Flat-Out Matt (4 page)

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts as he walked up the steps to the gray house just off Brattle Street in Cambridge. It was impossible to come home and not have a moment of pain. There would always be the split second of anticipation that Finn would be there. That he might come bounding down the stairs to tackle Matt in a spontaneous wrestling match, or that his music might be blasting so loudly from his room that the entire house would tremble from the booming bass. Matt would probably never get over it, but each day he had a touch of happiness in that moment of blind hope. He shook his head again.

He was edgy tonight, too, because it was impossible not to worry about what had gone on while he’d been at school today. Julie was an unknown factor that had played into Celeste’s day. Even Julie’s reassurances over the phone that Celeste was fine hadn’t comforted him much, because he didn’t like anyone else being involved. And saying that things were “fine” just had to be inaccurate. Things were never “fine” with Celeste. Even if picking up Celeste from school hadn’t been an outright disaster, something unusual, or strained, or difficult must have taken place. Julie had no long-term experience with Celeste, and just because Julie had done well with his sister over the matter of a few days didn’t mean that she knew what to say. And what not to say. It wouldn’t take much to push Celeste over the edge, and for all Matt knew, he was walking into a house now filled with a hundred Flat Finns. A Flat Army poised to defend and protect Celeste.

Matt would grab whatever leftovers he could find in the fridge and duck up to his room. He had a long night of schoolwork ahead of him.

It was immediately obvious when he stepped into the house that something was off, but he couldn’t quite narrow down what that something was. He could feel the tension in his shoulders increase as he walked into the kitchen, and he felt as though all of his senses were malfunctioning.

Julie turned to him and smiled. Without meeting her eyes, Matt set his messenger bag on one of the stools by the breakfast counter. He looked at the plate in front of him.

“What is this?”

“It’s a gastronomical representation of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
.” Julie put her hands on her hips. Her dark hair was in a loose ponytail, and she had on rolled-up jeans and a light, flowy top. “Don’t you see it?” she continued. “The clear depiction of the struggle for sexual identity as evidenced by the two phallic shapes?”

Matt stared at her. This girl was confusing. “What are you talking about?”

“What are
you
talking about? It’s manicotti, you nut. What do you think it is?”

“I know
that
.” Even though Julie had just used the words
sexual
and
phallic
, he still had brain function, for God’s sake. “I was referencing the noticeable absence of takeout cartons. You made dinner?”

“Celeste and I made dinner,” Julie corrected him.

“And they did a wonderful job.” His mother appeared and placed her wine glass on the counter.

Matt briefly registered that Erin was drinking, but the lure of the food in front of him dulled any concern he had about that. He immediately sat down and started eating, barely hearing his mother as she talked to Julie. An actual home-cooked dinner? And … Celeste helped do this? This was entirely weird. But, God, did it taste good. Matt didn’t normally care for manicotti, but this dinner seemed like the best thing he’d ever eaten.

Someone had cooked for him.
What a stupid thing to think. Or to care about.

“You’re home late. How was school? Did your meeting go well?” Erin asked.

Matt nodded and wiped his mouth with a napkin. A cloth napkin, at that. “Very good. Sorry I’m home late. And even sorrier that I’ve managed to double my workload by agreeing to be a research assistant.” This was also adding to Matt’s stress level. He would potentially be spending more time at school and therefore be less available to Celeste. Finding a way to make this work was going to be difficult.

“This is with Professor Saunders, correct? He has an excellent reputation, so this is an important opportunity for you.” Erin took a sip of her wine, and Matt looked away. “You’ll have to be incredibly diligent with your work.”

“I realize that.” Like he needed reminding about anything related to his academics. It wasn’t as though Matt had a long history of completely screwing up in school—he’d gotten into MIT, after all—yet his mother frequently implied that his education was somehow perilously hanging in the balance, and he might just crash off the academia scale at any given moment. “In fact,” Matt said as he stood up, “I should get upstairs and get to work. I’ll finish dinner up there. Thanks, Julie.” He took his bag and plate and started out of the kitchen. It had been a long day, and the last thing he needed was to be around Erin and her air of doubt around his competence. He stopped at the doorway. “Julie?”

