Chapter Text
“Me?” He smiled faintly. “Listen, I could study forever and I’d never break C. But it’s different for you, you’re good. You really are. If I had a brain like that, I’d - I’d have my head cut open so people could look at it.”
“Now wait a second…”
He put his hands on the back of a chair and leaned toward me. “I know. We kid around a lot and everything, but you have to be serious sometime, about something. If you’re really good at something, I mean if there’s nobody, or hardly anybody, who’s as good as you are, then you’ve got to be serious about that. Don’t mess around, for God’s sake.” He frowned disapprovingly at me. “Why didn’t you say you had to study before? Don’t move from that desk. It’s going to be all A’s for you.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, without any reason.
“It’s okay. I’ll oversee old Leper. I know he’s not going to do it.” He was at the door.
I thought about stopping him, speaking up once again, but before I could do anything Finny was out the door. The soft thud of the door closing was the only sound in the room besides my breathing.
There wasn’t a single coherent thought I was able to form in my mind. It was as if my mind was simply turned off, my body too numb to compute.
The sound of fellow students sprinting across the hall, their laughter bouncing off the walls, was what snapped me out of my stupor. Finny wasn’t trying to overthrow me after all. My God, he was being geniune. That whole time…the whole time he was genuine.
Here I spent my last days of the summer with Finny believing he was out to get me.
It was in that moment that I realized even though Finny was my closest friend, I truly didn’t know anything about him after all. It was a bitter sting.
There was no use studying anymore. I wouldn’t have been able to focus at all with the way my thoughts kept going over this new revelation like a broken record. The sun had started to set. I hadn’t moved an inch. I Couldn’t do much of anything except think. I thought and I thought.
I thought so much that I almost missed Finny coming back into the room. If it wasn’t for how careless Finny was with closing doors I’m sure I would have been too out of it to acknowledge his arrival. We stared at each other, him leaning loosely against the door and me rigid in my chair. In any other circumstance I would have laughed. We looked as if we were having a stand off against each other. Except this evening I couldn’t find much to laugh about.
“Well, did Leper jump?” I finally asked, my voice breaking from disuse.
“Of course he didn’t.” Finny said with a crooked smile before pushing his weight off the door and pulling his shirt over his head, preparing for bed.
I eyed him carefully for a moment while his back was turned. I’m not sure what I was looking for, possibly a crack in his glamorous facade, something to not allow myself to feel so silly for how I had been acting and feeling the past weeks. But there was nothing. Finny was the same as he always had been. I realized then and there that Finny could never really be anyone else. He could never pretend to be someone else. What you saw from Finny was what you got. He was an honest guy, through and through.
I got up from my desk and put my work away. Finny was going to bed, so I’ll follow him. If I could not do it earlier than I’ll do it now. From here on out.
We said our prayers together and simultaneously pulled down our sheets and laid down. After we bid each other goodnight that twisty feeling was back in my stomach again. This time it wasn’t jealousy or suspicion that was causing it. This time it was guilt.
It wasn’t until the next evening that Finny and I talked again.
When we woke up that morning both of us quickly got dressed without a word, which was uncommon for Finny, and went off to classes. The whole morning and afternoon I was becoming more and more paranoid with the idea that Finny thought over the previous night’s conversation and realized my past feelings for him. That he realized the actions I falsely accused him of in my mind. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to connect jealousy with my bitterness and offput behavior. Surely Finny was aware of the term rivalry and the idea of friends betraying one another. However, when we both entered our room for the night I noticed the small fidgets of his hands and how he bit at his bottom lip and realized he was also running paranoid.
I watched him set his books on the end of his bed and heard his bed creak only a slight as he set his body weight in the middle. He looked up at me.
“Say, Gene, I just wanted to say I’m sorry if I upset you last night. I mean, you seemed pretty annoyed with me and that wasn’t my intention.” Finny said with so much genuinity and kindness that my head started to ache again.
“I know it wasn’t.” I replied dumbly, lying straight through my teeth. “I wasn’t annoyed with you.”
