Work Text:
Miles From Normal
Gwendolyn Blake has always been different.
She has dreams. Everyone has dreams, though.
But sometimes her dreams are of people she doesn’t know; faces and voices she’s never seen.
Sometimes, her dreams come true.
It’s a small different, but it makes her a noticeable different.
Randy Evan’s dad will die in five days. It will be a work accident; he’ll get caught in the machinery—forgot to roll his sleeves up. It will be bloody and gruesome. Something that would make any adult—let alone a kid—scream at the sight. Gwen wakes with a start that night and cries until her brother bursts the door open and lays down with her, telling her it was just a dream as he pets her hair.
The next day Mrs. Rosemary tells her class that Randy will probably not be in school for a while, his dad has recently passed away; everyone looks at Gwen.
Her and Randy are the only two kids in second grade to have a dead parent now. They feel Sorry for her.
She hates them.
In third grade she dreams of Mr. Taylor’s wife. She’s with another man, the other man is yelling, he’s angry. He has something in his back pocket. The loud boom in the small room wakes Gwen. Her brother is already there.
It was just a dream, Gwenny.
The next day the principal tells her class that Mr. Taylor will not be coming back to school, his wife has died—been killed, he doesn’t say, but Gwen knows—and that Mrs. Montgomary will be his substitute until they find a permanent one. Half the class looks at Gwen then. She had been adamant that it didn’t matter if she’d done the spelling homework that day, Mr. Taylor wasn't going to show up. They want to know how she Knew. She doesn’t tell them.
In fourth grade she dreams of a boy. He’s in her brother's grade— was . This boy is dead now, he was kidnapped two years ago. She’s dreaming of the past. Of someone else’s past. This is new.
The boy is talking to a man.
It’s an instant click to her that this man is the kidnapper. Her dreams are never of good things happening to people. They all lead to one thing and one thing only.
The man has a top-hat and cape on. The paperboy glides past them on his bike, calling for his dog to follow. Gwen wonders how long the man knew he was going to take the paperboy next. Wonders if that was his plan to begin with but this boy blocked his path at the wrong time.
Do you like magic, Griffin?
Yeah!
Well then! Close your eyes, I got something special to show you!
Okay!
The dream swirls around her. The bright morning sky quickly fading into a bleak gray. It’s a room; a basement. The boy is laying on a dingy mattress in the middle of the room. He looks peaceful in his sleep.
Time passes. She doesn’t know how much, but the boy is sitting in the corner of the left wall, he has something in his hand. She leans closer to see what it is; a bottle cap, then closer to see what he’s scratching into the wall.
22317
So I won’t forget again
Time passes and the boy is sleeping on the mattress again. He doesn’t look so peaceful anymore; face scrunched up as if he isn’t actually sleeping but pretending. So nothing will sneak up on him.
The man comes in; no longer wearing a top-hat or cape, he calls the boy lovely and the boy flinches. The man tells him things that don’t make sense to Gwen’s young mind. A couple things stand out. The man hurt the boy, he hurt him in ways that Gwen didn’t know possible. The dream ends with the man saying that being Special can only take you so far as his hands go to his belt and Gwen Knows what that means. She doesn’t have to watch to see what she already Knows True.
But she does, because the boy looks right at her when the man raises the belt. The familiar thwack sound leather makes when it makes contact with skin makes her jolt awake.
She doesn’t cry, nor does she go to her brother. That night Gwen learns to keep to herself. Tells herself that she needs to be the tough one because her brother needs her to be.
In fifth grade she dreams of another kid. This kid is younger than the Stagg one. He has dark curly hair and steely blue eyes; he is covered in blood and is sopping wet.
This dream is Different. She hardly has dreams like this one; where the victims know she’s prying into their life so they shove pleasant memories at her as if trying to cover all the blood she’s seen not only seconds before.
This boy doesn’t do this though. She watches his death. It was behind St. Luke’s, at the bottom of the hill. He was sledding and had to pee. A man grabbed him as he was zipping back up. A man Gwen feels she recognizes but isn’t sure of.
