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He'd almost missed his science class.

Father Bertolli had said he needed to go and rest and eat something and said he'd call his professor and cover in case there was anything special happening, which Mike hadn't thought there was. He didn't even think he'd be missed in a class that big.

He sure wasn't being noticed....

Concentrating was out. Listening was almost out. That he could even be there was... about the limit.

He hadn't been able to take a nap. He hadn't been able to stop thinking, moving. He was filled with a nervous energy that wouldn't let him rest, but hadn't made him feel strong, either.

After a frustrating half-hour spent trying to find ~some~ comfortable position, he'd finally just taken his winter coat out of the small closet and gone to the class he was technically excused from.

And forgot his textbook. Not that it mattered, since he didn't think he could follow along.

Scientific Method 102. Biology. Chemistry. Physics. Geology.

Radial Fenistrology too, probably.

Mike doodled a decorative ribbon under the words, and then changed the F to a Ph. Science-ier. Then he changed pens and added a purple, flowery border around the butterflies that topped the page.

He supposed the class was the science version of Intro to Philosophy. Baby-food for the mind... the toothless mind.

Father Bertolli said any philosophy was good, even a little one, if it was honest.

Was a little bit of science worth learning? If it was honest? True?

He looked up at the teaching assistant who was doing the classes on chemistry. The prof had three different TAs to do the different sections this term. Chemistry, biochemistry and then biology, up to the Christmas break.

She had a nice smile. When she smiled, she went from kind of plain to really pretty.

Mike looked back at his paper. Then he felt around in his bag without having to look.

He traced a circle around his pill compact in the center of the page, put it back in his bag, and then drew tiny circles inside its outline. He didn't try to get them properly spaced around the edges. Just added in a few in the middle: 28.

He'd carried the compact for two years.

Julie Harrington found him crying in school on the day he'd found his first for-sure for-sure whisker hair. The day he couldn't pretend any more that the others weren't. It was also the day they'd become friends, and then quickly, best friends.

He'd carried the little compact every single day since two weeks after that, when she'd gone in to the free clinic and told them she needed a prescription. They gave her a box with three little blister packs of 28, wrapped in an elastic. Each sheet neatly fit into his compact.

It was a prescription that she still sent him, every three months, every 84 days. Or had, once. The week before.

He'd always waited outside the clinic while she always went in alone.

Hiding outside so they wouldn't see him, and know.

The TA had the exact-same color hair as Julie, sort of.

Chemistry and biology.

Mike rummaged in his bag again until he found the little bottle he remembered was there too. It was just clear, but he knew he'd feel better, and he needed to feel better right then.

Julie was taking a year off to earn money and decide what she wanted to do, but they still talked at least once a week. He stretched his left hand out and examined his chipped nails in disgust... and finally decided to do it, even with.

What would he have done if his beard ~had~ got really thick? Without the pills. Before electrolysis.

Father Bertolli said philosophy had to be about the littlest things, too. Or that it was about the daily things. Not just Creation and Life and Death.

It had to be about pills and electrolysis and... life, too. 'Little L' living.

The TA girl at the front was writing a long string of chemicals and plus signs on the overhead projector.

"Balancing the equation means choosing the lowest whole molecular ratios so that the masses on the left - the reactants - equal the masses on the right, the reaction products."

Mike didn't understand what she was saying, or even if he understood what she meant to say. But he could tell she enjoyed teaching it.

"Besides balanced weights, all reactions either release or require energy. Some reactions, need ~added~ energy, like in this example, to potentiate the reaction. Some release energy, often as heat. It was by measuring reaction energies that early chemists and physicists first deduced the existence of atomic structure beyond the ideal of Platonic elements..."

Mike decided she was too smart for him - that day, anyway - and looked back to his own work. The clear didn't look that bad, once he'd made sure none of the old polish was flaked totally loose... it was kind of pretty, even, the pink shining here and there, more than his nails on the other hand.

