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Escape from Neverland

Because the real Peter Pan can fly

By LiliaPublished 3 years ago 11 min read
17
Escape from Neverland
Photo by William Bout on Unsplash

This was not how he imagined the class would go. He nervously brushed some annoying strands of stubborn grey hair off his forehead, affixed his owl glasses to the bridge of his nose for the hundredth time, and gruffly cleared his throat. Several pairs of bespectacled eyes squinted at him before refocusing on the screens in front of them.

“What was that, Prince Charming?” Ruyi called out, cupping an arthritic hand to one ear. She let out a hearty cackle when he blushed.

No, not at all what he had planned.

––

A Few Weeks Ago

Professor Peter Pan was approaching his 53rd birthday, and the only love in his life was still his research. It had been a cold, drizzly morning as he biked the short distance to his lab. Stopping by the faculty lounge for his usual coffee run-and-hope-nobody-sees-him, he was surprised to find the room abuzz with professors and graduate students. Before anyone could stop him, he had already ducked back out. Common chatter was not his thing, and certainly not before his morning coffee.

The source of the chatter was soon discovered in his mailbox: a letter from the university to one Professor Peter Pan, a title that he personally never wrote out. He opened the envelope quickly, trying to avoid the inevitable cringe. Mr. and Mrs. Pan may have applauded their ingenuity at having picked a great English name that coincidentally included their Chinese surname, but they could never have known how cruel the taunts of elementary schoolchildren could be. There were the fistfuls of sand stuffed into his backpack and sometimes his lunch. Pixie dust. There was being shoved off swings and slides because the real Peter Pan can fly.

Or the most common: Chinks don’t belong in Neverland! He hadn’t known what it meant, but the sneers told him that he shouldn’t tell anyone.

He brushed the age-old feelings aside as he focused on the letter. In an effort to promote university engagement with the local community… Ah, just what he needed – another university initiative to stall his work. But wait... a modest research grant will be offered to all participants. That was tempting. Several local NGOs were then listed at the bottom of the letter along with open volunteer positions.

Now, Professor Pan was no humanitarian. Simply because people were not his interest. Teaching computer science at the university was merely a means to an end, the end being his love for research. He went about his day avoiding as many personal interactions as possible and grudgingly held office hours once a week, which was already once too many. He spoke in code, and so did his computer. Oh, if only people were that simple! If only people made as much sense to him as did data structures and algorithms. Alas, they didn't, and his elderly parents had long given up on their matchmaking quest. He was married to his work, and he was quite content with that.

His only woe was not being able to persuade the university to pour more funding into his work. So for research’s sake, he supposed he could tolerate some “community engagement”...

––

A few weeks later, he had signed up to teach technical skills to senior citizens at the Asian cultural center. The center was located in Chinatown, so he could pick up his favorite takeout – pork buns and dumplings – on his way home. Win-win, he told himself, despite the many knots twisting in his stomach as he locked his bike outside the imitation pagoda.

Inside, a stout receptionist looked him over quizzically and declared, “You’re much older than previous volunteers – we usually get tech-savvy teens for this.” She waved him upstairs to a large multipurpose room, where several long meeting tables with computers were set up.

There were five people in their seventies or eighties clustered around a computer screen watching one of them play mahjong solitaire. He took a deep breath. If he could lecture in front of a full auditorium, he could do this. All he needed to do was give a couple of lectures on basic technology. Who better than a computer science professor, right?

“Who’s this shuai ge?” A spirited voice behind him caused him to turn. Professor Pan had never been called handsome before, and it was no small surprise to see that the words had come from an elvish woman in her eighties tottering in with a walker. Her smile, though devoid of teeth, was full of life, and her wrinkles were written by decades of mischief.

“I’m Professor Pan, but you can, uh, call me Peter if you wish. I’m the new volunteer teacher.”

“Ah, Peter Pan! Well, I’m Ruyi, and I’m the mob leader here,” she said proudly.

He smiled back awkwardly, unsure of what to say.

Thirty minutes later, the professor realized this “community” was going to need more “engagement” than he’d signed up for. Every few minutes, someone interrupted him with completely irrelevant questions. Xiong, the one who had been playing solitaire earlier, wanted help getting rid of ads from his Candy Crush game. Only Ruyi, who had taken out a little black leather notebook and was taking copious notes in Chinese shorthand, seemed to be paying any attention. He was glad when he finally reached the end of his presentation.

“No one has made a presentation for us before!” Ruyi commented. “What did you say your profession was?”

“I do research in computer science,” he replied. “Oh, and um, teach at the local university.”

“A professor! I should’ve known. Attractive professors are the bane of my life.” She cackled when he shifted his feet and looked away. “My son-in-law also works at the university. What position, I forget. What is your research?”

He hesitated, trying to think of a way to explain his years-long project. “I’m working on, um, developing a faster search algorithm. Like to find information stored in a data structure…”

Her forehead crinkled before her eyes brightened, and she asked, “Can your search thing help me find my dentures?”

Professor Pan’s smile turned into a chuckle as Ruyi began to laugh, showing off her missing teeth.

––

A few more lectures passed before Professor Pan gave up on finishing his presentations. His elderly students had their own agendas and were persistent when it came to their questions. How do I upload photos to WeChat? What’s the difference between SHIFT and CTRL? Why does this video keep replaying? (It was an animated GIF.)

Ruyi’s agenda seemed to be getting to know him. It puzzled him because it was so contrary to his nature. His mantra had always been: don’t meddle; meddling breeds problems you can’t solve.

“Why are you here?” she asked one day, after class.

Why?” he repeated. She had a knack for replacing the code in his mind with befuddlement.

