Simon Corbin sat on a swing in Bissell Park. The swing wasn’t moving very much, but it was not entirely still either. He didn’t care to swing so high that it would make him dizzy. Rather, he just wanted to push back and forth enough to comfort himself — to relax himself from all the stresses of the day. Back and forth he pushed the swing with his feet. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  School was out for the year — and had been for the last few days. He would not have to go back until next year. Best of all, he would not have to set foot in Dogwood Elementary School ever again — as he was destined (or so he thought) to enter Wheaton Middle School come fall.

  As relaxing as the swing was, he tensed up when he heard an unwelcome voice. “It’s that f_gg_t, Simon Corbin,” he heard it say. He looked up and sure enough, it was Jeremey Taylor, the owner of the voice, with his lackey, Bill. Jeremey, in an unsurprising move, threw a pebble with some dirt at Simon — enough to show that he could violate Simon’s space whenever he liked while doing so in such a manner that no adult would take the offense seriously.

  “Stop it!” protested Simon.

  “Why don’t you make me?” asked Jeremey, pelting him with another pebble as Bill did the same.

  This was not the first time Jeremey had tormented Simon — but this time, something snapped.

  “I mean it!” shouted Simon as he stood up from the swing. And as his feet touched the ground, a dust-storm welled up. Instead of quickly settling back down to the ground, it grew, turning into a full-fledged whirlwind as it moved quickly in Jeremey’s direction. It didn’t stop until it had pushed both of the hostile boys a few feet back into a patch of grass.

  As the boys got up and brushed themselves off, Jeremey looked squarely at Simon. “You’re gonna regret that, you freak!” he said, and the two boys walked away. Simon was free of them for now, but he was sure that without a doubt, somehow, they would revisit him. No matter what he did, these boys and others like them were determined to make his life as miserable as possible. Fortunately, as it was now summer, he would not have to see them every day anymore. Hopefully he would run into them a lot less at Wheaton than he had at Dogwood.

  As he dreadfully pondered his latest run-in, he got up off the swings and headed over to the park bench where his mother was talking with one of her friends. “Mammy, can we go home?” he asked.

  “In a little bit,” she answered. “Serena is still playing with her friends.”

  He sat on the bench beside her, flapping his hands about on his lap and fidgeting with his fingers, as he waited for his mother to finally be ready to leave. At very least, Jeremey and Bill could not come over and torment him here without his mother seeing them do so.

  “He’s a very sensitive boy,” he heard her tell her friend as she wrapped a comforting arm around him. “And a lot of boys his age are, well, not so sensitive.”

  Finally, he heard his mother’s friend say, “If you’d like to go, I can bring Serena over later.”

  “Thank you very much,” he heard his mother say. “I appreciate it. Stop by for some cake when you do.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to,” said her friend.

  “It’s no problem. You’re anyway doing me a great favor.”

  * * *

  It seemed that no matter what he tried, Simon Corbin, age eleven, could never stay out of trouble. Other kids, the boys especially, were constantly picking on him at school. They always did little things that adults would never take seriously, but which made Simon’s school life miserable — from swift, mild kicks when adults were not looking to throwing very small objects at him.

  Simon tried his best to endure what they did to him. He tried not to let it get to him — but ultimately, it always did. And occasionally, when one of them pushed him too far, or when he had been tormented one time too many, something would snap inside of him — and mysteriously, the laws of nature would break down. One time, the strap of another boy’s backpack broke — and though Simon swore he had nothing to do with it, nobody believed him.

  His relation with the school faculty was not that much better than his relation with his fellow students. Any time he had an infraction with anyone, the teacher would always assume that he was the one at fault. He had been taken to the principal’s office, sent home, and even put in isolation more times than he could count. Most of the teachers, in general, were abusive toward him. One time, the school librarian even had his mouth covered with her hand so that he had a hard time breathing. Fortunately, that time he had an alibi to protect him from being accused of having pushed the bookshelf that mysteriously fell over right there and then. This, however, didn’t stop him from getting taken to the principal’s office for nebulous, unspecific reasons.

