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

family and his parents out to Pizza Hut once a month.
    Behind her she heard her brothers and sisters and their friends shrieking and laughing as they charged around the corner of the house blasting each other with water from their Super Soakers. For just that moment she wanted to be them. Or at least to be that age again, back when her biggest worry had been whether or not she’d be able to get a chicken breast when nine forks simultaneouslydove for the small plate of fried chicken in the middle of the table. Rarely did she get a breast. Usually she ended up with two wings, or maybe a leg. You had to be fast in a house with seven kids.
    Devin stared down at the envelopes on her lap but couldn’t bring herself to open them. These were her tickets out of here. There was no way in hell her parents would ever be able to pay for her college education. She knew that, had always known it. But she and Kyle and Danny, none of whom came from families with money, had already thought of that. The scholarships were to be part of “the project.” Now, with Simon in a coma, she wondered how they were ever going to pull off this last crucial part of the plan.
    Her sweaty fingers left damp prints on the envelopes. Her thoughts turned again to Simon. Simon, who had helped all of them, who had never once used his skills to improve his own academic situation, and who might be dying.
    As if that weren’t bad enough, there was something else. Simon was in love with her. Devin had known this from the first day he started hanging around with them, the day Kyle brought him to Rob Fisher’s party. She saw how Simon couldn’t keep his eyes off her. And she knew at once he was theirs, knew she’d be able to get him to do things he might not have done otherwise.
    Now it was eating away at her. She could feel it in her stomach, like a sack full of baby alligators, trying to chew their way out. The only way to put an end to the incessant,painful gnawing was to go to Principal Schroder and tell her the truth. But Devin would never do that. Not to Kyle. Not to herself. And most of all, not to Simon.

    Simon sat on the edge of Stanley Isaacson’s bed while the old man told him about the time he was on a submarine in the Pacific. “Like being in a metal coffin,” he said. And Simon knew what he meant, because that was exactly what had happened to him. Only there was no one else there with him. No submarine crew for company.
    He knew what it was like to be locked inside a dark place. But sometimes he got out. He wasn’t sure how he did it, only that it had happened twice so far. This was his second journey, and it had brought him to Mr. Isaacson’s room, three doors down from his own. Mr. Isaacson, who had thick tufts of white hair growing from his ears but only a few thin wisps on his head, told Simon to call him Stanley. When Stanley talked about the war, about being in the sub with the lights out, feeling the rumble of depth charges only yards away, his withered body stiffened, his knobby fingers clutched at the lightweight hospital blanket. Simon thought he could smell Stanley’s fear. It smelled like seaweed, dark clumps stretched out on the wet sand.
    People walking past the door thought Stanley Isaacson, who was eighty-nine years old, was having a conversation with himself. They weren’t in the least surprised, given his age, that he was suffering from dementia and would soon be going to a nursing home. They did not seeSimon sitting on Stanley’s bed. No one could see him. Except, apparently, Stanley Isaacson.
    Simon made this discovery the first time he found himself outside his body. It had taken him a few minutes to realize that the person he was staring down at in the hospital bed was himself. He could make out the shape of the nose, the swollen purple eyelids, the chin. Part of his head was hidden beneath bandages. He could tell they had shaved some of his hair, although the section was now covered in white gauze stained with