The way Simon looked out over everything made him seem very wise, and the fact that he didn’t talk all that much made him seem even more sage. When Simon did say something, it was usually quite astute, except when it was just totally ridiculous. He had a goofy side that I really responded to. He made me laugh. It is a good thing to have a fella who can make you laugh. Words of wisdom.
Simon had begun working as a junior counselor at this weird study camp that his parents made him do. It was like summer school, but supposedly more fun, with a lot of time during the day for goofing off and playing sports. From what I could tell, he didn’t do a whole lot there, just answer a question from some distracted kid every now and then, and lie in the sun when they played dodgeball. He got home around the same time as he normally would during the school year, unless he missed the bus.
I hadn’t told Simon about Thomas because I couldn’t be sure how he’d react. Granted, he was the most easygoing person on the planet, but what if this was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Let’s face it, everyone has one. What if he suddenly thought I was a freak, or that my family was a bunch of losers and he lumped me in with them? He and Maxine were basically the only good things in my life; the last thing I wanted to do was mess with that. There was just too much risk in revealing the truth.
And then one day while we were sitting on his futon, after a little kissing session, Simon pulled back from me.
“I want to see your room sometime.”
“What? Where’d that come from?”
Simon started laughing. “You don’t have to panic,” he said.
“Well, you haven’t seen my room,” I said back. I was trying to be funny. Sort of. There was nothing all that wrong with my room, but between my parents and my sister, on top of the fact that my room was really not that interesting, there were just too many things that could go wrong.
But what could I do?
At dinner that night, I asked my dad how the real estate business was. He looked at me oddly. Granted, it was a question that was more than slightly out of the ordinary, especially lately.
“It’s going fine, Lucy. Thank you for asking.”
“You have a lot of showings?”
“I do,” he said. He was still looking at me funny, but in a pleasant way. I’m sure he thought I was reaching out an olive branch or something of that nature.
I didn’t know how to ask any more without making it totally obvious. Luckily, as my sister and I were cleaning the table after dinner, my dad told my mother that he had a closing the next afternoon and would be a little late. My mom told him that she had a meeting at four but would be home by five thirty, after picking up my sister from her rehearsal. So I had a few hours clear. I was set.
“I’ll just head over to Maxine’s,” I threw in. There was no reason for me to say it since that’s what I did every day, but I was so relieved that they would all be gone from the house, it just came out.
I don’t particularly care for being misleading, but let’s face it, with all the secrets I was keeping about this whole thing, I was getting pretty good at not being all that direct. Besides, desperate circumstances required desperate measures. Or maybe I’d just inherited a deceitful nature from my father—who seemed suddenly in a very good mood. Perhaps it was my showing interest in his affairs—no pun intended. When I left the kitchen he was laughing, telling my mom a story about a guy who bought a house as a surprise for his wife. That struck me as a very risky proposition; it wasn’t like buying a scarf or even a car. You’re stuck with a house. I didn’t hear the rest of the story because I went up to my room to text Simon that we were on for the next afternoon.
We met at his house and walked over to mine. I wanted to make sure the coast was clear and not have him simply show up in case something had changed. As we walked over, I grew more and more nervous.
“Don’t worry,” Simon said. “I’m sure I’ll love your room.” Then he smiled his goofy smile and took my hand and my stomach relaxed a bit.
“Wow, I really like it,” he said as he stood in the doorway to my room, taking in the scene. I noticed for the first time exactly how much junk I had gotten rid of. There was still no picture above the bed. I had been hoping to replace it with the cool painting of a golden eagle’s head that was in our living room, but that would have required asking my mother.
“It’s very Spartan,” Simon said, reading my mind, as usual.
Unlike his room, with the futon on the ground, there was no obvious place to sit in my bedroom except for the bed. I plopped on the edge while Simon walked around a bit. He spun my globe, then picked up the hand-woven hat from Peru on my shelf. The hat usually sat on top of the globe, but the night before Simon came over it struck me as cheesy that I had a hat on top of the world, so I plucked it off. As he fingered the cap, I was glad I had moved it. Then he did the craziest thing. When he went to set it down, he put it back on top of the globe.
He came and sat next to me on the bed. We started to kiss. It felt really weird to do that on my bed in my room in my house. But it also felt really nice after a minute. Then he put his hand over the zipper of my jeans. Neither one of us paid it any attention. It was as if it had fallen there by accident. He just left it where it was, and I certainly didn’t move. We stopped kissing, and he pulled back but didn’t move his hand from my pants.
“Thanks for bringing me over,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “You’re welcome.”
He unsnapped the button to my jeans. I leaned back a little so he could unzip me. The whole process was kind of awkward, but he eventually got the zipper down most of the way. He put his hand in my underwear and just kind of rested it there. Then he started to move his fingers around a bit, but since the jeans were tight, there was only so far he could go. I would have to slide the pants down.
So I did.
I think this surprised me more than it did Simon, but not by much. I lifted my hips and pushed my pants down. They bunched up just above my knees. Then his finger reached inside me. I knew that my life would be changed from thereafter.