“Yeah?”

“So things went all right today?” Asking her to pick up Celeste today had taken every ounce of nerve he had. But once—just once—he hadn’t wanted to drop what he was doing to attend to his sister. But he felt awful about it, as though he had let down Celeste yet again. Meeting with his professor had been important to him, because as much as he loathed the way his mother rode him constantly about his education, she hadn’t managed to kill his insatiable interest in learning. He’d delayed a year of school after Finn died. Wasn’t that enough to let him off the hook for asking Julie for help today? No, it wasn’t really. One day could change everything. He knew that all too well.

“Totally fine. I told you that when you called. Both times,” she said.

He admired the tone in her voice, the same one that she used a number of times the day they went apartment hunting. It actually was a bit Finn of her. She wasn’t being mean or making fun of him, but she could get away with slightly teasing him without making him feel bad. The way that she treated him like… well, like a normal person… was slightly jarring. Nice, but jarring in its familiarity. And he was both grateful and anxious from the lack of detail that she offered about the pickup.

“Okay. Thanks again.”  

When he reached his room, he shut the door, opened his laptop and finished his dinner. He browsed a few of the message boards that he frequented and tried to focus on fine-tuning his attack on another user’s take on internet security. Matt loved internet security issues, but tonight his concentration was shaky. Eventually he caved to what he really wanted to do, which was check an e-mail account that he used on occasion, the one that the he used to write Celeste so that she could pretend to get e-mails from Finn. It was part of a fantasy world that she liked to maintain, a world in which Finn was still alive and sending her updates on his travels. Yes, it was a little crazy, but Matt knew that Celeste understood it was essentially a game. She knew it wasn’t real. Even Matt had to admit that there were moments when he didn’t mind concocting stories and tweaking pictures. He’d even made that Facebook page under “Finn is God” because he knew that Celeste would then sit with him on occasion and browse through photos and silly status updates. All this Finn stuff often seemed to be the only thing that drew Celeste into him. Or drew anyone into him, maybe.

Of course, he hadn’t planned on Julie sending Finn is God a friend request on Facebook. Or writing to him. It was so incredibly stupid to have replied to that first message when she let him know that she was staying in his room for a few days, but… hell, Matt just hadn’t been thinking. And the lie had already been set up, so he’d just gone with it. What was the alternative? Write her back and say,
Actually, Julie, this isn’t Finn. It’s Matt, across the hall. Sorry, but Finn is dead, and my mother gave me a sharp one-liner about how we were all going to stick with Celeste’s preferred version of events just to make things easier, and that was that. No hard feelings?
If Matt were honest with himself, he’d allow that it had been surprisingly nice to hide behind that degree of anonymity when he wrote her back. Julie would never
meet
this fictional Finn, so what did it really matter anyway? It wasn’t as if she would be around for very long.
Nobody
was around for very long because then they couldn’t all act like lunatics by letting Celeste pretend that Finn was alive and well and cleaning up elephant dung in Africa or whatnot.

A few more days and an apartment would probably turn up. True, Matt and Julie’s day of hunting the Boston/Cambridge area for something non-cockroach and/or hooker-infested didn’t go well, and this was a horrible time to try to find a place to live, but Matt had no doubt that Julie would be gone by the weekend.

And then life would go back to normal. Whatever that meant around here.

