Simon Says (8 page)

Remember that, Gray: People think what they want to. You'll please them all the more by making whatever they think seem real for them. It's so easy. It takes so little effort to please people. You don't have to lie to any of them, either. Just show them whatever part of yourself you know they'll like.

Remember that you have to date the right girls. Your parents like to hear about your dates because they don't want you to work all the time, they want you to have some fun. Your friends expect you to date because they do, and seeing other people doing the same thing 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. There's so much of me in Alan's story that I don't really know what an outside reader would make of it I know what I want them to make of it—I want them to nod and see themselves in it, and I want them to think about themselves differently than they had before. A writer shows his reader things he hadn't known before, not just so the reader can say, "Sure, that's how it is," but so the reader can think about those things from a new perspective. That's what I'm showing them: a new perspective on playing the game.

February 16 (Freshman Year)

When Mr. Adler said he wanted to speak to me first thing this morning, he sounded so serious I wondered if Jeffs English teacher could have told him I'd written Jeffs paper on Tom Stoppard's plays. But it was about
The Eye of the Storm.
He'd already finished reading it, and he was blown away (couldn't resist!). Totally. He wants to give it to this agent he knows, and he thinks it's going to be
published
I'm stunned. I mean-that's what I wanted. But still-it's a long way from dreaming something to seeing it really happen.

But Mr. Adler is thrilled, because the teachers all give each other credit when one of them mentors a student who succeeds. And they usually have to wait until a kid's a senior, or at least a junior, to start bragging. So he's going to get
credit for mentoring me and maybe getting me published as a freshman! Fine with me. And he likes me all the more for thanking him and letting him think I believe he had something important to do with it Maybe he did.

At lunchtime I called my mom to tell her the good news, and she was satisfied-not shrieking and everything, just satisfied, like it was the very least of what she's been expecting all along. "I knew everything I sacrificed for you was worth it," she told me, and her voice sounded more peaceful than triumphant But that's fine with me. This is just going to be the start.

Now I've got this idea for an essay on writing that I want to submit to the student journal,
Ventures.
I think they'll take it Maybe the next step would be to get on staff there. I'm really doing it!

Spring Break, April 17 (Freshman Year)

This is better than all the chocolate rabbits and foil-wrapped marshmallow eggs piled high in a fantasy Easter basket! Mr. Adler called me at home. The agent he got placed
The Eye of the Storm!
No joke! Fifteen (just), and I'm going to have a major publishing house publish my novel! My parents are delighted. This time Mom did start shrieking. I'm going to dedicate the book to Mom and Dad-they should really like that.

Everybody wants to celebrate. My parents were planning this Easter picnic-now they're turning it into a party announcing the book, and Mr. Adler is planning a big party for the writing arts department as soon as we all get back to Whitman. I called Ben, and we're planning our own celebra
tion of the contract Suddenly I'm a celebrity, and the book isn't even out yetl But Mr. Adler said something about fast-tracking publication so it'll come out early next spring, right after everybody gets back to school from Christmas break.

T
HE
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES

F
EBRUARY 6

by Alvin Pierce

The Eye of the Storm
by Graeme Brandt. 223 pages.

In these confusing times it is astounding to discover an author who dares to offer explanations for modern Americans, and their mental peccadilloes, without embarrassment or apologies. It is more astounding still when the author is a boy. Newcomer Graeme Brandt is just that fifteen, and he has presented young readers with an imperfect but nevertheless impressive first novel.

It is as if a surgeon took his scalpel and carved out the very core of our youth, then exposed with painful clarity exactly what keeps today's kids going. There is no gentleness in Brandt's language or theme; everything is diamond sharp and uncompromising in the terrifying voice of matter-of-fact high school student Alan Travis.

The Eye of the Storm
is a character study that traces Alan's rise from street life in San Francisco with his homeless father and younger brother to a
private high school in Los Angeles. Brandt sees America as an environment tailored to yes-men, and has Alan drag his family to the top by striving to please everyone around him and by teaching his out-of-luck father and his admiring brother to do the same. It's a precarious road to success, threatening to veer off into disaster at any turn.