The man does something to the curly haired boy. He screams and cries until he doesn’t. Gwen doesn’t see what happens, the boy must not want her to see. The man leaves looking paranoid but somewhat satisfied, Gwen feels sick.
Then the boy is walking out from behind a tree further ahead of her. His vibrant blue eyes stand out against his dark skin, they narrow on her.
I was the first. Tell my story.
Then she’s waking up in a cold sweat. She pants for air for a while before she breaks down into gut-wrenching sobs. She doesn’t know why the dream made her so upset. The boy didn’t look upset. The screams and cries weren’t as bad as they could have been. She hadn’t Seen anything. She usually does. Things she doesn’t think she’ll ever forget.
Her brother comes in and shushes her, telling her that their dad will wake up and be mad at her then neither of them will be able to go to school tomorrow. She wants to tell him to screw off. That he’s being an ass right now. But then he puts his hand on her head and starts petting it soothingly. His shushes become less frantic; a mantra of It’ll be okay, It’s okay, and It’s not your fault, You can’t choose what you dream about. She’s soon only sniffling every so often and when her brother tells her it’s not her fault for maybe the millionth time with a wobble in his voice she looks up and sees that he’s crying now too. He doesn’t make any noise. He’s always been a quiet crier—if he ever even cries.
“I’m sorry, Finney,” she says quietly, wrapping her arms around his back and putting her face in his chest.
“It’s not your fault,” he says back, voice still wobbling but not breaking. It takes a lot to break her older brother. He stops petting her head to pull the covers back over them. “You never need to say sorry to me,” he mutters. She wants to say it again. There are so many things to be Sorry for.
There always is.
But her brother's hand resumes its soothing circles in her hair and all she can think about is how emotionless those blue eyes were.
In fifth grade she dreams of a boy that looks to be the same age as her brother, his hair is raven black, his eyes are a deep mud brown. He’s smiling brightly; a canine tooth sticking out. He laughs at nothing in particular. A high-pitched whistling sound comes from behind him. He looks back and his smile somehow grows when he sees the model rocket in the air.
A man on the side of the road is carrying groceries to a black van. On the side it says Abracadabra in a turquoise color. His shoe catches on a rather large crack in the sidewalk and he goes crashing down onto the stone ground. It’s almost a comedic fall. Heavily exaggerated. As if it was planned. The boy wasn’t paying attention though. The model rocket having caught his attention long enough to miss the fall but not enough to miss the cry the man gave when his groceries fell and over a dozen oranges rolled out of one of the paper bags and into the street.
The boy comes to a skidding stop on his bike. He looks to be contemplating something before he jogs his bike over to the side of the street the man is on, still on his knees.
Help mister?
Did you observe that bullshit?
The boy laughs slightly and bends down to pick up the oranges. The man gets up with the rest of his groceries and opens the van’s back doors. Over a dozen black balloons burst out all at once. The boy, with his arms full of oranges, frowns at them. A quizzical look on his face.
I’m a part-time clown.
The boy accepts this with an oh followed by a nod and a smile.
Hey, you want to see something funny?
The man has a steel can, yellow and black, with pictures of bees on it. The boy’s smile grows a bit as the man shakes the can roughly. Maybe he thinks it’s silly string. Gwen Knows it isn’t.
The oranges fall again, one of them splatters juice on the ground, another lands beside Gwen’s foot.
The dream twists and turns and Gwen’s taken back to a familiar room, only difference being the person in the bed. Even the expression he wears is familiar; peaceful and innocent as he sleeps. Unaware of the assumed torture to come.
A loud clank sound comes from behind her, it’s a large metal door, and in comes the man. He has a tray with two oranges on it and a bottle of grape soda—the sight of the drink sets panic coursing throughout her body, thinking of her brother and how this boy is maybe the same age as him, how the last boy she saw in here was the same age as him too.
This time the dream doesn’t get to come to its terrible conclusion. Gwen wakes herself up at the sight of the man’s cold eyes squinting, as if smiling under a demon-like mask he was wearing.
