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Constellations were everywhere, if you knew where to look for them.
In the ink blots made by bleeding pens you could find Canis Major, the Greater Dog, or Canis Minor, its aptly named counterpart. Spilled pepper could look like the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, if you squinted hard enough. And freckles were basically a free-for-all—grab a pen and start connecting dots.
Finney spent just as many hours looking in these places as he did looking at the night sky. He considered himself something of an expert given the speed at which he could point out the mirrored pot-and-handle shapes of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, following from there the path up, up, up, to Polaris. He’d even gotten good at spotting some of the fainter ones, too, like Draco.
Yet as he shoved the door to his hard-fought freedom open, the bike lock uselessly dangling from its hook, Finney saw but one, bright and blinding—the sun.
He felt the heat it produced in his temples, his cheeks, his eyes; a raw, pulsating sort of burn that no amount of blinking, rubbing, or squinting lessened. It was as though he’d flown right up to the sun and stared at it until his eyes popped. Only the shade offered by his raised palm dimmed that fire to a tight, discomforting simmer.
Someone was running towards him.
With enough force to knock them both flat on the ground, Gwen barrelled into him. They fell onto hardened dirt and dried grass, a messy tangle of limbs and emotions.
“I found you,” she whispered, “I found you.”
Her face was a blur—but that was just the tears.
Cops, reporters, and civilians swarmed the barricaded street like corpse flies, buzzing with the need for answers. There was much to be done, what with five dead boys unearthed from one basement, and a single survivor from the other.
Even when they’d moved him and Gwen to the back of the ambulance, shoulder to shoulder and swaddled in fleece, Finney still found himself squinting against the knifepoint sting of bleak daylight. He wanted nothing more than to hide under the covers until the pain went away—until everything went away.
An EMT knelt into view. He couldn’t read her nametag, but she had wild curls tamed by a purple scrunchie and a patient smile.
“I’m Jane,” she said. “Can you tell me your name?”
He unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Finne—Finn.”
“Do you know where you are, Finn?”
He looked up. Neither the flat brick houses nor the cracked asphalt were familiar—not what he saw of them now, and certainly not what he’d glimpsed of them while running in the dark of night. He could only hope that he wasn’t far from home.
“That’s okay.” The nurse snapped on a pair of powder-blue latex gloves. “You’re in Galesburg, just outside of Denver. You know what day it is?”
He swallowed, raw as sandpaper. “Wednesday?”
“Close,” she said, as though he were just guessing the number in her head, “Friday.”
A week. Seven days. One hundred and sixty-something hours.
He didn’t know what to say.
Thankfully, Jane didn’t mind. She carried on with her exam, pulling a pen from her breast pocket. “I’m gonna take a closer look at you, okay?”
Only, it wasn’t a pen, but a flashlight, and with a little click-click—
A sudden flood of hot, blinding white.
Finn recoiled. He whimpered, the pain so strong he was hot-cold all over, on the verge of passing out. A wash of acid coated his tongue. When he blink-blink-blinked the spots away, a small cluster lingered in his left eye, like a bug on a windshield.
“Does your head hurt?” Jane felt with long and nimble fingers along his greasy, dirt-speckled scalp. “Do you remember getting hit or falling?”
There were plenty of aches he could remember—the throb of his shoulder from hitting the floor when the window grate popped loose, the sting of his palms from being tackled onto pebbled sidewalk, the bite of his torn fingerbeds from clawing dirt, the dull pulse of his tailbone from—
If he had taken a blow to the head, he couldn’t recall.
And somehow, that felt worse.
“Well, that’s okay,” she said soothingly, peeling her gloves off, “you seem alright, but we’ll take you in, just to be safe.”
Finn’s stomach lurched. “Take me in?”
He wasn’t going home? For days, that’s all he’d begged for, prayed for, even—please let me go home please let me go home please let me go let me go let me—and, yet they still wouldn’t let him go.
He felt like the punchline of some cruel, cruel joke.
“—ney?” It was only Gwen, squeezing his arm. “Finney?”
Finn didn’t answer. Hiking the blanket further up his shoulders, he tucked into its fleece-soft warmth, and let his head drop on Gwen’s shoulder. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take.
⚬─✧─⚬
‘Yes, she'll manage, Jessica thought. There's that about this Fremen creature: the—’
Squinting beneath the kitchen’s buzzing light, Finn folded the book’s halves further apart. At a generous eight-hundred and eighty-four pages, Frank Herbert’s first Dune had a laughably small print, and thus the rest of the sentence trailed off towards the book’s center crease like tiny black ants following a marching line. The Atreides family had just landed on Arrakis, and if it took him any longer to parse through the chapter, they just might stay there forever.
