Filed to story: If He Had Been With Me Book PDF Free
We line up as a team again and lift him with more grace than before. This time, I try to cherish the weight of him on my shoulder. I lean my cheek where I hope is close to his.
And then on a quiet count to three, we set Finn down forever.
There is crying again but no more laughing.
In the row of chairs by the grave, the man who was supposed to be Finn’s father sits, leaning forward with his head in his hands, and does not look up even once. Sylvie, seated next to him again, sits ramrod straight, like her purpose is to be a wall between him and Angelina. Perhaps it is.
I knew the poem about an athlete dying young was coming. I hadn’t known how different it would sound as Coach read it here, by Finn’s grave.
His final resting place. His final everything.
They’re about to do it.
There’s a mechanical hum as his coffin is lowered down.
It’s not really him, yet it is him, and they’re putting him away forever. I want to beg someone to stop this, to let me keep him, please.
But it’s done. Finn, my friend, is in a hole in the earth. For the rest of my life, no matter how long I live, I will always know exactly where he is, because he’s never going to move again.
People are lining up to throw a handful of dirt in the hole before they leave him, but I can’t do this last thing for him, so I stand there and watch.
As the grave begins to slowly fill with dirt, I think of Autumn coming later, after the rest of us have gone, to be with him.
six
I watch as the line of people who have waited to talk to Angelina slowly winds down. Alexis met my eyes before she left, but we never spoke. When Coach was leaving, I told him there was something I needed to do, that I’d get a ride home from someone else. I don’t know what I’m waiting for though. I don’t need to say anything to her or Autumn’s mom, and my duties are finished. Finn is in his grave.
I take off my jacket and tie, unbutton my collar.
Compared to the August heat, the metal of his coffin had felt so cool against my cheek.
I wonder how Angelina does it, comforting these people, mostly kids from school but a few adults too. They are waiting to shake her hand or give her a hug or share some sentiment, and her child is not fully buried a few feet away.
Autumn’s mother stands protectively by her. I figure if Angelina wasn’t getting anything out of talking to these people, she’d take her friend home.
“Are you waiting to talk to her?” Sylvie asks.
I jump because I had no idea that she was nearby, much less standing behind me. I’d wandered away a bit, and Sylvie and I are on a small slope among some graves from the 1970s.
“No,” I say. “I wasn’t ready to go. Are you?”
“No,” she says. There’s a bruise near her temple and a scratch along her cheek. Otherwise, she is outwardly, physically unmarked from the crash. Her blond hair is pulled back and up in a way that I’m sure has a special name. Her trim black suit probably has a French name on the label.
“I thought about texting or something,” I say by way of apology, but Sylvie shrugs.
“Nothing was your fault,” she says.
“Still, I could have said something.” I’m not sure if we’re talking about the crash or Autumn.
“You don’t have to pretend that we were more than friends of convenience, Jack. I’m tired of people pretending to care more about me than they do.”
“Geez, Sylv,” I say. It’s not that I think she and I would have naturally gravitated toward each other, but in the past four years, I’d come to think of us as comrades of sorts.
“Sorry,” she says, which is more than what I said to her, but I decide to call her out on what was truly shitty in what she said.
“Finn didn’t pretend anything about his feelings for you,” I say. “He lied about his feelings for Autumn, but he loved you.”
“Just not enough?”
“I—” I’m regretting not letting this go. “I don’t think it was about ‘enough,’ Sylv.”
She laughs, startling me again. I look at her. She isn’t smiling, and her eyes are closed.
“That’s what he said.”
“Yeah?” I’m distracted, because I’ll never know his side of that conversation. “What did you say to that?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t remember.” She opens her eyes. “The good news is the doctors say it’s dissociative amnesia, not retrograde amnesia, which means that my not remembering the minutes before or after the accident isn’t brain damage. I’m protecting myself, according to them.” She laughs the same cold laugh, and for a moment, she looks like Autumn did on the couch, but she takes a deep breath, and it clears.
I shouldn’t ask her, but it’s bothering me, how Alexis described the scene to me in detail…but Sylvie’s memory isn’t complete about that night.
“Alexis said that you saw him when you woke up and called 911.”
Sylvie doesn’t laugh this time.
“That’s what they tell me, but I don’t remember making the call.” She shakes her head. “I remember telling a paramedic that I knew Finn was dead because of his face. But later at the hospital, when the police tried to get a statement from me, I couldn’t remember waking up or his face. They did all the brain scans, and it’s a regular concussion. Apparently, when I’m ready, I’ll remember.”
“Oh,” I say. “Can you choose to never be ready?” I’m being sincere, but she laughs again, and this time, it’s real.
“I’ll have to ask my new therapist,” she says.
“What happened to the guy Finn liked?”
She sighs. “Dr. Giles always hated Finn.”
The idea of anyone hating Finn silences me.
In the distance, Angelina and Autumn’s mom are walking to the limo together, their arms around each other’s waists. Soon, Sylvie and I will be the only ones here: us, Finn, and all the other dead people like him.
“Maybe ‘hate’ is too strong of a word,” Sylvie continues, “but Dr. Giles didn’t trust Finn. Plus he said Finn seemed codependent. That was part of the reason he thought I should go away for the summer. To give me space to take care of myself.” Sylvie shrugs. “Dr. Giles and I agreed that after all the progress I’d made dealing with…other things, perhaps it would be best for me to start fresh with someone who didn’t have preconceived notions about Finn, since he’s going to be the focus of my appointments for a long time.”
“Huh,” I say.
Sylvie looks down the slope. Together we watch the limo drive off.
What a betrayal it is that Alexis told me that stuff about Sylvie and some teacher from her old school. I’d only half been listening, and part of me had wondered why she was telling me all that, but mostly I had been thinking about Alexis’s body and not about whether she was a good friend.
Sylvie starts walking down the hill, away from Finn’s grave, into the older parts of the cemetery, and I follow.
“It’s funny,” I say, simply to say something. “I was thinking about how no one could hate Finn, and you say your doctor at least hypothetically disliked him.”
“Oh, I hate Finn,” Sylvie assures me. She smiles softly at my shock. “Don’t get me wrong. I love him too. If I had the power to stop loving him, I would have long ago. So I love him, and I hate him.”
“I guess.” I want to defend Finn, but this time, I can’t. “I guess that’s fair.”
Sylvie smiles again and shakes her head. She stops walking.
“Jack, if you really are my friend, can you do something for me?”