If He Had Been with Me (5 page)

“So what do you know about Sylvie?” my mother says. I take a large spoonful of ice cream into my mouth and regard her. We are sitting on the outside patio of The Train Stop Creamery, the town’s only ice cream parlor. It is the first hot day of May.

“Finny’s girlfriend?” I say. My mother nods. “I dunno,” I say. “Why?”

“No reason,” she says.

“You just started wondering about her all of a sudden?”

“Well,” she says.

“What?” I say.

“Angelina and I were just talking about her the other day, and I wondered what you thought.”

“She’s okay,” I say. “I don’t really know her.” We eat quietly for a while before I ask. “Does Aunt Angelina not like her?”

“Oh, she likes her, but I think she’s never gotten over the disappointment that you and Finny didn’t end up together.” She nudges me under the table with her foot.

“Mom!” I say. I glare at her. “I have a boyfriend.”

“I know, I know,” she says. “We just always thought that’s what was going to happen.”

“Well, it didn’t,” I say. “We don’t even hang out with the same people.”

“I know,” she says again. She sighs. I roll my eyes and eat my ice cream.

Whenever I wonder what it would be like if Finny and I were together, I never imagine that there is anyone else with us. I don’t like to think I would have had to become a cheerleader to be Finny’s friend again. In my imagination, Finny isn’t in my group, and I’m not in his; it’s just the two of us, like it used to be. At school, we eat lunch together and he walks me to my classes. We do our homework together. He takes me to art films in the city. At night, we lie on our backs in the grass and talk. We burn CDs for each other. We pass notes. We hold hands at the bus stop. I imagine adoring him without question. I am certain that I would if I were in love with him.

“Is Aunt Angelina out somewhere with Finny, asking what he thinks of Jamie?” I ask. My mother smiles.

“Yes, sweetie. It’s a conspiracy,” she says.

“Well, if you two were talking about Sylvie, why not Jamie?”

“I like Jamie,” she says. She spoons her last bit of ice cream out. “I can tell he’s a good kid. His parents seem like good people.”

“But you guys aren’t sure if Sylvie is a good kid?” I say. I’m pleased with the direction the conversation is going, but I don’t want to show it.

“Is she?” my mother says.

If the rumors are true, Sylvie is not a good kid. There is a story about her and Alexis making out in a Ferris wheel while all the guys watched, and the whole group supposedly gets drunk sometimes. They are good students though, so most adults don’t suspect them of anything.

It’s hard for me to imagine Finny drunk, or liking a girl who makes out with another girl for entertainment. I wonder if he’s still shy when he is drinking, if he blushed when he watched Sylvie kissing Alexis.

I wonder what Aunt Angelina would do if she knew about Finny’s friends.

“Oh,” I say, “Sylvie is a cheerleader. She’s on student council and the honor roll. She’s too busy being perfect to be shooting up heroin on the side.”

“All right, all right,” my mother says. We stand and throw away our plastic bowls and spoons and walk out to the car.

I imagine Finny loving Sylvie, but sometimes wishing she were different, the way I sometimes wish Jamie were different. I imagine him being aroused as she made out with Alexis in front of everyone and afterward asking her never to do it again. I imagine him feeling free and confident as he drinks with his friends, feeling included with them, a part of something.

In the car, I roll down the window and feel the warm night air blowing on my face. My mother is quiet next to me. I wonder where Aunt Angelina and Finny are tonight, what they are talking about.

I imagine Finny and I sneaking out of our houses to fool around down at the creek. I imagine leaving my blinds open for him when I change clothes. I imagine his hand moving up my thigh as we watch a movie with a blanket thrown over our laps.

I imagine that even though we were friends as children, we wouldn’t have stayed children just because we were together.

The last day of school feels as if it is truly the last, as if I am being set free not for three months but thirty years. My scary finals are all over; all I have today are my English and health finals. I’m taking honors English in the fall, and the health final should be simple. Drugs and sex are bad; water-skiing is good.

There is hugging and squealing on The Steps to Nowhere. Sasha is the only one studying; the rest of us are more or less free. Jamie kisses me loudly and wraps his arm over my shoulders.

“Ugh, I cannot wait for today to be over,” he says.

“Me neither,” Noah says.

“You still haven’t signed my yearbook yet, babe,” I say. This is the third day I’ve asked him. He keeps saying he will do it later.

“I know, I know. Give it to me,” he says. I hand it to him and he opens his book bag.

“Why don’t you just sign it now?” I say.

“I don’t feel like it right now. I’ll give it to you at lunch,” he says. He shoves my yearbook into his bag and zips it closed.

