If He Had Been with Me (4 page)

Winter is always a dead time for me. I wish I were like the trees. I wish I could feign death, or at least sleep through the winter. My tiara continues its reign as a permanent fixture on my head. Before long, no one asks me about it anymore.

Second semester I trade Gym for health class. On the first day the teacher, Mrs. Adams, tells us that she used to be a professional water skier and leaves out the part about how she ended up a professional health teacher. It becomes apparent after the first month that every disease we study, she has known someone who has had it. Most of them were on the water skiing team. Angie has the class with me, and Mrs. Adams becomes the frequent subject of our lunch conversations.

Walking to and waiting for the bus is now my personal hell. I stamp my feet, keep my head low and my shoulders hunched, and quietly hate the world for being so cold. I am careful to always stand with my back to Sylvie and Finny. I have never told anyone how much I hate seeing the two of them together; they would make too big of a deal out of it and think it meant something stupid. I just don’t like her, and they annoy me.

Some mornings, I think maybe Sylvie is talking for me to overhear. When it’s really cold out, I think the idea is ridiculous and that I am stupid for even thinking it. It’s cold, and nothing matters except getting inside that bus and getting to Jamie.

“So I was thinking this weekend we should go to that party—you know which one I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, everyone is going to be there, so we should really go.”

“Is Jack going?”

“
Everybody
is going, Finn.”

***

“Class,” Mrs. Adams tells us, “eating disorders are not something to joke about. I’ve seen what they can do to a person. One girl on my water skiing team had anorexia. Another was bulimic. They were such beautiful girls, but these are not pretty diseases.”

***

Jamie and I talk on the phone every night before we go to sleep. We talk about getting married someday and what sort of house we’ll have and how many children. It surprises me how much he wants these things, such normal things, and nothing else.

Sometimes I am disappointed with love. I thought that when you were in love, it would always be right there, staring you in the face, reminding you every moment that you love this person. It seems that it isn’t always like that. Sometimes I know that I love Jamie, but I don’t feel it, and I wonder what it would be like to be with someone else.

I love him the most when we fight and I am scared that he will leave me. After we fight, I want so much to be close to him, and the next day I want his hand in mine every minute. Sometimes he loves me more than I love him and he wants me to pay attention to him, but I wish he would leave me alone so that I could go back to reading or talking to Angie about Mrs. Adams. Sometimes we both love each other a lot and it’s hard to hang up at night, and I wish it could always be like that.

***

“Class, I was young once too,” Mrs. Adams says. “I know about the pressures to have sex. Not just from your partner, but from your friends and the media and even your own body. It can be hard. But please, please be careful. I know you think that no one you know has an STD, but that’s how they spread. I remember having to hold the hands of several of my teammates after they found out that they had an STD. One girl got herpes, and as we’ve learned, that’s one that never goes away. Imagine having that forever.”

***

One morning, it sounds like Sylvie and Finny are fighting. They whisper back and forth, and Finny is suddenly saying a whole lot more than “Yeah.”

Now that I want to hear what they are saying, I can’t. I glance over my shoulder at them. Finny is standing next to her, glaring at the ground. Sylvie is facing him and clinging to his side as she looks up at his face. From a distance, it would be hard to tell that they’re fighting.

“Please,” I see more than hear her say. He shakes his head and doesn’t reply.

Jamie gives me a promise ring for Valentine’s Day. All day, whenever I see someone I know, I rush up to show them my hand and tell them that I have the best boyfriend ever. He gives me another tiara too. This one is gold and has more curlicues.

To everyone’s surprise, spring comes early that year.

It is the moment I reach my door that I realize I left my house keys in my locker. It’s Thursday, the day my mother goes to see her therapist and then to the gym. She won’t be home until five-thirty. It’s two-thirty in the afternoon in early March. The snow is gone but it is still cold out, and it’s about to rain.

I stand facing my door for a moment. I have two options. One is to stay on the porch, hope the rain doesn’t blow on me, and later try to explain to my mother why I didn’t take the second option.

***

“I’m locked out,” I say as he opens the door. Even so, a flicker of confusion passes over his face.

