am not brave enough to understand it or accept it. I lack the strength, the courage. I think of Reid, how comfortable he is, how unaffected he seems. He has only been in my world for a week, but already he has started to change everything. I’ve stood up to the tormenters and attackers because of him. I’ve ventured into friendship again. I’ve laughed for the first time in months. The nightmares have stopped. Reid, the Vincent van Gogh painting, strange and complicated and provoking. I could never think of him as an abomination, so how could I believe this to be true of myself?

My mother smoothes my hair and tells me she will fix us some supper—spaghetti with meatballs, and some garlic bread. She kisses me on the forehead and leaves the room. I look over to the window again. It’s dark now, and the street lamps have come on--orange light floating diagonally in the falling snow. The windowpane is illuminated and soft, and I can see now the shapes I had been drawing as Reid spoke to me on the walkie talkie. They cover the lower right corner of the windowpane, and rise up to touch the cold and the dark. These shapes I have drawn over and over again, seem to move into the night and are a glimpse into my hidden mind---the hopeful and unafraid mind. This symbol I have drawn, unmistakeable, frosted in glass and touched by dim light—the symbol of the heart.

***

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE

I finally see him during the last period class—Pre-Calculus—sitting two rows ahead of me, wearing the same blue jacket and wool cap that he had on yesterday as he was reading his book in front of the Clayton. He sits up straight and tall and alert as Mr. Bishop takes roll call, and after his name is called—Reid Oliver—Mr. Bishop looks up, smiling, and formally welcomes Reid to the class. Reid Oliver. Nice, solid-sounding name, I think. Sounds like a name that might be in a Dickens novel.

“You’ve got the text book, I see,” Mr. Bishop says, nodding toward Reid’s desk. “Good. We’re one page 96 now, lesson 7.2, conic sections.” He waits for Reid to open his book, and then he turns and starts writing some definitions on the chalkboard with a piece of blue chalk. As he writes, Reid opens up his Trapper Keeper and begins jotting down some notes with an Erasermate pen. A couple of times he pauses, erases something, and then continues writing again. People look over at him curiously, and then return their eyes to the board. I lose track of the lesson, distracted by my various ponderings about friendship, cocoons, and my dad, and by Reid’s diligent writing and the way his jacket crinkles softly when he moves, like the sound of corn stalks rustling in the wind.

When the final bell rings, everyone immediately gets up and begins shuffling outside of the classroom. Mr. Bishop calls out our homework assignment as chairs and desks clatter and scrape against the floor. I take longer than usual collecting my things, stalling for time because I am nervous about running into Reid on the way out the door. I am not sure what I would say to him, and I am embarrassed thinking of how he must have heard me yelling out last night in my sleep. With my head down, I push my papers, pen and books into my backpack. By the time I look up, I see Reid has already left the room, and I breathe a sigh of relief and walk out the door into the first sunny afternoon we’ve had in what seems like years.

“You have a walkie talkie?” I hear a voice coming from behind, and when I turn around, I see Reid standing there, one eye squinted shut in the bright sunlight, the other looking at me calmly as he waits for me to answer the question. He grips a blue backpack in his hands and wiggles the toe of his snow boot into a patch of slush.

Caught off guard, I fumble, “I, um, no, I guess I don’t.” My hands tighten on my backpack as if I am preparing to use it as a weapon. I feel ridiculous reacting this way, but I can’t seem to help it.

“You can borrow one of mine,” Reid says, zipping open his backpack and extracting a pair of walkie talkies from inside. “Here,” he says, holding one of the walkie talkies out for me. “Channel 3. We’re close enough neighbours that we can talk on it instead of using the phone.”

I look at the walkie talkie uncertainly for a few seconds, and then slowly I reach out my hand and take the gadget from him, and Reid smiles politely at me from behind his thick glasses. He looks different this close in proximity. I don’t know how else to classify it other than to compare it to the way I had felt seeing, for the first time in person, Vincent Van Gogh’s self-portrait at the Chicago Art Institute. I had seen the painting dozens of times in art books, but it wasn’t until I had experienced it close-up and in person that I could finally grasp the magnitude of the painting.