I could tell Finny knew I was lying but he was kind enough not to call it out. “Well I just wanted to apologize all the same.” I had never heard Finny this nervous before and the tone didn’t suit his voice at all. I didn’t like it.
“You have nothing to apologize for.” And I meant it. He really, really didn’t have a single thing to apologize for. If anything, I was the one who needed to be humbled. “I’m sorry for how I acted last night. I guess I was just a little tense from the exams. But that’s no excuse for taking it out on you.”
There was a small voice in the back of my head reminding me that I was yet again lying to Finny, even in my apology, while Finny was being as sincere as he ever could be. Finny’s bright smile blocked out the voice only a little bit. “No sweat, pal.”
I could tell by his face that he felt conflicted, possibly wanting to say more, so I restrained myself from speaking until I could tell he was ready. I didn’t have to wait that long. I watched as Finny flopped down on his bed and turned his head to my direction. “I had just been thinking about it all day and, well, I felt really awful about what happened the more I thought about it. I thought that maybe I’ve been pressuring you to come with me this whole time when you were busy with other things you needed to do, or wanted to do, and that’s just me not being a very good pal to you.”
I wanted to argue against him but my tongue was like putty in my mouth. He was blaming himself. The perfectly imperfect bastard was blaming the whole thing on himself. He hadn’t a single clue.
“So listen up Gene, any time you have to study or you just don’t want to do something you let me know, okay? I won’t be mad at all. Not one bit. And if there’s something you want to do and you think I wouldn’t want to do it, then I suggest you ask me first because I can assure you I won’t mind at all to do anything you want. That’s another thing I realized. It’s always been me calling the shots on what we do, and that’s not how friends should be. I’m really sorry about that Gene, honest. I just wasn’t paying attention before I guess. But I’ll do better now.”
He was finished talking and I knew it would have been rude of me not to respond, but not a single sentence was coming to mind. How could I possibly respond to that? Here was Finny, laying on his side looking at me with such a sincere expression on his face as if he just solved all the problems in the world, thinking that he was the problem in our friendship. Because of course Finny wouldn’t have thought for a second that for the past weeks I was stewing in bitterness and jealousy of him. That I thought he was competing against me, that he was out to beat and ruin me. Finny wouldn’t dare think any of that because it was all illogical to him. Best friends don’t think that way about each other.
I felt real sick to my stomach thinking about how Finny had no clue for weeks how I was really feeling about him. And here he was thinking he came up with the solution because he already diagnosed himself as the problem.
My silence must have made Finny grow uncomfortable since he decided to speak up again. “So, are we good, Gene? No hard feelings and back to normal?”
I had a manic passing thought that I should tell him. Explain to him how I was feeling. That I shouldn’t let him take the blame for my own issues. But as soon as the words left his mouth I knew what my response was going to be.
“Yeah, we’re good.” I confirmed with a small smile.
Finny smiled back at me. I decided then and there I wasn’t going to let him know.
I had never looked forward to heading home as much as I did that semester. Normally I would wait until the last moment possible before packing my sorry excuse of a wardrobe up, all hand me downs from my brother. However, due to certain circumstances, this time around I began packing as soon as I found my suitcase.
I could tell Finny was puzzled by my sudden change in routine but he had the grace not to mention it. Devon was closer to Boston than it was to my hometown so I would be leaving before Finny. It wasn’t necessarily something I desperately looked forward to, spending time with Finny was always a way to brighten my spirits and not to feel so alone, but he was the cause of my guiltiness and wounded pride at the moment. It would be good for a small break away, I thought.
The day before I was due to leave Finny asked, “What’s your address?” I had been pulling back the sheets of my bed when he asked and stilled. “My address?”
“Yeah, so I can write to you.”
“You want to write to me while we’re on break?” I asked, looking at him curiously. The request wasn’t that odd but our break wasn’t going to be for that long.
It could have been the lighting, but I noticed a slight pink tint rising on Finny’s cheeks. “Well I don’t see why I shouldn’t. We’re pals, right? Pals write to each other when they’re away. My dad still writes to his buddies that he made in school.”