“Oh. Okay,” Finny says. He steps aside and lets me come in. I’m wearing Doc Martens and a new pink tiara. He’s wearing khakis and a sweater. He’s kicked off his shoes already. His socks are green. I nearly say something. What kind of boy wears green socks?

“What time does your mom come home?” I ask.

“Four,” he says. His mother has a spare key. “Where’s your mom?”

“It’s therapy day,” I say. I follow him into the living room, where he sits down on the couch. Aunt Angelina’s house is always just a little bit messy, the lived-in kind of messy where books get piled into corners, and throw pillows and shoes seem to be everywhere. Aunt Angelina has never quite finished decorating either; on the wall above Finny’s head, there are three different samples of paint spread in large splotches. They’ve been there as long as I can remember.

“What do you want to watch?” Finny says. He picks up the remote and looks at me.

“I’m going to read,” I say. I had been planning when I got home to edit a poem I started during history class, but there is no way I could take out my notebook and start writing here, in front of him.

I sit down in the armchair across the room. It’s bright blue, and for years Aunt Angelina has been going to have it reupholstered, as soon as she decides on a color scheme for the room. When I hear Finny start flipping through the channels, I take my book out of my bag and glance up at him.

Finny looks like a Renaissance painting of an angel or like he could belong to some modern royal family. His hair stays blond all winter and looks like gold in the summer. He blushes a lot, partly because he is so fair, partly because he’s shy and gets embarrassed easily. I know that Sylvie must have approached him first and she was definitely the one who asked him out.

Finny never tells anyone how he is feeling; you just have to know him well enough to understand when he is sad or scared. Today his expression does not tell me how he feels about me being over here. Either he couldn’t care less, or he could be annoyed.

We see each other frequently, but we rarely are alone together. And even though we will still sometimes side together against The Mothers over an issue, we never have anything to say to each other that isn’t superficial.

Years ago, Finny and I strung string and two cups across our bedroom windows so we could talk to each other at night. After we stopped talking, we never took it down, but finally the string rotted away.

Finny’s cell phone rings and he leaves the room without saying anything.

I look down at my book and begin to read. The rain has started, and I am distracted by the sound of it. Finny used to ask me to go outside with him to save the worms on the sidewalk. It bothered him to see them drying and writhing on the pavement the day after rain. He hated the idea of anyone—anything—ever being sad or hurt.

When we were eight, we heard his mother sobbing in her bedroom after a breakup and Finny pushed tissues under the door. When we were eleven, he punched Donnie Banks in the stomach for calling me a freak. It was the only fight he ever got in, and I think Mrs. Morgansen only gave him detention because she had to. Aunt Angelina didn’t even punish him.

“Autumn is already here,” I hear him say in the next room. There is a pause. “She got locked out.” There is a longer silence. “Okay,” he says, and then, “I love you too.”

This time he looks at me when he comes back in the room.

“You guys are having dinner over here tonight, so Mom says you might as well just stay.”

“But my dad’s supposed to be home tonight,” I say. Finny shrugs. My dad cancels family dinners frequently enough that I suppose it isn’t worth pointing out to me. I shrug back and look down at my book.

When I look up again, it is because I hear Aunt Angelina coming in through the back door.

“Hello?” she calls out.

“In here,” Finny shouts back. He mutes the TV and his mom walks into the room.

“Hi, kids,” she says. Her long patchwork skirt still swirls around her ankles even when she comes to a stop. She brings her scent of patchouli oil into the room with her.

“Hi,” we say. Aunt Angelina looks at me and smiles with the left side of her mouth. It’s the same crooked smile Finny has when he’s feeling playful.

“Autumn, why are you wearing a Jimmy Carter campaign shirt?’” she asks.

“I dunno,” I say. “Why is your son wearing green socks?”

She looks back at Finny. “Phineas, are you wearing green socks?”

He looks down at his feet. “Well, yeah.”

“Where did you get green socks from?”

“They were in my sock drawer.”

“I never bought you green socks.”

“They were in there.”

“This all sounds very suspicious to me,” I say.

