If He Had Been with Me

On the last day of school, I worry that I will cry when I say good-bye to Mr. Laughegan. I know that if I do, no one, not my friends or Finny’s, will ever let me forget it.

“I’ll see you the year after next in my writing class,” Mr. Laughegan says to me.

“Hopefully,” I say. “I know there is a lot of competition to get in.”

“You’ll be in,” he says quickly. I take it as a promise.

***

The first day of summer, I wake up and stretch in bed, feeling all my muscles and joints. It’s early still, just after seven, but the sun is bright in my window. I sit up and rub my eyes. A story idea has been bouncing around in my head for the past few days; suddenly it feels like the perfect moment to write. I’m not sure where the story begins, but I know what I want to happen.

Like most of my stories, it will end tragically.

I sit down at my desk without eating or brushing my teeth. I hesitate for a moment, then type my first sentence.

The day Edward died, I dropped a vase of tulips while walking up the stairs.

I begin to describe the tulips—red—and the white porcelain vase smashed against the dark wood of the staircase. I’m not sure what the significance of the tulips is—yet. It will come to me.

By ten o’clock, I have a rough draft. Five pages. I’m pleased with myself. The narrator was the accidental murderess; her guilt has left her reeling in near madness, and I close on the first image: the blood red flowers, the broken innocence of the white vase.

***

My mother is reading the newspaper in the kitchen when I skip downstairs. She looks up at me over the rim of the paper.

“In a good mood?” she says.

I nod. “It’s the first day of summer and I’ve already killed someone off,” I say.

“In a story?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Ah.” She goes back to reading. The phone rings and I pick it up.

“Autumn?” Aunt Angelina’s voice says after I say hello.

“Hey, I’ll get Mom,” I say. My mother looks up.

“No, actually, Autumn, I wanted you.”

“Oh.” My immediate thought is that something has happened to Finny.

“I’m going to tear down my classroom today and my good-for-nothing son canceled on me. Do you think you can help me? I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Oh, sure,” I say. It’s been a long time since I’ve been inside our elementary school. I’m curious, and spending time with Aunt Angelina can be fun.

“Really? Can you be over in fifteen minutes?”

“Easy,” I say. She thanks me and reiterates the promise of making it worth my while.

“What was that?” my mother asks.

“Aunt Angelina needs someone to help her tear down her classroom,” I say.

“Where’s Finny?”

I shrug. It is unlike Finny to cancel on his mother, but I felt odd asking. I have a fear of someone suspecting how often I wonder about Finny. I always try not to show too much interest, just in case.

***

Finny opens the back door when I knock. His face is blank; he doesn’t look startled to see me, and even though I’m sure that I do look surprised, he does not react to my face.

“Oh. Hi,” I say. “I thought you were gone.”

“I’m about to be,” he says. His voice is as sterile as his face. Aunt Angelina comes in the room with a bundle of portfolio books and canvas bags.

“How long will you be?” she says.

“I don’t know,” Finny says. “I’ll come by if I can. Sorry.”

“It’s fine, kiddo, get going.”

“Bye,” Finny says. He sidesteps me and leaves out the back door. His step is quick on the stairs. I look up at Aunt Angelina. I wasn’t intending to ask, but it must be plain on my face. She knows I know Finny well enough to see when something is wrong.

“He didn’t say,” she says, “but it’s something with Sylvie.”

“Oh,” I say. I hope that my face and voice give no more away. Aunt Angelina hands me some of her things and we go outside. I glance at the spot where Finny parks in the driveway, even though I know he won’t be there. We don’t talk as we load up the trunk and pull out of the driveway. It’s a short ride to the school; less than a minute later, we are only a few blocks away.

“So Finny tells me you’re thinking of teaching,” Aunt Angelina says to me. I shrug and then nod.

“Gotta do something practical,” I say. “I think it could be fun.”

“It is,” she says. She pauses as she makes a left-hand turn down the side street next to the school. “But it takes a lot of dedication.” I don’t say anything. She parks the car and turns off the engine. “You have time to decide though,” she says.

We unload the car and walk through the side door of the school where Finny and I grew up. It’s an old building from the 1920s, dark brick, high ceilings, long, narrow windows on every wall. Whenever I see or hear the word “school,” this building is the picture that comes to my mind.