If I was feeling my sarcastic self I would have pointed out how it’s different for Finny's adult father to keep in touch with old school friends who probably live states away by now, compared to our situation, where we will see each other again in only a couple of weeks. But I decided not to. Something in Finny’s expression told me it wasn’t the right response. Instead I grabbed a loose sheet of paper and a stray pencil off my desk, scrawling my address down as quickly as possible. Finny thanked me as I handed the paper to him. His eyes flickered down to my handwriting and then back up to my eyes within seconds.
“You promise to write back?”
The corners of my mouth quirked up slightly. “Only if you write something interesting enough.”
I decided it was okay to be sarcastic with Finny for a moment.
And if the growing smile and playful roll of his eyes were anything to go by, Finny thought it was okay too.
There was a kid on my block named Darry Mills who enlisted in the war less than a year ago.
He was around my brother’s age, and I remember when I was younger seeing the two play in the sandpit my dad crafted out in the backyard.
Darry had a little sister who cried a lot and a dimple on his right cheek that was always visible. I remember him being a nice kid. He was the first boy on my block to enlist, my brother followed shortly after. When my mother greeted me at the train station I was met with a kiss on the forehead, a weary smile, and the news that Darry was missing in action after a particularly bad mission. Those were the only words my mother said to me on the way home. Frankly, I think they were the only words she needed to say.
I hadn’t seen Darry in years. I don’t even think my brother and him remained friends throughout their teenage years. But the news that he was missing, most likely dead, was enough to numb my entire body.
It was another reminder of the war. And, honestly, a reminder of what I could probably expect for my future.
All I could think about was how Darry would sometimes invite me to join building sandcastles with him and my brother, despite the way my brother whined and moaned about my company. I thought about how his little sister was sick and couldn’t eat a lot of sugar, so Darry would refuse to eat sugar too because he thought that was fair. I thought about how when our family dog died Darry came straight over and hugged my brother in a way I’ve never seen a boy hug another boy. About how the day after that he brought over a stuffed cat toy and gifted it to my brother while saying, “I couldn’t find a dog one in the store so I had to get a cat.” I thought hard and long about Darry.
And then I thought about my brother, Thomas. I knew my mother was thinking about the same thing too. The whole neighborhood was thinking about it, I’m sure. The only two boys in the close knit neighborhood serving in the war, and now only one of them is accounted for.
I wondered if Thomas had heard about Darry. I wondered if my mother had told him or if he heard through the grapevine. If he had heard I wondered if he stopped and thought about building sandcastles or eating sugar free popsicles on the back porch swing.
My father was still at work by the time we arrived at home. With another small smile my mother excused herself to the kitchen to work on dinner. As I went upstairs to unpack my stuff I passed Thomas’ room. The door was open. It stayed open. Not because of my parents but because Thomas never once closed his door. It was a quirk of his and I guess my parents kept it like that to not have the house feel so lonely and empty.
My throat burned at the thought that I really didn’t have a quirk for my parents to remember me by.
It had been so long since I stepped foot in my brother’s room I couldn’t stop myself from wandering inside. His wallpaper was yellow, the same as mine. His bed was pristinely made and not a single book on his bookshelf was out of place. My brother was always the more neat one out of the two of us. There were photos displayed on his wall, pushed in with pins. And as I turned to leave I saw a blur of brown placed on a chair next to his closet.
It was the stuffed cat toy that Darry got him all those years ago, resting right on the beaten down wicker chair positioned in the corner of his room.
I didn’t feel the urge to walk into Thomas’ room anymore throughout the break.
Finny wrote to me twice while on break. He seemed to be pleased to be home. Albeit he was bored out of his mind being there all by himself since he had no siblings or cousins his age.
I found myself grinning at his announcement that if he had to bake another pie with his mom he was going to throw out the oven. I wrote back to him telling to save me some slices of peach pie.
