Brave New Love (39 page)

Back in the cafeteria I know there’s little hope of finding anything I can stand to eat. The line for the food has diminished by now—most kids were hungry and also don’t mind
this crap—so I breeze past what’s on offer at the steam tables behind the invisible electric food protector. Messages scroll by above the offerings: “Have
-some-fried-NuFish-with-cream-sauce.” “Have-some-sautéed-SoyJoy” “Have-some-synthetic-apple-pie.” I pass, and go to one of the vending machines. The chocolate
bars cost fifteen credits and I’ve already used up a lot of credits on the motel. I’m incredibly lucky that my parents don’t automatically track what I spend, like a lot of
parents do. The motel debits my card as “cash,” but the amounts are large enough to raise questions.

Behind me I hear some kids who used to be my friends whispering, “That fruit Eric and his
boyfriend
should go live in the woods across the border in that ungodly state, with the
rest of the freaks.”

I’ve heard other whispers about this place before. It’s just across the state line. I’ve been wondering about it. I mean, there are states that don’t have laws like ours.
That’s partially what the Breakdown was all about.

I skip lunch and leave the cafeteria. I don’t mind going hungry. Being with Pan is more important than food and, if I’m lucky, Pan’s dad will offer me some
good food
when I drop him off at his house. Pan’s father makes Thai food and has connections on the black market. Though poor, he can get actual vegetables and occasionally even chicken or pork or
fresh fish. It was at Pan’s place that I learned about real food. What my mother presents us for dinner microwaved from the freezer isn’t nearly as good.

Besides, going hungry helps save my credits for an hour or so at the motel with Pan. I’m not quite eighteen, not old enough to legally rent a motel room—Pan’s only
sixteen—but for enough credit, the Truth or Consequences ignores that—they ignore a lot, like the fact that we’re two boys who are renting the room for a few hours only. They
don’t ask questions. Sure, they
look
at our IDs, but they don’t swipe them, they just take my card number over the phone and debit the credits.

Unfortunately, although the place is expensive—they have to pay off the cops and who knows who else to get away with all these infractions—it’s also filthy. The toilets
don’t flush with adequate conviction, and when they do they often overflow, so the bathrooms are to be avoided at all costs. The beds are also dirty. We’ve seen insects in them. And
there’s dust and grime all over the place. So we use the toilets at school before we leave—which aren’t very good either, but better than the ones at Truth or
Consequences—and we take showers when we get home. We always strip as soon as we get into the motel room-not because getting naked is
all
we are there for. In fact, sometimes we
don’t do anything more than just hold each other and talk. But removing our clothes keeps them reasonably clean. We don’t want our parents to notice anything unusual on our clothes and
wonder where it came from.

I stop by Ms. Van Houten’s room when I finally get out of my last class. Pan is still in the room, as usual. We don’t want to meet in the hall and leave the school together, because
then the other kids would see us and report us. All the other kids have already rushed from the classrooms by now, and if we wait a few minutes—using up precious time—they’ll all
be gone and we can sneak out without being seen. We trust Ms. Van Houten; we know she won’t turn us in. She’s the only teacher who doesn’t wear a cop badge.

But the cameras and microphones are everywhere.

We trust her so much that I sit in the desk next to Pan and touch his shoulder, casually as if I’m just getting his attention. He turns and meets my gaze with his dark eyes in his dark
face, serious and unblinking. We’re opposites. I’m blond with light skin and blue eyes. I look at him just as seriously.

And then I place three fingers, spread apart, on the desk-like an “M”—our secret code:
Motel today.
His whole face lights up.

Pan is a sophomore. He and his father came to America only a year and a half ago. Pan learned to speak his English very quickly. But, like I said, reading is another matter. The Thai language
has a completely different alphabet.

Ms. Van Houten smiles warmly at us, then turns around to look at the digital clock display in the top middle of the wallscreen. She turns back. “I think you boys should go now. All the
other students have gone. You know, some of the them have been asking me questions about your . . . friendship.” She sounds concerned. “I know you just want to help Pan with his
reading, Eric, but others, well . . . they talk about things. They might report you and you’d have to go through interrogation. I’ve heard it’s very unpleasant. You have to give
them the answers they want, and if you can’t prove they’re true . . .” She lets the sentence hang, unfinished. Ms. Van Houten
knows
, of course. But she has to be careful
too.