She doesn’t say anything about the dream until the day it’s announced that Bruce Yamada has been kidnapped by The Galesburg Grabber. She goes to Amy the day she comes back to school. She tells her she saw Bruce in her dream. A clown with black balloons.
Amy doesn’t believe her and calls her a Freak. Gwen doesn’t deny it, she doesn’t even acknowledge it. If she gave in to each jab someone throws at her then she wouldn’t be able to handle the people that say those same things to her brother. He Needs her. She can’t break.
In sixth grade Gwen dreams of her brother dying. He smiles at her and tells her that he wants to see Mom again. That she wouldn’t get it because she doesn’t even remember Mom’s voice or face. He tells her that it was always going to end like this, he has their father’s eyes and their Mother’s heart. She cries and begs him not to.
But Finney Blake is nothing if not stubborn.
She wakes up screaming and crying hysterically. Finney rushes in and tries to hug her, but she pushes him off and screams at him. She hates him. How could he do such a thing to her? After everything that they’ve been through together? He’s just going to ditch her?
Eventually their dad comes in and yells so loud it makes both of them recoil and cover their heads. As if he’ll hit them. He looks guilty and miserable as he says he’s sorry and that he’d never hurt them again. He cries and tells them he’s Sorry and Sorry. That he Loves them and he’s Sorry he’s so terrible. Gwen hates him. Finney looks like he hates him more than her.
He leaves when they’re all calmed down, saying Love you on his way out. Neither of them say it back. They almost never do.
“What was the dream?” Finney asks and Gwen almost throws her alarm clock at him. Because–
“You died.” He frowns at her, an unasked question in those soft brown eyes. The eyes of their father. “You–” Her voice breaks but she continues as if it hadn’t. “killed yourself.” He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even look surprised and then Gwen really does throw the alarm clock at him. She screams at him to never even think of it, that she’d never forgive him if he ever did something like that to her. She screams and sobs until her voice goes hoarse. They sit there, Gwen panting and crying still, Finney on the other side of the room, rubbing his elbow because Gwen’s beaded necklace hit him there.
He doesn’t look at her when he says, so very quietly, “Your dreams are real, though.”
“No– NO!” Her throat hurts and so does her chest—her heart. She can hardly breathe. “Not all of them– Finney, NOT ALL OF THEM!” Finney doesn’t say anything, still doesn’t look at her. Even when he picks up all of the things she’s thrown at him and puts them on her vanity, and then walks out, making the door shut so quietly she almost doesn’t hear the click over her jagged breathing.
She cries herself to sleep that night, reciting so many prayers that they all become mixed and don’t make any sense.
The next day they all have Family Dinner. No one talks, they don’t address the one-sided screaming match that happened at 2:48 am last night. They don’t address Finney’s tired eyes or his sudden loss in appetite. They don’t address Gwen’s knotted hair or dried tear streaks down her face, they don’t address their dad’s soft brown eyes—Finney’s eyes—shifting between his two kids, maybe asking himself how to fix it; how to fix this terrible mess all of their lives have become, or maybe he’s asking himself how to get out of this before he’s dragged too far into it.
Time passes on as it always does. Birthdays and holidays flying by. They play their parts. They’re happy on the days you’re meant to be happy, sad on the days you’re supposed to be sad. Finney graduates school. He doesn’t leave.
“I’m seventeen,” he says anytime Gwen asks him. “I don’t wanna leave you,” he’ll say when Gwen cries to him. “I’m scared,” he whispers when he thinks she’s not listening.
In ninth grade she dreams of a boy with dark curly hair and blue eyes. She doesn’t recognize him right away. He looks smaller than she remembers. Maybe it has something to do with her being much older than the last time she saw him. He hasn’t aged; memories don’t age, ghosts don’t age.
She doesn’t watch him die this time. This time they’re on the side of Mission Road. The one right across from St. Luke’s. His eyes are still the same shade of blue they were five years ago. A dark ocean blue. He points to something behind her, she turns and nothing is there. The boy laughs and she whips back around.