‘There's that about this Fremen creature: the drive—’
It wasn’t like he couldn’t read at all; he managed billboard signs and newspaper headlines just fine. It was the smaller, finer print, that proved a challenge. Even then, the fix was simple—he had only to hold the book at the right distance. Too far, and the words were smudges on the page. Too close, and he’d be looking down his own nose.
‘There's that about this Fremen creature: the drive to—’
It was merely a coincidence that each time he breathed, the page quivered like a leaf in the wind.
‘There's that about this Fremen—’
He closed the book.
The house was silent. It wasn’t his first night alone since—well, since—but it was equally hard won. Gwen, away at a sleepover, had threatened to call every hour if he didn’t pick up the first time, and Dad had tried to switch shifts to be home in time for dinner. Finn appreciated their concern, but resented it, too. Did they really think he’d suddenly forgotten how to microwave leftovers, or lock the doors? Did he really seem that helpless?
Maybe I am, he thought, sliding the book aside, can’t even read right.
Abandoning Jessica and Paul to their adventures, he dragged himself into the living room, where the glow of the TV stung once he turned it on.
He rubbed his eyes. They were dry as sand, and had been since he woke up from an unplanned mid-afternoon nap, all grit-speckled and hot to the touch. The screen, when he did manage to sneak a glimpse, was but a blur of color—which color, he couldn’t tell.
"Tonight; a memorial for the anniversary of—"
With a sharp, bitter jab of the off-button, darkness returned. He threw the remote aside and sat there, aching, fuming, a pillow clutched to his chest.
There were days where their modest little house felt too spacious for their family of four-turned-three. It was definitely too large for one—shadows filled the gaps left by his sister and father’s temporary absence, squeezing in on him like a hydraulic press until he couldn’t breathe. Every creak of wood or groan of a pipe traveled as far as it did wide, loud enough to make him flinch. The cold draft from the poorly insulated windows seeped into his bones.
Night crawled on.
⚬─✧─⚬
“You ready?” asked Dad, tossing Finn the keys to the hatchback.
Finn caught them. With a heavy sigh, he said, “Nope.”
For weeks now, all he ever heard was get a job or get your license. Apparently, all that lazing around wasn’t good for him; kids his age were supposed to be at the movies or going to parties, not wasting away in front of the TV. Nevermind that he didn’t want to do those things, let alone had anyone to do them with.
“You’re a smart kid,” Dad had said, “don’t let that go to waste.”
How being smart had anything to do with driving a car, Finn didn’t know. Just last week, one of the kids at school had gotten pulled over, high as could be before first period. And then there was old man Jones, who didn’t remember his name when asked, let alone where he’d parked, but still somehow managed to drive his little Chrysler to and from the store every day.
God, Finn’s head hurt.
It was a nasty ache, too, the kind that dug ice-hot fingers behind the eyes and clawed at the skull. Blinking allowed a few seconds of sweet, dark relief, but as soon as the light back trickled in, so did the pain.
Dad shifted his weight. Hesitant, he asked, “You alright?”
A year and some change sober, and he’d finally thought to try at being the diligent father he always should have been. He’d tossed out all the hard liquor, replaced beer bottles with sparkling water, and attended meetings when his work schedule allowed for it. The process was a slow going one, but it was going.
Finn stopped digging a knuckle into his eye and unlocked the car. “Fine.” As much as he didn’t want to spend the afternoon outside, he wanted to spend it being coddled inside even less.
It wasn’t his first time behind the wheel. He’d once snuck into the driver’s seat before a little league game, curious and jittery and not quite thinking ahead. The seat had nearly swallowed him whole and his feet had dangled in the well beneath, the pedals far out of reach, but he’d still felt on the verge of something great—an astronaut, preparing for take-off. He’d shared a giddy laugh with Gwen once he’d scampered into the back beside her, narrowly avoiding Dad emerging from the house, him and his switch-flick temper.
It had been so easy to imagine, back then—all that freedom.
“So,” Dad started as they buckled in, gesturing to the gear shift, “we’ll take it slow. First, you’re gonna—”
Finn shifted into reverse, checked the rear-view mirror, and started a slow but careful roll out of the driveway.
“...Right.”
They crept their way through the neighborhood, just a few miles shy of the 20-something limit the black-on-white signs advised him to go. Save for an elderly woman hobbling her way home from the bus stop—Mrs. Jones, Finn guessed—the streets were empty. Parents didn’t let their kids play outside anymore. not in this neighborhood, at least.
As overcast as it was, the snow-laden sky still stung his eyes. Tears kept gathering at the corners, no matter how many times he wiped them away. Perhaps he had gotten too used to sitting in the dark after all.
Dad cleared his throat. “Are you, uh…”
“Dirt,” muttered Finn, dragging a scabbed knuckle over his eyelids, “just some fucking dirt.”