When Simon took his hand away, my brain wasn’t working all that well, but I managed to stand and pull my pants up. I was glad to be in my room, glad it was with Simon, glad no one else was home.
We hung out a little while longer, but I started to feel the pressure of time. Who really knew when anyone in my family might just walk in? Let’s face it, they were all very unreliable.
“Shall we mosey on out of here?” I said.
Simon laughed. I didn’t think it was that funny, but I was glad he liked it. I hopped up and clapped my hands. Simon just looked at me, then he jumped up and clapped his hands too.
“Alrighty,” he said. When we got to my door, he turned back. “See ya, room.”
Who says goodbye to an empty room? I mean, how charming was this guy?
“This is my sister’s room,” I said when we passed her door in the hall. I was just chattering, not really paying attention to what I was saying—I was so excited and distracted by what we had just done, and also relieved to be getting out of my house. “And that one is my parents’.” I was suddenly a tour guide.
“Your brother’s room is downstairs?” Simon said at the end of the landing.
I froze.
Simon was three steps down the stairs before he noticed I wasn’t beside him anymore.
“What is it?” He turned to me.
I couldn’t speak.
“Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I said.
“What’s the matter?” He took a few steps back toward me. He was standing on the step below me so we were the same height, looking eye to eye.
“I have to show you something,” I said at last. “Follow me.”
Most other people would have nagged me about where we were going, but only once during the fifteen-minute walk did Simon ask what was happening.
“Just be patient, please,” I said.
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��Cool,” he replied—God, I loved this man. But let’s see if he would still love me after what I had to show him.
I led Simon to the bench directly across the street from Thomas’s apartment where I had sat before. Simon looked around, trying to figure out what it was that I was being so secretive about. There was no one around. The cute little SUV wasn’t in the parking lot.
“You see that apartment building across the street?” I asked him finally.
“Yup,” Simon answered.
“That’s where my brother’s room is.”
“What?”
“That’s where he lives. With his mother, who isn’t my mother.” I explained about the fling.
Simon listened to every word I had to say, and then he was quiet for a while longer.
“What’s his name?” he asked finally.
“Thomas.”
“Really? My parents were going to name me Thomas if they hadn’t named me Simon,” he said.
“That’s weird,” I told him.
“But they didn’t.” He shrugged the Simon shrug. Then he got up and walked to the edge of the sidewalk and looked across at the building. I watched his back, and then went to stand next to him. His toes were dangling off the end of the curb. I did the same with mine, like we were at the end of a high diving board.
Simon just looked out toward the apartment the whole time. I had no idea what he was thinking.
“I just found out about it, not too long ago,” I told him.
“You just found out about what?”
“That he existed.”
“Wow,” Simon whispered, in what qualified as the understatement of the year.
“Yeah.” Then I told him about searching this place out and encountering Thomas that one time he was on his skateboard. Simon started to nod again and kind of stuck his lower lip out. His brow furrowed.
I was suddenly so sorry I had brought him, sorry I told him everything. My eyes were starting to burn—I wasn’t going to be able to hold the tears in much longer. I wanted to run.
“I want to meet him,” he said.
“You can’t,” I squealed. Apparently it was really loud, because he started to laugh. Then I started to laugh. And I couldn’t stop. My laugh was hysterical, like a crazy person’s. I just couldn’t stop. Simon was still laughing a little, but not as much as I was, but he was smiling at me. Eventually he grabbed my shoulders and started shaking me.
“Stop laughing,” he shouted into my face, but he was laughing now too. “Stop.” Then he wrapped his long skinny arms around me and pulled me into a hug. I hadn’t had any hugs in a long while. I had stopped letting my parents hug me after I found out about Thomas. And I don’t think Simon had ever just hugged me before. We stood there, in the gutter, with his arms around me.
At some point I could feel that he was starting to pick his nails with his arms around me. “Stop picking your nails,” I said as my laughter settled down.
“No,” he said.
I laughed a little more at that and he did, too. We calmed down enough to sit on the curb. He looked over at me, and then reached out his arm to wipe my nose with his sleeve.
“Oh, that’s gross,” I said, and pulled my face away.
“No, it’s not. It’s what sleeves are for.” He was looking at me with that goofy grin on his face.
That’s when the SUV turned onto the street and pulled into the parking lot directly across from us.
Thomas hopped right out of the car, before the driver’s-side door even opened. He was carrying a toy bow and arrow. His mother got out of the car with a food shopping bag in one hand and her purse in the other. She was prettier than I remembered that first time. Her light brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail; she wasn’t skinny or fat, not too tall or very short. In fact, if she hadn’t had sex with my father and then had a baby, I don’t think I would have really noticed her at all.
Thomas had the arrow in position and the string of the bow was pulled back taut—he was ready to shoot. He spun around and pointed the weapon at his mother.
“Do not point that thing at me, Thomas,” she scolded him. “I’ve told you that a thousand times. I will take it away if you do that again.”