As the Travis family climbs," we don't know whether to cheer Alan on or to deplore his tactics, but he so resembles that part of ourselves that we hate to acknowledge that we cannot ignore him. Brandt flings Travis at us with an analytical accuracy that will shake the reader and keep him in knots long after he turns the final page.

Although this novel is marred by youthful overexuberance, Graeme Brandt is more than a precocious teenager. He is well on his way to shouldering the responsibility of the novelist's art to define us for ourselves. Few authors have effectively confronted this monumental task since William Faulkner captured the Southern mind so clearly—and fewer still have ever done it deliberately for young people.

That's not to say that adults won't be mesmerized by this novel Read it to discuss with your teenagers, because they'll be talking about Alan Travis—and about Graeme Brandt Whether your reaction is fury or resentment at helpless recognition, remember that this is the America you live in. Watch Brandt to see what he writes next; perhaps he can tell us where we're going.

February 7 (Sophomore Year)

Mr. Adler said that the
Times
doesn't review many books for kids and teens, so it's a big deal that they gave the book such a great review. I guess it's great, even though Mr. Pierce doesn't seem to like what I had to say much-he likes the book more than Tyler Murdoch did here at Whitman, though! The review in
Ventures
was pretty bad-a prophet in his own land, I guess. But the book got good reviews in
Publishers Weekly
and
School Library Journal,
and a bunch of other magazines I've never heard of. And it's in the book fair, which means they'll take it right into the schools so kids can buy it easier.

The agent has taken a collection of my short stories to see if he can sell it to the same publisher, or maybe to a different one. And
Ventures
did take the essay. It's like I can't put a wrong word on paper, even if I try.

My parents are thrilled about the book's success, though my dad had to warn me it might not last I don't know about that Even though I'm not working on a new novel yet, I'm full of ideas for stories, and maybe something will grow to book size. I'm not sure I knew this was going to be a book when I started it, though I was hoping, certainly.

But right now I'm just enjoying the fuss. Even seniors at Whitman recognize me and talk to me around the campus! Not that most of them have read the book, of course. But some of them have, and others have read the reviews, and nearly everyone has heard about it They all have their own impressions of me-and all the impressions are different I think that's interesting.

"It's for you," Adrian calls out, waving the phone receiver in my direction. "Or are you asleep there?"

Lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling is far from sleep. I can see patterns in the textured plaster; I can make colors on the white backdrop. It's better than thinking.

I roll off the bed and take the phone.

"Charles?" It's my father.

"Charlie? Are you all right?" And my mother.

"Hi. I'm fine. All settled in."

My mother asks, "You haven't forgotten your promise, have you?"

I had to work at getting them to let me come to Whitman, even with the scholarship. My mother was horrified that I was still so obsessed with painting. I finally made a deal with them—I'd get decent grades in the academic courses I took, and I'd take all the tests, and next year I'd fill out applications for colleges, and once I graduated I'd go to college and study for a sensible profession. Mother said they'd let me come here as
long as I understood it was sort of a last fling before I put aside my "childhood love of painting" and settled down to their idea of a "sensible career."

"I haven't forgotten," I tell her.

"Are they teaching you anything there?" my father asks.

Not about perspective in still lifes or landscapes.
But I don't tell him that "Sure," I say instead. "I'm reading
Lord Jim
in English, and I'm taking Introductory Programming, like you suggested."

"That's good," he says eagerly. "There are some good jobs in programming—with lots of emphasis on graphics these days. Are they teaching you how to write programs for video games?"

My sudden smile—at his struggle to reconcile my art with something practical like computers—takes me by surprise. I ought to tell him I wouldn't be caught dead writing computer programs for a living any more than I'd be caught dead sitting in an office selling real estate or being a lawyer, but I can't shape the words. I'm too pleased to hear his voice. "Maybe. It's a two-semester course, so we could get into that in the spring. Or next year."

"Did your art things get there safely?" Mother asks.

Things.
"Yeah. The studio's all set up now."

"Now don't lock yourself in that studio and forget about your other courses," she warns.
It's time you got this out of your system once and for all, Charlie.

"I won't." I change the subject. "Hey, the editor of the art and literary journal here asked me to do some sketches she can publish."