Faye rode her bicycle through the quiet evening, breathing hard, she wasn’t very fit. She should have caught up with Johnny by now, shouldn’t she? She saw him run out of the yard like his tail was on fire (His tail? She hadn’t even ever seen his tail yet! She had almost asked him to show it a couple of times, but it would mean him taking off his pants, and that had seemed a bit, you know, risqué. And here her parents were suspecting them of having sex, for Pete’s sake!), but: he wasn’t going to run all the way home, was he? If he was headed home, that was. Or did he have to work later this night? She didn’t know, they hadn’t spoken about his work for some time—there were nicer things to talk about than rat-catching. He would usually leave her around midnight, even if he had nowhere to go, because Faye needed her sleep. She had often fallen asleep before he left, lying in his arms, and she never would remember him leaving (even though he said she would half wake up, and mumble at him). (And he mother would complain next morning that Faye had again forgotten to brush her teeth before bed. This made Faye both smile and made her feel slightly devious. Sorry, mom, for not brushing my teeth, never you mind the lemurian boy I had in my room..!)

She had no idea where he might have run off to, mainly because she didn’t know why he’d run off at all. Why had he acted as crazy as he had? What the heck had gotten into him? Why had he looked at her as if she was a poisonous snake he’d just stepped on?

Faye crossed the Interstate, which was practically considered the border of the Shantytown. She paused and looked around. In the distance she saw the light of some fires outside the wooden shacks. Some Spanish voices on the wind, laughter, a man and a woman arguing…

Well, she wasn’t going in there, on her own, at night, no sirree. She turned back, pedaling towards town, not in a hurry, thinking what to do now.

She didn’t dare go home yet, though she knew she’d have to soon enough. She didn’t know what to do about that whole parent-situation. She had to talk to Johnny, find out what was going on, what had been wrong with him, then, after that, she’d think about what to do next. First things first, as they said.

So, where could he have gone, if he hadn’t gone home? Work. But would he just go to work, like nothing had happened, when something (whatever) definitely had happened..? …something besides him being discovered coming down the tree by her father? Again, to answer that question, she had to know what had happened. She couldn’t know how he would be acting now, as long as she didn’t know why he had acted weird before.

She arrived at 126 Whitaker Avenue, Old Man Williams home, where Johnny stored his ratcatcher’s case. She put her bike against a streetlamp, and stealthily walked around the place, into the backyard, and tried the door of the shed. It was closed. Johnny would have the key, or Tuto would if Johnny wasn’t working tonight.

The house itself seemed to be sleeping, its windows dark. Would it be proper to wake up an old man? She knew most old people went to bed early, and got up real early. What time was it anyway? About 11 PM, she figured.

She walked to the front of the house and rang the bell. Screw it. This was an emergency, wasn’t it? It might well be. Maybe Johnny had, like, a psychic breakdown, or something. Johnny had told her Old Man Williams was a friendly geezer, who had always treated him fairly, which was unusual for a humans.

She rang the bell again. Was he deaf? Maybe he was a bit, being old… A window creaked open on the first floor.

“What time is this to be pestering people?” a croaking voice asked her. The man hadn’t bothered to put on a light in his room, so Faye only saw a dark outline, a few stray hairs on the man’s head were illuminated by the streetlamp.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Williams! You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Johnny’s and I’m looking for him. Could you tell me if he’s working tonight? And where?”

“If Johnny’s working tonight? Well, I suppose—” the man suddenly fell quiet. “Oh, Johnny, you say… no, no, I’m afraid he hasn’t been working for me for months. Left town, I believe, yes, so he did.”

“What? No, hold on. I’m a friend! I’m not with the police! I know Johnny’s been—” she stopped yelling then, and sort of shout-whispered, “I know he’s back! I’m not the police!”

“I can see you’re not the police, young lady. How old are you anyway? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“It’s an emergency, sir!” she still shout-whispered at the dark shape above, “I know Johnny works for you, and I know Tuto as well, you see?”

“Is that right? Say, those boys have been doing fine work, and I’ve been considering sending Tuto over to Midland for some jobs. I never could of course, with only Johnny working for me, but now with Tuto… and seeing it hasn’t rained for weeks, which means the rats are laying low…”

Faye wasn’t here to talk about rat-catching, for crying out loud. “Like I said, sir, sorry to interrupt you there, but it’s an emergency? Can you tell me where I can find Johnny?”

“No, dear, I don’t believe I can. Tuto handles most of the logistics now, hobnobbing with the customers, and so forth. Those boys won’t be needing me, soon enough, e-hehehe…” the man chortled.

Damnation! “Okay, sorry to have bothered you, sir. I’ll be on my way then.”

“Get yourself to bed, missy.”

There was only one other option. She rode to the Frost Bakery on Grandview Avenue. She hadn’t spoken to Pearly for weeks—not since she had suddenly shown up in Faye’s bedroom and told her she was a fool and warned her she was getting Johnny killed with her foolishness.

