by Laura Nowlin
“Oops,” Finny says. I open my eyes. The ball we were aiming for bounces off the side and rolls slowly to a stop. We straighten and step away from each other.
“I guess I’m too big of a screw-up even for you to fix,” I say. He doesn’t answer me or move to take his aim. “Finny?” I say. He blinks.
“That wasn’t your fault,” he says. “It was mine.” He hands me the cue again.
56
We are in the courthouse downtown. I’m holding my new digital camera, a gift from my birthday. Angie’s dress is short and white, with blue tights. She has a large white flower pinned in her hair. Her back is to me now, but when she turns in profile, I will see the barely discernible swell in her middle. Preppy Dave is in a gray suit. His hair is wetted down and combed so that the lines show. His mother is crying. I’m not sure if they’re happy tears or not. I raise my camera and take another shot. Jamie leans over and looks at the screen. He nods in approval. All of us are sitting in one row on the left. On the other side, three of Preppy Dave’s teammates sit. They are the only other young people here; the rest are parents and grandparents, a few aunts and uncles. There is one baby in the crowd and every few minutes, it mews and is shushed again.
I reach over and take Jamie’s hand again.
“We’re next,” I whisper. He smiles briefly and squeezes back.
Preppy Dave and Angie turn to face each other, and I let go of his hand and raise my camera again. Her smile sends a knifepoint into my stomach; my hands shake and the picture is blurry. I delete it before Jamie sees.
Someday I’ll be happy like that, I tell myself.
Angie’s hands squeeze Dave’s and I think about his hand over mine as we aimed the pool cue. I squeeze Jamie’s hand.
57
All day, The Mothers made a big deal about this being our last Christmas before we leave for college, and Finny and I had to not roll our eyes or laugh when they got sentimental. Sometimes our eyes would meet, and we gave each other silent warnings not to give in and snort or sigh in reply to them. We didn’t see how things could be so different next year, and they were ridiculous and maudlin in our eyes.
My parents gave me a laptop. Good for schoolwork, they said. Good for writing, I thought. I’ve started something new, something secret, and now I can carry that secret thing with me wherever I go, bouncing against my hip in my messenger bag.
Finny got a sound system for the little red car from his father. He was never that much into music, but he shrugged and kind of smiled.
***
We’re sitting on the couch watching TV with the lights off. Christmas is at Aunt Angelina’s this year. The pine tree by the window sometimes blinks randomly in one section or another, but never all at once or to any rhythm. Finny had tried to find the problem and fix it, but then Aunt Angelina decided she liked it. Because of the tree, the light in the room dances across the ceiling and makes the windows darken and flash again. Finny has the remote. He flips through the channels until he finds It’s a Wonderful Life. He sets the remote down on the coffee table, leans back against the cushions, and stretches his long legs out in front of him.
At Thanksgiving, when he got up in the evening to leave us for his new other family, our eyes met briefly but we did not say anything. Without him, I sat in the corner with a book and went upstairs early. Nothing about his evening came to me through The Mothers and he did not say anything about it in gym class. All I know is that he isn’t leaving us tonight.
The Mothers laugh in the kitchen and Jimmy Stewart falls in the swimming pool. We both smile, and the movie fades into a commercial break. I stand up.
“Do you want a Coke?” I say.
“Sure,” he says.
I kick his foot. “You’re blocking traffic with those things,” I say, and he folds his legs back and stretches them out again after me like a toll booth.
Those legs took our school to state soccer finals this fall. I went to their last game with The Mothers and got to watch him running for an hour and a half. The muscles in his legs, the way he lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face, the concentration in his eyes as he ran—it made my chest constrict. I felt as if I would never see him play again, and I somehow knew they wouldn’t win the game, that they wouldn’t make it to championships, and this would be Finny’s last game ever. Finny’s last game in high school, I amended in my mind, but my chest still hurt when the whistle blew and he trudged across the field in defeat.
In the kitchen, my mother is checking on the lamb, and Aunt Angelina is pouring a glass of wine.
“Twenty more minutes,” Mom says.
“I’m just here for Cokes,” I say. Aunt Angelina reaches on top of the fridge and gets them down for me. I take a warm can in each hand. Finny and I like to drink our sodas out of unrefrigerated cans; sometime around third grade, we got the idea that there was something wild and rebellious about drinking soda straight from the can, and for years we refused to drink it any other way. It’s habit now. Jamie thinks it’s odd, probably because I have never given him an explanation, not that the real one would help. He still offers the opinion, whenever it comes up, that my relationship with Finny is weird.
“Throw it,” Finny says when I come back. He holds out his hands.
“Do you have a death wish or something?” I say. I cross the room and place the can in his hands.
“Nah. Even if you hit my head, you couldn’t throw it hard enough to do any real damage.” I sit down on my side of the couch and open my can. He’s probably right. I’m taking my first sip when he speaks, and he’s too quiet for me to hear.
“What was that?”
Finny clears his throat. “I’m going to miss gym class with you,” he says.
“You mean you’re going to miss laughing at me in gym class?”
