Shades of Simon Gray by Joyce McDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

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 noisybirds, 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. She 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 futuresbetween 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