My dad had taken me to the Art Institute when I was seven-years-old. We had spent all day in the museum, and toward the end of our visit he had directed my attention to Van Gogh’s painting, which was hanging all by itself in the middle of a plain white wall. He told me that the portrait was made up of hundreds of red and blue dots of paint applied in a style similar to Pointillism. When I had stood in front of the painting, closely scrutinising all the dots and streaks of paint, I had been transfixed by the manner in which the seemingly nonsensical pattern of colours could all come together to create the unforgettable image of Van Gogh’s face.

It is with the same feeling of wonder that I look upon Reid’s face now.

Reid has removed his cap, and in the sunlight his hair is the soft-flame colour of the desert. His skin is fair, almost to the point of translucence. When he smiles, soft dimples appear at the corners of his mouth. His eyes are the blue colour of light hidden deep inside layers of snow and ice. He is almost the same height as me, maybe a half-inch shorter. He smells of winter wood smoke and the sweet tang of summer wheat fields after a hard rain.

Holding up his right wrist, he glances at a digital watch there and taps the plastic face once with his forefinger.

“So I’ll contact you in about an hour, see if the walkie talkie works from inside my place. Don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t,” he says matter-of-factly. He zips his backpack closed and then looks up into the sky and grimaces. “Sun doesn’t warm things up much around here, does it,” he says bleakly.

“Not in the wintertime,” I reply, putting the walkie talkie into my jacket pocket. My voice cracks with nervousness. “Not until May or June.”

It’s been so long since anyone at school has talked to me like this, in such a causal and friendly way—a human way. I’m not sure how to handle it. I don’t know where to put my hands, how to hold my arms. I don’t what to say, how to move the conversation along. I stand there, fidgeting with the straps on my backpack, my blood pounding in my temples. Reid watches me, not saying anything. He looks fascinated by my embarrassment. Suddenly, the walkie talkie in my pocket crackles to life, rescuing me from an awkward silence. I hear the muffled, broken-up sound of a strange man’s voice come over the speaker. “Pick up….oil….”

“Interference,” Reid explains, glancing at my pocket and frowning a little. “Let’s change channels. We’ll try four.” He pushes a couple of buttons on top of his walkie talkie and motions for me to do the same. I take the walkie talkie from my pocket and examine it nervously, not sure what to do. Then I see the button on top labelled “channel.” I push it once and the digital display window reads “4.”

“You got it?” Reid asks, and I nod. “All right then,” he says with a sigh of satisfaction. “Guess I’ll talk to you in an hour.” He hoists his backpack on his shoulder, salutes me, and then turns and begins walking briskly along 3rd Street toward the trailer park.

As I walk home, I replay the conversation in my head, murmuring aloud what I had said, which, not surprisingly, wasn’t much of anything. Periodically, I stop and pull the walkie talkie from my pocket and smile and shake my head. What an interesting kid. Where did he come from? Must have been from someplace sunny and warm—he’s not used to the cold Midwest winters yet. He looks like he belongs in a softer climate, in a place full of gold sand. My blood starts pulsing in the vein. What happens when he contacts me on the walkie talkie? What do I say? He’s like the Van Gogh painting at the Art Institute. A bunch of complex colours all mixed together. Red and blue. Beautiful. Is that the right word? I wouldn’t know what to say.

I walk home slowly, my nerves making me feel heavy in the limbs. When I get to the trailer park, I take the long way round to our place to burn off some of the nervous energy. A couple of house dogs who aren’t used to seeing me on this route start barking and pawing the windows from inside when I pass by. Residents I haven’t seen before wave hello, mostly older people in their 60’s or 70’s. An old man wearing plaid pants and a red sweater stands on his porch smoking a pipe. He says, “More snow’s coming,” and points to the sky with a grey, wrinkled finger. I nod and continue on.

At home, I heat up a Hot Pocket in the microwave and bite into it as I sit on the couch, eyeing the walkie talkie in my hand as if it were a grenade ready to blow. I glance over at the cat clock in the kitchen. It’s almost been an hour. On the next bite, the Hot Pocket cheese burns my mouth, and I get up to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen, and as I return to the couch, the walkie talkie crackles and Reid’s voice comes through the intercom. It’s almost as if he is standing in the living room right next to me. He says, “You there? Over.”

I swallow down a large gulp of water and then lift up the walkie talkie, holding it to my mouth like a microphone. “Um, yes. Here,” I say tentatively, and when there is no response, I realise I have neglected to push down the button on the side, and so I try it again. “I’m here,” I repeat, firmly depressing the button this time, and then I add “over” and wait.