“No. I mean I’m going to miss hanging out with you.”
A lump forms in my throat. I shrug, smile, and try to speak around it. “We see each other all the time. We have dinner with The Mothers, like, twice a week.”
“I know,” Finny says. He looks down at his can. “But I dunno. We should hang out sometime when we don’t have to. Go see a movie or something.”
“Um,” I say. I’m looking away again now. I feel warm and fluttery inside. I cannot say anything. Perhaps it is possible for us to have come full circle, from as close as two people can be to awkward strangers to nearly friends to—
To what?
What could we, would we, be now? It’s possible to love two people at once, but could it be possible to stay loyal to one?
I look up at his face, his flushed cheeks and nervous blue eyes, and I want to say “Sure.” I want it too much.
“I’m not sure, Finny,” I say. Even allowing myself to say his name hurts. “I don’t know if Jamie would like it. It might be kinda weird.”
“But I thought Jamie and Sasha hung out all the time?”
“Yeah, they do,” I say. “But they’re friends—”
I flinch, and I can’t speak anymore. I stare straight ahead and try to breathe without trembling.
“I see,” Finny says. I hear my mother’s cell phone ring in the kitchen. I take a deep breath and stand up.
“It’s probably almost time for dinner,” I say. Finny watches the TV and says nothing. I step around the coffee table and walk as quickly as I can out of the room.
In the bathroom, I sit on the edge of the tub and press the heels of my hands into my eyes until I see strange shapes in the darkness. My fingers tremble in my hair.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t,” I whisper.
“Finny! Autumn!” Aunt Angelina calls.
Finny and I meet in the hall and say nothing. We walk into the dining room together and stop at the threshold. An hour ago, Finny and I set the table for five. Aunt Angelina is taking off the china and silverware from one seat. Sh
e carries them into the kitchen. My mother sets the rack of lamb on the table and sits down with her hands in her lap.
“Mom?” I ask. “Where’d Dad go?”
“I don’t know, honey,” she says. “But he just called to say he won’t be coming back tonight.”
“Oh,” I say.
Aunt Angelina comes back into the room and puts her hand on my mother’s shoulder.
“Come on and sit down, kids,” she says. Her voice and face plead with us. Finny takes a step forward but I don’t. He turns and looks at me. Our eyes meet. He reaches out and lays his hand on my arm.
“Come on, Autumn,” he says. He squeezes gently and kind of smiles.
“Okay,” I say.
Aunt Angelina and Finny talk for us while we eat. Afterward, The Mothers close themselves in the kitchen and Finny and I watch TV until midnight. We don’t say anything else to each other.
58
Jamie answers on the last ring, just before his funny and clever voice mail message would have played. His voice is blurry with sleep. It’s eight o’clock in the morning, the first Saturday since we started school again. It’s the year we graduate now, the year we’re supposed to be grown up.
“Jamie?”
“What? I was sleeping.”
“Jamie, my parents are getting a divorce.” There is a silence. I imagine him sitting up, rubbing his face with one hand.
“God, pretty girl, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not even sure why I’m upset,” I say. I’m in my room curled in my desk chair. It’s raining outside, dark and cold. I have a quilt over my shoulders and my cheek resting on my knee. “Hardly anything is going to change. Apparently Dad moved into an apartment downtown a week ago and I didn’t even notice.”
“When did you find out?”
“They told me last night, over dinner. And they said all that bullshit about how it wasn’t my fault and they both still loved me etc., etc., like I was six or something.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did. You didn’t answer.”
“Oh shit. I remember. I was at the movie with Sasha—”
“I know. It’s fine.”
“I meant to call you back.”
“It’s fine,” I say. My words sound harsh in my ears but Jamie does not say anything about it. I swallow. “Do you think you could come over?”
“Yeah,” Jamie says. “Just let me shower first—hey, want me to take you out to breakfast?”
“I don’t think I can eat.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” I say. I pull the quilt tighter around me. “Just come over and hold me.”
“Will do, pretty girl. I’ll see you in a minute.”
“Wait! Jamie?”
“What?”
“Will you ever leave me?”
“Nope.”
“Promise?”
“Yup.”
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye. Love you.”
“I love you too, Jamie.”
I lay my phone on the desk and watch the rain outside my window.
59
At school, Angie lets me feel her stomach. It’s still not very big, but it’s taut like a drum. Everyone at school knows about her now, and all my friends know about my parents. At lunch one day, Alex asks if it means that my mother and Aunt Angelina are finally getting together. Sasha punches his shoulder and calls him an idiot.
“Seriously, dude?” Jamie says, “Did you really just say that?”
“You were all wondering it too!” Alex says. He rubs the shoulder Sasha punched with one hand.
“Yeah, but we weren’t going to ask,” Noah says.
“Noah!” Brooke hisses.
“Look, everybody, I knew you were thinking it. I don’t care. And no, they’re not.”
“Autumn, you want to feel my belly again?” Angie says. She knows it cheers me up.
“Sure,” I say.
