Other than Nora, Simon’s family doesn’t know he’s spending this summer on the East Coast. He’s going to have to tell them soon because not mentioning it will tip the scales from “distant but plausibly warm” to “estranged” and Simon doesn’t want to be the one responsible for that.
Simon:Is that an invitation or a warning?
Nora: 50/50
Nora: figured you hear it from me, give me the answer you know they want, and then you don’t have to talk to my dad
Nora: or YOUR dad
Simon: This is bullying.
Nora: correct
It’s not that Simon dislikes his family. He doesn’t, at least not most of them.
It’s just that the Devereauxs are gregarious Connecticut football enthusiasts with jobs in investment banking and corporate law. Simon’s bad at math, introverted, and gay—a combination they all treat like a delicate health condition. One of his brothers is the junior senator from Connecticut and the other’s a partner at a top New York law firm. Both his parents are retired hedge fund managers and both his stepparents are retired doctors. Simon pretends to fly through outer space for a living; they just don’t have many overlapping areas of interest.
There’s a story Simon’s brother used to tell as part of his stump speech, about how Simon struggled academically until his parents sent him to a school that focused on the arts. This was supposed to demonstrate Senator George Devereaux’s commitment to education and arts funding, as well as to remind everyone that he has a semi-famous brother. The story’s even kind of true. In eighth grade, Simon flat-out refused to do any schoolwork whatsoever until his parents agreed to send him to a high school with a decent theater program.
He’d been a wretched little goth child, grew into a wretched little goth teenager, and only thanks to a timely growth spurt, a late appearance of the family cheekbones, and a talent for looking handsomely judgmental was he spared the fate of becoming a wretched little goth adult. There’s a fine line between being sullen and being superior, and it took Simon some trial and error to find that line and keep to the correct side of it.
Nora was born when Simon was in high school. He mainly knew her as a face on his oldest brother’s campaign-curated social media until she was thirteen and started texting him out of the blue.
At first he couldn’t understand why she sought him out. But thenshe sent him a selfie—not one of the campaign-approved shots of her in a school uniform, but a picture of her with inexpertly applied black eyeliner and no smile—and it all clicked into place. Somewhere in his mother’s house, there are pictures of Simon with the same smudged eyeliner and scowl. She’s a wretched little goth child and she thinks of him as proof of concept. Devereauxs can, with a little effort, avoid getting an MBA.
They don’t look much alike, but he feels like there’s a resemblance anyway, something that makes him almost understand what people are talking about when they talk about family.
Nora: anyway, party’s at the end of may. you don’t even need to drive. metro north to greenwich or just go back to your roots and hire a car. dress code is generationally wealthy white people
Simon: If I don’t go, you know it isn’t personal, right?
Nora: yeah yeah whatever
Simon has nearly two months to wrap his mind around this, so he probably should reassure her that he’ll be there. But he can’t, so he just sends her a picture of Edie and tries to fall asleep.
In the morning, Jamie’s up before Simon, which is a bad sign. He’s lying in wait in Simon’s kitchen, a full pot of coffee on the counter.
“Has Ken been in touch?” Jamie asks, which is a worse sign. Ken is Simon’s agent.
“No.”
“Okay, he’s useless as usual, good to know.”
“Hey—”
“So there was an article yesterday aboutTree of the Godsand your name is mentioned.”
Simon’s face heats. That show made the worst day working with Charlie Blake seem like a peaceful visit to the library. The showrunner habitually screamed and threw things, which opened the door for every other sociopath on set to let loose. The lead actor was a Method pest who stayed in character in order to harass every woman under thirty-five and hurl insults at everybody else. Simon spent months wishing he’d gone to law school.
“That show ended eight years ago,” Simon says. “Are they ever going to stop talking about it?”
“There are rumors about the second book finally getting adapted. That’s why it’s all getting dredged up.”
Those rumors reappear every few years and never go anywhere, possibly because the entire former cast and crew are using the power of negative thinking to un-manifest it.
“Anyway,” Jamie goes on, “it’s the usual stuff about difficulties on set. Nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“Difficulties,” Simon echoes. Jamie’s being delicate. “What exactly does it say?”