  But despite how he was generally vilified by students and teachers alike, he still had a few friends. A few boys and girls wanted to play with him at recess, and even have him over after school or on weekends. And most of them, at least, did not torment him. But even around them, he was not entirely free of strife. Around his male friends, he had to pretend to be more interested in boyish activities than he really was. And if he was seen too much around any of his female friends, he would be taunted by people who were quick to assume that his intentions were somehow of a romantic nature — an assumption that made him rather uncomfortable. In many ways, even among his friends, Simon was always alone.

  And many times, when he sat by himself, Simon looked at the other kids and wished he was more like all of them. Specifically, he wished that he were a girl — and free to wear dresses and grow long hair as they did — as he sat uncomfortably in his boy’s clothes. But he dared not breathe a word of this to anyone. He did not know how people would react if they knew he felt this way — but he was sure it probably would not be in a very favorable manner. He had heard of people far away asserting that they were girls despite being born as boys — or vice versa — but always in the most derisive, mocking way. Sometimes those who mentioned such people did so even with anger — extreme anger, suggesting that they would hurt these people if they could. And something suggested to Simon that this hostility would go beyond mild kicks and the hurling of tiny pebbles. The last thing he wanted was to make his situation even worse than it already was by being on the business end of this kind of hostility. But many times, as other children would play about as they willed — he would sit there, watching them longingly.

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  His home life was not ideal either — but it was substantially better than his school life. He still had to wear the boy’s clothes that were given to him — but at least he was not pushed to be rough and tough like other boys. Though, occasionally, his mother would remind him that he would fit in a lot more with the other boys if only he we’re interested in the same things that they were. As a matter of fact, it was sometimes even noted that his little sister, Serena, was more interested in boyish things than he was.

  He had constant, fierce fights with his sister, who was one grade behind him in school — but she never tormented him just for the sake of tormenting him, though at times it felt like she was doing so. And though at the most heated moments of those fights it seemed like the laws of physics were about to unravel just as with the altercations at school, somehow nothing of the sort ever happened. A good number of times these nearly-averted incidents would even result in the two of them calling an unspoken truce — like the time back when they were very small children when a living room shelf began teetering, about to fall on the both of them, before suddenly settling back in its place.

  Problems from his school life also had their way of spilling into his home life as well. When teachers would have him sent home from school, a clear message was sent to his parents that they had to do something to discipline him. This often resulted in him having to do tons of extra homework that his father would come up with in addition to that which was assigned by the teachers at school. Also, often he was too distracted to complete a class assignment that other students didn’t seem to have a problem completing — and his parents were instructed to have him complete the assignment at home. This, too, resulted in an increase in his homework load. And if this happened on Thursday or Friday, his father would also come up with an extra assignment for him to complete over the weekend — one for Saturday if his failure had been on Thursday, and one on Sunday if his failure had been on Friday.

  In the end, it frequently ended up mattering very little whether he would prefer to engage in boys’ activities or girls’ activities in his spare time — because so often, Simon would not finish his homework until it was time to go to bed for the night.

  But now Simon had finally graduated from Dogwood Elementary School, and the best he could hope for was to turn over a new leaf as he entered Wheaton Middle School. At least this was the best he could hope for until one day near the end of June when a strange man rode into town on a bicycle.

  The first unusual thing one would notice about this man was what clothes he was wearing. By themselves, the clothes would not seem too odd — but they were not the kind of clothes one would wear while riding a bicycle. Of course, even on a bicycle, one might wear such clothes in an urban area without any hills where bicycle commuting was commonplace. But this was Oak Ridge, Tennessee — a suburban town full of hills. As such, one would generally wear nothing of the sort. He wore a brown blazer, brown slacks, and brown leather business shoes. Beneath his blazer he wore a white oxford shirt and a blue tie with brown pin-stripes. And on top of his head, he completed his look with a brown Bowler hat on top of his straight brown hair that sat on his light skin, stopping not very far above his green eyes. This business attire was simply not something that one generally wore while riding a bicycle — certainly not in a hilly, suburban environment like Oak Ridge.