“Fine,” I say. I’ve found it’s just easier to let him have his way on all the little things that shouldn’t matter.

“Hey, Mom says she can drive for our girls’ day tomorrow,” Angie says.

“Yay,” Sasha says between flash cards.

“Yeah, well, you know that we’re going to have a boys’ day tomorrow too,” Alex says.

“Okay,” I say.

“And we’re going to do boy stuff that you aren’t invited to,” Jamie says.

“All right, whatever that means,” Brooke says. “But we’re just going to the mall.”

“Hey, guys, let’s go to the mall,” Noah says.

“No,” Sasha says, “you cannot go to the mall. We are.”

“We can get our nails done,” Alex says.

“And our hair. I need highlights,” Jamie says.

“Oh, shut up,” Brooke says. “You don’t even know what highlights are.”

“Why is it you guys get weird every time we do something alone?” Angie says.

“Yeah, do you think we’re plotting against you?” I ask.

“No,” Jamie says, but for once neither he nor any of the others have a comeback. The boys start talking about going to Noah’s tomorrow to play some video game.

***

I
love
you
, Jamie’s note says.
You
are
the
best
thing
that
ever
happened
to
me. All I want from life is to marry you and have our family. Have a good summer. With me.

I close my yearbook and stuff it back in my book bag. Jamie didn’t give it to me at lunch; it’s now the end of the day. He asked me not to read it in front of the others, so I told everybody I had to go to the bathroom before we walked to Jamie’s house. I flush the toilet even though I didn’t use it, because Brooke came to the bathroom with me. When I come out of the stall, she is staring at herself in the mirror. I wash my hands and look over at her.

“Hey, are you okay?” I say. It takes her a moment to answer.

“Yeah,” she says, “Sorry, I just zoned out for a second there.”

“It’s cool,” I say. “I can’t believe that we’re not freshmen anymore. Can you?”

“No, not really,” she says.

***

At Jamie’s pool, we play chicken-fight, climbing on the boys’ shoulders and knocking each other down. Jamie and I win, and he parades around with me on his shoulders, then suddenly drops me to make me scream. I pout; he kisses me and then dunks me. A dunking war breaks out that the boys win even though there are more of us. They high five and we roll our eyes.

We lean up against the wall in the shallow end and the boys wrap their arms around our bare waists. The sun is warm on our heads and the water. It is summer and we are free.

The pizzas arrive and we lay about eating by the pool until we think we’ll never have to eat again. We decide to ignore the one-hour rule and jump back in. The boys begin to wrestle and we stand to the side and watch them. After a while, I get bored, and I’m thinking I’ll try to get Jamie alone in his room, when I realize that Brooke and Angie have been gone for a long time. I go inside and pad barefoot across the kitchen. The bathroom door is closed. I lean my head against it. I can hear them talking on the other side. I knock.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I ask. There is a pause, and then I hear their voices again. Angie opens the door a crack.

“Are you alone?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. She opens the door enough for me to squeeze in.

Brooke is sitting on the bathtub. Her eyes are red and she is dressed in her shorts and shirt again.

“Oh my God, what’s wrong?” I ask. Brooke looks down at our feet on the tile floor.

“I cheated on Noah,” she says. Angie is leaning against the sink with her arms crossed. This is not new information for her. Brooke loses herself in her tears again. I sit down next to her.

“With who?” I ask. Brooke continues to cry.

“It was her lab partner, Aiden,” Angie says. “They’ve sort of been friends all semester.”

“Aiden Harris or Aiden Schumacker?”

“Aiden Harris,” Angie says.

“We just had fun together in class,” Brooke says. “I didn’t think it meant anything.”

“What happened?” I say.

“He invited me over to study for the final,” Brooke says. “He kissed me, and for a moment, I let him.”

“That’s all?”

“I stopped him and left and I wasn’t going to ever tell Noah,” Brooke says, “but I hate keeping secrets from him.” She begins to cry again. Someone knocks on the bathroom door.

“Hey, guys,” Sasha says. “What’s going on?”

We let her in and tell her the story.

“It was just one kiss?” Sasha asks. Brooke nods.

There is a knock on the door.

“Hey,” Jamie’s voice says. “What are you guys doing in there?”

“Are you plotting something?” Alex says.

Sasha opens the door and sticks her head out.

“Look, guys,” she says, “we have a really serious situation in here, so cut it out.”

“What do you mean?” Noah says. Next to me, Brooke’s cries turn into a wail. “Hey, what’s going on? Brooke?”

“Brooke, honey, do you want to talk to him?” I ask. Brooke wipes her nose and nods. Angie and I instantly stand at attention and crowd behind Sasha.

