Johnny had waited that morning for his mother to leave, before he entered the shack, thoroughly washed, and smelling of soda and lake. Pearly wasn’t there, he didn’t know where she’d gone.

He had slept the whole morning and was now teaching Tuto how to work the steel spring rattraps without getting a finger caught, and he had brought along Marlon and Damian, two ferrets, so they and Tuto could get used to each other. During this he told Tuto, speaking Spanish, about Faye.

Tuto was surprised, but not shocked.

“She’s the skinny blonde one, right?” Tuto asked. Johnny said, yes, with the green eyes. Tuto said she had seemed nice, and Pearly seemed to like her a lot, but he hadn’t really gotten to know her, since she hadn’t spoken much whenever they met. “She always seemed to be thinking, and seemed to be worried about something. Now I know what about…” Tuto said with his nice smile, while the two ferrets ran small circles around him, “…about you. Those two friends of hers, now they talked, man. There’s this one girl, small, with freckles, and these huge eyes swimming behind thick glasses… she looks a bit like a squirrel, a very happy squirrel, she’s very nice. And there’s this other girl, who I met only once, ‘Claudette’ is her name. Her black hair hangs down her face, like this, like two curtains, and she looks at the world through these curtains like it’s all one big show. I don’t think she takes anything very seriously. I’ve been thinking about this girl, hoping I run into her again. Maybe if your girl is crazy enough to fall for a stinking lemurian, maybe her friend can fall for a stinking Mexican, right? I didn’t even know this was a thing, humans and lemurians falling for each other.”

“It’s not a thing, normally,” said Johnny, “not naturally, that is. But don’t forget I’m half human, so maybe it’s my human half that’s mad about this girl.

“In the past humans and lemurians were regularly coupled, but they were forced. These were both slaves, Africans and lemurians, and they were made to breed halflings, like me, who would also live their life as slaves. It was not unlike the breeding of new types of dog. I recently learned this still happens, when I was trying to get back home, traveling through Kansas.

“In these cases there’s no love involved, obviously, or lust. Lemurian women have been raped by humans through the ages, but I believe that’s more to do with power, with dominating the other, than with actual lust. But who knows? And if you believe the stories humans tell, the other way round also happens: lemurians are said to rape human women, human daughters. Part of the reason half-breeds like me are permitted in human society, as long as we behave properly, is that we can’t procreate. Because of that, we’re not expected to have any feelings of love or lust, whatsoever. We’re like the eunuchs in human history, who watched over harems.” Johnny didn’t know the Spanish word for eunuch, so he had to explain the concept to Tuto, who had never heard of it, was appalled, and sure hoped there wasn’t a Spanish word for it.

Johnny wondered why he was telling Tuto about Faye, while he hadn’t even told Pearly. Did he want to get advice on the matter from a human point of view? He shouldn’t expect this from Tuto, he knew, who was hardly a well-adjusted member of human society. In his own way, Tuto was as much an outcast as Johnny…

…Tuto’s mother died giving birth to him. His young father left him with a large neighboring family, and promised to pay them each month for raising the child. He never did pay, and disappeared, never to be heard from again.

The boy grew up with the many children of this family, and when times got hard and food got scarce, all children went hungry. For some biological reason, Tuto’s body could handle being sustained on very little nourishment much better than his many foster siblings. He grew taller and seemed healthier, which didn’t make him very popular with his hard-working foster parents. The very superstitious community of Mexicans in the shantytown would call him a ‘cuckoo’s child’ or believe him to be devil’s brood, and they would always suspect him of trickery and deviousness, no matter how friendly he acted…

…Both Tuto and Johnny took to spending time with the greasers in town, who were clad in leather, revved their motorcycles and generally offended the civilized citizens. Tuto and Johnny appreciated how these youngsters actually chose to be outcasts. They didn’t even want to be part of society. And apparently the greasers recognized in Tuto and Johnny two fellow outcasts.

Being Mexican and lemurian, they were a far way from being accepted into the greasers’ fold—they were poked fun at and put down, but they were tolerated on the sidelines of the group, and enjoyed listening to the wild music that was sometimes played from a car radio and enjoyed not feeling completely alone in this world.