“Agreed. Finny, Autumn and I are going into the kitchen, and when we come back, you better have an explanation for your socks.” Finny and I glance at each other in surprise. I look away and set my book down. Aunt Angelina waits for me at the door. When I reach her, she lays one hand on my shoulder as she walks with me into the kitchen.

“Honey, your mom isn’t having a good day,” she says quietly. “Your dad had to cancel dinner tonight and it really upset her.”

To other kids, this wouldn’t sound like a big deal. But when your mom has been hospitalized twice for depression, you learn to read between the lines.

“Okay,” I say.

Last time Mom was in the hospital, I was in sixth grade. I spent two weeks living with Aunt Angelina and Finny. At the time, it was fun. Everyone kept telling me that my mom was going to be okay. They told me about chemical imbalances and how it was a sickness like any other, and that Mom would get better. So I accepted it, and every night Finny snuck into the guest bedroom and we would draw pictures on each other’s backs with our fingers and then try to guess what they were.

I doubted it would be like that this time. Any of it. For one thing, this time I’ll ask why, if it’s just a chemical imbalance, Dad seems to be causing it.

“She’ll be fine. We just all need to be really understanding tonight, okay?”

“I get it,” I say. She’s saying not to stage a teenage rebellion at the dinner table.

“Your mother loves you very, very much,” she says.

“I get it,” I say again. “It’s okay.”

“All right,” she says, and she squeezes my shoulder. Despite her promise to find out more about the mysterious socks, Aunt Angelina does not follow me back into the living room. When I come back in, Finny mutes the TV and watches me sit back down.

“Everything okay?” he says.

“Yup,” I say. “Isn’t it always?”

He laughs, a quick exhalation through his nose, then his face becomes serious again, and he cocks his head to the side. He’s asking me if I want to talk about it. I shake my head and he looks away again quickly. The sound comes back on the TV and I pick up my book again.

***

Back in sixth grade, he had to sneak into the guest bedroom because we weren’t allowed to sleep in the same bed anymore. We hardly ever broke the rules and I was nervous every time he came, but I never told him not to. The truth of the matter is, if they hadn’t suggested it, it never would have occurred to me that things could be different between us just because we were older. We lay on our stomachs side by side and we only touched to draw on each other’s backs. I drew flowers and hearts and animals. Finny drew rocket ships and soccer balls.

On my last night there, Aunt Angelina came and stood in the doorway. She was silhouetted in the darkness by the light in the hallway. I suppose she could see us better than we could see her.

“Phineas, what are you doing in here?” she said.

“Autumn is sad,” he said. It wasn’t until he said it that I realized it was true. There was a long silence. Finny lay still next to me. I watched her dark form in the doorway.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said, and then she left. It was Finny’s turn to draw on my back. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the shapes he traced over me. It always tickled, but I never laughed.

“Two houses,” I said. “And four people.”

“It’s our houses,” he said. “And our family.”

***

My mother skips the gym and comes straight home. Aunt Angelina orders pizza and we eat in front of the TV, something we never do at my house. Afterward, I claim to have homework and go home. My mother stays. She says she’ll be home later.

When I get home, I call Jamie to tell him everything. I cry, and I tell him that I’m scared. I tell him that I found out that they only hospitalize you if you’re suicidal. I tell him it’s supposed to be genetic.

Jamie tells me that he will always love me and take care of me, no matter what. He says it over and over and over and over again.

The field at the bottom of The Steps to Nowhere floods with the spring rain. The boys walk around this impermanent lake together, threatening to push each other in or pretending they are about to jump in to make us scream.

We hear that hardly anyone ever goes to the Spring Fling, so we decide that it must be cool and that we will go.

The girls all come over to my house to get ready. The dance is casual, and we’re all wearing jeans. I’m going to wear the corset I bought with Sasha last fall.

Brooke wants to do everyone’s makeup, so we take turns sitting for her while the other girls watch. I go last, and it’s during my turn that she says it.

“Autumn,” she says, “I’m not going to spend the night tonight.”

“Why?” we all chorus. Everyone’s overnight stuff, including Brooke’s, is all clustered together by my bed. Brooke stops putting foundation on me and takes a deep breath.

