Shades of Simon Gray

  Danny remembered how they’d flanked him, walked him down the hall, straight into the custodian’s closet, and pulled the chain overhead to turn on the single dim light-bulb. Surrounded by industrial-sized bottles of disinfectant, cans of Comet, boxes of sponges, and bundles of paper towels and toilet paper, they had held a brief meeting. They were juniors back then; Simon, a lowly sophomore.

  Danny remembered how, in spite of Simon’s small stature—five and a half feet of skin and bones—and his face, so pale he almost blended in with the wall, he had stared them right in the eye, his expression as stoic as a moose facing down an eighteen-wheeler. He didn’t so much as blink. He just stood there waiting.

  It was Kyle who had spoken first, Kyle with his smooth easygoing style, his friendly grin, who towered over Simon by half a foot, wearing a Tommy Hilfiger rugby shirt, as colorful and approachable as Simon’s black T-shirt was darkly impenetrable. Kyle’s dark hair was short and neat. Simon’s, pale and shaggy, jutted out in all directions, as if he’d forgotten to comb it that morning. Face to face, they were a study in contrasts.

  Kyle had been rambling on about how Simon was a living legend at Bellehaven High, how everyone knew he was a genius with computers. That was when Simon finally blinked, although his face still showed no expression. Kyle kept pouring it on. He kept it up until Simon glanced over at Danny and said, his voice flat and noncommittal, “Does this have anything to do with Walter Tate’s family moving to Seattle?”

  Bingo.

  Danny was impressed. Simon had nailed it. He wondered if Simon knew that Walter, who’d been part of their posse since Walter was a freshman, was a vital part of the academic hub they’d created. Probably not. And neither Danny nor Kyle was about to tell him that. Not yet. It was too risky.

  “Why d’you think that?” Danny asked.

  Simon stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets and leaned back against the metal shelves. “Walter was in my advanced placement computer science class.”

  Kyle looked down at his watch. “I’m going to be late for calculus.” He rested one hand on the doorknob, the other on Simon’s shoulder. “Rob Fisher’s having a party Saturday night. You want to come with us?”

  Danny could tell by the look on Simon’s face he was suspicious. He didn’t trust them for a second. And why should he? They were about to sucker him into taking over Walter’s place.

  Within a week Simon Gray was putty in their hands.

  School was the last place Danny wanted to be that morning, but he knew he had to go. So did the others. They didn’t have a choice.

  Danny rolled off the bed, pulled a pair of boxers from his top drawer, jammed his legs into cargo pants, yanked a navy T-shirt over his wet hair, and grabbed a cotton shirt from the closet. Usually he spent several minutes working on his hair to get it just right—short dark spikes, tipped platinum blond, carefully arranged to strike a balance somewhere between casual unkemptness and studied artifice. That morning, without even bothering to look in the mirror, he hardly took time to whip the comb across the top of his head.

  Danny was halfway down the front walk when he noticed that the bare tree branches were choked with crows, crows in every tree in his yard, and in the McAllisters’ yard next door, and every yard all the way down the block, for as far as he could see. Even worse, the birds had left their calling cards all over his black Mustang. Danny shook his fist at them, flipped them his middle finger, and shouted an obscenity as he climbed behind the wheel. He didn’t have time for this right now. If he didn’t get a move on, he’d be late. But even with all he had on his mind, he couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that the birds were laughing their heads off at him as he peeled out of the driveway.

  Two minutes later, just as the first bell rang, he pulled into a parking lot cluttered with crows. He wondered if they’d followed him there, then decided he was getting paranoid. The birds lined the roof of the school, rows of feathered soldiers in shiny black uniforms awaiting orders. They sent up a raucous cry as Danny headed for the front steps.

  He slipped his shades from his shirt pocket, although he didn’t think for a second they would be much help protecting his eyes if the birds attacked. Crows always went after their enemies in groups. Outright mobbed them. They’d even been known to eat their own, if they found them already dead. That much he knew.