If he hadn't been able to take Julie's pills, what would he have done?

If his mum and dad hadn't been like they were, would he have been like Tyson Greene instead?

He finished his left thumb and carefully screwed the cap back on to shake it and make sure it didn't dry out while he waited. The girl next to him smiled and made a 'I wish I'd brought something to do, too' look when he noticed her looking at him. He made a little smile back that he understood.

Tyson Greene had dropped out of grade 12 in February. Mike thought he was probably failing about every class by then, just from not attending. Julie and Karin'd said they'd heard his home life was really bad since the rumors about him being gay had started to get bad during the past summer.

Mike hadn't known Tyson well. Nobody had, he thought.

He looked at his hands. One looked pretty. One looked...

One looked like the polish was wet, and the other looked... the same. Dry nails, but still with little flakes and sparkles of pink. Still pretty, almost the same, but not... identical.

They'd talked about ~him~, too. Said he was gay or a sissy and all that...

He wrote 'Tyson' under the butterfly at the top of the page. In amongst the flowers.

The overhead at the front of the class had a new equation on it, a shorter one. The equal sign in the middle was arrows. Both ways.

He remembered what she'd been saying. Depending on whether energy was put in or out, the chemicals changed back and the reaction would go both ways. Perfectly.

It was the same stuff on both sides, the elements and all, but they were totally different molecules each side, too.

Were hydrogen and oxygen any different atoms if they were in water? Or after they were split out of water?

Plato'd believed atoms were all there was. Never-changing.

Two years ago, he and Tyson were the same, in school. Then, Julie and Karin and Roxy had known, and then he started taking pills. And Tyson'd been just another boy across the room in some classes.

They'd both changed. Different ways.

Mike stopped.

Doodling. Painting. Listening. Stopped.

Had ~he~ really changed into someone different? Had Tyson? Just from everyone knowing about him?

His beard was almost gone. Was that ~that~ different? Not many people even noticed.

He'd told Father Bertolli, and the man at Student Services. Mr. Hamilton. The girls knew all of everything, even away, from chatting. And his mum and dad knew almost everything too, sort of....

And nothing was different except that his beard was gone, and that he looked a bit different.

If Tyson had looked at him before he'd left, in January, or held the front doors for him... at school...

If Tyson had smiled and he'd known Tyson was gay, like everyone knew, and he'd smiled at him the way that boy had smiled....

If he'd know Tyson could see him as pretty, back in grade nine?

Or if Pia had smiled that way, too? Would he have felt anything? At the same doors, instead of a boy?

Would he have ever thought any of those thoughts in grade ten, about his beard?

Would he have been so afraid of his beard if ~anyone~ had smiled at him and said he was pretty... as he was?

He started to remember that dream, embarrassed that he'd even thought of it, there in class. After two years.

He didn't want to wonder what he'd have done or felt if things were different back then.

Instead, he wrote 'CHEMISTRY'

Then he drew careful, perfectly-the-same arrows above and below it, going both ways. Forward and back.

Chemistry. Sometimes it could go back.

The pills were chemistry. Some of it ~would~ go back.

If he stopped electrolysis, some could grow back.

A bucket of balls couldn't go back.... Was that philosophy?

Philosophy was everything... and he tried to think, using what Father Bertolli had taught him. Honestly.

-

He looked at his nails. His hands were shivering. Shaking. He didn't think he could even do his right hand nails.

He didn't have enough energy left.

If Mrs. Thakur said they wouldn't pay any more, would he go back? Would he be ~able~ to go back? Did that arrow point either way?

He looked just at his right hand. It still looked pretty, without any fresh polish. Was his left hand really different at all, really?

He could look up Tyson Green when he went home at Christmas. He'd never even said hi to him, that he could remember....

Was Tyson going back, in his personal chemistry, when he dropped out?

Or was he going forward?

Was that even the right question, when he didn't know Tyson?

-

End of Part the Sixth. Chemistry