Reid’s voice comes immediately. “It’s 1600 hours. Star Trek is on. You want to come over and watch it? Over.”

My heart is pounding again. My hand shakes like I’ve been drinking too much coffee. I push the button again and open my mouth to speak, inwardly berating myself for being such a nervous wreck about this. “Um, sure,” I say into the walkie talkie. “Over.”

“I have some Cracker Jacks and Coke. 7-UP if you’re not a cola man,” Reids voice says. “Oh, and some Boston Baked Beans if you like those.” There is some rustling and then, “Over.”

“Uh, yeah, sounds good. Over,” I reply. A smile involuntarily quivers on my lips.

“Roger that. You don’t have to knock. Door’s open. I hope you aren’t allergic to cats. See ya in a few. Over.”

I get up from the couch and begin pacing the room. This is fine, this is good. Having friends is good. My smile drains away as I think about having to deal with the rumours and bullying that will undoubtedly erupt because of this later. Should I give warning to Reid? He doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into. He’s new to the school, doesn’t understand the dynamics yet. He’s like…..He’s like a new cadet on the Starship Enterprise. He needs to be debriefed and trained and made to understand that I’m as good as the plague to him. He talks to me, and socially he dies. I pace around the room, and the forgotten Hot Pocket on the table gets cold, and the cat clock meows four times, and I know I should get a move on, but still I pace.

He’s an interesting person, obviously intelligent. He reads. He likes Star Trek and Boston Baked Beans. He owns a cat. He deserves a chance to fit in here, but he may lose that chance if he associates himself with me. Do I let that happen? I pace around the room and accidentally bang my knee on the edge of the coffee table, and then the walkie talkie crackles again with Reid’s voice. He calls out, “Did ya get lost or something?”

“No.” I laugh into the receiver. My kneecap is throbbing as if my heart dropped down into my leg joint. “No, I just….I’ll be there in a second.”

A past version—a not-so-long-ago version--- of myself would go into the liquor cabinet right now and swallow down a couple of shots of cheap Vodka or Schnapps in an effort to fill myself with a false sense of courage, and although I consider this for a few seconds, as well as the pack of my mother’s Virginia Slims in the kitchen drawer, I think better of it and ultimately decide I need to face this sober. I remember the words in my dream, the ones that are taped to the back wall of my locker, and I set my jaw in determination, eventually managing to relax it into a nervous smile. In my nervousness, I feel like I’m smiling my way through a muzzle, or a mask of concrete that encases my entire face, but still, I am smiling. And it’s a start.

Before I leave, I take a look in the gold-flecked mirror by the front door, checking my appearance. My blond hair is buzzed short on the sides, and I’ve grown my bangs out long so that they flop over and cover the right side of my face. The kids at school call it the “skater” haircut. I’ve never ridden a skateboard, but I like the style. In the midst of all the recent bullying, I’ve thought about doing something totally different with my appearance, maybe something crazy like a green Mohawk or a row of red, hairspray-sculpted spikes, in order to give the assholes at school something else to talk about besides my sexuality. I allow myself a small chuckle as I open up the front door. A Mohawk. Yeah, sure, wouldn’t that be a riot.

Outside the sky is still clear, but now the wind is blowing colder and it feels like the temperature has dropped another 10 degrees since I left school. I zip my jacket up to my chin and walk down the rickety porch steps and into the street as if I’m entering a battle zone. What a difference a year has made. Or maybe I’ve always been this way, always nervously moving about, never staying too long in one place because if I do, a bomb will drop there, and then I’ll be dead. I’ve become hypervigilant after Damian and all the constant bullying from the kids at school. I’m always looking for the next attack, and I don’t trust anybody. People notice when you are broken down and on edge, and now they’re swarming in like flies on decaying flesh.

When I lived with Damian, it didn’t matter if I came home from school with a black eye or bloodied lip, but it matters now living with my mother, and so I’ve been trying to stay under the radar as much as possible since I’ve been back here. With a new friend in the picture—Reid--- I don’t know how much longer the peace will last. I hope long enough for me to give him fair warning of the danger that lies ahead.