“She wants to talk to him,” I say. Sasha opens the door just enough so we can file out and Noah can slide in. We shut the door behind him and turn to face the boys.

“We should go outside,” Angie says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“What’s going on? Is Brooke okay?” Jamie asks.

“We can’t tell you,” I say. The back door closes behind us and we walk to the edge of the pool.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re guys,” Sasha says. She, Angie, and I sit down and dangle our legs in the pool.

“Noah’s in there,” he says.

“It involves Noah,” I say.

“How does it involve Noah?” Alex asks.

“We can’t tell you that,” Angie says. I nod.

“This is stupid. She’s my cousin,” Jamie says.

“I know,” I say. “But we can’t tell you.”

“It isn’t our place,” Sasha says. All three of us nod to that.

“Are they breaking up?” Alex asks.

“Maybe,” Sasha says.

“Oh my God, I hope not,” I say.

“They won’t,” Angie says.

“Okay, this really is stupid,” Jamie says. He and Alex go and sit on the patio chairs. The girls and I begin to whisper. After a while, Noah comes out and asks for Angie. She comes out alone a few minutes later.

“Is she okay?” I ask. Angie nods.

“Yeah,” she says. “She told Noah. They’re gonna walk home and talk about it.”

We swing our legs in the water and make waves, but nobody really talks. We’ve said everything we have to say to each other, and we still won’t tell the boys. Finally, after half an hour, we gather our stuff to walk home. Alex stays behind with Jamie.

When I kiss Jamie good-bye, he does not hug me back, and he looks away afterward.

“Bye,” he says.

“Bye, love you,” I say. “I’ll call you.”

“Okay.”

***

That night we fight on the phone. Even though I cry, he still does not forgive me until I tell him Brooke’s secret. He is instantly sweet again, and we don’t talk about the fight.

At the mall the next day, Brooke tells us about her conversation with Noah while we eat in the food court. She says that Noah has forgiven her, and that Noah said he knew she was sorry and that he hated seeing her cry.

“I can’t believe how much he loves me,” she says. She looks down at her plate of French fries and smiles.

I start to wonder what Jamie would have said if it had been us, and I push the thought away. Nothing like that would ever happen to us.

We spend the Fourth of July at the fair in the park. Angie’s Hazelwood boyfriend is with us and we are pleased to be a complete set of four couples. We wander around the scant stalls and booths and listen to the music. Every time we see someone from school we stop so that Angie can introduce Mike. Finny and Sylvie are at the fair too, but we do not stop for them. The fair is small so we pass by them frequently. I knew they would be there, but every time I see them, the image jumps out at me like pictures in a pop-up book. We eat a meal of hot dogs and funnel cakes, and the girls decide we want to go to the petting zoo.

I fall in love with a brown baby goat, and it falls in love with me; when I picked it up, it nuzzled me and laid its head on my chest. I ask Jamie if I can have a baby goat when we get married. He says no, and then says maybe, if it means he doesn’t have to mow the lawn.

I sit on a bale of hay with Augusta, my goat, cradled in my lap like a human baby. She gazes up at me, and either she is mesmerized by the glitter of my tiara, or she thinks I’m her mother. I am singing Augusta a lullaby I have made up for her when I look up and see Finny smiling crookedly at me; Sylvie is crouched next to him looking at the pen of piglets. I stop singing and glare at him. His shoulders shake with silent laughter.

“Oh, Finn, look, it likes me,” Sylvie says. Finny turns away from me and kneels down with her. I’ve matured enough in the past few months to remind myself that I don’t really know her; maybe she’s very nice.

Jamie and the others come to stand around me. They have gotten as much enjoyment as they can out of the fair for now, and they want to go back to Sasha’s.

“But I don’t want to leave Augusta,” I say.

“You
named
it?” Jamie says. I nod.

“Okay, put down the goat and walk away slowly,” Alex says, both hands held out in front of him.

“That joke doesn’t make any sense,” I say. Jamie tugs on my arm.

“Come on, I’m hot,” he says. I sigh and kiss Augusta on the top of her head and put her down. When I leave, she runs to the end of her tether and bleats.

“Oh,” I say. Jamie takes my hand and keeps walking, pulling me along. I look back once over my shoulder. Finny is bending over and scratching the top of Augusta’s head.

We wait through the heat of the day at Sasha’s, then walk back to the park just before sunset. This is where I will have to leave them. My father said he would leave The Office in time to watch the fireworks with us, so Mother wants us to do it as a family. Family, of course, means Aunt Angelina and Finny too.