“Pearly seemed very unhappy when she found out about us, about Faye and me. Maybe you can talk to her about it,” Johnny said to Tuto. “Maybe it’s because she had to find out,” Johnny wondered out loud. “Maybe it’s because I didn’t tell her, didn’t tell her sooner. You see, Tuto, lemurians don’t lie to each other. Maybe not never, but very, very rarely. It’s always been like that. Not because we’re more noble than humans, I don’t think, but because we can’t lie very well. Our scent, the smell our bodies give off, would betray us. We can smell if someone is scared or nervous, and you can’t fake your scent. I can always smell the contempt other lemurians feel for me, simply because I’m a halfling and they’ve been brought up believing we are mistakes that should never have been born.

“Look at my own mother. She has never tried to hide the fact that she doesn’t like me. A human mother would never be so ruthless towards their own children, and would at least pretend to love them. But lemurians can’t pretend. Not to each other. We can lie to humans, of course. Most of us had to learn to lie pretty well just to get by.”

“Thank goodness!” said Tuto. “Please don’t tell me what you really think of me!”

The boys laughed.

“In this same way,” Johnny continued, “mother must have smelled I’ve fallen in love. I noticed how it had changed the scent of Faye, and it must have changed my scent as well. Thankfully she hasn’t smelled a human girl on me like Pearly did, but… well, I’m not sure how much of the truth mother suspects. She knows there are no lemurian girls my age around here, so, I’m afraid she may well suspect the worse… if she thinks about me and my life at all, that is…”

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“Oh hey, Pearly!” Tuto said brightly.

Pearly had come up behind Johnny. “I need to talk to Johnny, Tuto,” she said in a stern voice, speaking Spanish like the boys had.

“It’s okay,” Johnny said, “Tuto knows what’s going on, I just finished telling him about it, he can stay.” He didn’t know what to make of Pearly when she acted so seriously, and he preferred it if Tuto stayed.

“What does Tuto know, Johnny? Tell me about it, what did you do last night?”

Johnny shared a quick look with Tuto, who had never seen Pearly like this, and said, “Well, I… met with Faye…”

“You met her? You went to see her, at her home? In the middle of the night?”

“No, no… she came to see me, while I was working, like she did the night before. See, well, she climbs out of her bedroom window,” he had to smile at that, “to see me, see, we’re in love.”

“Love?” Pearly spat the word out. “You’re damn fool, Johnny!” she angrily turned on her heel, and walked off, actually stamping her feet.

A flabbergasted Tuto said, “I don’t know if I should believe my eyes or ears… I think I saw Pearly, but I heard your mother…”

When Johnny’s mother came home at the end of the day, Johnny was boiling a batch of potatoes, cleaned but with the skins on, in a large pot above a fire. They divided the potatoes into portions in silence, and mother took these to several old lemurian neighbors. When mother returned. Johnny had finished preparing their dinner. Normally Pearly would help him with these chores, but he didn’t know where she was, and mother didn’t ask about her.

They ate in silence. A bus with windows so dirty and dusty it must have been dark inside, rode passed them, and ejected its load of spent Mexican workers half a mile farther in the shantytown.

Johnny looked at his mother from the corner of his eye. Did she seem deeper in thought the usual? Possibly. He never could fathom what went on in her head, and today was no different. Did she smell it on him now? Did she smell his being in love? Or did he still smell only of the soda he had washed himself with this morning?

He didn’t feel very in love right at this moment. He felt forsaken, and desperate. He wished he were with Faye. He would feel in love again. Nothing really mattered when he was with her. All troubles were shut out from their tiny bubble of togetherness. The rest of the world seemed insignificant. As soon as they were apart he started worrying again, about Faye, about himself, about them together, and they seemed two tiny and fragile teens about to be swallowed by the enormous hostile world.

