If He Had Been with Me

  “That’s true,” he says.

  “Will you come?”

  Finny shrugs. “Your friends won’t mind?”

  “We already discussed it,” I say. It’s an accurate way to describe the argument this proposition caused on the steps this morning, but he doesn’t need to know that.

  ***

  “Look, you guys,” I said, “I’m not having all these people over unless I know Aunt Angelina won’t say anything.”

  “And you think having Alexis and Sylvie over will make the party seem tame?” Sasha said.

  “Having Finny over will,” I say.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is anyway,” Noah says. “I figured he’d be coming. He lives next door.”

  “If he comes, they’ll all come,” Jamie says. “They never do anything alone.”

  “Neither do we,” Brooke says.

  “I do not want to hang out with them,” Jamie says.

  “Me neither,” says Sasha.

  “How about this,” Alex says. “If they try to come near you, I’ll pelt them with candy corn.”

  “You don’t have to,” I say. “I doubt they want to hang out with us either.”

  “But you think they’ll come if you ask them?” Jamie asks.

  “If I ask Finny, yeah,” I say. “And I’m going to.”

  ***

  Finny bends down and ties his shoe.

  “Okay,” he says, “we’ll come.”

  “Awesome,” I say. “But I didn’t think it would be hard to convince a big partier like you.”

  “I’m not really. Mostly I just stand there. And I’m almost always driving Sylvie home, so I can’t drink.”

  “Sounds like fun. So why do you go?”

  Finny looks away and shrugs. “Sylvie needs someone to look after her,” he says.

  “Oh,” I say. It’s as if someone has opened a window and a cold breeze is fluttering around us. And suddenly it’s unbelievable again that I could invite Finny—and Sylvie!—to the Halloween party with all my friends. Finny and Sylvie were Homecoming King and Queen this year. Up on stage, Finny looked miserable and blushed while they crowned him, and Sylvie beamed at the crowd. They held hands. I can’t have them in my house.

  “Well, thanks for the favor. You don’t have to stay the whole time if you want,” I say.

  “It’s fine,” Finny says, and I know he can feel it too. We sit in silence for the rest of class.

  53

  I open my notebook and turn to a fresh page.

  “Okay, remember the rules, no crossing words out, no stopping. Ready?” Mr. Laughegan says. We look at him expectantly. “Your strongest memory. Go!” I bend over my desk and my hand flies across the page.

  The night Finny kissed me I—

  My hand recoils from the page as if burned. This isn’t the right answer. That isn’t my strongest memory. That’s the memory I’ve tried so hard not to have. I can’t possibly remember it well enough to write it down.

  “It’s a stream of consciousness, Autumn. Don’t stop.”

  I can’t disobey Mr. Laughegan.

  The night Finny kissed me I didn’t know what to do.

  ***

  We’d hardly spoken for weeks. All autumn we had drifted and drifted away from each other, and I never knew what to say to him anymore. That last week of school before break in eighth grade, we had even stopped walking to the bus stop together. My mother asked me if we had had a fight.

  But then it was Christmas Eve. My mother and I came over, and I sat down next to him on the couch, and there weren’t the other popular girls or our different classes or the way the kids at school thought our friendship was strange. There was only our family together and the tree and our presents and we watched It’s a Wonderful Life together while The Mothers made dinner.

  We didn’t talk about how things had been different, because suddenly everything was the same again. On Christmas morning, we laughed and threw balled up wrapping paper at each other. It was unseasonably warm that afternoon; we went into the backyard and for the hundredth time he tried to teach me to play soccer. The next day, he came over and we made a fort in the attic. We lay on our backs and looked at the sunlight bleeding through the ripped quilt above our heads, and I told Finny the plot of the novel I was going to write, about a kidnapped princess whose ship sinks and she has to start a new life among the natives of the island she washes up on.

  For a week, we were us again, and I forgot to call Alexis back, and Finny shone his flashlight in my window at night. We made popcorn and watched movies. We took silly pictures of each other with his mother’s camera. I made paper snowflakes and he hung them in the windows.

  It had been like rushing down a swift river. I had been swept away from Finny and into popularity without the chance to come up for air. But now I was breathing again, and I thought we could find a way to stay friends. I don’t know what he thought.

  We had one week. And then it was New Year’s Eve. My parents were going out, and I was going to stay with Finny and Aunt Angelina until they came home. After dinner, Finny and I baked a cake with his mother, and while it was in the oven, we sat at the kitchen table and made increasingly silly lists of resolutions, that we would befriend ducks and build jet packs, meet five dead celebrities, and eat an uncut pizza starting from the middle.

  “Here’s a real one,” Finny said. “Let’s build a tree house this summer.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Can I paint it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Any color I want?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even if it’s pink?”

  “If that’s what you want.” Finny added it on the bottom of the list, drew a dash, and added a notation on color schemes. “I missed you,” he said, his head still down. My throat tightened. He looked up. We stared. I don’t know what my face looked like. His cheeks were pink, and I remember thinking that his eyes looked different, darker somehow. And something else. Something had changed in the weeks we had been apart, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Finny, Autumn, it’s almost time,” Aunt Angelina called. Finny broke our gaze first, and went to grab wooden spoons and pots for us to bang.