I didn’t have much company either. My father worked practically all day and my mother wasn’t going to stop her routine just because I came home. She had her normal errands and clubs to run. I never knew my mother to sit down and enjoy a day off. She was always up and going. It was always time to run off to Sarah’s book club, or time to take another care box off to the post office.
Surprisingly I spent most of my time writing. And reading. Reading and writing. It was a funny thing, writing. For I never considered myself much of a scholar. Sure, I studied a decent amount and school came easier to me than most, but I never cared too much about it. But that summer going on fall I was driven with an itch to write something. Anything.
The problem was I had no idea what to write. So I’d sit at the wood desk in the living room and fill up the wastebasket with my crumpled rejected papers. I figured it’d be easier if I could just find something to start with, maybe make some kind of outline, but the truth of the matter is my mind was completely blank. How could I want to write something but have no idea at all what plot I wanted to create?
I considered asking Finny for advice but withheld. Call it shame or embarrassment, but I didn’t want Finny to know. Not that he would have made fun of me or mocked me, but that I didn’t want him to completely classify me as an academic achiever.
I put writing on the back burner for a while. A guilty please I couldn’t even give myself.
When my father came home from work and my mother had dinner on the table, that was when my social interactions started for the day.
My mother would start it off by asking how work was for my father, he’d always respond with a “Work is work,” and then she’d ask me what I did during the day.
“You should get outside and play.” My father suggested one day after I admitted that I hadn’t done anything but stay in the house and watch television. “Does a kid good to see the sun.”
“I don’t like to play by myself.” I said pathetically while stabbing the lone pea on my plate, deciding not to argue with my father over how kids my age don’t “play” anymore. My father grabbed his hankercheif and wiped his mouth off before tossing it onto his plate. “You don’t have to play alone. Doris is home from school isn’t she, Anna?”
My mother glanced at my father, a look of mild surprise on her face, before looking back down at her chicken. “I think so, dear.”
“Well there you go. Play with Doris.” My father said resolutely.
There was one problem to that solution.
“Who’s Doris?” I asked, racking over my mind trying to remember anyone I knew named Doris. There was silence at the table while my mother fiddled with her food and my father watched. I had an odd feeling that I said something wrong.
Finally my mother spoke. “Doris is Darry’s little sister. She’d sometimes come around the house, remember?”
Oh.
“I remember.” My voice was much smaller now than it was before.
My father must not have noticed. “And it’d do her some good to have a friend right about now, you understand?”
“I understand.”
At some point my mother got up to do the dishes. My father had left to sit on the couch and read the newspaper. I stayed at the table, looking at the seat next to my left, the one my brother used to sit at, and for the first time in my life, felt incredibly lonely.
I called Doris the next day. My mother had put her address book down on the coffee table for me to look through and find it. No one answered the first time I called. The second time I called was a little past noon, and a small flutey voice answered the phone.
“Is Doris home?” I asked, somewhat expecting no one to answer the phone again.
“This is Doris.”
“Oh.” I said lamely. “Well, this is Gene. Gene Forrester. I’m Thomas Forrester’s little brother. I don’t know if you remember me.”
There was a pause. I fiddled with the telephone cord. The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked louder than usual. Finally a response came. This time the voice was emotionless.
“Sure, I remember you.”
Not exactly the greatest thing to hear. Her bored and uninterested tone did not go past me. Somehow the conversation was already going sour.
“Well, uh, I was wondering if you wanted to hang out today.”
“And do what?”
“Whatever you’d like. We could see a movie, or get ice cream, or just…” I trailed off, suddenly unaware of anything we could do and fully aware that I didn't want to do anything with her.
“Gene, I’m going to be honest with you. Is that alright?” She didn’t wait for my answer, and I was too frozen to give her one anyways. “I don’t want to hang out. I don’t want to do anything. And I certainly don’t want pity calls from brothers of friends Darry had when he was a little boy.”
I didn’t recover enough in time to answer before the line went dead.