As I cross the threshold, I think how I don’t have as much time to decide as I once did. When I was a student here, anything in the world seemed possible. It hadn’t seemed like a dream to move far away and write books; it had seemed like a plan. At ten, I hadn’t thought wanting to be a writer was impractical; wanting to be a pirate princess was impractical and I had put that dream aside.

But I’m older now, and I realize that a career of nothing but writing stories all day is as likely as marrying my dream pirate prince. I’ve done the research; getting published is nearly impossible, and of those few who make it, only a fraction can live off their work. If it was just about me, I could wait tables in the day and write all night and be happy.

But there is Jamie now, and he wants to buy a house and raise children with me. He says I’m perfect. He says I’m all he wants. I can’t disappoint him.

Aunt Angelina unlocks the door to her classroom and we step inside. I realize now why she wanted me and not my mother. The room is even more disorganized and lively than Aunt Angelina’s home. There is a half-finished mural on the wall that was a quarter-finished when we graduated four years ago. Prints from both famous and obscure artists line every other wall and cover the entire ceiling. The window ledges are lined with sculptures and various three-dimensional arts. On her desk is an asymmetrically shaped vase filled with flowers made of newspaper. I know from asking years ago that the newspaper is from the day Finny was born. On the wall behind her desk is the only framed art—a drawing we did together in third grade of a landscape littered with unicorns, soccer balls, explosions, and puppies.

The soccer balls and explosions are much better drawn than the unicorns or puppies; Finny was always better at drawing than me. I loved art class anyway though. Every year, Aunt Angelina made her seating chart so that we sat together at the smallest table in the corner that was only big enough for two. Most of our other teachers thought Finny and I were too focused on each other; they wanted us to make other friends and often sat us on opposite sides of the room. It never worked.

“If you could start wrapping up the sculptures at the window,” Aunt Angelina says, “I need to clean out this desk.” She sighs and eyes the mounds of paper spilling over the surface. We’ll be here awhile.

At the window, I can see the hill I used to sit on and read while Finny played kickball or soccer with the boys. I didn’t mind that he played with them for that half hour; I always wanted to read at recess, and we would be together after school anyway.

Sometimes I put down my book and watched him play, and I would try to send mental messages to him. Look up now, I would think, or, That was a good kick. I was convinced that he could hear, because sometimes he would look up at me watching him and smile. I never mentioned our secret telepathic conversations though. I knew that if we spoke about it out loud the magic would stop working.

Aunt Angelina turns on the radio. I wrap the sculptures up in tissue paper and fill the canvas bags with them. Aunt Angelina hums along with the music. I think about the story I started this morning. I’m proud of it. I’ll print it off tonight and give it to Jamie tomorrow.

Only the top of the desk is cleared off by the time I’m done; the drawers are all open and files are spilling out. Without being asked, I begin to take the posters down off the wall, making a blue ball of sticky-tack that gets larger and larger as the minutes pass. I go one wall at a time, standing on a chair when they get too high for me. Aunt Angelina sighs just as I am almost done.

“Autumn,” she says, “I would have been here all day. Thank you.”

“No problem,” I say. “It’s kind of fun being here.”

“You should go see Mrs. Morgansen before we go. She still asks about you.”

“Maybe,” I say. I feel shy about going to see my favorite teacher. I’m not sure where the feeling comes from. I take the last poster off the wall and slide it into the portfolio book. The ball of sticky-tack is nearly as big as my fist now. I throw it toward the ground, but instead of bouncing, it sticks to the linoleum with a thud.

“Darn,” I mumble. I bend to pick it up and set in on the nearest table.

“Okay,” Aunt Angelina says. She drops a stack of books and papers onto the top of the desk. Her trashcan is over flowing. “If you can get the posters off the ceiling, I’ll clean out the cupboards and we can start loading up the car.”

“Cool,” I say. I jump up on one of the tables and start plucking tacks out of the ceiling. A familiar song comes on the oldies station and we both start singing. I start to sway to the music and I grin.

“I always wanted to do this,” I say.

“Do what?” Aunt Angelina says.

“Dance on these tables. Every time I was in here I imagined it.”

She smiles and reaches over to turn up the music. We start to sing again, and the next song is another favorite. I dance around the table with my arms above my head as I pluck each poster from its place. I even come up with a special shimmy-move for when I need to bend down to set the posters on the table.