  Right now he was quaking in his Nikes. He’d had a horror of birds, any kind of birds, ever since he’d read the story of Prometheus in seventh grade, read how he was bound to the rocky peak of the Caucasus, where each day an eagle pecked away at his liver. And all because he stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to mankind. That was what happened when you pissed off Zeus, or any of the gods, back in those days. If they didn’t like what you were doing, they made sure you knew.

  Danny stood there, one hand hovering above his sunglasses, a visor protecting his eyes in case of an attack. He studied the crows, trying to calculate how fast he could make it to the front doors.

  From somewhere behind him, he heard, “Hey, Giannetti, wait up.” He didn’t have to look to know it was Kyle.

  He jogged up to Danny’s side, a living ad for J.Crew in his khaki chinos and blue shirt. An olive green backpack hung from one shoulder. He didn’t seem at all bothered by the crows. In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice them. “My house. After school, okay?”

  “I’ve got track.”

  “Skip it. This is important.”

  Danny nodded. He knew Kyle would never ask him to miss practice unless something serious was going on.

  Feeling less intimidated now that reinforcements had arrived, Danny took the concrete steps two at a time, yanked open the door, and headed down the hall. Kyle was right on his heels. He clamped his hand on Danny’s shoulder just as Danny was about to walk into homeroom. Danny was instantly reminded of that day in the custodian’s closet, Kyle with his hand on Simon’s shoulder, looking as friendly as the local Good Humor man. “Loosen up,” Kyle said. “I doubt Gray’s doing a whole lot of talking right now.”

  Danny glanced away, bothered by the look in Kyle’s eyes. There was nothing Danny could say. He nodded again and slipped through the door into the classroom. But the weight of Kyle’s hand on his shoulder would stay with him for the rest of the morning.

  In homeroom Liz Shapiro was frantically trying to finish the last few problems of her math homework when Principal Schroder’s voice crackled through the static over the PA system. It filled the room. The voice announced that Simon Gray had been in a car accident, was in a coma, would need their prayers.

  Liz wanted to stand up and scream right back at the speaker above the door that it was a big lie. Simon Gray lived two doors down from her. He was her closest friend. She knew him. He was a good driver. A careful driver. A responsible person. Instead, she stared, silent and unmoving, at the back of Kevin Zimmerman’s head, at his girlfriend’s initials, S.C., cleanly shaved into his partial buzz cut, the tips of the letters slightly hidden by the longer hair growing on top of his head. She had seen this sight every morning for most of her junior year and couldn’t have cared less if Kevin Zimmerman let Sara Cohen shave her initials on his head three times a week. But today it seemed important to understand why.

  If Simon let her, would she put her initials on him, like personal property? Like sewing a name tag on gym shorts, or on clothes you took to camp? That was pure fantasy and she knew it. Simon was her best friend, had been since they were both in Pampers. She could not recall a time when he hadn’t been a part of her life.

  Liz’s face grew damp with sweat as she realized too late she was about to vomit. She lunged for the door, ignoring Mr. Prendergast’s protests from the front of the room, making it halfway down the hall before she threw up. The locker felt icy cold against her sweaty clothes as she slid to the floor. Her cheek rested against the cool metal. The pool of vomit was only inches from the tips of her fingers. Her head throbbed as her mind screamed over and over, Please, God, not Simon.

  Saturd
ay afternoon—only two days before—they had been sitting on the dark green couch in her family room, watching a rented video of Forbidden Planet. The two of them were crazy about old movies. And this was one of Simon’s favorites. It had been the first day of the April heat wave and the air in the room was stifling, although every window in the house was open.

  Liz was supposed to be working on a project her history teacher, Mrs. Rosen, had assigned the second day of the marking period, back in February. Everyone in the class had to select an event in American history—either local, regional, or national—and find evidence to show discrepancies or distortions in present-day accounts, evidence that, when shared with the class—everyone had to present their findings in both a written and an oral report—might change their perception of the event. “History,” Mrs. Rosen had explained as she gazed out at them over the tops of her half-moon glasses, “is subjective. But there is a central truth at the core of every event. I want you to come as close to finding that truth as possible.” And that, she had told the class, was their goal.

