Shades of Simon Gray

by Joyce McDonald

  This was all her father’s fault. If he hadn’t been standing in the doorway of her bedroom barking orders at her, as he always did, yelling for her to “get a move on,” Courtney would have had time to pick out something decent to wear instead of grabbing wrinkled jeans and a stained T-shirt from the pile of dirty clothes on her floor.

  Right now she wished she had brought a sweater. The hospital was cold enough to give her frostbite, even though it was eighty degrees outside and the air was so heavy you could drown in it.

  Courtney reached for a magazine, opened it, and laid it against her chest to hide the tomato-sauce stain. She slid down in her chair, crossed her legs at the ankles, and leaned her head against the wall, right over someone else’s oily stain. Fragments of history—facts temporarily wedged into her brain from cramming the night before—skipped through her mind at random. She tried to second-guess the questions Mr. Meehan would have on the test. What is the Emancipation Proclamation? In what year did Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address? Give three reasons why the country went to war. They had been studying the Civil War this marking period. Right now it was a whole lot easier to think about a war that had torn apart the nation than about her brother.

  Although she would never admit it to anyone, sometimes Courtney thought Simon was all that stood between her and the loony bin. He was the buffer between her and their father. Her father drove her nuts. He was always on her case about something these days. She spent a good deal of her energy finding ways to avoid him.

  The past Thursday, two days before the heat wave struck, Simon had come across her smoking pot behind the garage by the woodpile. He stood there with his hands in his sweatshirt jacket, looking more like one of her freshman friends than a high school junior. But he didn’t freak out or anything when he saw her. Not like their dad would have. Instead he sat down on the ground next to her, leaned back against the garage wall, and stared up at the overcast sky.

  Courtney’s instinct was to squash the joint into the mud and claim it was only a bidi, mango flavored, not even a real cigarette. But she didn’t want to waste good pot. Instead she kept her gaze aimed straight ahead, as if she hadn’t even noticed Simon.

  Beyond their backyard was an open field, and beyond that, the cemetery where their mother was buried. A large sycamore spread its bony arms above some of the headstones as if it wanted to gather them all up in one swoop. It was too early for leaves, although buds had begun to appear.

  When the joint was too small to hold anymore, Courtney squeezed the lit end with her thumb and forefinger in short, quick nips, then put the roach in her pocket.

  With his eyes on the distant headstones, Simon asked, “Does it help?”

  No one but Simon could know what it was like living with their father since their mother had died. It was like living with a human land mine—the slightest little thing could set him off. And no one but Simon would understand why she was smoking pot. “Yeah. It does.” Courtney dug her fingers into her scalp and rubbed the top of her head violently, as if she were trying to trench through to her brain. “Sometimes.”

  Simon nodded but didn’t say anything more. That drove Courtney nuts.

  When she wanted to get on his nerves, she called him Simon the Good or Saint Simon. For as long as she could remember, he’d never gotten in trouble for anything. Nothing serious, anyway. It wasn’t normal. “It’s not like I’m addicted, you know. I’ve only tried it a couple times.”

  When Simon didn’t respond, Courtney turned to him with a thin half smile. “Like you don’t have any escape hatches.” She lifted a rock by her thigh, bounced it up and down on her palm a few times, then flung it into the open field. It made a dull thud as it landed in the damp earth. “You want to talk about addictions? What about all the time you spend at the computer? I can’t even get near it. Not even when I’ve got a paper to write.”

  “Who said I wanted to talk about addictions?” A cold wind seemed to rise out of nowhere, setting the sycamore branches flailing in a frantic motion and rustling the cornstalk stubble in the open field. Simon pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head.

  Courtney thought he looked like a monk.

  She knew he wouldn’t argue with her. Not like he used to. He never even teased her anymore. Not since their mother had died a year ago from a staph infection after a routine appendectomy. Nobody had seen it coming. It just happened. One minute she was fine, excited about coming home the following day, and three days later she was gone.