I walk up the stairs to his front door. Potted cactus plants sit on the steps in varying states of brown decay. A door plaque that reads “Bless All Who Enter” rattles softly in the wind. As I lift up my knuckles to knock, I remember Reid had said that the door was open and I could just come in. I put my hand on the brass doorknob and turn it slowly.

When I enter the house, a brown tabby cat runs over to me and rubs itself enthusiastically against my ankles. “Hi there,” I say quietly, stooping down to scratch the top of its head. It feels good to be gentle with something after so much of my recent world has been hard and cold and dark, devoid of any tenderness. The cat leans into my caress appreciatively and begins to purr loudly. I look around the empty room, remembering the way it had appeared last night through the window. Now I am inside, suddenly inside. Seems surreal. The cat meows and smashes its nose to my hand, and I laugh.

“That’s Antoine,” Reid says, emerging from the hallway. “He’s always begging for attention.”

I look up, smiling, and then open my eyes wide with surprise. Standing before me in the middle of the room is Reid, wearing a maroon-coloured Starfleet uniform, complete with the silvery federation pin clipped above the left breast. His hair has been neatly combed and oiled, and his face looks soft and damp, as if he has just shaved. A patch of late afternoon sunlight falls in a wide swath across his upper body and face, giving the unavoidable impression that he has just materialised out of a teleportation device.

He walks causally past me and into the kitchen, saying over his shoulder, “I’m not a nutcase. I assure you, I am quite sane. I just happen to really like Star Trek. I hope that doesn’t bother, disappoint, or offend you.”

“No….of course not,” I say quickly. A strange tremor of excitement fills my chest, but I don’t have time to contemplate the source of it.

From inside the kitchen, I hear the sound of soda cans cracking open and fizzing, and then Reid appears in the doorway, a can in each hand, and asks me which I would prefer: Coke or 7-Up.

“7-Up,” I answer, figuring the last thing I need right now is the nerve-frying effects of a caffeinated beverage. I try to move my eyes away, but I can’t help staring at Reid’s uniform and his shiny hair. He looks almost regal in his costume. Otherworldy, even. I’ve never seen anyone like him.

“7-Up it is,” Reid concurs, handing me the appropriate condensation-covered can. “And thus it shall be Coke for me.” He takes a sip of his drink and then pushes up on the bridge of his glasses with his right index finger, ala Clark Kent, and says, “We’ve missed the first 10 minutes of the show, but I think we’ll catch up pretty quickly.” He jerks his head in the direction of the hallway. “Back this way. The TV’s in my room. My uncle doesn’t want a television set in sight of our guests. He thinks it’s in bad taste.”

He leads me down a narrow, shag-carpeted hallway, past a bathroom, a small laundry room, and what I assume is his Uncle’s bedroom, and then stops at a closed door at the end of the way. A sign reading “Security Clearance Required” in block letters hangs on the doorknob.

“Here it is,” Reid says, opening up the door and ushering me inside.

“Wow,” I breathe as I step into his bedroom, not quite sure what to make of it. Every inch of wall and ceiling space seems to be covered with some sort of Star Trek paraphernalia—posters, figurines, comic books, printed T-shirts, candy wrappers, pins, plastic cups, magnets, pencils, stationary, keychains, stickers and trading cards. His crisply-made bed is covered with a printed blanket featuring the Starship Enterprise, and in the right corner of the room stands a life-sized cardboard figure of the Star Trek character Data. A Star Trek-themed lava lamp glows in green gelatinous blobs on a desk next to the TV.

“How long did it take you to collect all of this?” I ask, looking around the room in amazement.

“Oh, about five months, give or take a couple of weeks. I’ve been watching the show ever since the pilot aired last September.”

“All this in five months?” I let out a low whistle. “Man!” I reply admiringly.

“You’re the first person besides my uncle to see the collection,” Reid says offhandedly. “I usually don’t invite people into my room, but I sensed you were a Star Trek kind of chap and wouldn’t be offended.”

“You knew that?” I ask in surprise, inwardly chuckling at his use of the word “chap.” I feel my cheeks warming and try to hide it behind a long drink of the 7-Up. My throat gurgles as I swallow.

“Yeah. Somehow I just knew.” He shrugs and takes a sip of the Coke. “Oo can sit dere if oo want,” he offers, talking through his mouthful of soda and motioning toward the bed. He swallows and makes a loud “Coke sigh” and says, “I’ll take the office chair.”