  The paper was due at the end of the marking period, less than two weeks away, and would make up a third of their grades. Liz had chosen the hanging of Jessup Wildemere as her topic. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Local legend. A bloody murder. Intriguing subject. She’d spent a few weeks on it but had become discouraged when she couldn’t find much that was new or interesting.

  Even though the paper loomed in the back of her mind like a dark shadow, Liz tried not to think about it. She was in a silly mood and couldn’t resist making fun of the film. That was what the two of them usually did when they watched these old movies. But on this day Simon wasn’t playing, and Liz could tell by the odd expression on his face that he had something on his mind. He hadn’t even teased her about her hair, which in a fit of PMS frenzy she’d taken a pair of scissors to the day before, hacking her long dark tresses into short uneven layers. She left the results tangled and uncombed, as if she’d just rolled out of bed. And truth be told, she was rather pleased with the results. But Simon didn’t even notice.

  Then, as if they’d never been watching the movie at all, as if they were picking up where they’d left off with some other conversation that Liz couldn’t remember, a conversation that perhaps Simon had been having in his own mind, he said, “I’m thinking about going out West and getting a job next year.”

  This was such a startling revelation that Liz bolted upright. She hit the Pause button on the remote and slid to the edge of the couch. “You mean drop out?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Simon had always been at the top of his class. He was brilliant with computers, with anything to do with technology. Everyone, including Liz, assumed next November he’d be applying for early acceptance to MIT or Carnegie Mellon.

  “Maybe.”

  “And what, go out West? You mean like wearing a Stetson and going on cattle drives?” It was a ludicrous picture and they both knew it.

  The old Simon would have laughed. The Simon who had been hers long before Kyle and his friends took over his life. But now he sat there staring at the frozen TV screen and never even cracked a smile, as if he hadn’t heard her, didn’t even know she was still in the room.

  Liz reached over and tapped him on the head. “Hello in there.” She leaned forward, tilting her head to get a better look at his eyes, eyes the color of the sea—a dark and stormy sea. And that startled her. She stared at him, as if trying to see right inside his head. Because sometimes that worked. Sometimes she could almost read Simon’s thoughts. They had known each other that long.

  Simon stood up so suddenly he had to grab the back of the couch for balance. “I’ve got to get home,” he said. He crossed the room to the French doors that led out to the patio.

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Liz prodded. “I mean, really wrong.”

  Simon gripped the doorknob. “Nothing’s wrong.” His voice was flat.

  “The smartest kid in Bellehaven High wants to drop out of school and that’s not something wrong?”

  Simon stared across the room at her. For a few hopeful seconds she thought he was going to tell her what was really on his mind, when suddenly the movie roared into the awkward silence. Instead of hitting the Pause button again, Liz turned off the TV.

  “Maybe I don’t want to go to college. Maybe it’s that simple,” he said.

  Liz began nervously twisting a jagged strand of hair. It wasn’t “that simple” at all, and she knew it. But she wasn’t sure how to get Simon to talk about what was bothering him. And in the end, she said exactly the wrong thing. “There’s more to it than that,” she said. “I know you, Simon.”

  He yanked open the door and looked over at her. His eyes were hooded, unreadable. “You don’t know me at all. You just like to think you do.”

  Liz felt as if he’d given her a karate chop across her windpipe. For the first time in their friendship, she didn’t have a clue what was going on in Simon’s mind. And now it appeared as if she never had. So she let him go. Let him walk right out the door.

  Now he was in the hospital, in a coma, and might never come back to her.

  Someone had grabbed Liz by the elbow and was attempting to help her up. She stared up into the puffy red face of Mr. Prendergast. His tie flopped awkwardly against the top of her head as he struggled to get her to her feet. Liz was all too aware that she was a little overweight, that the size ten jeans she’d bought a few months ago were getting difficult to zip up, but Prendergast’s grunting made her feel like a whale. She shoved him away. “I’m fine,” she said, scrambling to her feet.