Do you even know who I am?
She doesn’t. She can’t say that though. She can’t talk in these dreams. She’s meant only to be a spectator.
I was the first.
What does that mean? she wants to say. The boy seems to understand the unasked question. He points behind her again and she looks because there isn’t much else to do.
Finney is there. It’s not the Finney Gwen knows right now. This is a tiny Finney. He’s much shorter than Gwen, his eyes are big and innocent.
He’s eight.
The boy walks in front of Kid Finney.
He didn’t tell anyone either.
The boy turns back around, eyes heavy lidded and tired. He looks much older than he is. Gwen wants to ask what this is. What this is about and what it has to do with Kid Finney.
It doesn’t. I mean, it doesn’t have anything to do with Finney Blake’s eight-year-old self.
A terribly familiar van pulls up on the side of the road and all of a sudden it clicks.
This boy is Loren Shipp. The kid that died in a freak sledding accident when Gwen was five-years-old, when Finney was eight.
I was the first.
He stares at the van, no emotion behind those blue eyes.
I didn’t want to be.
A single tear rolls down his face. Gwen didn’t know ghosts could cry.
When she wakes that night she goes to Finney’s door and knocks softly, not expecting a reply.
She doesn’t get one. He’s awake, his light is on.
He doesn’t answer the door anymore.
In tenth grade she doesn’t dream of people dying at all. No dreams that aren’t her own. Finney gets a job and helps pay bills. He says he’ll leave when Gwen can get her own job. The beginning of next year. She doesn’t take this to heart. Finney most likely won’t ever be leaving.
Some nights she blames herself for ruining Finney’s chances at having a normal life. Others she blames her Mother. She hates herself the most on those nights.
Finney gets drunk for the first time on December 9th. The day Robin was taken from him. He walked all the way to the graveyard in nothing but a hoodie, a pair of sweats, and his fuzzy slippers. Gwen finds him leaning against Robin’s headstone asleep.
Beloved son, nephew, and friend
Robin Luis Arellano
February 2, 1965-December 9, 1978
When she shakes him awake he says Robin’s name as if it were a lifesaver and he was drowning in a storm. She cries with him and hugs him. When they come back home they’re soaked in melted snow and red all over. They both come down with a cold the next morning.
In eleventh grade she dreams of Loren Shipp again. The dream is short and seems to hold no meaning. It’s Weird and Odd in the normal way that dreams are Weird and Odd.
Loren is in a field of wild-flowers, he’s dancing with Kid Finney. They’re laughing and having so much fun. Robin shows up after a long while. The only difference to him and how Gwen remembers last seeing him is that he’s shorter—much shorter, Kid Finney laughs about it and Loren says it’s okay, he’ll grow into himself given time. Gwen supposes this makes sense because she didn’t know Robin until he was at least eleven.
Somewhere throughout the dream Susie shows up with Amy and they all—including the three boys—make flower crowns.
They all laugh and laugh until they complain about their stomachs hurting.
When Gwen wakes up she’s laughing too, then it dies in her throat when she realizes that it never actually happened and never will happen.
She cries until she forgets what she was crying about.
In twelfth grade she dreams of people dying in horrible ways and of people dying peacefully and almost calmly. Finney is still there. She asks when he will leave, he says he doesn’t know, actually and that if she wants him gone so badly she should just say so. She doesn’t. That’s the problem. She never wanted Finney to leave her enough to push him away.
“You wanted to be an aerophysics-whatever,” she says on the night of her graduation.
He mutters, “Astrophysics,” and then snorts nastily and says, “Sometimes things don’t work out, Gwen.” She hates herself for being so selfish. She should have forced him to leave.
Finney is the bravest person Gwen knows, but sometimes he needs a push to act on that bravery.