I sit down on the bed and take frequent sips of the 7-Up, my eyes roaming around the craziness of the room. Once we’ve settled into our designated spots, Reid flips on the TV, and I’m excited to see that it’s a colour set. After years of watching everything in black and white, this is heaven. A commercial for Tootsie Pops is playing, and Reid takes the opportunity to hand me a package of Boston Baked Beans and Cracker Jacks and tells me about how he and his uncle have just moved here from Berkeley, California. “My uncle’s in manufacturing and got offered a job in technical packaging for a local canned fruit company. I guess he’s been wanting to get out of the Bay Area for years. He’s always said it’s nothing more than a godless rat race out there.” Reid stops and cups a handful of Cracker Jacks into his mouth. A piece falls onto his lap, unnoticed. “What about you?” he asks as he chews on his mouthful of caramelised popcorn. “You live here all your life?”

“Yeah,” I answer, shaking the Cracker Jacks box around, trying to get the prize to surface. “I was born here.”

“That’s interesting,” Reid replies, flicking his box a few times to work his prize out. “By the way, what’s your name? I don’t think I’ve asked that yet.”

“Oh, um, it’s Luke. Luke Snyder. I go by Snyder, even though in school they have my last name as Grimaldi. That’s my stepfather’s name, and I……” I trail off, shaking my head dismissively. “Anyway, I go by Snyder.”

“Mind if I call you Ensign Snyder, or would you prefer Lieutenant?” Reid asks as if it is the most ordinary question in the world, as ordinary as asking whether or not you would prefer paper or plastic.

I let out a startled laugh. “Ensign, I guess?”

“Ok, Ensign Snyder. Show’s back on.” He leans forward and turns up the volume knob and asks if it’s loud enough. I nod, and for the next 45 minutes we watch the show in silence, occasionally excusing ourselves from the room to use the bathroom down the hall. After the episode is over, I have no recollection of what I’ve just seen. I was too busy contemplating Reid’s room and his obsession with Star Trek and his surprising interest in my friendship. I realise I am in the presence of a rare individual, someone who is genuine, someone who is unashamed of who they are and who, in turn, would be unlikely to judge or condemn or criticise anyone else for living as they are. A rush of optimism emboldens me. I decide this is the kind of person I need to be around and have as a friend, and to hell with what the kids will think once they catch wind of this new development in my life. To hell with them and fuck them all.

Reid stands up and smoothes down the front of his uniform after the show is over. “So you live with just your mom?” he asks, adjusting the pin on his chest. “I just live with my uncle. Ever since I was ten-years-old.”

“Yeah?” I say. I wonder if I should ask what happened to his parents, but maybe that would be too personal of a question. Instead I say, “Yeah, it’s just me and my mom. My dad died eight years ago. My mom remarried, but it didn’t last.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” Reid says. And then, matter-of-factly: “My parents died when I was ten. Suicide, homicide.” I feel my jaw drop open.

“Wow….I’m….I’m sorry,” I stammer, not sure what else to say. Suddenly my problems seem embarrassingly trivial. I almost feel the need to apologise to Reid for how I had been drowning myself in self-pity all these months. My hands start to shake.

Reid continues on in the same, flat and unaffected tone. “I’m the one who found them. My dad had shot my mother and then himself with his police handgun. They were lying on the floor in the bedroom. It was dark in there. I had to turn on the light…..There was so much blood.”

“God, that must have been horrifying….” I feel a splash of nausea burning the edges of my stomach as all the blood starts draining from my face. Reid continues on, describing the crime scene and the aftermath. The blood bath seems to go on indefinitely. I close my eyes and wipe my brow with the back of my hand, not sure if I can handle any more details. It’s one of those things with me—Blood. Gore. Violence. I’ve never had the stomach for it. I can’t even think about it without getting sick. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to push away the grisly images of Reid’s murdered parents out of my head, but they won’t budge. My breath catches in a hard lump in my throat and I cough loudly.

I hear Reid sitting down his can of Coke on the desk and then taking a step toward me. He says, “You look pretty pale, Ensign. I’m sorry if I said too much. I forget sometimes that people are sensitive to these matters.”

