Shades of Simon Gray (26 page)

Liz paced her bedroom as she read this last entry. When she had finished it, she sat on the edge of the bed and held
the open journal in her lap, tried to take it all in. She reread it several times. To all appearances, Jessup did indeed kill Cornelius Dobbler. But why? Was it because Hannah’s father had promised her to Elias Belcher? Killing the father of one’s beloved wouldn’t exactly endear him to her. Maybe Jessup had been provoked by Cornelius. Or maybe Cornelius had attacked him. Maybe it was self-defense.

And so it had gone. Liz had more questions after her discovery than she had before she found the journal. In the end, with only a few hours before school, she had pounded away at the keyboard and printed out an eight-page paper, half of which was comprised of direct quotes from Lucinda Alderman’s diary. The paper was supposed to be at least fifteen pages.

Liz pushed the cold scrambled eggs around the plate with her fork, lost in thought. Forget the C minus. She’d be lucky if Rosen gave her a D plus.

When Devin came to the hospital later that morning with her father, she was surprised to find Liz Shapiro in the waiting room outside the intensive care unit, slouched in one of the chairs, her head against the wall, sleeping. Liz looked as if she’d spent the night in the chair. Her clothes were wrinkled and her hair was an uncombed tangle. Devin suspected Liz was there because of Simon and wondered if there had been a change in his condition. She thought of waking her to ask but decided against it.

She took a seat directly across from Liz, while her father headed to the ICU to see his mother. Later it would
be Devin’s turn. She knew they would be there the entire day, and that was fine with her. Now that she had legitimate access to the ICU, she hoped to slip in to see Simon, even if it was for just a few minutes. He was as much on her mind these days as her grandmother.

A short time later Courtney walked in. The moment she came through the door, Devin felt an electric charge so powerful it made the hairs on her arms stand straight up and her scalp tingle. Had Courtney felt it too? Had Liz? Devin thought she had seen Liz’s legs twitch, although she didn’t wake up.

Courtney mumbled “Hi” to Devin and took a seat against the third wall of the small room, while her father went in to see Simon. She and Devin had shared this waiting room quite a bit over the past few days, ever since Devin’s grandmother had been moved to the ICU. But they had little to say to each other.

Devin looked from Courtney to Liz and realized that the three of them were each seated in front of a different wall. The room was scarcely eight feet wide. If the girls stretched out their legs, their feet would have met in the middle. This seating arrangement struck her as odd, almost territorial. But then, it wasn’t as if they were friends.

“How’s Simon?” she asked Courtney.

Courtney looked over at her as if she was considering how to answer this question. “He almost died last night.”

“Oh my god.” Devin leaned forward. “What happened? Is he okay now?”

Liz woke to the sound of voices. Her muscles ached from sleeping in the chair. She pulled herself up and stretched her stiff legs in front of her.

Courtney was in the middle of giving Devin an account of how the mountains on the monitor had suddenly gone flat, how Simon had died right in front of her, and how the doctors had managed to bring him back. Liz had already heard the story. But she could see that Devin was badly shaken by the news.

When Courtney finished her story and had answered all Devin’s questions—the ones she could answer—the three girls leaned back in their seats and resumed their silence. Throughout the day, they went their separate ways. They got coffee in the cafeteria and browsed in the gift shop, looking for nothing in particular except to kill time until it was again their turn to visit, except for Liz, who wasn’t allowed into the ICU.

By midafternoon Simon’s condition hadn’t changed. It was still critical. Liz stared down at her sneakers. She wondered if she should go home. Devin and Courtney had legitimate reasons to be there. But didn’t she belong there too? She was Simon’s best friend. She loved him. Surely that was reason enough. And there was another reason. She had come because of the disturbing dream she’d had earlier that day. She had come because she was afraid for Simon.

In the end, she decided to stay. It didn’t matter what the others thought. Whatever happened, she would be there, waiting.

Liz closed her eyes and tried to sleep again. The image
of Simon swimming in the muddy river came back to her in a rush. She saw him struggling, fighting to keep from being swept away. Up ahead was the oak tree, only a few feet from his grasp.
The branches, Simon
, she whispered.
Grab the branches
.

The sun hovered just above the trees. Soon the sky would darken and Simon would be alone in this place. He had never been there for an entire day. And he was beginning to think he might never leave. Perhaps he would remain there for all eternity with Jessup’s silent corpse. He couldn’t remember when he had felt so desperate.

Above him three crows circled the tree. Simon watched as they landed on the top branches. For reasons he couldn’t begin to explain, he felt he should try to climb this tree. It was stupid, he knew. When he got to the top, then what? He’d just have to come back down again. And there would be Jessup, waiting for him.