“You can still do it, you know.” She lays down on the cool ground. It’s May, Finney will be 21 next month, she’ll be 18. Finney still looks like the awkward teen he was years ago. His shoulders have gotten broader, he’s gained weight, making him look more muscular. His hair is longer; in a small ponytail at the nape of his neck. Gwen likes to braid it sometimes—though her braids are never as nice as Finney’s. He’s got a stubble—it’s still growing in a bit awkwardly, though. He looks like an adult. He is an adult. But he’s still that Odd Little Kid too.
He doesn’t want to leave. He needs a push.
Robin was always best at making Finney do things he didn’t think he could do.
“What if I say I don’t want to?” He sits a bit straighter as he says it.
“I’d say you’re a liar,” she replies instantly and knows she’s Right. Finney straightens himself out when he lies. As if he thinks it makes him look more credible. He barks out a laugh and lays down beside her.
“I feel like all I do is lie nowadays,” he mutters.
“What have you been lying about?” He exhales roughly.
“I don’t know–”
“I think you should go back to school,” she interrupts. She’s afraid of what he’ll admit to. Afraid of all the lies she somehow missed, the lies she ignored and swept under the rug because they were too inconvenient for her to deal with then. “You’re still young, Finney. I want you to… to live again…”
“...Yeah, I know…” He sighs and turns his head away from her, to the stars. “Do you think they’re up there?” he asks softly. “Griffin, Paperboy, Vance, Bruce… Robin… You think they’re watching us right now? That they’re stars now?”
“It’s a beautiful thought.”
“So you don’t think they are.”
“I don’t know what I think anymore, Finney.”
“…”
On June 21st, Gwen and Finney’s birthday, Finney makes the announcement that he’s been accepted into a collage in New York. It’s not in the top twenty but it’s also not in the bottom twenty. Gwen jumps up and down, squealing like a little girl while their dad hugs Finney tightly saying he always knew Finney would go to great places.
So Finney leaves and Gwen stays. She’s not upset in the slightest as she watches Finney drive off in their old Cutlass with nothing but two suitcases and one trash bag full of clothes in the back seats. She waves frantically and chases the car until she gets too tired, when she gets back home her dad hugs her and she cries for what feels like forever but is really only ten minutes as the kitchen timer goes off and he dad has to let her go.
He just needed a little push.
She goes to the University of Colorado Denver and throughout the course of her college life she dreams—she never stops dreaming, whether dreams of people dying or just Normal dreams.
Her dad doesn’t ever say anything about the dreams. He doesn’t say much at all, really. They are kind of like ghosts in this house.
They talk; when they pass each other in the hall, going to the bathroom or something. They talk when they’re having Dinner. Dinner is always on the table now, Gwen cooks sometimes but mainly it’s her dad. And they talk at the Dinner table. Small-Talk, but still talk.
Some days he’ll be sitting in the den, watching TV and she’ll come in and sit with him; not really watching it, sometimes it feels nice—feels Right—to just be in the same room as him.
“You know I really am sorry, don’t you Gwenny?” he asks one Sunday night after they’d settled in to watch something—it was The Night Court . Gwen liked it well enough.
She glances at him and is caught in those sad brown eyes. Sometimes she hates seeing those eyes on him. Finney has those eyes and she loves them. They tell her so much he refuses to say. But she doesn’t want her dad to tell her things he doesn’t even want to tell her. She shrugs. Dan Fielding is being yelled at by a woman on the TV. She snorts.
“Gwen– I am. I– I’m– I’m trying and I know you’re already a fuckin’ adult and it’s too late-”
“You hit me,” she says quietly, not looking away from the TV. Judge Stone is banging his gavel on the sound block as the courtroom erupts in chaos, Dan is being chased by a group of women. She doesn't laugh.
“I– I know…” And he sounds so miserable Gwen almost tells him it’s okay; that it was her fault as much as it was his; that she should’ve been a better Kid.
Almost. She doesn’t. Because it wasn’t her fault. Telling her dad about a terrible dream she’d had of people dying—of Kids like her, dying and screaming for help was never something she should’ve been punished for. Been whipped with a belt for.
