Free Simon Says by Elaine Marie Alphin

makes us all feel we're doing the right thing, doesn't it?
    When you date, take the girls where they want to go: Please them. Ifs so easy-the other guys take their dates to hard-core action movies and football games and things that
they
like. You can make the girls happy by taking them to romantic movies, or to plays or concerts. It doesn't make any difference to you, anyway. Ifs all the same.
    And ifs easy, after all, to find friends you really do like to be with. Jeff introduced you to Ben Carter, so your parents
approve of him. And the teachers see Ben as one of their promising seniors: He's already had a one-act considered by the Humana Festival—ifs not Broadway, but it's national theater, not just school. So Mr. Adler thinks it's great that Ben's taken you under his wing. Well, Ben opened up a whole new world for you. Ben's gay, and he showed you things you only dreamed of—things you thought no one else imagined except you. Girls are easy enough to date, but if they get serious it gets harder and harder to please them. Guys are so much easier to keep happy, and perhaps you like them better. Ben does, and you like Ben.
    Boys-girls-just satisfy whoever you're with, Gray. It's easy to please all of them, after all. Spend your time with Ben and his friends, and take out girls to please your parents and your other friends. Everybody knows they're just living up to everybody else's expectations, and everybody pleases themselves by believing whatever they like to believe about themselves and about everyone else, and ignoring things that might upset them, right?
    You've found the real secret, Gray. This is what people are, here and now. This is what they all do, and you're going to write about these people. In that class on the modem novel, Mrs. Wilson said that a novelist's task is to define people within the novelist's time. Well, this is your time, and this is what people are like, so this is what you'll write.
    Ben likes what you write. Your mother likes the fact that you write, without caring exactly what it
is
you're writing. Mr. Adler loves your style and your insight Your father thinks ifs a strange career, but he's proud of your good grades. Everyone's pleased with you-your friends, the teachers, everyone
you meet-you're living up to their expectations, and they're all pleased to see what they want.
    It's so easy, Gray.

    August 31 (Senior Year)

    [Note to myself now-if it was all so easy then, what's changed now? If I knew the answers, were the answers wrong? Or are there simply more answers because the questions have gotten harder? Sometimes I think I can't find anything to fill the empty hole because there's nothing to find, but that doesn't make the emptiness hurt less. There has to be a better answer, somewhere. When I write, I want to feel like Karl feels when he sculpts. I want someone to look at me and see me lost in my creation. I want to create something worth getting lost in.]

    September 21 (Freshman Year)

    Ifs all coming into place. Now that I know what to write, the words are spilling out onto the page. It's churning inside me like a storm, and that's what I'm going to call it
The Eye of the Storm.
Jeff thinks ifs weird I'm in my studio writing so much, but I know he's actually scared about his own classes rather than worried about me, so I've been helping him with an English paper when I'm in our room. And Ben really understands-he knows I'm writing.
    Was there ever such a high? Everything seems brighter around me, the colors of the changing leaves, the tangy autumn scent on the breeze, the damp grass underfoot And everywhere I go, there's my main character, Alan Travis, turn
ing to talk to me, or talking through me to one of the other characters in the book. He's growing, and he's going to make it because he knows the secret.
    Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have somebody actually read this book. This isn't like the short stories I've written, or the papers I write for class.