Haven by Laury Falter

lab. They were starting the third phase of clinical trials today.”
    “Do you want to try her there?” I offered.
    He stared past me, appearing dazed as he looked over my shoulder. “We’d never get in. They’ll be in lockdown right now.”
    Where we’re supposed to be, I thought with a bit of irony.
    “I need to get some things from my room.”
    I realized I was blocking the door and stepped backwards into the hallway, but my body didn’t clear the door entirely and as Harrison passed our arms brushed. And there was a subtle, but unavoidably evident, adjustment to his posture. Amused, I watched him enter the room across the hall, his broad shoulders squared and stiffened.
    He was shoving clothes, deodorant, and a toothbrush inside a canvas duffel bag when I walked in and surveyed his bedroom. While I didn’t expect posters of nude women or hard rock bands, I also wasn’t expecting what I did find. A small bed had been shoved against the wall with an opened suitcase of clothes lying next to it. Other than those two items, there wasn’t a single sign that this was his room. It was an office where he’d been allowed to sleep. He’d crammed his belongings into one corner, and I noted with sadness that he took up as little space in this world as I did. In fact, there was only one item not in that corner that didn’t look like it belonged to his aunt. It was a book splayed open to a specific page on the desk beneath the window, and when I moved close enough to it my breath caught. Woodrow Wilson High School was printed at the top of the page and below it, on both pages, were rows of class pictures. It was opened to the S’s, and my picture was in the top right corner.
    “I need to pick up something else before we leave,” Harrison said from the door, purposely drawing my attention back to him.
    “Okay.”
    “And I need to leave a note for Eve.”
    “Okay.” Why couldn’t I think of something else to say? Oh, that’s right, because half my mind was back on the yearbook wondering why it was opened to my picture.
    I wasn’t sure if he saw me notice it or not but he strolled to the desk, lightly flipped the yearbook closed, and pulled out a piece of paper. Without either of us acknowledging what I’d seen, he scribbled something rapidly and then looked up as if he was wondering where to put it. He wandered out, I followed, and we stopped in the kitchen, where he slid the note under a long-dead potted plant. The sight of it pulled me from my pleasant daydream that Harrison might have opened that yearbook to my page for a reason. The plant seemed ghostly to me, sending an understated message that the person who tended that plant had also tended to Harrison, and her lack of care meant she probably wouldn’t be coming back for any of them…Harrison, the note he was leaving, or the plant. I turned away, reminding myself to stop being so melodramatic. The aunt must have a heart. She let Harrison stay with her. And to convince myself of this stranger’s ethics, I studied the kitchen, carefully avoiding the plant since it would only prove my point.
    There were no pictures of Harrison, not even of when he was young, and no family snapshots. The only items hanging on the refrigerator were pieces of paper that looked to be lab notes. I recognized lots of the symbols from Chemistry class, but these were far more complex than I could comprehend. They seemed to be reminders intended to catch the owner’s attention as she went out the door. Basically, this was not a home, and it was clear to me that his aunt had forgotten the humanity behind science.
    I had become so focused on my surroundings, so lost in thought, that the question that had been hovering just beneath my consciousness finally burst forth. “Why will getting to know you change my opinion of you?” I paused, realizing what I’d just said, as surprised by them as Harrison.
    “Huh?” he asked, tilting his head down and around to peer at me over his