  When the moment came, we ran down the lawn together, and the neighbors were setting off fireworks and we stood on the sidewalk and whooped and banged and watched. Finny was louder than I had ever seen him be before. He yelled and his voice cracked; he raised the pot above his head and it clanged like a gong. It unsettled me slightly, like his eyes. He didn’t seem the same anymore.

  “Okay, come on guys,” Aunt Angelina said. We turned and, still breathing hard, began to trudge up the lawn behind her. She had almost reached the porch when Finny grabbed my arm.

  “Wait,” Finny said. I stopped and looked at him. He swallowed and stared at me.

  “What?” I said. I saw him lean in, but I thought I must be confused. He couldn’t be about to kiss me. Then he turned his face to the side, his nose brushed along my cheek, and Finny’s lips were on mine. Warm. His lips moved gently against mine once; there was only enough time for my eyelids to instinctively flutter closed and open again. He pulled away slowly, his eyes never leaving my face. His hand was still on my arm, his fingers clenched around me. My stomach had tied itself into a knot.

  “What are you doing?” I said, even though Finny wasn’t doing anything now. He was just looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before. His fingers dug deeper into my arm. We took a breath.

  “Kids?” Aunt Angelina called from the doorway. “Come on. Cake’s done.”

  I gently tugged my arm and his hand dropped. I took a step away from him. Our eyes never wavered.

  “Kids?”

  I turned and ran up the lawn. He followed me, and I imagined him grabbing me and pinning me to the ground.

  Finny, my Finny, kissed
me. It was horrible. It was strange and wonderful. It felt like I was watching a meteor shower and did not know if it meant the stars were falling and the sky was breaking apart.

  When I got back home, I closed my blinds and buried my face in my pillow. My tears were hot in my eyes and it was hard to breathe.

  “What are you doing?” I said. “What are you doing?” I whispered it to him again and again until I had cried myself to sleep.

  The next morning while The Mothers made our New Year’s brunch, Finny and I sat on the couch with three feet between us and did not talk. We stared straight ahead.

  There were four round bruises on my arm where his hand had clasped me. He had never hurt me before.

  And we weren’t friends anymore.

  ***

  It’s not fair I wasn’t ready It’s not my fault. Did you kiss me because you wanted to kiss a girl or did you kiss me because What was I supposed to do I wasn’t ready I wasn’t ready I didn’t know

  “Time,” Mr. Laughegan says. I drop my pen and it rolls off my desk and onto the floor. “All right. Now read over what you wrote. Is there a story there?”

  54

  I am drinking white wine out of a blue mug. The party is crowded and hot, a success. Some people are dressed as pirates or hobos; I am dressed as myself in a blue t-shirt, a black skirt, neon tights, and a silver tiara. I watch the party alone, leaning against the doorway of the living room. Brooke and Noah are in the kitchen making drinks. I don’t know where Alex and Sasha have gone. Angie and Preppy Dave are snuggling on the couch, drinking Coke and whispering. Jamie is standing on the coffee table, telling a story to his captive audience. He spreads his arms wide and shrugs, and everyone laughs.

  “So I went back to the car again,” he says. One laugh stands out this time, and I glance around him to the other side of the room. Sylvie sits cross-legged on the floor next to the couch, a beer in hand and her eyes shining. I know that look. Sylvie has been charmed by Jamie. It happens easily enough and to nearly everyone.

  Jamie throws back his head to laugh at his own joke, and Sylvie grins. My mouth eases into its own smile and I watch Jamie jump off the coffee table and take a bow. Sylvie may like him now, even want him maybe, but he is sauntering across the room to me. Jamie lays his hands on my hips and leans close.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “That was a very entertaining story.”

  “I know,” he says. Now that his epic tale is done, the room is beginning to fill again with other voices, a low humming around us. He is so close that all I can see is his laughing, mocking eyes staring into mine.

  “I really want—” I say.

  “Want what?” he says.

  “To be alone with you,” I say. The skin crinkles around his eyes as he grins.

  “Let’s go,” he says. I shake my head.

  “If everybody sees us go together, they might duck under the rope too,” I say. Before everyone came, I strung a piece of twine across the stairway to keep the party downstairs, the madness and mess contained.

  “I’ll go now,” Jamie says, “and you follow in a minute with drinks.”

  “Okay,” I say. He kisses me hard, pressing me against the doorframe, the way he never does in front of others usually. He leaves me breathless and flushed; I tip the mug back and finish the wine in one swallow.

  I walk over to the couch and sink down next to Angie. I cup my hands around my mouth and lean into Angie’s ear.

  “Whisper, whisper, whisper,” I say. She shoves me gently and laughs. “What are you guys plotting over here?” I say.

  “We’re gonna get married,” Preppy Dave says.

  “In December, maybe,” Angie says. “We’re going to tell our parents soon.”

  “Wow,” I say, “that’s really—” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Finny enter the room. “Big,” I say. They both nod, and Dave’s arm tightens around her shoulders. I stumble up and stand with one hand on the couch. “I’ll leave you two crazy kids now,” I say. “I have an appointment to keep in my bedroom.”

