Filed to story: If He Had Been With Me Book PDF Free
I’m surprised that I feel as if something has shifted within me or perhaps in the air around me. I don’t have to go back to my room. I could go somewhere on campus, or I could get into my car and drive away forever. Whatever I decide, there’s no one to stop me. It’s my choice what happens next.
I choose to go back to my room. I want to be alone.
It doesn’t occur to me until I see the partially open door that I know I left locked that perhaps someone from the waiting list was assigned to Finn’s open bed.
I remember reading the housing application with Finn, where it said it would honor as many mutual roommate requests as possible but that it was best to fill out their personality quiz just in case. I didn’t, but if I had, I doubt it would have been taken into consideration in a last-minute reassignment from the waiting list.
There’s already a new name on the door. I hope Brett likes the Chiefs.
As I push open the door, the three people in my room look up at me, startled.
“Hi,” I say to them.
The guy sitting on Finn’s bed looks surprised even as his mother steps forward to shake my hand. As I take it in mine, I see that she has tears in her eyes. I’ve interrupted something. His father has gone back to staring at his hands clasped in front of him.
“We’re the Carters,” she says. “And this is Brett!”
“Hi,” I say. “Nice to meet you. I was going to grab my stuff and take a shower.” It’s early evening, but it’s still hot as blazes out, and everyone was traveling and moving today, so my excuse to be antisocial is accepted.
“Well, if we don’t see you again, have a good semester!” Mrs. Carter says. The tears in her eyes glitter. “Let us know if you ever need anything!”
“Thanks.” I grab the basket of shower stuff that my mom forced me to pack up before we left for dinner. She told me that I would be glad later, though I don’t think she could have foreseen this exact situation. Either way, I mentally thank her as I bolt out of there.
And here I thought my parents were getting emotional about me leaving home.
Suddenly, I’m grateful for my undemonstrative family. Which makes me miss them, especially my mom. Mentally, I thank her again, this time for not crying.
He’s not dying, part of me had wanted to tell the Carters. Which would have been a dick move, so I’m glad I didn’t, but it’s how I feel. Angelina would give anything to be in that woman’s position, yet she has the audacity to cry? It seems like such bullshit.
At least I’m thinking clearly enough to know that there’s something off about my reaction, so I take that long shower as promised. I hear others coming and going, but a line never forms, so I don’t give up my stall.
I hear two guys laughing together. Clearly, they’ve been friends for years.
I turn up the shower. The water pressure isn’t great, but it blocks out the sound.
I give it enough time that Brett’s parents would have to be seriously unreasonable to still be hanging around. My fingers and toes are wrinkled raisins by the time I get out.
It’s not quiet on the floor of our hall, but it’s the difference between going to a concert and going on a hike: the woods are full of noise and activity, but compared to a concert, it’s silent. There’s some laughter and conversation, some television noise. About half the doors are closed.
It’s only nine o’clock, but I hope this Brett guy is asleep. When I get to the room, I decide he may as well be asleep, because he’s reading the new student manual.
The stapled booklet was sitting on our bare mattresses when I arrived and is filled with campus phone numbers I could get online, rules about alcohol, and a couple of maps or something. Mine is sitting in the recycling bin, where any sane person would put such paper-wasting nonsense.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.” Brett doesn’t look up.
Perfect.
I get into bed with my CD player and pull the top sheet over my head. I listen to Finn’s best of Tom Petty album with headphones until the light filtering in through the sheet goes out.
I keep listening until I fall asleep.
thirteen
So what’s college like?
It’s hard to say.
At breakfasts, I wonder what Finn would have thought about the dining hall eggs that come from a cartoon or the soggy waffle machine. Walking around campus, I think about how Finn would like the trees here. Sometimes I look up and scan the crowds, expecting to see him. I don’t know how to convince myself that it’s not a mistake: Finn’s not at college with me.
Of course, if Finn were alive, he wouldn’t be at college with me. He’d really be at college with Autumn.
What a glorious nightmare that would be.