  Mr. Prendergast had already called Clyde Zukowski, the custodian, who showed up with a bucket of disinfectant and a mop. He scratched the white stubble on his pockmarked face and glared at Liz as if she were Typhoid Mary, carrying some insidious disease that might wipe out the entire school population if he didn’t get this mess cleaned up fast.

  Before the first-period bell rang, Mr. Prendergast had written Liz a hall pass, handed her her backpack, and sent her off to the nurse. But Liz walked right past the door of the nurse’s room, ducked below the glass window of the main office so Angela Beckett, the principal’s administrative assistant, couldn’t see her, and slipped out the front door of the school. She was going to the hospital. And she was going to pull Simon out of this coma if it took every last ounce of will she had.

  The clock above the waiting room door ticked toward eight-thirty. If she had been in school that morning, which wasn’t going to happen, Courtney Gray would have been facing a history test. This was the only good thing that could be said for the moment. She was here, in the hospital, and would not be sweating bullets over Mr. Meehan’s exam in first period.

  Her father was in the intensive care unit with Simon. She and her father had been at the hospital since twelve-thirty in the morning, after driving through a nightmarish plague of peepers until they reached the outskirts of town, where suddenly, miraculously, the roads were clear again. The flood of frogs, their incessant chirping, like an onslaught of half-crazed, half-starved baby chicks, had made the journey to the hospital seem all the more surreal. Still, she would have traded this real world, where her brother lay broken and bruised, for that unreal world, frogs and all, in a heartbeat.

  Standing by the foot of his bed, Courtney had stared down at her brother’s battered face. Lips that didn’t twitch, eyelids that never fluttered. A bruised, swollen face. A body full of tubes. Clear plastic hoses of various sizes running up his nose, into his mouth, and into his arm, all hooked up to an array of intimidating machines: a respirator to keep him breathing, a monitor with its colored lines bleeping across the screen to let everyone know Simon was still among the living—although barely—and bags of dripping fluids that hung on the IV pole. She was allowed only ten minutes with him, although she had left the room before her visiting time was up, left because she couldn’t stand it another minute. She had headed straight for the waiting room around the corner fr
om the entrance to the intensive care unit.

  There were two waiting rooms, side by side. In the larger room were a TV and a table with a coffee machine. Courtney would have preferred this to the other room, which was not much bigger than a walk-in closet and held only six chairs. But a man and two boys were in the larger room, watching cartoons. She was in no mood for the Road Runner.

  She had tried the main waiting room across from the cafeteria. It was large and bright, but the huge sprawling palms reminded her of something out of Little Shop of Horrors, and to make matters worse, a woman with three small children was leading her kids in some song-and-dance routine. Courtney thought if she heard the woman sing, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands,” one more time, she’d have to swat her with a rolled-up magazine.

  In desperation, she had returned to the cramped, cheerless room with six chairs, all upholstered in a faded beige fabric and soiled with stains.

  Someone was paging Dr. Greenberg. The woman’s voice echoed over the PA system, rumbled like a bowling ball down the hallway. Courtney held her breath. Dr. Greenberg was Simon’s doctor.

  For just the briefest moment Courtney thought about going back to the ICU to find out why the nurse was paging Dr. Greenberg. But for some reason her body didn’t want to cooperate. She couldn’t seem to make herself get up. She’d had about enough of this. She wanted to go home. Now. And she wanted to take Simon with her.

  Instead, she stared down at her hands, ignoring the red raw rims around her cuticles, so that she didn’t have to look at the hospital’s mission statement—the only thing mounted on the bare walls—for the thousandth time. She noticed a spot of tomato sauce the size of a fifty-cent piece on her T-shirt, right above the blue bird made of sequins. She ran her hand through her spiky blond hair, realizing as her fingers became tangled that she’d never bothered to comb it before they left the house. She hoped no one she knew showed up. She looked like hell.