  “Be safe,” Preppy Dave says.

  “Yeah,” Angie says. I laugh and take my hand away from the couch as I turn away, and I stumble into Finny’s chest.

  “Oh!”

  “Sorry,” he says, even though it is clearly my fault. His drink spilled down his front when I ran into him. He wipes at his chest with one hand while I look around for something to blot his shirt with.

  “Oh, baby,” Sylvie says. She touches his chest and clucks like a mother hen.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  “It’s fine,” Finny says.

  “You’re going to reek of alcohol, baby,” Sylvie says.

  “Let’s go in the kitchen and get a towel,” I say. “And you can have a drink from our stash.” He steps around the table with me and we walk to the kitchen.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Finny says.

  “It only fair,” I say.

  “That’s very nice of you, Autumn,” Sylvie says. Finny and I don’t say anything in reply.

  In the kitchen, Brooke and Noah are trying to make a martini shaker by fitting a plastic cup over a glass tumbler. Drops of vodka fly across the room with every shake.

  “I don’t think it’s working,” Noah says.

  “No,” Brooke says. She lays the makeshift shaker down sadly.

  “Hey,” I say, “make something for Finny from our stash.”

  “Would you like a custom hand-shaken martini?” Noah says. I open a drawer and take out a tea towel.

  “Say no,” I advise.

  “Um,” Finny says, “perhaps something that won’t make a mess in Aunt Claire’s kitchen.”

  “Who?” Brooke says.

  “My mom,” I say. I hand Finny the towel and he blots his chest, but his shirt is only damp now and it doesn’t do much good. While Brooke and Noah make a rum concoction for Finny, I fill my mug and a plastic cup with wine.

  “Here you are, my good man,” Noah says.

  “Thanks,” Finny says. The three of us—me and Finny and Sylvie—walk back to the living room. The hallway is empty. I duck under the rope and look over my shoulder to make sure no one saw.

  Finny is standing at the bottom of the stairs, his drink untouched in his hand. Sylvie is gone. I hear her laughter in the next room.

  “Hey?” he says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t forget what you promised me, okay?”

  I try to flip through all of my memories of us, trying to find a promise that hasn’t been broken yet. There were a lot of promises; there isn’t much left.

  “Not while you’re drunk,” he says. My grip on the wine tightens, and I feel myself start to nod and then shrug.

  “You don’t need to worry about me, Phineas,” I say. “Okay?”

  He looks at me, not blinking, not moving. He does not blush. From the next room, Sylvie calls his name. He doesn’t seem to hear. I swallow, trying to push my heart back out of my throat.

  “Fine,” I say, “I’m not—we aren’t going to, okay?”

  “Okay,” he says, and turns on his heels.

  “Finn?” Sylvie calls.

  55

  “So, did you hear about Thanksgiving?” Finny says. He’s lining up his pool cue with the white ball. He shoots and breaks the triangle in the center of the table. Balls roll in every direction. One falls into the left pocket.

  “Does that one count?” I say. Finny shrugs and motions for me to shoot. “We might as well count it since you’re going to win anyway.”

  “You don’t know that,” he says.

  “Yeah, I do.” I lean over and try to position myself the way he did.

  “Don’t hold it so high in the back,” he says. “Don’t hunch either.” I shoot anyway and hit the ball on the side. It bounces off the rim a
nd hits the floor. Finny grabs it and places it back on the table. He opens his mouth to explain to me what I did wrong.

  “What were you saying about Thanksgiving?” I say. He looks down and begins to line up for his next shot.

  “My father wants me to come over to his place and meet his wife and daughter.” He shoots and the white ball hits the one I think he was aiming for, but it doesn’t go in the hole.

  “You have a sister?” I say. My chest feels hot and my stomach sinks. Finny shrugs, and anyone else would think that he could care less. I know he cares. And it’s another connection to rival mine. First Sylvie and now this sister.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “How old is she?”

  “She’s four,” he says. I relax a little bit.

  “How long have you known about her? Why didn’t you tell me?” He looks up at me again. We’re standing across from each other, on different sides of the table, pool sticks in hand. Around us, other conversations buzz, and balls clack against each other. I know why he didn’t tell me, because we were hardly speaking to each other when she was born. He doesn’t bother reminding me though.

  “Your turn,” he says.

  “So, you won’t be with us on Thanksgiving?” I say. I shoot and the white ball hits the orange number six, which clacks uselessly against the wall and rolls to a stop.

  “No, I will,” he says. “I’m supposed to come over later in the evening, for cocktails and leftovers.”

  “Oh,” I say. He shoots, and another ball rolls into the pocket.

  “You look relieved,” he says. He smiles.

  “Would you want to be alone with them all day?”

  Finny shrugs. I lean over and try to aim.

  “Stop,” he says. “I can’t take it.”

  “What?”

  He doesn’t answer, but walks around the table and stands behind me. He lays his hands over mine. They are dry and warm. His hip presses against mine.

  “Like this,” he says. He adjusts my hands. I close my eyes. We are still. His hands press against mine. I take a breath. I hear the clack of the balls.