By the time break was over and I was on the train back to Devon I had made zero progress in my writing. In fact, I had simply given it all up. Which was possibly for the better since I had no intention of hiding anything new from Finny and didn’t want to bring up my new fixation.
I truthfully hadn’t been able to prepare myself for seeing Finny again.
Preparations probably weren’t necessary for the two of us but I hadn’t been able to successfully shake off my guilt. It was always easy to be around Finny, he never made it hard to be myself. In truth, when I was around Finny nowadays I wanted to be a better self. I just felt that to be that better self I would have to be honest with Finny, and that was always the step that I got stuck at.
And as luck would have it, as I was walking up the brick steps to enter Devon, I heard Finny call out for me as I reached the final step. “I tried calling for you outside, didn’t you hear me?”
“No.”
Finny gave me a funny look and hiked his bag up on his shoulder. A short brown lock of hair had fallen over his left eyebrow. My fingers twitched at the thought to push it back for him.
“How were things down under?” Finny asked while leaning his weight onto me as we walked. I shoved him back into an upright position and he laughed easily. “The same. How was your break?”
“Long, boring, lonely, devastatingly bland, etc.” Finny listed off. “Don’t get me wrong, my folks are a treat to be around. But a boy can only take so much family time before he goes crazy.”
“You’re telling me you didn't enjoy making all those pies or doing crossword puzzles?”
“Laugh it up all you want. At least now I know how to bake all kinds of pies by heart.”
“If only we had a baking class here.”
“The one class I’d pass with honors.” Finny sighed playfully, shaking his head as if truly disappointed. He glanced a look my way and caught the smirk on my face.
We fell into a quiet laugh together before finally making it to our room.
He took his bed. I took mine. He once again rambled on about how dreadful baking really is and how he doesn’t know how girls do it all the time. I told him about my mother’s clubs, he told me about his mom’s sewing classes. We talked about our classes, about sports. We talked and we talked. And the more we did the more I realized that I had missed Finny. I had missed him real bad.
“Are you going to join any sports?” Finny asked one morning while twirling his spoon around in his half eaten oatmeal. The cafeteria was half filled with students and every so often you’d hear a cafeteria worker have to explain to a student that he can’t come into the kitchen and fix his own breakfast.
“I thought about being an assistant crew manager or something.” I answered with a shrug.
Finny made a noise as if he had been slapped. I glanced at him curiously and was met with a face twisted up in a mixture of disgust and disbelief. “Assistant manager!”
I waited for him to explain. He didn’t.
Instead I was met with a slap on the bicep and another exasperated, “Assistant manager!”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, feeling myself grow a tad bit embarassed by Finny’s attention. I looked around us to see if anyone was paying attention. Only one lower classman at the end of the table was throwing us a questioning look. He looked away quickly as soon as he met my eye. “What’s wrong with being a manager? Someone’s gotta do it.”
“That someone doesn’t have to be you!” Finny exclaimed again. Except now he seemed less concerned for my mental health. He resumed playing in his oatmeal. “You gotta get out there and play a sport. Doesn’t matter which one.”
“Oh, so Badminton would be fine?” Finny groaned in disgust. “Okay, any other sport but that one. And certainly not manager!”
A medium shadow came over our table and I looked up to see Brinker setting himself down across from us. Brinker let out a dramatic sigh, his tie wasn’t tucked in properly. “I woke up late and now I won’t be able to go through the line and get breakfast.”
“Here, have mine.” Finny said as he shoved the plastic tray in Brinker’s direction.
“So,” Brinker said as he opened Finny’s undisturbed orange juice cartoon, “What’s going on with you two?” He said in his usual obnoxious manner.
Finny elbowed me in the rib. “Gene says he wants to go out for assistant crew manager! Can you believe it?” There was no longer disgust in Finny’s voice, only amusement and teasing, which somehow felt worse to hear.
Brinker seemed to not have thought that the idea was as horrible as Finny did, but did raise a curious eyebrow in my direction before shoveling a spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth. “Why manager?”
