HWYD Chapter 2

Even after all he’d been through, even after missing school and moving to a small town in Wyoming, high school was still the same. None of it made any real difference. The teachers would call off roll, check the pronunciation of names, hand out syllabuses, assign “getting to know you” sheets. It was a small school, but the seniors were preoccupied enough with the prospects of football and homecoming and annoyed enough about having to go back to school that a new name among dozens of others made little impact.

Finnley was just fine with that. It was what he had intended all along. For his mother’s sake, he greeted the few people who looked in his direction with interest. They exchanged a few sparse, insignificant comments and names that would be forgotten by evening, Jacobs and Hannahs and Charlies. At lunch, he even sat on the end of a table with some of the kids who identified themselves as nerds, so he didn’t even stand out as a loner.

He didn’t need his mom’s printed map on the return trip home, and he was pleased to discover that only a smattering of students walked home by this route at all. The sun was out in full force, and Finnley was finally grateful not to be wearing his sweatshirt. The dark shadow of the forested hills and the mountains beyond cooled him as the sidewalk turned towards home, and he flicked through some poetic lines about pine trees in his head.

When Finnley got home, he was alone. His mother wouldn’t be home for several hours yet, and he was in no mood to commence the tedium of first-day homework. There were a hundred things to do—he had hardly looked around the house since he had gotten here, hadn’t even truly begun to unpack—but all he wanted to do was… what?

He couldn’t say the words. His lips sealed up and his brain crashed and instead of thinking about what he wanted, Finnley reached for the handrail to heave himself upstairs. Lying on his bed, staring at the speckled ceiling while music blared through his earbuds, he whitewashed his mind to match the walls until there were no memories left to nag him. With the music for company, he felt more human than he ever did walking the halls of the school. He also felt more alone.

When enough time had passed that if he didn’t start doing his homework his mother would be fiercely disappointed, Finnley finally sat up. He sharpened a pencil and started in on the first day’s work. Despite his lethargy, he read the first chapter of some classic book he’d never heard of for English and filled out a half dozen “About Me” sheets for teachers who would stack them in a neat pile only to accumulate dust.

At the very end, he began a fresh piece of poetry with his forest thoughts from the walk home. Despite supposedly taking it easy this year, Finnley was enrolled in AP Biology, and advanced English class, US History, Calculus, and, as the school unfortunately required, PE. The one true perk of this schedule he was able to balance it out with a poetry course. The school wasn’t fantastic, but it did have one good class in it.

Checking his watch and realizing that his mom would be home soon, Finnley finally resigned himself to writing his blog post. It was terrible, off-topic, and anonymous, and it would have to do. Finnley hit the enter button and shut his laptop before he could overthink the post again. Keeping his promise, however stupid it was, ended up being more important than the quality of the post.

When his mother still didn’t return, he sighed and headed for the kitchen to make himself dinner. He’d gotten pretty good at it, since his mom often worked late and unreliable shifts. Finnley wasn’t an elegant chef by any means, but he was well accustomed to feeding himself in the evenings. It was almost better that way.

A little rooting around in the cabinets yielded a box of mac and cheese, which was decent enough for his purposes. He set the table, made his food, and ate it all in silence. After washing the dishes, Finnley fed his rabbit, Rory, and lifted him out of his cage. He was just carrying the small rabbit up in his arms as the front door creaked open.

His mom’s face broke into a weary smile at the sight of him. “Hello, Finnley! Did you—I’m sorry I was late—did you manage to get some food? Oh, what am I talking about, tell me how your first day of school was! Did you meet some nice kids? Are you taking your classes okay?”

“It’s fine, Mom,” Finnley said, and he stepped down one stair. “Really. It’s not really a big deal, I didn’t get too much homework and I’ve already finished it all. And yeah, I met some people. They seem…” the word that came to Finnley’s mind was something between ‘decent’ and ‘indifferent’, but he just parroted his mother and said, “…nice.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said, and it sounded like she meant it. Like she believed him. The thought that she knew him so poorly made Finnley swallow hard to shove down the spark of pain, but it was probably better if she believed that he was happy and excited about school. She hadn’t exactly had a great time of it either.

“Did you manage to post your blog?” she asked, and just like that, the conversation had moved on. Finnley could only nod, not wanting to tell her about how it was hideous, how it had nothing to do with what Dr. Lark had told him to write about. “I’m so proud of you. Now—now, I know we made that decision—”

“Yes, we did,” he said firmly in response to her floundering. He had only one request when it came to his mother and the blog, and he was going to enforce it with everything he had in him. “Don’t go looking for it. You won’t find it, and I’m not ready for you to read it.” And if you really want to know how I feel about what happened last year, you can ask me yourself, in person. She wouldn’t ever do that, and he wouldn’t ever write about it on his blog, even if she did find it, so the memories would stay buried. “But you’re fine with letting perfect strangers read it?” It struck Finnley as a typical parental excuse, and he had to keep himself from rolling his eyes. Instead, he said “Yes, Mom,” in a placating tone. “It’s fine. People do this all the time. It’s probably better that they’re strangers anyway.”

When she smiled at him, Finnley could tell she didn’t understand him at all, but was too tired to object any further. “Well, I’ve got to get myself from dinner, and I think it’s time for you to be in bed if you’re going back to school tomorrow.” He might’ve said that it was debatable, but then his mom’s eyes finally caught on the rabbit cradled in his arms. A dramatic sigh ensued, and her hands automatically moved to rest on her hips, her chosen position of authority. “You’re not taking Rory up with you again, are you? You know you shouldn’t sleep with your rabbit. You could smother him, or he could fall down the stairs!”

“Rory’s smarter than that.” It was easier to say than I’m smarter than that. “You’d better go get your dinner. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I love you,” she called to his back. He pretended not to hear.

Finnley went to bed quickly, Rory lying beside him. He didn’t want to think about anything anymore, so he closed his eyes until it was gone.
It was around one in the morning when something woke him up. At first he thought it was his mother, wandering the house and doing the laundry late at night, but then he realized that the noise came from outside. The girl stood quietly on the lawn, looking up at his window. Finnley threw on his shoes and rushed downstairs and out the front door.

There she was, standing there as real as ever, blond hair resting lightly on her shoulders, sweater sleeves bunched up around her hands.

“Allie,” he breathed, softly, as if worried that his voice would send her into flight, that her saying her name would make her disappear. She didn’t say anything in response, but turned and walked away from him, silent and sure as if she had been living in this neighborhood her whole life.
The cool night air washed over Finnley in waves as he followed, a light breeze whispering through his hair and rustling his clothes, breathing down his neck. Allie’s hair did not move. Perhaps it should’ve unsettled him, but it didn’t. Allie walked forward and he trailed behind as if caught in a trance.

Focused as he was on her spectral form, he didn’t notice the edge of the sidewalk coming up in the dark until he tripped over it, barely catching himself in time. He brushed off his hands as quickly as he could, but when he looked up again, Allie was gone. The forest was a smear of darkness before him, the streetlights a halo of light behind, and Finnley was terribly, painfully alone. 

Note: I had the brief idea that I should combine this with the first chapter because there's not a lot of movement in the beginning of it, and both are relatively short. Any thoughts?