Cabin Fever (BXB)

A Bubble Pops

"This one?" I ask, leaning in like it'll bring the thing into more focus. The picture's of everyone dressed for the evening, in black and navy and smiling. Simon's maybe in middle school and Finn's first grade. Maybe kindergarten. Simon's smile is pressed thin, and Finn's is bigger. The background suggests a wedding party, but they're wearing kippahs of different colors.

Finn's playing Mario Kart in the basement, glancing my way every so often to see what I'm referencing. "Cousin Liza's bat mitzvah. She's a lawyer now, I think. I don't know. We don't talk to her. Our family's too big to keep track of."

The basement is perpetually cold. So painfully cold. In summer, I'd imagine it's a glorious haven, but right now it is unfathomably cold. It has window wells to let light in, but all I see is the metal of the wells and glimpses of the bushes that hide them. "This one?" I turn the photo album his way, tapping on the corner of a vacation picture.

He looks at it then pauses the game. "...Legoland."

"They have an amusement park made out of Legos?" Neat.

"It was a bad trip." He goes back to the game.

I don't ask. I know he has a limit, and I don't want to push him closer to it. I flip backwards until I come across a picture of a young Simon, his eyes blood red and holding a bouquet of flowers. He's smiling. "What's this?"

Finn side-eyes it and pauses the game again. He takes out the picture and flips it over. "Oh. Simon was in a musical. A lot of them." He puts it back and goes back to the game. "He hated them, if I remember right. Was terrible at them, too. Like a bad homo."

In following pages, Simon's stint with theater seemed to continue. The look of distress is displaced, as time goes on, with forced smiles and tired eyes. Bright flowers and dull, dying stares. Scattered in between were pictures of familial life, of luxurious-looking vacations, of successes in extracurriculars, and awards in competitions. Flipping back and forth leaves a cold hole in my stomach. There's so few pictures of Simon smiling. Actually smiling. "Mathletes. Swim Team. Soccer. School newspaper."

"Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaah, Colin and Amy did that a lot. Mostly Colin but I can't not blame Amy for it."

"I take it you're not involved with this much like your brother."

"Not anymore. I think they got tired of me pushing back as much as I did, and wasting money when they signed me up for shit I didn't go to."

"Must be nice."

"To have a life? Yeah, if that's what you're saying."

"Could be." I smirk at him.

He side-eyes me and grimaces.

I get to Simon's high school graduation, and that desolate look in his eyes in all-consuming despite the grin on his face. He holds his graduation cap, decorated with "COULD'VE BEEN VALEDICTORIAN" with a tongue-out emoji, to the camera (though why any high school needs a cap and gown for graduation is absolutely lost on me) (also, putting that on a cap feels like such a slap in the face). His parents stood either side of him, hands on Simon's shoulders, and smiling. In the countless pages after, it's just Finn, Mr. Hopkins, and Mrs. Hopkins. There are no other pictures of Simon.

"...and that's when Simon was in Annie Jr. Oh, he had a very hard time memorizing the lines, and had awful stage fright. I had a wonderful time performing when I was his age, so I thought he would, too, but no. I thought he would just shake it off, get used to it. We worked together on memorizing lines and the dances and everything, but he...struggled," Mrs. Hopkins says. She turns the page. "He used to love dancing, my Simon, but onstage, he froze up." Another page is turned. "He was on his high school's mathletes team, and on the swim team."