Why is it that all parents sound the same?
Thomas spun around and ducked behind the car and then pointed at some invisible target in the other direction.
“Go shoot it in the park, sweetie,” his mother told him. She didn’t even see us sitting right across the street. When she got to the door she called over her shoulder, “Dinner in half an hour,” and went inside.
Thomas high-kicked like he was some kind of Ninja warrior, then grunted and spun and swung his other leg at some invisible foe.
I looked at Simon. He had that grin on his face again. “Watch out behind you!” he called out.
Thomas whipped around and saw us. He smiled.
“Behind you,” Simon shouted again, and pointed at an invisible assassin.
Thomas whirled and pointed his arrow and let it fly. It hit the outside of the apartment building and dropped into the bushes. He looked over his shoulder at Simon and then ran to retrieve it.
When he had the arrow again he put it back on the string and pulled it taut and started to march toward us. He had the largest, most diabolical grin on his face. When he got to the sidewalk directly across the street from us, he stopped. His toes were hanging over the curb, just like ours had been a few minutes earlier. The big black rubber tip of the arrow was pointed directly at Simon, who stood up beside me. “I dare you,” he said.
Thomas giggled for just an instant and then fired. The arrow went zipping past Simon’s head. Simon ducked, but if it had been on target it would have nailed him. No way he could have dodged it fast enough.
“Whoa,” Simon said.
“Aw.” Thomas groaned and went tearing down the street toward the dead end, then around onto our side of the street. He veered off the sidewalk onto the grass about twenty feet from us. As he was bending to get the arrow, Simon started to walk toward him.
“Can I see that thing?” Simon asked.
“Sure.” Thomas held out the bow with one hand and the arrow with the other.
“This is totally cool,” Simon told him. I don’t know if he was a lonely kid or what, but Thomas was really pleased that this older guy thought something of his was so nice. The two of them started to take turns shooting at a tree about twenty feet away. Simon was a very good shot, which is something I would not have expected. Not that I didn’t think my boyfriend was athletic; it’s simply that archery seems like a very specific thing, not something one just picked up and did very well at.
“Give it a shot,” Simon said to me after he hit the tree for a third time in a row.
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “Do you want to try it?”
I wasn’t sure if he remembered me from the other time we met, but he didn’t mention it. I did notice that he had blue eyes, which is something I hadn’t registered the time I saw him. He had won the genetic battle that I had lost, the battle that saw me saddled with my mother’s muddy brown eyes, while this kid got my dad’s shiny blue peepers—illuminating once again how cruel and unfair life is.
I took the bow and arrow. Simon had to help me get the notch on the end of the arrow to sit on the string, but then I pulled it back. I missed the tree by about five feet.
“That’s not too bad for a first try,” Thomas said as he ran to get it. We took turns shooting for a few more minutes, until a second-story window in the apartment building across the street opened, and Thomas’s mother called out.
“Dinner, Thomas.”
“All right,” he called back. Then turned to us. “I gotta go.”
Simon held out his hand. “My name is Simon,” he said.
“I’m Thomas,” Thomas said, shaking Simon’s hand. He was acting very grown up. It’s funny to see little kids shake hands; their grip is always so limp.
“And this is Lucy.” Simon pointed at me.
“I know,” Thomas said. “I met her before.”
Thomas waved at us from two feet away, said, “See ya,” then turned and ran down the street, around the dead end, then back up the other side of the street to his apartment. He pushed a button and turned to wave at us again. The buzzer buzzed, he spun back to the door, opened it, darted inside, and was gone.
The air was still.
We stood there for a bit and then began to walk up the street toward Prospect Avenue without speaking. I couldn’t really focus on anything.
“He’s a nice kid,” Simon finally said.
I didn’t say anything to that.
Simon took my hand as we crossed the avenue. I guess he could tell I wasn’t in the mood, because once we got to the other side he released it and shoved his hands in his pockets. Even though I didn’t want him to hold my hand, I almost started bawling my eyes out when he let go. I folded my arms across my chest and kept walking.
He was talking about some stupid research paper he had to do over the summer. Of all the times to talk about such an idiotic thing. I didn’t even hear what the topic was. I was suddenly cold, even though it was hot out.
“Would you please just shut up,” I said.
“Whoa.” Simon’s shoulders went up a bit and his hands went deeper into his pockets.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but do you not think that it is just a tiny bit insane that I have a little brother, who I just found out about after EIGHT YEARS, who has no idea that the person he was just playing with is his sister?”
Simon shrugged.
“Don’t just hunch your shoulders,” I yelled at him. “What is the matter with you?”
Simon didn’t say anything.
“What is the matter with everyone? This is not normal, this is not okay.”
“It’s just the way that it is,” Simon said softly.
“It’s not just the way that it is. Don’t be such a fucking idiot,” I yelled. I couldn’t believe I was being this horrible to him, but I couldn’t stop. “Do you have nothing more intelligent to say than that!”
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