She doesn’t look at him anymore for the rest of the night. As soon as The Night Court goes off she goes to her room. Right before she gets to the door her dad says, “I’m gonna keep tryin’... Even if you an’ Finney never forgive me– You shouldn’t. But…” He sighs heavily, sounding much older than Gwen's ever heard. “You guys deserved better. I’m trying to be better... I’m sorry it took me so long.”
That night she lays in bed worrying about homework she didn’t do and whether that one person with all the notes did it. She doesn’t think about her dad at all, well, only when she’s not thinking about how she’s not thinking about him.
Finney keeps in touch. He writes letters saying that once she gets a mobile phone he’ll text or call her everyday, that talking to their dad on the landline when she’s out is too awkward. He sends her frightening letters sometimes. Some saying he hates it in New York and that it was all a mistake, he should just come back home. Those letters are hard to read, the handwriting is slanted and angry. She calls him on the landline as soon as she sees the handwriting, quickly scanning the letter as it rings. She talks to him for hours on end, not caring of the cost—their dad doesn’t either because Gwen’s the one that pays the phone bill.
It takes a bit to calm him down then he tells her what’s wrong and usually it all goes back to normal. He never falls behind in any of his classes. Which Gwen is so proud of and brags to anyone that’ll listen. He’s top of his classes in almost all of them. She loves him.
Sometimes he’ll call randomly in the middle of the night. He sounds sad on those calls, but sad in a resigned way. Like this is a sadness he’s used to. He says he’s remembering Robin, he thinks he had a crush on him. And on the nights when he calls really late he confesses that he thinks Robin might have liked him too. He doesn’t cry at this. He says it all in that same sad but resigned tone.
“Do you think we could’ve made it?”
“I don’t know, Finney.” She sips her coffee, it’s 4:57 am, there’s no point in going back to bed now. “You definitely could have tried.”
A rustling sound from the other end. “I don’t think I would have wanted to…”
A pause. She sips her coffee again. “That’s okay.”
“You don’t think that makes me… weak?”
A longer pause.
“Do you think it makes you weak?” Seconds turn into minutes and Gwen thinks he’s hung up or fallen asleep, or he just isn’t going to answer until she hears him sniffing.
Once… Twice… Thrice…
Finney is crying. Quietly. He’s always been a quiet crier.
“I miss him,” he says, voice wobbling and then finally Breaking.
That night Finney cries— sobs. These terrible gut-wrenching sobs that Gwen has never heard from him before. She doesn’t cry. Finney Needs her right now.
So she listens to him sob and doesn’t say anything.
Time passes. Because it doesn’t stop for anything or anyone. It moves on whether Gwen moves with it or not. She graduates college. She cries when Finney shows up. She didn’t get to go to his graduation.
He stays in town for a while. Gwen dreams.
She dreams of a younger Finney and a younger Robin Arellano. They’re watching Jaws at the drive-in theater—even though Jaws came out years before they actually became friends and if what Finney’s told Gwen about Robin is true then a year before Robin even came to America. That’s how she knows this isn’t a dream of the past but one her head’s made up.
Finney jumps at only a couple scenes. Robin never jumps. Somehow it ends with them having a popcorn fight then the dream follows Finney home. The house is quiet and cold, even in a dream, Gwen shivers. Finney locks the door, their dad is asleep on the couch, he passes him and goes up to Gwen’s door, slowly opening it. There Gwen is, maybe nine or eight. She looks so little compared to the woman seeing her now. She’s sleeping and though Gwen can’t hear anything she knows her kid self is snoring.
Finney smiles a bit and shuts the door just as quietly as he opened it. Then the dream fades slowly, nothing like the nauseous twists and turns that usually happen.
It fades into a field that seems familiar but not quite. There’re wild-flowers everywhere. Paisley purples, cornflower blues, bumblebee yellows, and all colors in between. She feels a sense of deja vu for this place she’s never been to before.
The only thing she can see besides all these flowers is a big oak tree in the distance, it’s branches are covered in golden leaves. When she walks up to it she can see that oranges are growing on it.