“Because Noah’s parents are out of town, and I’m going to his place,” she says. There is a moment of silence.

“Are you…” Angie says, her voice trailing off. Brooke looks around at all of us, and nods. We scream and Brooke covers her face with her hands.

“Guys!” she says.

“Oh my God,” Sasha says.

“Why?” I say, and then wonder if it was the wrong thing to say. Brooke uncovers her face and smiles.

“Because I love him,” she says, “and it just feels right.”

“Awww,” Angie says.

“Wow,” Sasha says. “Now I’m going to be thinking about it all night.” We laugh.

“We’re going to walk to his house after the dance. Tell your Mom I got sick and left early, okay?” Brooke says. I nod. “I’ll come get my stuff tomorrow.”

“You’re going to tell us everything, right?” Angie says.

“Well…” she says.

“You have to!” Sasha says. We all agree that she has to.

When the boys arrive, we all file downstairs together and my mom takes our picture before we all pile into the van to go to the school. Jamie looks hot, and I tell him in his ear on the way there. He smiles and doesn’t say anything, but when I squeeze his hand, he squeezes back.

Out of fifteen hundred students, about sixty show up for the Spring Fling. We have the floor to ourselves and we dance together in the middle and shout requests at the DJ, who actually complies. Because there are so few students, nobody stops us when we start to dance on the tables. It doesn’t matter how we dance because there is hardly anyone to see us, and our dance moves and requests become more and more ridiculous. We make a conga line. We do the Macarena when the Electric Slide is blasting out of the speakers. We exhaust ourselves dancing, drink some punch, and then go dance again. At the first slow song, Jamie asks our principal, Mrs. Black, to dance, and she does amid cheers from all across the room.

We congratulate ourselves and agree: the Spring Fling is cool because nobody goes.

It’s a long time before the DJ plays another slow song. By then my heart is pounding, and I’m so out of breath I practically collapse into Jamie. He looks so handsome that I get butterflies in my stomach looking at him. I wrap my arms around his neck and we sway to the music.

“I love you,” I say, and I’m not saying it to remind myself that I do; at this moment I can feel it.

“Love you too,” he says.

“Did you hear about Brooke and Noah?” I ask. Jamie rolls his eyes and sighs.

“Yeah, he was bragging about it all afternoon,” he says.

“Really?” I ask. “What did he say?” He shrugs.

“He just said that they were gonna do it.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What else did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything else. He just said they were gonna do it tonight.”

“Well, that’s not bragging”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why?”

“What are you talking about?” Jamie says. “I just told you that he was bragging about it all afternoon.”

“I just don’t understand how he was bragging all afternoon if all he said was that they were going to do it. That’s like,
one
sentence.”

“Never mind,” Jamie says. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t, okay?”

“But why—”

“Autumn, I don’t want to talk about them having sex, okay?”

“Fine,” I say. We finish the song in silence. Afterward, I ask Angie to go to the bathroom with me. We talk about our hair and how much fun we are having, and a little bit about Brooke of course.

“It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” she says. “I mean that Brooke won’t be a virgin tomorrow. It doesn’t seem real.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say. We go back outside. I look at Jamie from a distance and try to bring back the good feeling I had before, but I can’t. I wonder if when Brooke kisses Noah, if she sometimes imagines that he’s someone else. I wonder if when she touches herself, he is the only one she ever thinks about.

I tell myself relationships are hard work. No one is perfect. There’s no such thing as happily ever after.

***

On Monday, on The Steps to Nowhere, Brooke says that afterward you don’t feel any different, except you love him so much more than before.

“But you’re not like, ‘Oh my God, I’m not a virgin anymore.’”

“Really?” I say. I think that that would be the only thought I could think afterward. I think that I would look at myself in the mirror and say it over and over again.

“Yeah,” she says, “It’s just like—” She doesn’t finish her sentence; she just looks down at the boys standing by the water. They are seeing who can throw rocks the farthest. I watch Jamie win. I imagine it just feeling right with him.

“Did it hurt?” Angie says.

“Oh yeah,” Brooke says.