It isn’t until the radio switches to a slow song that I hear his soft laugh behind me.

“Ah, there’s my long-lost son,” Aunt Angelina says.

“Sorry I’m late.” Finny looks at us from the doorway, his hands in his pockets, his head cocked to the side, and the corners of his mouth twitching upward. I want to glare at him for laughing at me, but I’m too relieved that he looks happy again.

“I could hear you guys all the way down the hall,” he says.

“Autumn is fulfilling a childhood dream,” Aunt Angelina says.

“Yeah, I remember,” Finny says. He crosses the threshold and looks from my face to hers. “What can I do?” he says.

“Put that ridiculous height of yours to use and take down the posters Autumn can’t reach from the tables,” she says. Finny is well over six feet now. Soccer and track kept him from becoming scrawny as he stretched out over the winter; he’s as slender and lightly muscled as before. Aunt Angelina likes to complain about how much he eats.

My dancing is done now. The three of us work quietly as the radio continues to blare. Even with his height, Finny needs a chair to reach the high ceiling. I move to another table and he gets all the posters in between. With two of us, we finish before her again.

“Done,” Finny says. He drags the chair across the floor and back to its place. I stay standing on the table, not quite willing to give up the dream yet.

“Go say hi to Mrs. Morgansen,” Aunt Angelina says. “I saw her car pull up a few minutes ago.”

“Okay,” Finny says. He looks over at me. I shrug an assent and jump off the table flat-footed. My sneakers smack against the linoleum loudly.

We walk side by side out into the hall. The radio fades behind us as we walk, and when we reach the stairs, the building suddenly is eerily quiet; all my memories of this place are much louder. The wooden banister is smooth and familiar beneath my hand; I dreamed of dancing on the art tables and sliding down these banisters and climbing to the tops of the bookshelves in the library. I loved it here, so much that I didn’t even realize I loved it. Even though I looked forward to summer, I cried every last day of school. I didn’t cry yesterday.

And of course the other kids thought I was weird for liking school, but that was just another quirk among many that Finny had to defend me for.

I cautiously look over at him, wondering what he’s thinking, if his memories are as happy as mine. By all means, I should have felt like an outcast here, a pariah, and Finny should have been the popular boy he is now. I wasn’t, because of him, and he wasn’t, because of me.

Finny looks to the side and catches me staring. I face forward again. He doesn’t say anything.

At the door of Mrs. Morgansen’s room, he knocks and smiles softly into the window. Through the wood, I hear a startled gasp. I step to the side as Finny opens the door.

“Phineas!” I hear her familiar voice cry before I see her. “I hoped that I would see you today.”

“Of course,” Finny says. Her pleasure causes the faintest of blushes to spread across his cheeks. Our favorite teacher leans forward and hugs him to her through the threshold and I see her for the first time in years. She looks just a bit older, like she’s moving from middle-aged to the edge of elderly. Still, I instantly recognize the brooch on her blouse and the smell of her perfume. She sees me as she pulls away. I feel something sharp in me during the half second of confusion in her eyes, then her smile widens.

“And you brought Autumn,” she says. Her arms are quickly transferred to me, and relief washes through my body; I had feared that she would recoil from this teenaged tiara and ripped jeans me, that her affection for me would be reserved for the pretty little girl I had been.

“Come and sit,” she says. She leads us into her classroom, half torn down, half familiar. She pulls out a chair and motions for us to sit down. The desks and chairs feel just a tiny bit too small. “Now tell me what you’ve been up to,” she says. Mrs. Morgansen looks at us expectantly. Finny and I glance at each other, the same way we do when we are cornered by The Mothers.

“I haven’t been up to much,” I say.

“You won that poetry contest,” he says. I shrug.

“That wasn’t much,” I say.

“Of course it is,” Mrs. Morgansen says. “Though I’m not that surprised.”

“It was just within the school,” I say. “They picked one from each grade and printed them in the yearbook. That’s all.”

“But she won the overall prize too,” Finny says. “She beat seniors.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say, because it isn’t. The other winners’ submissions ranged from trite to cliché; it wasn’t a hard crowd to beat.

Mrs. Morgansen laughs.