Johnny had told her Pearly had mellowed somewhat since then, and they were on speaking terms again, though they were still a long way from how they’d always been. Pearly had certainly changed, he had said. She mostly spoke to him now about some young lemurian guy named Brick, who had left Odessa years ago, had travelled the country, and had now made his home in New York, where he lived together with a couple of lemurians and humans. In one big house. This Brick still regularly wrote his family in Odessa and had invited them to come live with him several times.

Faye hadn’t liked the sound of this at all. To her it clearly sounded like Pearly was still trying to get rid of Johnny, ‘for everybody’s sake’, and tried to break Johnny and Faye apart in the process.

Faye put her bike against the wall, and tried the large wooden door of the bread factory. It was locked. She had once taken a tour of the place as a school trip. It had smelled heavenly. Lights were on inside, so Faye looked through the windows, rapped them and yelled, “Pearly! Pearly! It’s me Faye!”

She’d gone round three quarters of the building, when she was scared witless almost bumping into Pearly coming round the corner.

“Jeezus! I thought you were inside!”

“I was, but someone was hollering my name, as if there aren’t families sleeping up the road.” Pearly looked like she was playing dress-up as a cleaning lady, with an apron and a handkerchief tied round her head—but she was the cleaning lady, of course. “What are you doing here, did something happen to Johnny?”

“Yes!” said Faye, “something did, but I’m not sure what! See…” and she told Pearly about the evening she had…

“Whoa. So now your father knows about you guys?”

“Yes, and he immediately told my mother, of course, and I heard them talk and they think Johnny and me were, you know, putting out…”

“Putting what out?”

“No, I mean, you know…”

“Oh, mating!”

“Sure, let’s call it that.”

“And you haven’t?”

“No! God! What is it with everybody? We haven’t. Not that I haven’t thought about— Why am I even talking to you about this. You’re what, six years old, right?”

Pearly smiled and her eyes sparkled in the night. Seeing that familiar smile again made Faye realize how much she had missed her little friend. These last few weeks had been busy, filled to the brim: school, homework, homelife, Johnny, sleep… she hadn’t had a moment to stop and think and realize she had been missing her friends. She hadn’t really talked to Patty either, for some time. They would meet at school, and ride or walk back home together, and they would chitchat, but hadn’t really talked. It wasn’t helping that Faye was still keeping her main occupation (Johnny) a secret from Patty. Faye had read the looks Patty gave her. Patty didn’t understand what had happened to Faye, and she missed her old friend. And Faye didn’t know what to say, or what to do about it. She had changed, and didn’t think the old Faye would ever return. She felt sorry for Patty, but these things happened didn’t they? People fell in love, people grew up…

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“So, what did they say?”

“Who?”

“Your parents, what did they do?”

“I don’t know, I, uhm, escaped.”

“You ran?”

“Yeah, I know, it’s not very brave, I guess. I just couldn’t handle— Just didn’t want to try and handle—”

“Like you ran when Johnny returned.”

“… I suppose, yeah. I guess it’s just something I do when things get a bit… but hey, this isn’t about me! Do you have any idea what happened to Johnny? Is it, I don’t know, some lemurian thing?”

“No, it doesn’t make much sense. Not the way you describe it, it doesn’t…” and Pearly seemed to think about it for a moment. Then she cocked her head and inhaled deeply through her nose. She took a step forward and said, “Hey…”

“What is it?”

“I… thought I smelled Johnny…”

“Johnny’s here?” And she yelled, “Johnny!?”

“Hey! You want to wake up the whole neighborhood? Some people don’t like me working here, you know? Why do you think I work this late? I don’t want to get fired again.”

“Where is he?” Faye asked impatiently. “Has he been following me? What the heck’s going on?!”

“I don’t smell him anymore. Maybe I was mistaken,” she said, but by the way she said it Faye knew she hadn’t been mistaken.

Pearly ushered Faye into the bread factory and locked the door behind them. She still had a lot of work to do, perhaps Faye could help her, she said.

“Help you cleaning? I don’t really— I really should be getting back home. What time is it anyway?”

“Did Johnny tell you about this lemurian, Brick, who lives in New York?”

“Yeah, he started telling me about it. But, well, I really didn’t want to hear it.”

“Why not?”

“Honestly, Pearly, because it sounds to me like you want Johnny to follow in this guy’s footsteps, and move to New York because it’s supposed to be so great for lemurians. And I’m not too keen on that idea, as you can imagine, Pearly.”

“Why do you sound so angry about it? You don’t want to try living in New York? I didn’t mean you had to go now—”

“Me go? I thought you wanted Johnny to go!”