One of the crows swooped down to the lowest branch, where Jessup’s body hung. There was no mistaking that its urgent caws were for Simon. He laughed at the bird. “Do you think I’m nuts?” he said, as if they were having an actual conversation. “That tree’s got to be a hundred feet tall.”

One of the other crows landed right on his head and gave his hair a gentle tug. The third remained on the top branch, watching him. Simon sighed and shoved the bird off his head. It settled next to the other crow on the first branch. The branch was almost seven feet from the
ground. Simon looked up at the crows and shook his head. “Fine, great, you win,” he said.

He wrapped his arms around the base as far as they would go, dug his toes into the rough bark, and began to shinny slowly up the tree. The way Simon was beginning to see it was, there were two ways out of this place: you either pulled yourself up or you let them hang you.

The first few feet of the oak base were the most difficult. The bark tore at his flesh, scraped his hands and feet. But he continued to climb, digging his toes into the crevices of the bark. Some pieces flaked away, causing his foot to slip, but he hung on until finally he reached the first branch, the one Jessup Wildemere’s corpse dangled from. One of the crows settled on the branch next to him and cocked its head first to one side, then to the other, as if waiting for something.

Simon took a breath and looked down at Jessup one last time. Kyle and Danny would think Jessup was a real loser. But Simon knew that the man’s death, for all the false historic records and local tales, was an honorable one. If he ever got home, he would do everything he could to set the record straight.

From here on, Simon moved carefully from one branch to the next. Two of the crows kept one branch ahead of him; the third waited at the top. With each movement, each grasp of the next branch, another painful memory coursed through him. He remembered Kyle telling him how he’d overheard Principal Schroder talking to George McCabe about a computer security problem. He remembered thinking it would be only a matter of
time before McCabe discovered the keystroke recorder program, remembered how he and Kyle had worked like crazy to uninstall the software from three of the school’s computers. He remembered feeling sick about what he had done, and how easy it had been for the others to flatter him into showing off what he was capable of. Although he had been mostly showing off for Devin. Devin. These were the most painful memories of all. Because they were also his happiest and he knew such moments would never come again.

He had no illusions about what would be waiting for him when he got back. Possibly criminal charges, his father’s fury, the town’s stunned shock, and who knew what else. He knew he hadn’t actually hacked into the school’s network. Hacking was definitely a criminal offense. But he wasn’t sure how the school administrators would handle a situation like this. He had, after all, used software to obtain several teachers’ passwords, then accessed their computers and printed out exams for his friends. When he had finally gotten his hands on George McCabe’s password, it was carte blanche. He could log on to any place in the system, any account. He figured he would probably be expelled for something like that. Still, no matter how bad it got, he’d find a way to live with it. It was better than the alternative. It was better than being dead.

Simon reached out and pulled himself to the next branch. The physical pain was becoming unbearable. With each movement, red-hot wires coursed through his body in place of his veins. He would have screamed if he could. But his jaw was locked tight.

Fragments of memories, of Kyle, Danny, and Devin, of the past year, of all he had done, images of the frogs, the night of the accident, every horrifying moment, seared through his brain.

Some part of him knew he could stop the agony. And then there would be only the fog, the gray nothing. But he had already come this far.

Each branch was more of a struggle than the one before it. He was exhausted. He didn’t think he could climb much farther. He stopped to catch his breath, pressed his forehead against the tree. He felt dizzy. The pain was so fierce, Simon thought he might faint and fall, landing on the asphalt or sidewalk.

When he looked up again, the sky was swirling with crows. The birds circled so fast, Simon felt as if he were staring into an upside-down tornado. The faster the birds spun, the more Simon felt himself being pulled upward.

Near the top, the branches were thinner and precariously flexible. Simon stayed close to the base. He wedged his feet into the crooks. The three crows now sat on the uppermost branches. They cawed loudly and flew into the air to join the others as Simon pulled himself to the very top. Overhead hundreds of goldfinches circled between the crows, coming to land on the branches. Their fluttering yellow wings flickered as they descended. Simon, too, flung his arms outward, and all of them, together, caught the golden rays of the setting sun in one glorious burst of light.

Simon didn’t realize, until he felt someone’s hands on his shoulders, gently pressing him down, that he was
screaming, shrieking as loudly as any newborn pulled from the womb. And he did not stop until he felt a sharp prick in his arm and cool waves wash over him as he squinted, dizzy with the morphine, into the bright light above his hospital bed.