  That was why Courtney hated hospitals, hated doctors, hated nurses. She didn’t trust them. But most of all, she hated being there, in that place, waiting to see if they were going to screw up on Simon too.

  IT WAS NOT UNUSUAL FOR PEOPLE WHO WERE OUT for a Sunday drive, weaving down narrow country roads past dairy farms and fields of corn, to suddenly stumble upon the town of Bellehaven. Expecting to find a continuous expanse of fields and farms, they were rarely prepared for what met their gaze when they crested the steep hill and found, spread out below—as if it had materialized out of thin air like the mythical town of Brigadoon—Bellehaven, with all its Victorian homes nestled among ancient oaks and maples, hidden where no one could ever find it unless they wanted to, or unless they just happened upon the town by accident. If you weren’t expecting anything to be there, the very sight of it could take your breath away, especially in the spring when all of Edgewood Avenue was shimmering with crabapple blossoms.

  It was still too early for blossoms, although the unusually warm weather had teased little buds from the branches.

  Four blocks from Edgewood, Kyle Byrnes stood at the front window in the living room of the narrow Victorian where he lived with his mother, watching for Danny and Devin. His mother, a court stenographer, was at the courthouse and wouldn’t be home until sometime after five. His father, last they heard, was working as a short-order cook at some grill in Connecticut.

  Kyle spotted Devin as she turned the corner. She stopped to shift her backpack to her other shoulder. She had the most graceful way of walking Kyle had ever seen, even with the weight of the backpack tugging awkwardly at her shoulder.

  The night before, they had been making out in an old deserted shack down by the Manunkachunk River that ran through town. The night before that, they had gone to a movie in Hackettstown. And not once, during all that time together, had Kyle mentioned the conversation he’d overheard between Dr. Schroder and Mr. McCabe on Friday. He dreaded hysterics. And he was pretty certain Devin would go ballistic when she heard. Right now he was thanking his lucky stars none of the other kids they hung out with were in on “the project,” that they’d never even known about it. It was going to be hard enough dealing with Danny and Devin.

  Danny pulled up in his Mustang just as Devin reached the front walk. Kyle handed them both cans of Pepsi when they came through the front door, not even bothering to ask, and popped one open for himself.

  All of them were supposed to be someplace else. Kyle, the senior class president, had a student council meeting he’d had to cancel. Devin, who had the role of Lady Macbeth in the school play, should have been at rehearsal. Danny was supposed to be at track. Only Kyle knew how important this meeting was, knew they needed to figure out a way to keep the lid on things. Otherwise all hell was going to break loose.

  Devin dropped her backpack by the coffee table and curled into the corner of the couch. The temperature had been climbing all day and had finally hit eighty-seven. The room felt like a steam bath. She rolled her thick hair into a French twist, reached into her pocket for her claw clip, realized it was in her backpack, and leaned her head against the back of the couch to keep her hair off her sweaty neck. “I don’t see why we had to meet right after school,” she told them. “I could get replaced by my understudy if I’m not careful.”

  Danny eased into the recliner by the fireplace and pulled the tab on his can of soda. “Simon’s in a coma and you’re worried about a stupid play?”

  “That’s not what I
meant. I feel horrible about what’s happened to Simon.” Devin looked over at Kyle and with her eyes signaled him to help her out. “I just don’t see why we couldn’t have met later.”

  “We’re all worried about Simon,” Kyle said. “But we’ve got other problems.”

  Danny took a swallow of Pepsi. “Yeah, for starters we don’t have a clue what the guy’s got on his PC at home. He used it to log on to the school server a few times. What if that kid sister of his uses his computer? There could be all kinds of evidence—e-mails, chat room stuff—it’s all traceable.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Kyle said. He was standing by the window looking out at the front walk as if expecting someone else to show up.

  “Why would anyone even bother with Simon’s PC?” Devin said. “It’s not like anyone knows what’s been going on, it’s not—” She paused midsentence. Kyle had turned away from the window and was looking straight at her. “What?”