“No, you both, otherwise what’s the point? See, I’ve been writing Brick. He would usually write his family about once year, and I’d read them the letter, and if they had a reply, I would write a letter for them to send back. But a couple of weeks ago, I wrote him, personally, and we’ve been corresponding since then. He can write as well, you see. And he told me how he lives together with lemurians and humans in one single community. That’s the point. They live in some deserted convent, men, women and children, humans and lemurians. You and Johnny could live with them and be together. You see, things are changing up North in the big cities, Brick explained to me. There are these groups of people, this movement, called the civil rights movement. These are mainly African Americans who are fighting for their rights, but the lemurians also profit from this. They are also recognized to be unfairly treated. And it’s not just black people who think so, a lot of young white humans agree, and they all listen to the same music and wear the same clothes and they have this whole thing going together which is called a subculture. It’s like a little society within society, if I understand it right, with its own rules and customs.

“So you see, this is where I could see you and Johnny living together. Maybe I was a bit harsh when I first found about you guys, saying you were fools and you didn’t understand how the world worked… Maybe there is place for you two in the world, after all. I’m not saying you could go around kissing each other on the streets of New York, but you could kiss in your own home.”

“And you told Johnny you wanted us both to go to New York?” Faye asked somewhat puzzled.

“Yes, of course! And it’s not just New York, Brick says. You could go to Los Angeles or San Francisco. This subculture is popping up everywhere, and people call them ‘hippies’, which sounds pretty cute, don’t you think?”

“But I don’t understand why Johnny didn’t tell me the idea was for us both to go. The way he told me, it was about him going…” Faye didn’t know what to think. Had she misunderstood him? Maybe she hadn’t let him finish his proposal. No, she couldn’t stop him from telling anything if she tried… Great! Another thing she didn’t understand about him. Maybe she didn’t know this guy at all! Or maybe he was changing as fast as she herself had changed in the eyes of Patty. Maybe this time Faye couldn’t keep up with these changes, like Patty couldn’t keep up with her… and like Patty she could be left behind…

She told Pearly she ought to get back home, and absentmindedly waved goodbye. She was deep in thought, and pretty darn tired. She got on her bike, and rode home mechanically, when suddenly a car swerved and cut her off, breaking with squealing tires.

“Jesus!” Faye swore, and then recognized the car.

“Get in,” her mother said through the rolled down window, icily calm, but her eyes spat fire.

“I was just riding home, mom, I’ll meet you there,” she said, with a pitiful whine in her voice.

“Get in now!” she said, not calmly anymore.

“I’ve got my bike, should I put it in the back?”

“Leave the goddamn bike and get in, Faye!”

She dropped her bike by the side of the road, in the grass, and got in the passengers seat and braced herself.

“You were riding without a headlight!”

“Oh, it’s been busted for weeks,” Faye said, happy to be talking practicalities.

“And you don’t tell your father? Wait, we’re not talking about your bike, young lady,” and she stepped hard on the gas, the tires squealed again. “I’ve been looking for you for hours! We almost called the police, you know, to report you missing! If we had, you understand, we would have had tell them about your dalliance with that lemurian boy who they escorted out of town not too long ago. What do you think they would have done to him, huh?”

“I’m sorry, mom. I heard you taking to dad, and… we really didn’t sleep together, you know.”

“Didn’t you? Didn’t you, Faye? Then what have you up to with him in your bed, where I’ve been finding fur for weeks?”

“We were just talking, and reading…”

“And how do you expect me to ever believe that?”

“I don’t know, I—”

“I don’t want to hear it. This summer you’ll be sent to camp, out of state, and after the summer we’ll put you in a boarding school, a military boarding school, if they have that over here, I don’t know, it’s not something I ever looked into, for God’s sake, but if you can’t behave like a sane person, and your father and I are obviously doing a terrible job raising you, then we need some professionals to get you back to the real world. What we’re you thinking? First this guy scares you because he’s a creep and he’s following you, and then what? You feel sorry for him, or something? So you invite him into your room, into your bed? At night? While we are sleeping in the next room? Don’t think for a moment this is even slightly acceptable. You don’t know how these lemurians think! I don’t know how they think! Who does? They’re a completely different species, for chrissake, who knows what goes on in their heads. When a gorilla smiles at you, like this, it means he’s about to tear you apart! Now I’m not saying he’s a gorilla, or an ape, or anything like that, you know that’s not how I think, I’m just making a point!”

“He reads me stories,” Faye said, as her mother took a breath. Her mother exhaled and gave Faye a bug-eyed look.

“He what?” she said, as she turned the car into the driveway.

“He reads me stories,” she said again, thinking it sounded a bit silly. Should she have said that they loved each other? Or would that only make things worse?

Her mother looked at her as if she had just spoken German, and said, “Go to bed.”

Faye got out, and shut the door. For some reason her mother didn’t get out. She did shout, “And brush your teeth!” at her.

A weird noise attracted Faye’s attention. She looked and saw her father standing on ladder, his back to her. He had put the ladder against the chestnut tree. Faye had used a branch of this tree to get onto the roof, and from there through her bedroom window. She had done this often when she was a little girl, despite her parent’s warnings it was dangerous. She hadn’t made use of the branch for years, until she first snuck out to see Johnny almost month ago. Her father was cutting at the branch with a hand saw like a madman. Poor papa.