“Sure, Ms. Van Houten. I understand.” I smile. “I didn’t realize it was so late.” I got up and left the room. I heard Pan ask if she had any more work for him. No
way could we be seen leaving at the same time.

It would have been best for us to take different routes and meet at the motel, but Pan is too poor to have a motorbike, and the Truth or Consequences Motel isn’t close. He knows where to
meet me—my bike’s across the street from the church at the top of Heartbreak Hill.

•  •  •

The high school has freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior classes. Pan came to the school at the beginning of last year. We met because we both kept looking at each other
whenever we happened to pass in the crowded hallways. Last year we had the same lunch period, and Pan always sat alone. The teachers make sure that always happens to new kids. They don’t
trust anyone new. Especially if they are foreign.

“Hey, where’re you goin’?” Jumbo asked me last year when I started toward Pan’s table after we’d left the cafeteria line. Jumbo was somebody I talked to back
then. “You know we’re always supposed to eat at table 33C.”

“I . . . thought I’d be nice and sit with the new kid.”

“Huh? He’s weird and foreign,” Luther said. “What kind of sucker are you, anyway? And what if the teachers catch you at the wrong table? You’ll get the tazer for
sure.”

Krawl narrowed his eyes. “What’s your
real
interest in that kid, Eric?” he asked me. “Are you some kind of pervo or something?”

“Oh, shut up!” I snapped. “You know I’m going with Dezbah. I just don’t like the way everybody ignores that kid because he’s foreign. I’ll only eat with
him once. I just want to find out where he’s from and stuff like that. If you had half a brain you’d know it can be cool to find out about other countries.” I turned and walked
away, not wanting to see their expressions as they stared after me. Being different in any way is just about the worst and most dangerous thing there is.

Yeah, even just sitting with him once—where all the other kids could see—I was taking a big risk. But I couldn’t stop myself. I did it because of the way he looked at me in the
hallways. It might have been just my imagination, but I felt I could see longing in his eyes. And that was the way I felt when I looked at him, too. I knew there was something wrong with me for
being physically attracted to another boy. It was pervo, like Krawl had said. But at the same time—it felt so
right.
I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but my feelings for the
new kid were much more powerful than my feelings for Dezbah, one of the hottest girls in the class. I didn’t care about her much.

The foreign kid looked up at me. He seemed surprised that I was approaching his table.

It was unreal to expect that anything like what I was imagining might really happen between us. Even a lonely foreign kid wouldn’t dare put himself in that kind of danger. I swore to
myself that I would keep the conversation neutral, not say anything suggestive, just ask him where he was from and stuff like that. And I’d never sit with him again. Or talk to him again in
my life. I couldn’t allow myself to slide downhill like this. But I had to talk with him just once. I couldn’t resist.

I put my tray down across from his and sat down stiffly on the stool. “Er . . . hi,” I said.

His eyes were wide, his mouth half open in surprise. His teeth looked very white against his dark skin. He didn’t say anything.

“Uh, what’s your name?” I asked him as I picked up my plastic fork, even though there was hardly anything on my tray I could stand to eat. “I’m Eric.”

“I know,” he said softly.

“How do you know my name?” It was awful how much I liked it that he had found out my name.

“Oh, everybody know you because you on wrestling team.”

“You speak English really well,” I couldn’t keep from saying. He smiled, and on him it seemed a beautiful, warm expression. “But you didn’t tell me your
name.”

“Supan,” he said shyly. “But back home everybody call me Pan.”

“Where is home?” I asked him.

He was holding a spoon. He actually seemed to have been eating with a
spoon!
“Thailand,” he said. “A small village way out in country.”

“Geography’s not my best subject,” I said. “I know Thailand’s in Asia, but where exactly?”

“Southeast Asia. Thailand is south of Laos, east of Burma, north of Malaysia, and west of Cambodia.”

I grinned with embarrassment. “That doesn’t help me much. But now I can find it on a map, maybe.” I leaned forward. “But how did you get into this state? The military
hardly ever lets foreign people come here.”