“Do you have to go?” Jamie says. I nod and peck his lips.

“I’ll miss you,” I say. He looks so handsome that even waiting to see him until tomorrow kills me.

“Call me when you get home,” he says and kisses me again, for longer. I flush with pride and smile. Before I go, I wave to the others; they wave back and watch me turn away. When I glance back at them, they are all walking away together.

***

My mother, father, and Aunt Angelina are sitting by the lake where we always watch the fireworks.

“Hi, sweetie,” my mom says. She is smiling and holding hands with my father. He stands up and hugs me.

“Had a good day, Autumn?” he asks. I nod. He steps back and looks at me quizzically. “Your hair?” he says.

“I dyed it brown again,” I say. “Yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. We smile at each other. We are both pleased that he noticed the subtle difference so quickly.

“Finny told me you made friends with a goat,” Aunt Angelina says.

“Yeah. I want a goat, Mom,” I say, then I look at Aunt Angelina. “Finny was talking about me?” I say.

“He gave a detailed description of you rocking and crooning to a little goat,” she says. Her eyes focus over my shoulder “There he is,” she says. I turn around.

Finny is walking toward us, holding hands with Sylvie.

“Hey, everybody,” he says. Sylvie grins and waves with her fingers. My father stands up.

“And who is this?” he says.

“Uncle Tom, this is Sylvie,” Finny says. “Sylvie, Uncle Tom.”

“Hi,” she says and grins again.

“Nice to meet you,” Dad says. “Here,” he adds, stepping to the side, “I’ll move so you girls can sit together.”

It seems my father cannot tell the not-so-subtle difference between Sylvie and me.

I am now sitting between my father and Sylvie. Finny is on the other side of her, and The Mothers are talking together on the other side of Dad.

I stare straight ahead at the patch of sky where the fireworks will be. Finny and Sylvie are holding hands next to me. I have a choice. I can either continue to sit with them in silence, or I can try to be friendly and have one of the shallow conversations Finny and I sometimes have when we are together.

“How much longer do you think it will be?” she asks. Finny looks at his watch.

“Ten minutes,” he says. She sighs.

“Have you ever noticed that time goes slower while you’re waiting for fireworks?” she says.

“Well, time always goes slower whenever you’re waiting for something,” he says.

“I think it’s even slower when you’re waiting for fireworks,” she says. Finny opens his mouth.

“I agree,” I say. Sylvie looks at me in surprise. “I think it’s because when we’re not looking at our watches, we’re looking at the light fading in the sky. The anticipation never escapes our perception.”

“Huh,” Finny says.

“I guess so,” Sylvie says. She looks like she thinks that there will be a catch to agreeing with me. We’ve never spoken before outside of necessary pleasantries at school or the bus stop:
Excuse
me. Thank you. Hey, you dropped this.

“So, by your logic, if we look at the lake instead of the sky, time will go faster,” Finny says.

“Well, only as fast as when we’re waiting for something else,” I say.

“Okay, well, let’s look at the lake,” he says. I look at the lake. Once, in that time I call Before, my father decided to take Finny and I fishing. I was bored and climbed a tree overhanging the water. Finny thought that it was thrilling and sat all afternoon, telling me not to shake the branches of the tree because it was scaring the fish. I tried to be still for him. He caught one small fish. Aunt Angelina had no idea how to clean it, so she put it in the freezer where, after she had forgotten it, it froze completely solid. Sometimes Finny and I would take it out and examine it. We ran our fingers over the stiff scales and poked its frozen bubble eye, and talked about what it must be like to die. Months later, when his mother finally remembered to throw it out, we were sad for the loss.

“I went fishing in this lake once,” Finny says to Sylvie.

“Really?” she says.

“I was just thinking about that,” I say and laugh.

“Our frozen fish?” he says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“I don’t think time is going any faster,” Sylvie says, but just then the fireworks begin.

I’m quiet for the next hour, and let them whisper to each other. Sylvie leans her head on his shoulder. I think about Jamie somewhere in the park watching these fireworks without me. I imagine leaning against him, feeling him breathe next to me, and I ache as if I had not seen him for weeks.

The fireworks leave smoky patches in the sky, and the smell of sulfur drifts down on us. Next to me, Sylvie giggles. I am wishing she were not here. It is not fair; it was supposed to be just us, family.

I want to either be alone with Jamie or be alone with Finny.

The thought startles me, and I glance over at Finny’s handsome face, momentarily lit up by the lights in the sky. I never let myself think about what it is that makes me imagine us together sometimes or if it means anything. I love Jamie.

I look back at the sky.