  Also, generally, if someone were carrying luggage of any kind while riding a bicycle around here, they most likely would be doing so in the form of a backpack. This cyclist, however, carried a briefcase that was clamped to his bicycle behind his seat where some people might attach a basket. Beside all that, though, just from glancing at him, one would not notice anything too unusual. Nobody would be looking at him close enough to notice that he wasn’t pedaling nearly as much as one would expect him to on the route he took. Nobody would notice that he wasn’t exerting himself as strenuously as one would expect, especially in the uphill stretches of his journey.

  He rode out of Haw Ridge Park onto the Milton Hill Greenway in the early afternoon and headed up the marina until he took a left turn onto Emory Valley Road. On Emory Valley Road he rode past great lengths of forestry, as well as an office park or two and even a small shopping center before he turned right on Briarcliff Avenue. From there, he began making one turn after another, until eventually he crossed the Oak Ridge Turnpike. About a block or so after that, he finally reached the eating establishment which he visited every time he came to town.

  He rode his bike up to a lamp-post, and laid it there gently. Then, he withdrew an ornate wooden stick, over a foot long, from inside his blazer. With this stick, he gave his bike’s steering-wheel a double-tap. Immediately, chains came out of the bicycle, binding it to the lamp-post as well as to any removable parts of the bicycle itself, such as the seat and the front wheel. He then gave his briefcase a double-tap before returning the wooden stick to the inside of his blazer. The bicycle’s clamp promptly released the briefcase, and away he went with it across the modest parking lot and up a few steps into a tiny Chinese diner.

  A few minutes later, he sat down at a booth by the window, right across from the serving counter, with his spicy chicken cashew and a glass of soy-milk. He took his hat off, placed it on the table, and did the same with his briefcase before opening it and pulling out a manilla folder that was labeled on the tab with the words: “Corbin, Simon”. He opened the folder and looked at a picture of Simon. Gently, he placed the folder in the suitcase where he could see its contents as he took the first bite of his meal. With the index finger of his left hand, he swiped upward in front of the picture, and the pages in the file turned so that he could begin reading about Simon’s background as he ate.

  All of a sudden, he heard the tune of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy — a tune he recognized very well. It wasn’t heard in its full symphonic glory, but rather, reduced to a set of electronic-sounding beeps of different pitches and durations, forming the basic notes of the melody. Nonetheless, through its simplicity, this set of tones reminded him of the musical masterpiece that he knew and loved. But more importantly at this moment, it alerted him to the fact that there was something that demanded his attention.

  He reached into his blazer and pulled out a small flip phone. He opened it and placed it to his ear, causing the electronic-sounding tune to come to an abrupt halt.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Is that you, Rudy?” he could hear a female voice ask.

  “Sure is,” he answered.

  “I can’t see you,” the voice complained.

  “Well,” he answered, “I’m in public.”

  “I totally understand,” agreed the voice. “You got to blend in. But are you already there this early? Your subject’s parents won’t be home for another few hours — and you do not want to bring the babysitter in on this.”

  “Oh, I’m here a few hours early,” he admitted, “but I don’t really want to take chances. This is Oak Ridge after all.”

  “Oh,” said the voice, sympathetically. “How can we ever forget that incident.”

  “I know.”

  “It nearly exposed our world!” she continued. “But isn’t you being there longer than you have to risky too?”

  “That’s why I have to be real careful,” he said, “but trying to get into town during rush hour would be even more trouble.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” agreed the voice. “I’ll tell you what. How about you reach out to me when you’re somewhere that you can talk a bit more freely?”

  “I certainly will,” said the man. “Talk to you later.”

  He hung up the phone and put it back into his blazer.