  While Danny and Devin listened with growing alarm, Kyle told them about the conversation he’d overheard between Dr. Schroder and Mr. McCabe, about the discovery of the English test and the possible investigation.

  Danny shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “We’re screwed.”

  Devin glared at Kyle. “You’ve known about this since Friday and you didn’t tell us? I spent half my weekend with you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Did Simon know?” Danny asked.

  “Simon was the first person I told,” Kyle said. “I called him from the school. We had to move fast. Damage control. He’s already removed the recorder program from the library computer and the two in the computer lab. There’s no evidence that we ever used it.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Devin said.

  “Hey, it’s not like you were the only one left out of the loop,” Danny told her. The palms of his hands were growing damp with prickly sweat. He was only now beginning to realize he’d made a mistake. A huge mistake. When his first effort to print out his English test the previous Thursday had failed, he’d tried again, selecting a different printer. This time successfully. It never once occurred to him that his initial aborted attempt might have survived somewhere else in the system, printed out to someone else’s printer. He realized now that he should have known better.

  Devin rolled her eyes. She leaned forward, holding her head in her hands. “You guys … this is serious. How did that test end up in the secretary’s printer, anyway? Who’s got Abel Dodge’s English class?”

  She looked at Kyle, who shrugged. She and Kyle were in the same English class, and it wasn’t Abel Dodge’s. They both turned to Danny. “It was you, wasn’t it?” Devin said. “You’re the one who printed out the English test to the wrong printer.”

  “Hey, how was I supposed to know where the damn test was going to end up? It was an accident. It wouldn’t have happened if Simon hadn’t bolted on me before the job was done.”

  “Meaning what?” Devin said. Her chest was so tight she could barely take a breath. She was just now remembering that Simon had promised to come to her rehearsal after school last Thursday.

  Danny shrugged. “He had to meet someone. Like you’d have thought it was the President or something. Like he couldn’t wait five more minutes for me to print out the test?”

  “So you printed it out yourself after he’d found the file for you?” Devin said.

  “Well, yeah. Why not? I told him I could do it myself. No biggie.”

  “Apparently,” Devin said, clenching her teeth, “you were wrong about that. God, what a moron.”

  “It’s done, okay?” Kyle said, breaking into the conversation. “Blaming Danny or Simon or anyone at this point is a waste of time.” He rubbed his eyes, trying to collect his thoughts. “They know someone’s gotten into the system. They know it was the English test they were after. They’ll be looking for anything suspicious.” He turned to Danny. “When’s your test?”

  “You mean, when was it?”

  “You already took it?” Devin shook her head. “Oh, god. It’s over.”

  “What? I ace all my tests,” Danny said. “They’re not going to suspect me. They’ll be looking for some kid who usually screws up and suddenly pulls an A plus.” He was on his feet, pacing in front of the fireplace. “If I flunked the exam it would look a hell of a lot more suspicious. I’ve been acing most of my tests since I was a sophomore. They think I’m a frigging genius. If I’d suddenly blown this one, it’d send up red flags for sure.”

  “He’s right,” Kyle conceded. “We can’t do anything to call attention to ourselves.”

  “Oh, really?” Devin said. “Have you considered how we’re all going to get through the rest of senior year without messing up?”

  “Two and a half months till graduation,” Danny said. “We can chalk it up to senioritis. We all got into the schools we wanted.”

  Devin ignored this last remark. Although she’d been accepted by Lafayette, she was still hoping to hear from Cornell, even though most universities had sent their acceptance letters and packets, and their denials, more than a week earlier. By now almost all the kids in Bellehaven High who had applied the past winter knew what their options were. “The admissions directors will expect us to keep our grades up,” she warned. “You can’t just start flunking courses and expect them to chalk it up to senioritis.”

  “Who said anything about flunking?” Kyle frowned at her. “We’re not exactly a remedial teacher’s nightmare. Who says we can’t keep our grades up for the next two months? We just have to study. You can manage that, can’t you?”