That’s mostly what I think about on the walk between classes or while eating alone at the dining hall—just how annoying Finn and Autumn would be if they were here together.
After all these years of telling Finn that Autumn didn’t return his feelings and he needed to get over her, I’d have had to let him talk about her constantly, at least for those last weeks of summer. By the time we made it to school, I would have been tired of it. Finn would have been making a conscious effort to not talk incessantly about the miracle of Autumn loving him, but I would have been rolling my eyes every time he’d catch himself from bringing her up. It would be mostly fine, and I’d be happy for him.
But I know that every time I would ask Finn if he wanted to go to the dining hall, he would text Autumn to see if she wanted to come. And we’d wait in the lobby for her, where he would resemble a puppy awaiting his master, perking up the moment he caught sight of her. At the dining hall, there would be their lingering looks across the table, their secret smiles.
I would have been happy for him, really, I swear. If the tension between Autumn and Finn was annoying before, I doubt it would have gotten better when they became a couple. That’s the thing about sexual tension between two people: releasing it doesn’t make less of it. It usually creates more.
Every flyer I see for a freshman mixer or campus activity, I imagine asking Finn if he wants to go and him telling me he’d see if Autumn wanted to come. Autumn would be the underlying impulse behind any decision Finn would make this week. And it would frustrate me to no end. Eventually we would fight about it.
For a few days, whenever I’m not in class, the fictional fight Finn and I would have had over Autumn if he were alive is my focus. Sometimes I imagine confronting him after he’s missed plans with me or because I’m tired of vacating to the library so he and Autumn can hook up. Obviously, whatever is going on, Autumn tries to stick up for Finn, but he always tells her no, he needs to work it out with me, so she leaves, and wherever we are on campus or in the dorm, it’s Finn and me and we’re arguing.
Finn and I didn’t fight a lot, but I know him well enough to predict his defenses. He would say that this relationship was still new, and “You know what having the chance to be with Autumn means to me.”
In this dream world where Finn is still alive, I wouldn’t have seen Autumn grieving. I would still be suspicious of her breaking his heart, so I would point out that I was the one who had always been there for him, not her. And if Autumn abandoned him again, was I just supposed to be there waiting for Finn?
It feels so good to be angry at this Finn, this living Finn who is neglecting me to hang out with his dream girl.
No matter what starts the fight or exactly how I decide that the dialogue goes down, it always ends the same way: with Finn apologizing and promising to make more time for me. I know that’s how it would end, because I’ve always been a good friend to Finn, and he knows that. Knew that.
I tend to cry in the shower, same as at home.
Late at night, I can’t distract myself by imagining how it would be if Finn were here. At night, I know that Finn is dead. Or do I? The thought still nags me, but what if it wasn’t really Finn?
What if someone about Finn’s height and weight and wearing similar clothes stopped to help Sylvie, and he was the one who put his hand down in the puddle with the downed power line, and he’s the one in the gray box in the grave with his face burned off, not Finn.
Maybe Finn hit his head, had amnesia, and wandered off. Except I know that’s not true.
Other nights, I imagine Finn didn’t hit his head. Maybe Finn thought he’d killed Sylvie and he was so grief stricken and guilt ridden that he ran away, and now he thinks he can never come back because everyone hates him. Maybe he’s even scared the police think he killed Sylvie on purpose.
But Finn, the future doctor, ran to check Sylvie’s breathing and pulse. Ran to help her, because of course, that’s what Finn would do.
Even if I can make myself believe that we buried someone else in Finn’s coffin by mistake, I cannot make myself believe that he would let any of us hurt like this.
So Finn still isn’t here with me.
And there’s not much else to say about college.
fourteen
After my first week of class, I wake up on Saturday morning and decide that I need to figure out my running route. Everyone, from the RAs to profs to student advisors, keep saying that it’s up to us to be independent, and no one’s checking in on us. I know they’re talking about homework and stuff, but I won’t have Coach riding my ass anymore either, and I’m not going to be one of those jocks who goes to college and loses it all.
I was already the guy hanging out at high school after graduation.