For whatever reason I found myself growing quite annoyed with the situation. I pressed my fork harder than necessary onto the table, the metal making the noise louder than I wanted it to be. Finny startled beside me.
“So what if I want to go for manager? So what!” I looked between my two friends, both of whom were wearing matching baffled expressions. “I don’t see what the problem is. I certainly don’t see what’s to tease me for. Forget I even said anything to you.” The last sentence was directed at Finny and I knew he felt it. The look of hurt quickly coming over his face, and even though he schooled it almost flawlessly, I caught it.
If I had time to think at all I would have been embarrassed for my outburst, but I didn’t have time since Brinker decided to speak up. “Geez Gene, Finny was only playing with you.”
Another burst of irritation grew in me but soon fizzled out, being replaced by shame. And, yeah, embarrassment.
But soon enough, Finny cleared his throat and spoke. “I was only playing Gene, but it wasn’t right of me to take it that far. I’m sorry. I think you should go for assistant crew manager. And if you do, well, then Devon will have the best manager around the state.”
I looked at him and I felt that I really saw him.
The morning light shining through the cafeteria windows was shining down on half his face, one green eye sparkling more than the other, small hints of copper showing in his roots. He was looking at me with such a sincere expression I felt as if I could sob. I was reminded of him apologizing to me for being a bad friend, and I could tell in the crease of his brow that he was feeling like he let me down again. To say I felt ashamed was an understatement.
I only had time to nod before we were all dismissed and headed to our first class. Finny’s words stuck with me all through the day, but it was the sincerity in his tone that really attached itself to me the most.
That night in our dorm I apologized for yelling at him, and was easily forgiven.
“There’s nothing to forgive.” Finny had said with a smile. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
The changes started small but I noticed them almost immediately.
The first came a few days after our reunion. I was sitting in the library by myself studying when I heard the chair next to me scrap against the floorboard. I looked up and saw Finny settling down next to me, a binder and one of his textbooks cradled against his chest. He smiled at me.
“What are you studying?” He asked as he laid out his workstation with fake tidiness. His pencil went rolling down the table and he had to quickly lean over the table to catch it, causing his shirt to ride up his back only a little. Quickly, I looked away.
To say I was perplexed was an understatement.
I frowned at him. “Latin?” I answered as if I didn’t even know myself.
I was puzzled. Mainly because I knew Finny was supposed to be playing baseball with the other boys. He had told me as such at dinner and asked if I wanted to join when I politely declined.
Finny nodded. “I have Geometry work I need to do.”
I could tell he was trying to be casual but there was a slight strain in his voice.
“Why aren’t you playing? I thought you were joining the other guys?” I finally asked.
Finny shrugged. “I didn’t feel like playing anymore.”
“But you were really excited about it at dinner?” I don’t know why I was practically interrogating him over this, it really wasn’t that big of a deal, but I was genuinely baffled and confused as to why he was here in the library. And willingly, at that. I didn’t have to drag him along and hear his complaints the whole way there.
Finny shifted in his seat and opened to what seemed to be a random page in his textbook. “I played a little bit with them but decided I wanted to do something else. I have homework to do after all. Why? Do you not want me to sit here with you?”
To my horror he looked genuine in his question, his shoulders were set and tense, and before his arm could reach out to close his textbook I answered.
“Don’t be silly, of course you can sit here. Just surprised to see you is all.” Finny relaxed at that. There was a sideways smile on his face. “I go to school here too, you know?”
“I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen you at the library.” I said with a smirk.
Finny also smirked at my comment but his only response was his shoulder playfully shoving mine. We grew silent and fell into our work.
I wasn’t stupid though. That was for sure. Finny hated going to the library. Absolutely dreaded it. And yet, like clockwork, he would be there with me every night that I went.
He never went on his own, only went with me. And each night he left whenever I left.
I chanced sneaky glances at him and could tell that he wasn’t really working. He was trying to work, sure, but it just wasn’t getting through to him. His brows were always scrunched together so hard I thought he must have a killer headache from it.
