If He Had Been with Me

“We’re having a Halloween party the weekend my parents will be gone,” I say to Finny. He bounces the Ping Pong ball against the table and hits it slowly.

“Yeah, I heard about that,” he says. The ball bounces and sails past me.

“You did?”

“Yes. You know you were supposed to hit that back to me right?”

“Sorry.” I bend to retrieve the ball and hit it toward him. “The thing is, I have a favor to ask.”

“What?”

“Well, you know I did tell Mom and Dad that I wanted to have a little party for Halloween—”

“Mmhmm.” Finny taps the ball smoothly toward me and I dart over to whack it back.

“But, you know, it’s gonna be more than just a little party. And I was worried about your mom.” In spite of my clumsy dashing, we have a steady rhythm going now. Tap puck, tap puck.

“So?”

“So, I figured that if you were there, your mom would assume it couldn’t be all that bad, you know? That she’d let it slide a bit.”

Finny catches the ball in one hand and raises his eyebrows. “You want me to come,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. I shrug my shoulders without meaning too. “I mean, of course you can bring Sylvie and everybody else too.”

“You know, my mom isn’t as clueless as your mom.”

Ms. Scope blows her whistle, and Finny and I lay our paddles on the table and go to sit on the bleachers. The other half of the class gathers around the six tables.

“Yeah, but that’s because she’s cooler than my mom,” I say. We sit with a foot of space between us on the bottom row.

“That’s true,” he says.

“Will you come?”

Finny shrugs. “Your friends won’t mind?”

“We already discussed it,” I say. It’s an accurate way to describe the argument this proposition caused on the steps this morning, but he doesn’t need to know that.

***

“Look, you guys,” I said, “I’m not having all these people over unless I know Aunt Angelina won’t say anything.”

“And you think having Alexis and Sylvie over will make the party seem tame?” Sasha said.

“Having Finny over will,” I say.

“I don’t see what the big deal is anyway,” Noah says. “I figured he’d be coming. He lives next door.”

“If he comes, they’ll all come,” Jamie says. “They never do anything alone.”

“Neither do we,” Brooke says.

“I do not want to hang out with them,” Jamie says.

“Me neither,” says Sasha.

“How about this,” Alex says. “If they try to come near you, I’ll pelt them with candy corn.”

“You don’t have to,” I say. “I doubt they want to hang out with us either.”

“But you think they’ll come if you ask them?” Jamie asks.

“If I ask Finny, yeah,” I say. “And I’m going to.”

***

Finny bends down and ties his shoe.

“Okay,” he says, “we’ll come.”

“Awesome,” I say. “But I didn’t think it would be hard to convince a big partier like you.”

“I’m not really. Mostly I just stand there. And I’m almost always driving Sylvie home, so I can’t drink.”

“Sounds like fun. So why do you go?”

Finny looks away and shrugs. “Sylvie needs someone to look after her,” he says.

“Oh,” I say. It’s as if someone has opened a window and a cold breeze is fluttering around us. And suddenly it’s unbelievable again that I could invite Finny—and Sylvie!—to the Halloween party with all my friends. Finny and Sylvie were Homecoming King and Queen this year. Up on stage, Finny looked miserable and blushed while they crowned him, and Sylvie beamed at the crowd. They held hands. I can’t have them in my house.

“Well, thanks for the favor. You don’t have to stay the whole time if you want,” I say.

“It’s fine,” Finny says, and I know he can feel it too. We sit in silence for the rest of class.