Free Shades of Simon Gray by Joyce McDonald Page A

shadow, every line of every piece of furniture, and every object were as sharp and visible and even in some ways as wondrous as when he was four years old.
    Moonlight streaked through his window, creating shadows. His own shadow, even though he was standing right in front of the window, was disturbingly absent. And so, he now saw, was his computer, although the keyboard and monitor still sat on his desk. A sense of dread crept along his spine; his chest felt tight. He couldn’t understand why he should feel this way.
    This was his room. Of that much he was certain. Bare walls, no rugs or curtains. Once, when his sister told him she thought his room was totally impersonal, that evenprison inmates put things on their walls, he’d snapped back with what he thought was a pretty good putdown about people who needed to fill every ounce of empty space with meaningless junk. He was talking about Courtney, of course. But he doubted she realized that. If he were being truthful with her, which of course he wasn’t, he would have said he had no idea what to put on his walls. No idea what kind of curtains or rugs he wanted. In all honesty, he had no idea who he even was. Weren’t you supposed to have at least some idea before you stuck it all up there on your walls for the whole world to see?
    He stared down at his desk and wondered if Courtney had moved the PC to her room. She was always after him about hogging it. They were supposed to share the computer. But it didn’t make sense that she would leave behind the keyboard and monitor. Still, he couldn’t imagine where else his PC would be, and he would have headed straight down to Courtney’s room to find out if the computer was there, except he didn’t seem to be able to leave his own room. He was tied to it by some invisible force, like a kite caught in a tree, and he was only now beginning to think he might be there for a reason.
    Outside, it had begun to snow. Without warning, the wind grew fierce, smashing wet snowflakes against the windowpane, rattling the glass.
    Faint sounds of R&B echoed from somewhere outside his door. It wasn’t the sort of music Courtney listened to; it wasn’t rap or heavy metal. Maybe his dad had the radio on.
    Sometimes when there was only the hum of the refrigerator or an air conditioner, or the steady drumming of rain, Simon thought he heard a whole orchestra playing music he’d never heard before. Not inside his head, like some annoying, repetitive tune or jingle that got stuck in your brain, but soft, beautiful music gently surrounding him, kissing his ears. Whenever that happened, he would close his eyes and listen, trying to make distinctions between the different woodwinds, between the violins and violas, although he didn’t know the first thing about music, had never played an instrument in his life, and was even told by his sixth-grade music teacher that he was tone-deaf.
    Over the years he had devised a theory that the music was a distortion produced by the white noise, but most of the time he didn’t try to explain it. He just listened.
    He liked heavy metal and rap well enough, but as far as he was concerned, it was all background for the chaos in his head. If the music fit what was going on inside him, he listened. Otherwise he blocked it out. But the music that sometimes came to him unbidden, that was something else altogether. He wondered if it had to do with the hum of his own internal rhythms, the music his body made, music no one but Simon could hear.
    This was the first time he’d traveled beyond the hospital. Yet the chill of the hospital room and the smell of bleach were still with him. He was here and not here. There and not there. He had no idea how much time had passed—days, weeks, maybe even years. He wasn’t surewhat time of year it was. The sight of the snow muddled his brain. He sat on the edge of his bed and watched large feathery flakes land on tree branches thick with sleeping black crows, turning their