He really couldn’t figure out Julie. She looked so relaxed, so disarmingly at home here, and so totally unfettered by life’s challenges. Like that first moment he’d seen her outside her nonexistent apartment. She could have been miserable and upset, but she was still talkative and … so very
her
. Even in crummy circumstances. Matt was momentarily unnerved when she’d virtually collapsed into him on the escalator the other day, because not only was she genuinely panicked, but…. Well, it had been a long time since he’d had real physical contact with someone. Not that he was a particularly affection-seeking guy, but his parents and sister certainly didn’t look for opportunities to hug him, and he hadn’t been on a date since Ellen broke up with him. Holding Julie in his arms and keeping her from dropping to the floor was the first time that he’d been that physically close to someone in years. But the point was that she bounced back from the incident incredibly well. And the way that she’d managed that first dinner with Flat Finn? Matt didn’t know what to think about that. She was fun, and Matt didn’t really know what to do with
fun
these days. It was rather ironic that Julie seemed so at ease in this house full of deeply uneasy people.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, annoyed at his level of distractedness. Changes in the household were not going to be good for his studies.

Julie’s voice echoed softly outside his door. Matt tipped his head and listened, biting his lip to stop the smile that threatened to form. She was talking to Flat Finn. “You and I will be spending more time together, so I expect continued model behavior. Deal? You’re thinking about it? Let me know. Excuse me while I go to your namesake’s room and unpack. We’ll talk later.” She was… a funny girl.

Matt took a thick textbook from his bag. Just as he got comfortable sitting on his bed with his back against a pillow, Erin knocked and simultaneously opened the door.

“Matthew?” She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “I thought you should know that Julie is staying with us.”

Matt continued reading, but murmured. “I know. She hasn’t found an apartment yet.”

“No. I mean that Julie will be staying with us for good. I asked her to stay.”

Matt slammed the book shut and glared at Erin. “You did what? What do you mean
for good
?”

Erin crossed her arms. “I asked her to stay. She can help out with Celeste. Your father is leaving on his trip soon, and we could use someone else around here.”

Right, because their father was such a massive help when it came to Celeste?

“You’ve got to be kidding me? We can’t have her in the house! Why would you do this?”

“Matthew, lower your voice,” Erin said in an angry whisper.

He stood up and moved to stand next to his mother. “How in the hell are we supposed to make this work?”

“Calm down. I don’t see what the problem is. Julie will pick up Celeste from school and be with her until someone else gets home in the evenings. Your afternoons are now free, and considering the workload you have this year, I should think you’d be pleased. It’s a perfect solution.”

The room seemed be spinning. His mother had to be out of her mind. “And just what are we supposed to do about Finn, huh?”

“Finn?”

“Yes. My dead brother,” Matthew spat out under his breath. “My brother who Julie thinks is—”

“Matthew!” Erin’s face froze and it took a moment for her to speak again. “There is no reason to tell Julie about our personal business. The point is that this is a smooth solution.”

“Oh, Mom… Please don’t do this.”

“This is not a discussion. I’m simply telling you about the arrangements that have been made. And, goodness, you need to relax. There’s really no reason to get to riled up.” Erin frowned and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m going into my office to get some work done. Make sure Celeste has her lights off by eight-thirty, okay?”

Once alone, Matt dropped to the bed and lay on his side. He closed his eyes for a minute. The sound of the shower running in the next room soothed him a bit. He couldn’t even process what his mother had done. Perhaps there was no point in trying because there was nothing to be done about it. The decision had been made, as most decisions were in this house, without any regard for how it would affect him. It wasn’t that shocking. The systems and routines that he’d worked so hard to put in place and maintain for Celeste’s benefit could easily come undone now. 

He opened his eyes and found himself staring at the thick wooden leg of his desk. Of course, it wasn’t
his
desk. This wasn’t
his
room. It was Finn’s. Matt’s real room, the one that been his when life was happier, was across the hall and being taken over by a stranger who liked Flat People, Coolattas, and “interesting.”

Things were about to get really interesting.

Matt squinted at the desk leg and then rolled off the bed until he was sitting on the floor. Huh. He’d never noticed this before, and he took a moment before crawling forward a few feet, nearly entranced by what he was seeing. He knelt down and touched his hand to the old wood, feeling the letters that had been carved there so many years ago.  

Are you ready to jump?

His computer sounded and Matt slowly got to his chair, suddenly much more at peace with the swirl of changes that seemed to be engulfing him. He clicked the trackpad a few times.