Sometimes I would offer to help him with whatever he was stuck on, and sometimes he’d let me, but usually he would brush me off with a smile and say that he had it under control and I could continue with my work. He never asked for my help with anything and that baffled me. Finny use to always ask for my assistance whenever he was stumped, and now I could only catch him slightly eyeing my work before quickly looking back at his.
I knew he hadn’t miraculously became a genius overnight, and I knew he wasn’t quickly catching onto the work, yet he never asked. He just sat there, hunched over his books, pencil in hand and a scrunched up expression always on his face. Every now and then he’d catch me staring and would send me a smile followed by a quick wink. He would never talk to me either unless I talked to him first. In the past when Finny would come with me, he’d try his best to distract me from my work with jokes or just friendly conversation. But now, he was downright quiet. It was alarming the first night. I had assumed he was upset with me, possibly thought long and hard and realized what I had thought of him. But as soon as I would declare being done for the night Finny would sigh a breath of relief, smile fondly at me, and crack jokes all the way back to the dorms.
It threw me for a loop. It really did.
He missed games with the other boys. He canceled meetings of the The Super Suicide Society. All to come to the library with me and study.
He never once hassled me into doing anything. All things Finny never used to do. I thought there was something off about it, and each time I thought it over in my head I got a little nervous.
The old feeling of suspicion was creeping back up in me. Maybe he was trying to overthrow me after all. Maybe he thought long and hard about us and decided he did want to try and be the better of us once and for all. It was juvenelle to think like that again so soon but I couldn't help myself.
One night I side eyed him quickly before asking, “I thought you didn’t like to study? I thought it didn’t come easy for you?” There was more of an accusatory tone in my words than I would have liked but Finny didn’t seem to notice.
He looked up from his Latin and his tense features smoothed. “I don’t and it doesn’t.”
“Then why do you come down here with me all the time?”
Finny looked puzzled. “Well because you’re down here and I want to spend time with you.” He said it like it was simple and obvious. And I suppose to him it was simple and obvious. Maybe it should have been to me as well.
Didn’t he say to me that he was willing to do things I liked as well as things he liked? It’s simple to Finny. You like someone, you spend time with them doing whatever they like to do, even if you don’t like it.
I realized once again that he wasn’t trying to outshine me. He wanted to spend time with me. The reason he wouldn’t talk or distract me like old times is because he knew now that I liked quiet when I studied. He was being respectful and courteous. And here I was yet again thinking the worst of him.
I began to wonder how many times it was possible to be absolutely disgusted with yourself before you died of shame.
“Gene?” Finny’s voice pulled me out of my stupor.
I looked at him. He looked as if he was expecting an answer. An answer I knew I couldn’t possibly give him truthfully.
I closed my notebook. “Finny.”
He was still looking at me.
“Let’s go do something fun.”
“Well this is fun isn’t it?” Finny asked with a smile. He was trying to be serious but I could tell it hurt him to say that studying was fun.
“No it isn’t.” I said plainly.
I thought for a moment before I smiled at him. “Let’s go swimming, yeah? Let’s jump out of the tree.”
Finny’s growing smile was the only answer I needed.
The weather at Devon wasn’t the best that night. Perhaps it was an omen.
It wasn’t late enough in the year for it to be cold or even chilly, but the wind was blowing in a way that made the tree limbs dance, the whisper of leaves flowing through the air. The sun wasn’t going to set just yet but it’s heat was fading by the minute. I had half a mind to turn back around and head inside.
I knew I wasn’t cold yet but figured there might have been a chance to get a cold later in the night if we stayed out too late swimming. But I couldn’t turn back now. Finny smiled when I suggested it, he seemed pleased.
Finny was here. Finny was beside me, arms swaying in a somewhat graceful way and I noticed our steps were in sync. I had wondered briefly if our breathing was as well.
It was the spell Finny had over me that keep my pace going and soon enough we were by the tree. “Well,” Finny said matter of factly. “Do you want to go first this time?”
“Why don’t we go together?” I found myself asking.