“It’s ok, I’m just…” I laugh weakly, unable to formulate my thoughts. It feels like my head is floating somewhere along the ceiling.

“Blood-injection-injury phobia. I’ve seen this before,” Reid says in a brisk voice. “Put your head between your knees. I’ll be right back.”

I feel the shifting air currents swirl across my feverish skin as Reid leaves the room. Obediently, I put my head between my knees and take in slow, deep breaths, willing away the nausea and panic. I should be used to this by now. There was a time when this happened to me practically every day. I would see something on the news, or my science teacher would be talking about the heart pumping blood through its four dark chambers, or one of the kids at school would be bragging about an injury, describing it in blistering detail, and soon my head would be spinning, my knees buckling and heart pounding, and I would be in the bathroom splashing cold water on my face, trying not to pass out, and dying of embarrassment because of what a sissy I was.

Suddenly I feel a cold cloth being draped across the back of my neck. I startle a little, then relax, relishing the cool watery relief of the cloth. “Thank you,” I murmur, patting the wet cloth over my neck and face. I sigh and then smile sheepishly. “Sorry about that,” I say self-consciously. “I just had no idea about your parents. I mean, man, it’s…that’s just……”

Reid clears his throat. “I have a confession to make,” he says weightily. He walks over to the cardboard figure of Data and runs his fingers along the edges and sighs. “I made up that whole story about my parents to see what you reaction would be—to see what your character was.”

My head whips up. “You what?”

“It was wrong of me, but I just needed……” Reid turns to face me, his expression one of intense contemplation. “The fact of the matter is, Ensign Snyder, I’m severely lacking in social skills. And I apologise that you had to be subjected to my gross inadequacies first hand.”

“You mean you’re telling me your parents didn’t die like that? That that was a lie?” I look at him in disbelief, and then scoff and shake my head. “I wouldn’t call that a lack of social skills. I would call that messed up,” I say incredulously. I don’t if I should be feeling angry or relieved or sick to my stomach at this point. I wad up the damp towel in my fist and stare at Reid, waiting for him to explain.

“No, my parent’s didn’t die like that. They sent me to live with my uncle for a reason I cannot disclose at this time,” he says mysteriously. “I’m sorry for making you feel faint with my story, but, and it’s kind of complicated to explain this….and you’re right, it is messed up, but I can figure out someone’s character by how they react to something unusual and tragic like a murder and a suicide. Now, some people might say a token, ‘Sorry’ and show little emotion. Some people might express interest in the development of the crime. Others might show anger toward my father and his actions. You…well, you actually FELT the crime. You emotionally felt the violence, the loss, the terrible nature of it. Actually, you are a fascinating combination of both toughness of character and vulnerability, and…..”

Reid trails off, and then grabs a spiral-bound notepad from his desk and hurriedly writes something on one of its pages. I unwrap the towel and hold it up to my face again. “God, this is crazy,” I mutter. “Is this some sort of demented psychological experiment that you do on all of your friends or what?”

“Counsellor Troi,” Reid breaks in, throwing his notebook down. He folds his arms across his chest and cocks his head to the side, studying me with narrowed eyes.

“What?”

“Deanna Troi, the half-human, half-Betazoid empath who serves on board the Enterprise as the crew’s Freudian counsellor. That’s your character.”

“My character.”

“Yes. Your sensitive nature makes you a perfect match. You wouldn’t happen to be psychic, would you?”

I laugh unsteadily. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter. Your natural empathic nature is enough.” Reid sits down on the swivelling office chair and pushes himself side-to-side with his toes. “Hope you don’t mind that she’s a female character,” he says, grabbing the notepad from behind him and scribbling down more words.

“I guess not,” I answer uncertainly, watching his hand as it moves in quick bursts across the notebook. His hand is making me temporarily forget about the dead parents lying bloodied and pale on the floor, and my shock and disbelief that the whole story was fabricated. His hand is lyrical and pale, and moves steadily and quickly like light arcing across the page. It pauses mid-flight when Reid looks up to say, “I won’t do that again. I’m sorry. I hope you can trust me.”

“I don’t trust anybody,” I say. I look down and trace a cotton Enterprise on the bedspread with my index finger.