He turned left. Here, chain-link fences marked another stretch of empty street, along with patches of dried grass and the general gloom of the lower-middle class life. The construction sign that had been posted a few months ago still hadn’t been taken down, and with no progress to show for it either. A pothole-ridden intersection loomed up ahead.
Maybe Finn would bother to get out more, if there was something worth seeing.
As if spoken into existence, a speck of white light appeared in the middle of the road, fizzling like a sparkler on the Fourth of July.
“Pull up a little,” said Dad as he rolled up to the stop sign.
First, there was just one spark, then two, then three, until there were too many to count. They reminded Finn of miniscule galaxies, all pulsing and spinning and flaring to life. Cosmic resonance, came the distant, nonsensical, thought. The universe was trying to communicate with him. Whatever Dad was saying, it was lost to the rush of static in his ears.
He eased his foot off the break, and—
All at once, a blaring horn.
He jerked the wheel. Then came screeching tires, the rough thu-thunk and subsequently jostling of hitting the curb, a dull but heavy pressure on his stomach, his chest, his neck, pinning him in place. Move even an inch, echoed a low voice, and I’ll gut you like a pig.
Finn drew a shallow breath.
The car had stopped moving, but the engine continued to rumble, distant thunder beneath his feet. He smelled gasoline and cold air and maybe a little bit of nervous sweat.
Dad squeezed his shoulder, his palm large and steady. “You okay?”
Finn uncurled his hands from the wheel, first one, and then the other. Though the vents still blasted hot air, he couldn't stop shaking.
“Finney?” A rough tug. “Talk to me.”
Finn brought his hand up to his face, over the hill of his cheek bone and up to the slick outer edge of his eye. He swiped across the bottom rim, where the lashes there soft and damp and clumped together.
He realized, numbly, that couldn’t see.
He couldn’t see.
⚬─✧─⚬
As it turned out, wasp repellent wasn’t very good for the eyes.
The ER nurse had asked him the routine questions—Did you hit your head? Pass out? Take anything out of the ordinary?—all to which he’d answered no, no, and no. Then she’d gotten creative—Come into contact with anything potentially harmful?
“Like what?” he’d asked, unsure.
She’d had a nasally sort of quality to her voice, and a thick Northeastern drawl. “Cleaning chemicals, like bleach, detergent, window cleaner. Or maybe some type of spray paint or bug repellent.” She’d pointedly looked at him over the rim of her glasses when she asked, “You been near any fumes, recently, Mr. Blake?”
It had struck him with startling clarity, the memory.
The black-yellow-silver can, the shakeshakeshake of the ball within, the hiss of spray, the noxious smell.
The soft, too-good-to-be-true voice asking, How are your eyes?
It all made sense now.
They wouldn't know the extent of the damage until his visit with the Ophthalmologist, but for now, he'd been sent on his way with prescription eye-drops and a pair of readers. Once home, he'd drawn the curtains, crawled into bed, and laid there with a damp washcloth over his eyes. He was in and out of sleep for most of the afternoon, while Dad was stuck at the mechanic to handle the other, less-permanent damage. The cloth was cold by now, all stiff and crunchy, but the darkness it provided was a blessing nonetheless.
Just outside his room, the hallway floorboards creaked.
From beneath the duvet, he rasped, “ ‘m awake.”
Gwen opened the door and closed it just as gently. The mattress dipped beneath her weight. “Feeling better?”
“Mm.”
She brushed her wind-chapped fingers along his forehead, her touch as cold as ice. “Heard you totaled the car.”
Finn removed the cloth to glare. “I didn’t total it.”
It took a few seconds to readjust to the light. Once he did, he could see that Gwen looked about as cold as she'd felt, all pink-cheeked and sniffly. She must have walked home today, or at the very least, to the bus stop—which she wouldn’t have had to do if he’d already had his license. She was picking at the raw skin around her fingernails, unable to look him in the eye.
“You didn’t tell me,” she said quietly.
“Don’t.”
She frowned, offended. “Don't what?”
Pushing up onto his elbows, he said, “Don’t do that. Don’t make it your problem.”
She was always doing that—blaming herself when something went wrong. Soon he was going to run out of ways to tell her it wasn’t her fault.
Gwen folded the cloth in a beat of stubborn silence, setting it aside to take back with her on her way out. Finally, she asked, “Can I see them?”
Finn sighed.
He opened his nightstand drawer. The frames he’d picked out were a simple, rounded black, a temporary fix to a long term problem. When he put them on, the world drew into sharp focus, save for the little speck of darkness in the corner of his left eye—that would always be missing.
Gwen fought a smile. “You look…”
“Lame?” he offered.
She didn't answer, but she did stop him from taking them off. “Read to me?”
He couldn’t bring himself to deny her.
Once she’d kicked off her shoes and settled in against him, he opened the book and began to read.
“Yes, she'll manage, Jessica thought,” he said, “There's that about this Fremen creature: the drive to manage…”