  Devin looked away. She hated it when Kyle made her feel stupid. And she was still steaming because he hadn’t told her sooner about the conversation between Schroder and McCabe.

  “We’re going to have to take this one day at a time,” Kyle said. “For now, we do nothing. Except keep our ears open. If we see anyone new spending lots of time in the computer lab, especially after hours, that’s a bad sign. If they start taking PCs out for ‘repair,’ also not good. We’ve got to find a way to ride this out. Maybe they’ll never figure out what happened. There’s only one person in Bellehaven High smart enough to do that.”

  They all nodded.

  “Simon,” Danny said, barely above a whisper.

  With the heat wave in its third day, swarms of mosquitoes began to rise out of abandoned tires, rain barrels, and anything else that held even the smallest amount of water. But Devin McCafferty never noticed. Anyone watching her walk home that afternoon would have thought she’d had a few beers in the girls’ room at school earlier instead of a Pepsi at Kyle’s. They wouldn’t guess that her unsteady gait was an attempt to keep from stepping on squashed peepers. Because despite the pieces of frogs ground into the asphalt, pieces so flattened even the crows couldn’t pick them off the sun-soft tar, she was walking right down the middle of the road. If she walked on the sidewalk the crows—feathery black clouds of them, hovering on the branches of the elms along Meadowlark Drive—would cover her with their droppings. As it was, she was sorely tempted to carry her backpack on her head to keep anything disgusting from getting in her hair.

  A few times the crows lifted into the air, giving her hope. Maybe they would leave, settle somewhere else. But to her disappointment, their frenzied fluttering lasted only a few brief seconds before they settled back onto the tree branches.

  She tried to listen for oncoming cars over the noisy birds, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate. She was too upset, too preoccupied thinking about what would happen if there was an investigation at the school. What if Simon hadn’t gotten rid of all the evidence? She felt guilty for worrying about her own skin when Simon lay in a coma, but she couldn’t seem to help it.

  Scarcely five minutes had passed since Devin had left Kyle’s house. The meeting had meant missing rehearsal. She worried about losing her part, even though she wasn’t thrilled with the play Mr. Newcombe, the drama coach, had chosen. Sh
e had been hoping, along with everyone else, that he would let them put on Grease this year. Or even Hair. But the man was a Shakespeare fanatic. Every year since he’d come to Bellehaven High twelve years earlier, the annual school play had been something by Shakespeare. This year it was Macbeth. Devin was excited about landing the lead female role, although she disliked the character. It made her uncomfortable to speak some of Lady Macbeth’s lines. Not that she would have admitted this to anyone. Besides, having the lead in the school play looked good on her college applications.

  The afternoon was so hot it felt more like the middle of August than early April. The air in her lungs felt like steam from a teakettle. Strands of hair were glued to her face with sweat. She wished the community pool were open. Thinking about the pool reminded her of the past summer, when she and Kyle would sneak over the chain-link fence late at night and go skinny-dipping. Lying on the soft grass, away from the telling glare of the security lights, staring up at the stars, they planned their futures between long warm kisses, Kyle talking about Harvard as if it were heaven. Now, with Simon’s help, Kyle’s dream had become a reality.

  And today, when she got home, Devin found two thick envelopes in the mailbox, one from Cornell, her first choice, and another from Middlebury. She knew without opening them that she’d been accepted by both. Yet she felt no excitement. Not even relief. Nothing.

  She sat down on the front stoop of her house, holding the envelopes in her lap. Her father’s eighteen-wheeler was parked in the road by the curb. He must have gotten home from his latest run earlier than expected. Sometimes she wished he would find somewhere else to leave his truck, instead of announcing for the whole world to see that he was a truck driver. Devin knew he was proud of what he did, proud of owning his own rig, proud of being, as he often told her, “his own man.” Devin wasn’t proud at all. She was embarrassed. And even worse, she felt guilty for these traitorous thoughts. This was the man who had worked hard all his life to keep seven kids in shoes and to be able to take his family and his parents out to Pizza Hut once a month.