“I hope I can change that,” Reid says pointedly. We look at one another for a few seconds, and it feels like something shifts, something opens up. I can’t explain it with words. I just feel it. It feels as though I’ve known Reid for much longer than just an afternoon, for just an hour-long episode of Star Trek. I look at him, his blue eyes and calm, intelligent face, and wonder if he feels something, too. If he does, it is impossible to tell. He breaks eye contact and goes back to writing in his notebook. I hold my breath, and then exhale it in a long, sighing stream. My initial feelings about Reid had to be right. He’s a decent person. He’s crazy, but in a good way. A sincere kind of craziness. He means no harm. I don’t trust anybody, I always say. I’m always hiding from people, hiding from the way they hurt me and let me down. But maybe it’s time that I take a risk. Go with my gut. Trust.

Reid continues writing, and after a few more moments, I venture, “So this Counsellor Troi character. She can read people’s minds. She can feel the emotions of the people around her.”

Reid nods. “Yes, and she can telepathically communicate with people, although I don’t expect you to be able to do that.”

“I’m not sure I’m following where all of this is going. It sounds like I’m being cast in a TV show or something.”

“Kind of,” Reid answers with a small smile, looking up from his notebook. “I’m looking for people to star in my Star Trek movie that I’m going to submit to the UFO Festival in McMinville, Oregon.”

“The what Festival?”

“UFO Festival. They put it on every year the first week of June in McMinville, Oregon. You haven’t heard of it?” Reid swivels around and opens up the top drawer of his desk, rummaging around inside until he finds what he is looking for--a neon green flyer about the size of a paperback book. “Here,” he says, turning himself back around and handing me the piece of paper. “This explains everything. You see the part where it talks about the video contest? Prize is $100.”

I scan the flyer, noting the description of the contest and also the featured speakers, one of whom is Travis Walton, a man who claims to have been abducted by aliens in a remote Arizona forest in 1975. “This looks interesting,” I say, handing the flyer back to Reid. “So you’re going to film a movie then?” It seems alien to be in such a normal situation all of a sudden—TV, snacks, and friendly conversation, but I decide that for now, I won’t question it. I’m starting to settle into the flow of the moment, and I realise that I feel more human than I have in a long time. “Do you have a video camera?” I ask conversationally.

“I’m going to rent one from the school library. You can check one out for up to a week.” Reid jots something down in the notepad and then says, “I hope to start filming by the end of the month. I just need to work on the script a little bit more and recruit some actors.”

“I’m pretty good at writing, maybe I can help with the script?” I say tentatively. I can’t believe I’m already getting involved with the project, but somehow it seems like it’s a given.

“Excellent,” Reid says with an affirmative nod. “One less thing to worry about.” He pushes on the bridge of his glasses and writes a few more notes in his pad.

“That story about your parents,” I say after a period of silence, feeling the need to direct the conversation back to that horrible subject for a moment. “Seriously, do you tell that to everyone you meet?”

“Actually, no,” Reid admits. He shakes the last remaining crumbs from his Cracker Jacks box and cups them into his mouth, chewing on them thoughtfully. “I really don’t know why I did that with you. It was stupid. But you know what? I actually envy you for your visceral reaction to the story. Deep emotions fascinate me.”

“Data,” I blurt out.

Reid’s raises his eyebrows questioningly.

“Yeah, Data,” I repeat, waving my hand toward the cardboard figure in the corner of his room. “He’s your character. He’s the one who wants to understand human emotions, to feel them and experience them, but since he’s a robot, he can’t. Or at least not in the same way we can.” I start blushing furiously and avert my eyes. “Not that you’re a robot or anything, but…..” I look over to the door and see Antoine sitting in the hallway. “He even has a cat. He loves cats, remember?”

“Yes, he does. I see what you’re saying, and you’re right,” Reid says with the enthusiasm of dawning awareness in his voice. “I AM Data.” He smiles and grabs his notebook, flipping to a blank page and scribbling down some more notes. “Thank you for that insight, Counsellor.”

“So it’s not Ensign anymore?”

“No, in light of our current conversation, I think Counsellor is definitely more fitting.”

We look at one another for a few seconds, both of us grinning. I feel Reid’s smile moving around like the fiery end of a sparkler in my chest. I’m scared of the fire and try to extinguish it by drawing down a deep breath into my lungs. “Okay,” I say, exhaling and slapping my hands on my knees. “So about the movie. Where do we start?”

***

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