“Yes, everyone’s here for a purpose.” She winked at him, “I’m here to ogle at our dashing teacher, but Lang there is learning how to use the computer to help his dyslexic grandson. School’s hard for the boy, but Lang wants to show him that if an old man can learn, so can he.” She nodded sagely.

“So, why are you here?” she asked again.

Struggling to come up with a truthful answer besides the financial incentive, Professor Pan deflected with another question. “Really, you are here to ogle at me?”

Her eyes and mouth widened into little o’s before she broke into laughter. “Ah professor, you are finally talking back! That’s only part of the reason.” Her voice grew quieter, and a small frown appeared. “I have Alzheimer’s. I’m not really here for the class… I want to spend time with my friends, capture all the memories, big and small, here in my journal.” She gestures to her little black notebook. “See, this one is about you. When my memory gets worse, I want to look back and read them.”

Professor Pan was once again at a loss for words. He felt a blossom of respect for Ruyi that he hadn’t felt for anyone outside the professional arena. He couldn’t begin to fathom the loss – imagine not remembering Dijkstra’s algorithm anymore! Yet here she was, on a precipice from which there was no return, and still so incredibly joyful and warm.

Why exactly was he here? For the promise of a small grant? Suddenly, he wasn’t sure why his research was so important to him.

Later, on his bike ride home, he thought back to his college days, when research had become his comfort and escape. A disturbing memory resurfaced. He had been one of two Chinese students in his college class. The other boy had a stutter, one that worsened in his broken and accented English. Their professor had mocked him mercilessly, and he, Peter, had cowered, afraid to draw attention to himself. To their shared skin color, their shared heritage. Rather than allowing others to label him an outsider, he had immersed himself in theory and code, hiding from people entirely. It was a self-imposed quarantine. A self-constructed Neverland where he neither confronted cruelty nor experienced intimacy.

––

The promised research grant, $2,000 in cash, was placed in an envelope and left in his university mailbox. He planned to deposit the money at the ATM next to the cultural center before class started.

It was an overcast afternoon; rain was expected. Few people were out when Professor Pan arrived. From a distance, he saw Ruyi with her walker approaching slowly. He waved, but she was too far to see him. He was about to turn towards the ATM when he saw a figure in a dark hoodie emerge from an alley and approach Ruyi. His pulse quickened instinctively.

He didn’t remember moving his legs, but somehow he found himself close enough to hear the man say, “Give me your purse, yellow bitch,” and close enough to see the shock in Ruyi’s eyes when her walker was knocked aside. He froze when Ruyi was shoved to the ground, and he watched as the man rummaged through her purse. Decades of repressed bitterness, anger, and fear flooded him as he stood helplessly. C’mon, show us you can fly. Is this enough pixie dust?

Then, a flash of black leather. The thief pulled out Ruyi’s little notebook of memories, mistaking it for a wallet, and began to run. Suddenly, he was moving again, following after him.

“It’s just a journal!” Professor Pan’s voice quivered. The man didn’t turn. His mind spun. What could he do? He had money. Yes, he could offer cash, but how much? His mind raced as though running an optimization function. There was no time; he had to act.

“HEY, YOU WANT CASH? I HAVE TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!” he screamed.

The man stopped running. He turned back menacingly, looked at the notebook in his hand and sneered.

“Oh yeah? You gonna spit up 2K for this piece of trash? Show me what you got.”

Professor Pan held out his envelope of cash, limbs shaking from exertion and fear. The thief tossed the notebook at him, grabbed the envelope, and took off. Chest heaving, but with the notebook safely retrieved, the professor returned to where Ruyi had fallen. She was sitting up and appeared uninjured, aside from a small scrape on her forehead.

“You didn’t need to do that for me.”

“I had to.” He thought for a moment. “Because... I think that’s why I’m here.” As the words left his lips, he felt an intense relief, as though a quarantine had been lifted.

––

It had been two weeks since the assault, and Professor Pan hadn’t worked on his research since. Instead, he had purchased a little black notebook of his own to journal his feelings and observations – and that was how he knew it was another cloudy day when he found the deposit of $20,000 in his bank account. He had reported the $2,000 loss to the university with no expectation of getting it back, so he was shocked to see an amount ten times the original sitting in his account. He immediately phoned the university office, and the lady on the line informed him that he would “soon find out.” Find out what?

The mystery didn’t last very long. That afternoon, Ruyi’s smile was the brightest he had ever seen.

“Why professor, you must really have magical pixie dust after all! Remember the son-in-law I mentioned?” She didn’t wait for his response. “Turns out he works in the Provost’s Office. When he heard what happened, he spoke with the provost and got you a little extra for your research!”

“A little extra?” As usual, Ruyi left him with no appropriate response.

“Well, what do you think? We all hope you can put it to good use,” she beamed.

“That, I can do… I will do.” In fact, he already had some ideas in mind. Perhaps a program for dyslexic readers. Or perhaps an AI memory bank of sorts…

––

If you enjoyed this story, consider giving a heart or even a tip! Better yet, check out some of my other writing, including another short story Rain Like Coffee.

Since the writing of this story, anti-Asian violence has continued to rise across the country. If Ruyi's story has resonated with or touched you in any way, please realize that crimes like this are happening at an alarming rate, and not all of our vulnerable elderly have a Professor Pan ready to intervene. Below, you will find several links to different AAPI organizations that you can donate to along with general resources for the AAPI community.

Links:

Donate to Stop AAPI Hate

Donate to Asian Women Alliance

Learn how to get involved

AAPI Community Resources

friendship
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About the Creator

Lilia

dreamer of fantasy worlds. lover of glutinous desserts.

twitter @linesbylilia

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