There isn’t much else to cheer me up. I hate winter. Dr. Singh raises the dosage on my medicine. Last semester, I told Mr. Laughegan that I was starting a novel. I don’t feel like working much and I don’t want to disappoint him.
“Maybe you should get one of those sun lamps to sit under,” Jamie says. He’s driving me home from school. It’s snowing but not sticking, melting against the windshield and running off in thin streams of water.
“This isn’t just about the weather, Jamie. My parents are getting divorced.”
“Yeah, but you’re also depressed every winter, so maybe—”
“Are you sick of taking care of me?” I turn sideways in my seat to face him.
“No. Jeez, Autumn, I was just saying maybe it would help.”
“Sorry. I love you.”
“I love you too.” He turns on the windshield wipers and we don’t talk the rest of the way home.
***
Angie and Preppy Dave show us their apartment in his parents’ basement. They have a bed and a kitchen table. We aren’t allowed to stay for very long. Dave’s parents say they are giving them a place to live, not a place to hang out. At school, the other kids alternate between thinking it’s cool she’s married and looking at her with contempt. Angie seems oblivious to both, and every time her hand is on her stomach, she is smiling.
***
At the end of March, Sasha breaks up with Alex. She says it’s for good this time, and I believe her. They agree to go to prom together in April anyway, for old time’s sake. And then Brooke and Noah tell us, casually, that they don’t plan to stay together when they leave for college. They aren’t going to the same university, and they say they don’t want to ruin what they have by trying to make it work. None of us, except Sasha and Jamie, are going to the same school.
Sometimes when we’re all together, we talk about how high school is almost over. And how we will always be friends.
***
We’re eating dinner with Aunt Angelina and Finny nearly every night now. Afterward, my mother stays late over there and doesn’t come home until I’ve gone to bed. I hate being in the house by myself, so sometimes I bring my homework over and work at their kitchen table. Finny joins me and we do our homework together like we used to, except we don’t talk as much. Every evening, Sylvie calls him and he takes his phone into the other room for half an hour, then comes back and shoves it in his pocket before sitting back down. I heard at school that she isn’t going to college in the fall. She’s going to go to Europe for the summer, then take a year off to find herself or something like that. I want to ask Finny if they are planning on staying together, but I can’t.
I’m supposed to spend one evening a week with my dad, but it doesn’t always work out. When it does, he takes me out to restaurants in the city and asks me about school and Jamie. He’s always liked Jamie. His apartment overlooks the river and the Arch. It has a second bedroom that he says I can use anytime I want. I’m not sure what I would use it for.
A few green shoots begin to appear in the beginning of April. It’s still cold out, but things are getting a little better.
But only a little.
60
“Are you going to vote for Finn?” Sasha asks.
“For what?” I say. We’re at Goodwill, looking through a rack of old wedding dresses. It’s Sasha’s idea for her prom dress. Mom is making me buy a dress from a department store; she says that, right now, she needs something like buying me a real prom dress. I didn’t put up as much of a fight as I might have in the past. Brooke bought a dress from a department store too. She says that there are a lot of sequined nightmares at the mall, but it won’t be as hard as I think to find something cool.
Angie is making her dress out of blue crepe. It’s hard for her to find clothes now. Her mother-in-law buys her maternity shirts that look like something Sylvie would wear
if she ever got fat. Mostly Angie wears giant T-shirts from bands that broke up in the nineties.
Angie holds up a mock Victorian dress with a high collar for me to see.
“If you want to tell Alex to keep his hands to himself, that will do it,” I say. I go back to searching the rack.
“Well, since I’m about to be the last virgin of our friends, I might as well look the part,” she says. I look up again. Sasha has the dress flung over one arm.
“Jamie told you about that?” I say.
She nods. “Yeah, why didn’t you?”
I shrug. “I dunno,” I say, and I honestly don’t. “It doesn’t seem real, I guess.”
“Well, you’ve got two months and one week until it will be all the way real.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I say. I finger the yellowed lace on the nearest dress. “What were you saying about Finny?”
“Oh, are you going to vote for him for Prom King?” I feel my face scrunch into a grimace.
“He’s going to run for Prom King?” I say.
“He and Sylvie together. I thought you would know.” I’m not surprised that I didn’t know though. When Finny and I do talk, he never mentions Sylvie. Ever since Christmas, he usually only asks how I’m doing and I say fine and then we watch TV or go finish our homework. Sometimes we talk about school or the weather.
“I guess that was Sylvie’s idea,” I say. “No wait, I know it was. He hates being the center of attention.”
“But he’s so popular,” Sasha says. I shrug.
“That’s not his fault,” I say. “He’s likable.”
“I guess,” Sasha says. “And he is so hot.” I shrug again. She looks down at the dress in her hands. “I’m going to look so cool,” she says.
***
My mother and I go shopping on the first day that it actually feels like spring. Mom’s face is thinner and there are always circles under her eyes, but today she is excited.
“Now,” she says, as we glide up the escalator toward evening apparel, “is all pink entirely banned?”