“That’s a great idea! A way to celebrate our friendship! To set it in stone!” Finny exclaimed excitedly and I reveled in the hidden pieces of pride I heard in his voice.
He was like a magnet to me. As soon as he started to reach for the pegs I followed instantly.
Finny went first. I was behind him. And as soon as we reached the limb we were to jump from an awful feeling started growing in me. I had a passing thought of, ‘I could push him out of this tree. I could do it, if I wanted to.’ The thought was so blunt and brutal that I had to stabilize myself before going any further on the branch.
The action caused the limb to shake only a little but just enough to cause Finny’s grip on the limb above to tighten and for him to turn around and look at me, concern all over his face. “You alright, Gene?”
“Yeah.” I managed to get out. “A little lightheaded is all.”
That seemed to have done nothing to ease Finny’s concerns as he started to make his way back towards me, and I wanted nothing more than for his attention to be directed away from me. I couldn’t handle it.
I turned my head away and closed my eyes. “Are you afraid of heights?” He was trying to help, I know he was, but I wished he would stop talking. That he would stop being so kind and sensitive.
“No.” I gritted out through my teeth.
“Here.” I looked back at Finny. He had his left arm extended towards me. “Take my hand and I’ll keep you stable. We’re not that far out. We’ll just jump this once.”
Against my better judgement, I took his hand. It was warm and his grip was firm. I thought I was imagining the ghost of his thumb rubbing the back of my hand.
We jumped together.
And as I hit the water I felt as if I had been baptized and reborn.
When I resurfaced Finny splashed me with water and it felt like holy water on the skin of a sinner. I craved it more. I craved his attention. And when he turned away to float on his back I found myself missing it.
It was getting late. We both knew that. But it didn't stop Finny from declaring that he wanted to jump into the lake one more time.
“We’re going to get in trouble.” I said wearily. My teeth were clattering together since I was starting to get a little cold, the sun was setting. Finny seemed unphased.
“Just one more jump. We won’t be able to come out here that much anymore soon.” I don’t know why he was asking for my approval but I granted it to him anyway. As if I could ever deny him.
I got out of the lake before him, shivering my way over to where I dropped my clothes and tried to find a dignified way of putting them back on without shaking too much. I watched as he got out of the lake, water dripping down his body. He didn’t even think to dry himself off at all. He was barely shivering.
I watched as he climbed the pegs. I watched as he reached the limb and made his way into the middle. I watched and I watched.
I was watching as his knees bent. I was watching as one of his hands let go of the branch above him.
I was watching as a significantly big wind went through the tree. I watched as the limbs shook. And I was watching when he lost his footing and cried out, falling backwards, too far away for him to land in the water.
It was like an instinct. I didn’t even have to think of it that hard.
My shoes were in my hand one moment, and the next they were thrown to the ground. I lost sight of Finny for a moment, and I had the childish idea that he vanished in midair. Until I saw him again, coming straight down.
He wasn’t making any noise. I wondered briefly if he had passed out somehow.
I had a panicked thought that he died of fear or shock. I had heard of that happening. I didn’t have much time to think of anything else except for one thing.
I extended my arms and waited. It felt like an eternity, and for a moment I thought I had miscalculated where he was going to land, but eventually I felt the harsh impact of a body on top of mine. There was a loud snap that rang through the woods and I fell to the ground, my arms wrapped around Finny’s torso, dragging him down with me.
It took the breath out of me and as my head lolled to the side I was faintly aware that I was laying in a mud puddle, a sharp pain was stinging throughout my whole body, and my vision couldn’t even out no matter how many times I blinked. The weight on my chest lifted for a moment and I was met with a new blinding pain. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe anymore, and I became aware of a sharp pain in my right leg that I hadn't noticed before.
The last thing I heard before passing out was Finny’s voice, more alert and fearful than I’d ever heard it in my time of knowing him, screaming my name. The last thing I saw was the lake. The water looked a calm green color. Like Finny’s eyes.
Finny’s eyes were my last thought before the peace and darkness took over me.