Pearly came back riding the bright green kid’s bike Faye had gifted her. “Hiya,” she said and asked if there was anything left to eat. There was. Johnny didn’t dare ask where she’d been, not with mother present. Pearly gave him a look, a meaningful look, yet Johnny had no idea what it meant—but when Pearly squatted in front of him to scrape some red beans and potatoes out of the pan, he smelled it! Faintly, but unmistakably: Faye. She’d met up with Faye!

Pearly asked her mother how Ms. Noblesse had been today, and they chitchatted about several old and feeble lemurians.

Johnny went and sat thirty yards away from them, acting busy mending a cage. He hoped Pearly would come over and tell him what was going on. Tell him why he had visited Faye, why she was so very angry with him, what that look meant that she had given him a moment ago? She didn’t come.

As the sun set, Pearly and mother took the dishes and washed them in the lake. Johnny paced nervously around, worrying, trying to think what to say to Pearly. How to make her understand him. How as he a ‘fool’? He hadn’t chosen to fall in love, had he? He wished he hadn’t fallen in love! (No, that wasn’t true, but he could tell her that.)

Pearly didn’t give him a chance to speak his mind, and left early for work. Johnny still had hours to spare before he had to work…

That evening Faye was failing to concentrate on her homework. In her mind Pearly kept repeating what she had said earlier: “It will get Johnny killed! They’ll kill him, hang him from a streetlamp!”

Was their love truly putting Johnny’s life in danger? Sure, people would be shocked, but kill Johnny for it? Did these things really happen? Faye had never heard of anyone killing anyone, ever. Those things happened in movies and in books, and in wars, but not in Odessa, Texas, 1963, did they? Maybe they did. Maybe they did, and nobody ever told her about it. Maybe it was one of those things adults tried to keep away from teenagers, like sex and booze. Maybe she should pick up a newspaper and read it, someday. No teenager she knew ever read a newspaper, presumably because they were boring, but who knew… maybe they were led to believe they were boring, while in reality they were chock-full of all sorts of grown-up stuff teens weren’t supposed to know about…

… Faye’s thoughts were awhirl in her head, and the letters in the textbook in front of her nose were a meaningless blur…

… and no matter which way her thoughts turned, they never got very far before they swerved back, returning always to ‘Johnny’. To the taste of his mouth, the glimmer in his eye, the softness of his fur, the bulge in his pants pressing against her…

… God, she needed to see him! Should she go out again tonight? Those couple of hours of sleep this afternoon had strengthened her somewhat, but she knew it hadn’t been enough. Her body still needed to rest, and she should go to bed early tonight, finish her homework in the morning, be well-rested and not act like a complete nincompoop again tomorrow at school. There were only a few weeks left till summer break, and even though her grades had been fine all year, as usual, and there was no realistic possibility of her being held back a year, she knew that if she completely screwed up these last few tests, one of her teachers was bound to inform her parents. She couldn’t have that. Mom and pop had already been asking questions tonight during dinner. They could clearly see she had just woken up, and had seemed worried about her.

So: sleep it would be. The decision was made.

… But could she even get to sleep with her mind buzzing like this? She needed to see Johnny, even if it was just for a moment. Not to kiss him and hug him and squeeze him (that too), but mainly to set her mind at ease—if Pearly came to talk to her, she must have given Johnny a similar talk. Maybe it had scared him off (of course it hadn’t, he was as in love as she was, wasn’t he?), maybe he had thought that the best option, for both of them, in the long run, was for him to leave, get far away from her, back to Iowa or wherever…

No. Even if he wanted to, had convinced himself it was the best option, he still never would—he never could. He was nothing but a… a leave in the wind, being pushed and pulled hither and tither by love, just like her. No free will left, no thinking straight…

… God, was falling in love as world-shaking like this for everyone? Shouldn’t people be warned about it? You heard these songs on the radio, saying love was the greatest thing ever, but they didn’t tell you you couldn’t function as a human being anymore. They didn’t—

—a tapping on her bedroom window jolted her out of her pondering.

She turned to the window, but saw only herself reflected back at her. It was dark outside. Had Pearly returned to scold her some more? The window opened, smoothly gliding up, and Johnny’s warm voice asked her if he could come inside. She almost jumped out of the window to hug him.