A small twig-of-a-branch snaps off the tree and an orange bursts open beside Gwen’s foot.
There’s blood in it. Blood oranges.
Hey, Gwen, a voice says from somewhere above her. She looks up and makes eye-contact with Robin Arellano. He looks just how she remembers him; brown hair just below his shoulders with his signature bandanna in it—this one is blue, his favorite color, Finney’s second favorite color—along with a flower crown atop his head, it’s got pink, green, yellow, red, and blue flowers weaved into it.
He looks ethereal. Unreal.
Sorry I never said bye to you. You were cool.
He swings his legs back and forth, something childish that makes her chest twist uncomfortably. She can’t tell if this is real or not. If Robin is actually talking to her or her mind’s just playing its usual cruel tricks.
Not a trick, he says, then he takes the flower crown off and picks at it. I said bye to Finn a while ago. He gets a couple red flowers in his hand and gently lays them beside him on the branch. Could’ve been yesterday. He shrugs, picking at the blue flowers now. Could’ve been years ago. He looked old. He lays the small pile of blue flowers on top of the red ones, ever so careful they don’t fall.
Another orange falls and Gwen jumps.
You know he’s like you, he says nonchalantly. When he looks back down to Gwen he elaborates, He can see us. In the real world. Like you can see us in dreams.
Gwen’s heart stops beating for longer than should be allowed. She doesn’t say anything and another orange drops, right in front of her this time. She doesn’t flinch.
He’s doing good now. He says it like a question and Gwen finds that she can’t really answer confidently. Nowadays most things to do with Finney she can’t answer confidently. Just last week she wouldn’t have been able to tell you what color his hair was after he’d gone through an identity crisis and dyed about ten different colors before sticking to a dirty blond.
Robin holds his hand out above Gwen and turns it over slowly. All the flowers he’d picked off the flower crown float down over Gwen. Yellow, green, blue, pink, and red.
I don’t like goodbyes but I think you deserve one. You were a cool kid. Bet you’re a cool adult now if you still take after Finn as much as you did back then.
Soon her vision is dis-configured by the flowers and when she opens her eyes it’s to the ceiling of her room.
She doesn’t confront Finney about this new information The Ghost of Robin Arellano gave her. She hints at it and he gets nervous and changes the subject; this only confirms that it’s true.
On the day of their Mother’s death he tells her. It comes out as if he were talking about the weather and Gwen continues the tone. Like it isn’t a big deal; it is but if Finney doesn’t want it to be then it won’t be. He tells her he hates it and is Sorry for ever saying anything about her Dreams. She tells him she dreamed of Robin and he doesn’t flinch back at the name, nor does he grasp at it like a lifesaver the way he did so many years ago. He nods; Robin said bye to him too. They all said bye to Finney.
He doesn’t tell their dad and Gwen never tries to get him to.
She leaves Denver Colorado behind. Galesburg being nothing but a memory of a place she used to live, a place where terrible, terrible things happened to her in her childhood. A place her dad lives. A place Gwen made her first friend, had her first crush, first fight with a boy, first heartbreak, first loss of a loved one.
It was the first place she bled and cried and screamed. But also the first place she rode a bike and smiled and laughed.
On December 31st of 2001 Gwen and Finney get drunk and reminisce over the parts of their lives they used to share. They’re old now—if you count mid-thirties old, which Gwen does, but Finney doesn’t—and they’ve got plenty of new things to tell each other.
When the ten-second countdown begins Gwen reaches for Finney’s hand without looking away from the TV. He takes it, yelling out the numbers.
When it reaches one and the ball drops he cheers and shakes their intertwined hands in the air. Gwen cheers too and Finney looks at her with the brightest smile she’s seen since he was ten-years-old and says, “We should do this again next year.”
Gwen laughs and shoves him in the side. “Well, duh,” she says, shrieking with laughter when Finney tackles her and they end up brawling on the floor.
Finney’s weird, but that’s okay because so is Gwen.