Simon Sort of Says: Chapters 5–10

According to Kevin, there are plans for an Extremely Large Telescope and an Overwhelmingly Large Telescope, but for now, the Very Large Telescope is where it’s at.

In design and tech class we have been building bridges out of toothpicks and glue. Today was the day we set them up and loaded them with weights until they cracked. Only, mine didn’t crack—it shattered and sent shrapnel flying everywhere.

It was actually kind of embarrassing: I squealed like a rabid possum and threw my hands over my face.

This must be Zeny, because she looks just like Kevin: wild curls, brown skin, super skinny, gangly limbed.

She keeps giving him this look like he’s come from the big city specifically to tempt her into heresy.

I assume he’s Kevin and Zeny’s dad, because he’s got their coloring and he moves like them, like he could dance in a ballet.

He puts red beans and clear strings of something in the bottom, a scoop of shaved ice in the middle, adds a ball of bright purple ice cream and some red jelly things to the top, and pours sweetened condensed milk over the whole concoction.

So Agate gamely starts asking questions, and I explain who Curtis is and why we can’t fire him and what he’s done now.

She slides it over to me in an over-the-top nonchalant way, practically waggling her eyebrows.

At lunch I go to the library and look up sidereal time: “The timekeeping system that astronomers use to locate celestial objects,” which, you know, clears that right up.

I can tell it’s the right place because it has a big painted wooden sign suspended above the farm gate: Van der Zwaan Angora Et Cetera, it says in curlicue writing.

The scaffold that holds it up is as tall as a twenty-story building.

Someone has spread newspaper in the corner of the pen, but frankly not enough of it; I smell puppy pee.

Behind her one of the babies bangs their spoon against the tray, which makes the other one squeal and toss their spoon onto the floor. Sweet potato puree scatters over the drop cloth.

He flops down on his dog bed, sighing like he’s just had Thanksgiving dinner and settling his jowls across his folded paws.

They are both landlines—thanks for that, radio astronomers—and one is white and fairly new. The other is avocado green and has been there since telephones were invented probably. It makes a distinctive double ring that my mom calls “the party line.”

“It’s not for a pet,” she says. “It’s for socialization. You keep it and take care of it and take it everywhere and teach it manners.”

Later I figure out that Agate is actually in pretty good shape, she just has that kind of flush that makes redheads look like they are developing heatstroke—but just then I don’t know that and I think Agate might die.

It takes about a week for Herc to start to settle in. Of course, by the end of that week I’m an absolute zombie, but both my parents are happy to recount tales of Screamy, Colicky Baby Simon and tell me that it will all be worth it as a sacrifice for love.

“For a start,” Dad says, “blasphemy is a mortal sin, and one cannot commit a mortal sin before the age of reason, which is seven. And squirrels don’t live that long.”

“When I opened the tabernacle, in front of Missus Dolores P. and the Blue Hairs, that fuzzy little bugger leaped out, landed on my chest, bit my hand, hit the ground, dove beneath the altar, and then kept going all the way up the nave.”

This is important because Catholics believe that consecrated altar bread—the Host—is actually turned into the body of Christ. Which is why we keep it in a super holy gold-plated (but evidently not squirrel-proof) cabinet.

Dad helped the parish priest distribute the ashes.

When they were done, the right half of the church had dainty little smudges of ash between their eyes and the left half of the church—Dad’s half—had big, wild crosses that spanned their whole foreheads, like the Xs on pirate maps.

Soon the parish council had roped Dad into adding a brass section (featuring sackbut) to the choir, running a First Fridays thing, and supervising the classes for the kids who are going to take new sacraments.

I hear that and of course my brain goes straight to disaster and I have to do breathing exercises, but my mom has got an arm around me and is simulcasting the phone news to keep me from panicking and it’s just vaccine shortage yada yada spoiled refrigeration batch something something, and the upshot is Dad has to go to Omaha or Denver.

Apparently the squirrel has black tips on its ears and tail, so they’ll know it if they catch it, but they haven’t. Mom has dubbed it the Jesus Squirrel.

His being there gets us both out of going to church to contemplate the suffering of Jesus.

Herc focuses, spots Kevin, and comes bumbling right over, his ears up high and his tongue out.

I don’t know about Agate, but Kevin and me and Mom at least are supposed to be fasting for Good Friday—abstaining, technically, from what my dad calls sweets, treats, and meats.

She lets us hang out by ourselves in the upstairs living room, sprawling on the old sofas with paper towels instead of plates.

Since we can’t have Netflix or anything like that, there’s a DVD player (radio-astronomer-approved!) and a stack of movies and stuff. Kevin plops down and starts sifting through them.

“I’m going to take notes,” says Agate, rapturous.

Herc is out cold on the rug, doing that full splay thing that only puppies can do, with his hips all the way out and his belly pressed to the floor.

The telescopes are majestically slow, but the jargon is flying fast. “Hydrogen times pi,” someone says. “Sidereal,” says someone else, and the word makes my heart skip as it goes by.

The radio astronomer is cracking it now: “Seventy-nine...eighty-three...ninety-one...they’re all primes, no way that’s a natural phenomenon,” she says.

Agate sits with her stubby pencil poised over her little notepad, but she’s too engrossed to actually use it.

Agate sits with her stubby pencil poised over her little notepad, but she’s too engrossed to actually use it.

The smug bad guy scientist arrives right on cue, ready to steal the woman’s Nobel Prize.

“My mom is ‘helping me refine it,’” he says, making the air quotes big. He tells me how his mom has him measuring the microwave radiation emitted both inside and outside the microwave.