If He Had Been with Me

Jamie wants to go farther and I tell him that I’m not ready. We’ve been together since the third week of school, but it’s only early November and I’m surprised that we’re having this discussion already. A few days ago on the phone, he said that he loved me; I said I wasn’t ready to say that back, and now, lying next to him and staring at the ceiling, I’m wondering if this is why he said it.

“Okay then,” he says, and takes my hand in his.

We’re both fully clothed still, and dressed in the eccentric uniform adopted by our group. We’re not goths or hipsters, just odd. The girls dye their hair unnatural colors and the boys make an effort to look like they just rolled out of bed. We all wear boots and bite our fingernails. I know that we’re just conforming in a different way, but this is not something that I have said out loud. What binds our group together is the shared statement that we are different—and therefore somehow better—than all of the “normal” kids at school. Especially better than the popular kids.

Now that I’ve actually been to high school, I have no desire to be one of those girls with the ponytails and the pleated skirts. I am thrilled to finally be allowed to be myself, even if it is still under certain confines. With my new friends, being weird is a good thing, as long as it’s the same weird as them.

“Your house is so weird,” Jamie says.

I turn and look at him. This is the first time he has seen my house on the inside. My mom is at The Office’s Fall Festival with my father. Jamie was sick the night of my birthday party, and Mom still hasn’t convinced me to have him over for dinner.

“What do you mean?” I say.

“It’s so perfect,” he says. “Even your room.” It is not a compliment.

I look around at the lavender walls and white wicker furniture. I shrug.

“My mom decorated it,” I say, a half lie. She decorated the rest of the house and it is perfect, just like her. Everything coordinates; everything is arranged precisely so. It could be in a design magazine with my mother sitting at the kitchen table with a vase of white tulips, not a hair out of place as she pretends to read the paper. We did my room together. In the magazine, I would be in a cheerleader’s uniform. I would be smiling.

“You should get some posters or something,” Jamie says. I roll on my side and lay my head on his shoulder. I think to myself that he is handsome in that traditional tall-and-dark way. He says he wants to pierce his eyebrow and I’ve been trying to convince him not to.

“Yeah, I’ll probably do that,” I say. I really like Jamie, even if I’m not sure that I love him yet. He’s smart and quirky and he’s the leader of our group. As long as I am with him, I can never be evicted again. He rests his hand on the back of my head and twines his fingers in my hair.

“I love you, Autumn,” he says. Downstairs, the back door slams. We both sit up. “Is your mom home?” he says. I’m not supposed to be alone with Jamie in the house, especially since my parents haven’t met him. I’m still surprised that he was able to convince me to let him come over. I look at the clock. They still aren’t supposed to be home for hours. I shake my head.

“It’s probably Finny,” I say.

“Are you serious?” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. I’ve told Jamie of my sordid past, of the popularity and the ponytails. I told it as a tale of escape. How I narrowly missed becoming one of them. He knows too that my mom is best friends with Finny’s. I told him that we played together when we were little. There had been an old picture of Finny and I on my dresser that somehow survived our separation in middle school; for nearly two years, I only spoke to Finny when I had too, but it never occurred to me to take the picture of us down until this morning when I was getting ready for Jamie to come over. I hid it in the top drawer of my dresser under my socks.

Everyone knows who Finny is now, except they don’t call him that. Everyone at school calls him “Finn.” He was the only freshman to make varsity soccer. He and some of his formerly geeky male friends have now been absorbed into The Clique, but they don’t call themselves that anymore. Having a name for your group is way immature now. It’s strange that only a few months ago I considered these girls my best friends, and even stranger that Finny is becoming friends with them.

We were barely able to avoid having each other over for our birthdays. In middle school, it might not have been as big a deal, except my parties were all girls and his all boys. This year, our mothers thought that if we were having a mixed group, then we should invite the other too. What they didn’t understand was that this year, Phineas and I are separated by something far greater than just growing apart. We move on completely different planes of existence and bringing one into the other’s realm would cause a shifting in reality that would upset the entire structure of the universe. Finny was popular now. I was a misfit who had found other misfits to fit with.

They didn’t talk about this in front of both of us; my mother argued with me about it, and when I told her it was absolutely impossible that he come, my mother sighed and said, “What is it with you two this year?” so I knew he was having the same argument with Aunt Angelina.

“Why would Finn Smith be in your house?” Jamie says.

“He’s probably getting something,” I say.

“Like what?” he says. I shrug. I don’t know how to explain. “Let’s go see.” I don’t argue with him, even though my stomach drops.

Jamie hangs back in the hallway as I look into the kitchen. Finny is crouched in front of the open refrigerator, his blond head hidden from me.

“Hi,” I say. He looks over his shoulder at me. Until middle school, we were always the same height. Somehow during those years, he shot up past me and is now six foot. It is strange to see him looking up at me.

“Oh, hi,” he says. He stands up and faces me from across the room. He blushes lightly. “Sorry, the back door was unlocked but I didn’t think anyone was home.”

“I didn’t go with them,” I say.

“Oh,” he says. “Do you have eggs?”

“Um, yeah.” I cross the room and open the refrigerator door again. Finny steps aside for me. Before I bend over, I see his eyes focus outside the room, and I know he has seen Jamie lurking in the hallway. “How many do you need?” I say.

“I dunno,” he says. “Mom just said to see if you had any eggs.” I stand up and hand him the whole carton. “Thanks,” he says.

“No problem,” I say.

“See ya,” Finny says.

“Bye.” I stay where I am and listen to him clatter down the back steps before I go into the hall again.

“Wow,” Jamie says. “You guys know each other.”

“I told you we did,” I say.

“Yeah, but that was weird,” he says. I shrug again and walk back toward the stairs. “Does he do that a lot?”

“He lives next door,” I say.

“Yeah but—never mind.” We don’t say anything until we are back in my room. I lie down on my flowered bedspread first and he scoots in next to me. We kiss for a long time, and after a while, I push his hands away and we lie together in silence. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be in love. I’m not sure. Suddenly Jamie speaks.

“It’s almost like you were supposed to be one of them,” he says. “But somehow you’re not.”

“What do you mean?” I say.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Your room and him.”

“Well, I’m not,” I say. I start to kiss him again. I’m kissing him to make him stop thinking about it. The room once again is silent except for our breathing.

I’m thinking about it though. I’m thinking about going with Aunt Angelina to pick up Finny after soccer practice. I’m thinking about the cheerleaders asking me if he is my boyfriend. I’m thinking about sitting next to Finny on the bus the first day of school.

We could have ended up together, I realize as Jamie begins to grind his pelvis against mine. He would have told me that he loved me by now, but he wouldn’t have asked about sex. Not yet.

I can see all of this as if it has already happened, as if it was what happened. I know that it is accurate down to the smallest detail, because even with everything that did happen, I still know Finny, and I know what would have happened.

“I love you,” I say to Jamie.