“My father have cousin been living here all their life. Their parent come over long time ago, before this government. They sponsor us to come here after the bad hurricane we have at home.
Even they sponsor us, still very scary to go through immigration.” He shrugged. “I only want to stay at home, but my father not let me.”

I didn’t know what to say then and after a few moments’ silence it seemed as if the conversation had died. I looked down at my tray. Boiled octopus with some kind of thick, slimy,
smelly black sauce on it. Then, I heard Pan say, “I watch you wrestling in the gym one day. You . . . very strong.”

I looked back at his face. It seemed so beautiful to me now. And it sounded like he thought I was hot, too! “Do you play any sports?” I asked him.

“Football—here they call soccer. All village at home have team. And I row a lot there, when I go out on the lake with my father, help him get fish from his nets. And I climb tree a
lot, to get coconut and other fruit—fruit they do not have here.” He paused. “I see you in locker room one time. Your body good, like men who work in my village at
home.”

I tried to push my lips shut, but I had to smile. I was sure his body was “good” too.

Now he was beaming at me, not shy or embarrassed. “I wish we could—” he looked around the cafeteria “—go some other place, where no people around.”

That sealed it. I knew we were on the same wavelength. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. “Me, too,” I said. “Since you helped your father on a lake, you must be
a good swimmer.” He nodded, still beaming. “There’s a swimming pool, way downtown, in a place called the YMCA. The pool’s inside, so you can swim all winter.
Swimming’s good exercise to keep in shape for wrestling. My membership allows me to bring a guest. Would you like to go sometime?”

He nodded again. I had never seen such an intense expression of joy on anybody’s face.

So every weekend we went to the YMCA pool, far away from anybody we knew. Nobody from our school went there, even the other kids on the wrestling squad. I looked forward to those weekends more
than anything. He was small, but his body was perfectly proportioned, every muscle defined. We became close friends. I was amazed he understood so much about people’s lives—and could
say it in English. But it was so frustrating that all we could do was change clothes in the locker room, swim laps, and then shower together with other people around watching us. We were hungry for
more.

Then I found out about the Truth or Consequences Motel, and everything changed. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was dangerous. And I knew that nothing so wonderful had ever happened to me
before.

•  •  •

Today, after leaving Ms. Van Houten’s classroom, I went to my locker to get the helmets, then walked alone up the hill to the church. I left my motorcycle across the
street from it this morning—any church is as dangerous as the school, but this one is always closed in the afternoon, and I know nobody will be around. Since I’d planned to go to the
motel today, I’d parked here, far away from the school. I wait behind another lifeless tree.

Five minutes later Pan runs up the hill toward me. We don’t have to talk—we’ve done this many times before. We both put on our helmets—it’s illegal to ride without
them. But it’s also an advantage to be wearing them, just in case somebody from school might see us. They only sell one model of bike now and, with our helmets on, it will be difficult for
people to recognize us. I sit on the bike and rev up the engine. Pan climbs on to the back of the seat. He can’t put his arms around me, which is the safest way for a passenger to ride on a
motorbike, because the cops would stop us when they saw that. He has to hold onto the metal bar behind him. I rev up the engine again and pull out to the street.

The roads are pretty clear up here, and quiet. I know the engine will cover up what we are saying. I scream back at him, “We ’re so lucky you have Van Houten!”

“Yes! She only teacher who understand!”

Down on the main streets into the city the cars are almost motionless—one more thing that shrinks our time alone together. The highway would have been a little faster but motorcycles are
not allowed on it. So we can’t go fast, which both of us love. And even if there wasn’t much traffic, so we
could
go fast, the cops would stop us immediately and soak me with a
huge fine. Still, it’s better to be on a motorbike than in a car, because the bike can weave around the cars stuck at red lights and get to the front of the intersection—which is always
full of motorcycles, spewing poisonous exhaust into our faces. Still, the motorbike is fun. And it’s getting to be spring now—not that anything is getting green or blooming. There are
no living trees or shrubs or flowers to indicate spring. In the city, you can only tell the seasons by the temperature and weather.