“Well, you two haven’t changed a bit,” she says. I frown without giving my face permission to do so. She doesn’t notice. “Your mother told me that you started track this spring,” she says to him. Finny tells her about the team taking bronze at regionals. He does not mention that it was something they never could’ve dreamed of before Finny joined them. I wasn’t being humble, but he is. As I listen, I let my gaze wander around. I know it’s impossible that every day I spent in here was happy, but that is how I remember it.

Finny’s punch to Donnie Banks’s gut effectively ended any teasing from the boys’ side. Eleven was the age when all the girls decided to have crushes on Finny, and they knew being snotty to me wouldn’t get them far. Not that it helped them either. Finny was never interested in girls. The only girl I have ever heard of him having feelings for is Sylvie Whitehouse. I frown again, trying to see for the millionth time how Finny, who is devoted to his mother, never has a bad word for anyone, and who every winter shovels the driveway of the old lady across the street and refuses to take a dollar for it, can be in love with a girl known for her drunken antics and dirty mind.

“It’s so nice seeing both of you,” Mrs. Morgansen says, and my mind moves back to the moment. “And it’s nice to know you’re still such good friends.”

Finny and I both glance over at each other and look away again quickly. His cheeks are already turning a deep pink. It’s not as if we can correct her.

“Or,” she asks, “are you more than just friends by now?” and I realize she has misinterpreted his blush. Finny turns red.

“No,” I say. I look back at her and shake my head, “No, no, no.” By her startled expression, it occurs to me that I’ve denied it perhaps a bit too vehemently to be polite. “I just mean I’ve been with my boyfriend for almost two years now, well, by the end of the summer it will be. So, no.”

“Oh, I see,” she says. “And what’s he like?”

“He’s fifth in our class,” I say. Finny is third. “And he’s really good to me.”

“Well, I knew that,” she says. “Otherwise Finny wouldn’t let him near you.” She smiles and I fake a laugh. Finny doesn’t say anything. “Actually, Phineas,” she continues, “I think your mother did say something about you and a girlfriend last time I asked.”

“Oh yeah,” Finny says. He stands up. “Speaking of Mom, we should probably go. We’re supposed to help load the car.”

We are hugged again. We promise to come back again sometime. Mrs. Morgansen tells me to send her some poems and, embarrassed, I try to laugh it off. Finny closes the door behind us and we head toward the staircase again. I think about Mrs. Morgansen’s memories of us. Of course she would have no reason to think we’d be anything less than the closest of friends. When I let myself remember how we used to be, it is hard to believe things could change so quickly.

I think about Mrs. Morgansen saying we hadn’t changed, and I think of the girl I used to be here, in this school. I want it to be true. I don’t want to be so different from her.

“I’m going to do it,” I say to Finny when we reach the stairs. We both stop.

“Do what?”

“I’m going to slide down the banister,” I say. I grab the railing with both hands and throw my leg over.

“Hold on,” Finny says. “Let me get to the bottom so I can catch you if you fall.” I roll my eyes as he rushes down the stairs.

“You’re ridiculous,” I shout down to him. My voice bounces through the corridor.

“You’re wearing a tiara and straddling a banister,” he calls back up to me. I let him win and wait until he is poised ready at the bottom.

They must have just polished the wood; I fly down and have to catch myself at the bottom so that I don’t fall to the floor. Finny grabs my elbow but I right myself quickly and his hand drops.

“That actually looked like fun,” he says.

“It was,” I say. Aunt Angelina stumbles into the hallway carrying a potted tree that is clearly too heavy for her. Finny rushes to take it from her and the three of us load up the car quickly.

“Can you come to lunch with us or are you going back to Sylvie’s?” Aunt Angelina says when we are done, standing by her car. Finny’s face returns to the blank look from this morning.

“I need to go back,” he says evenly.

“All right,” she says. She reaches up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you for coming to help.”

“Of course,” he says. “Bye.” He glances at me and walks to his red car across the street.

At the diner nearby, Aunt Angelina chats with me about my plans for the summer and our visit with Mrs. Morgansen. I tell her about sliding down the banister and Finny standing at the bottom. She laughs.

“Sometimes you two are just so predictable,” she says, making me think of Mrs. Morgansen’s comment again. We talk of other things for the rest of lunch, and it isn’t until we are walking to the car that she brings him up again.

“I don’t suppose he told you what’s going on with Sylvie?” Aunt Angelina says. I shake my head. “I suppose I didn’t really think so,” she says. She changes the subject again.