You Have a Match(69)

“But then—my mom just—left.”

He says it with the bewilderment of someone it just happened to, like he’s not stuck in this tree, but stuck in the leaving. I wait him out, thinking he’ll go on, but he’s miles from these tree branches, somewhere I can’t reach.

“Like she left your dad, or…”

Finn shakes his head, a piece of him coming back. “I mean—she just—came into my room one morning and told me she was going to Chicago to see my uncle, and did I want to come, and I said yeah. She said she’d wait for me downstairs. And I said, ‘Wait, right now?’ and she said yes, and I said ‘I have school,’ and—” Finn’s ramble stops like a train that yanked its brakes, realizing it was about to go off the tracks. “I mean, I was barely even awake. I didn’t think…”

It’s almost fully dark. Whatever chance we had of using the sun’s light to get us down is a lost cause, so I stop trying to rush him. I sit and let the time go with us.

“She lives there now, in Chicago. She just decided she didn’t want to be with my dad anymore, so she left us both.”

I latch on to what he said before, knowing it won’t help but at a loss for what else to say. “But she wanted you to come with her.”

Finn lets out a terse breath, finally moving his forehead off the tree to look at me. “No, she didn’t. Not if she asked me like that, she didn’t. You only ask someone something like that if you want the answer to be no.”

I glance into the murky darkness below, trying to understand what might have been going through her head. She didn’t want him to come with her because she knew his world was here. She didn’t want him to feel like he had to say yes and leave everything behind, but still wanted him to know that she loved him. Because sometimes trying to protect people from your own fucked-up decisions is so impossible that there’s no right and wrong way to do it—everything will explode in the end. You can only try to anticipate which direction the explosion will come from.

The thought sidles a little too close to the anger I’m not ready to let go of yet, pricks like a needle trying to deflate it. The trouble is, I understand exactly why my parents did what they did. It just doesn’t change the way I feel about any of it right now.

“It wasn’t a choice. It was a trap. And anyway…” His voice goes low. He doesn’t seem afraid anymore, at least. Only tired. Ashamed. “I messed some things up after that. I told her I hated her and I never wanted to see her again.”

My own fuck you is still rattling like a pinball through the camp.

“You didn’t mean it,” I say.

“I think I did, when I said it.”

We’re quiet for a moment.

“It’s shitty,” he tells me. “The way she left, I mean. I did some stuff I shouldn’t have done. Messed up my grades. My dad made me come back for the whole ‘Reynolds method’ thing basically to punish me, but I think he just doesn’t want to deal with me anymore. And my mom…”

“You thought she’d come home. When shit started going wrong.”

His face tightens, like he’s trying to hold himself still, but his jaw starts to shake. “Your parents were here in the blink of an eye,” he says, sounding younger than he ever has. “They’re still here. And mine are too mad at each other to remember I exist.”

He is staring at the MAKE A WISH sign with enough intensity to set it on fire. I don’t think he even means to. It’s just directly in his line of sight, and there’s too much darkness to look past it and see anything else.

“I thought when I got here that it would help, being with my friends. But they’re all busy with actual camp jobs, and I’m … I got left behind.”

It resonates in a way that I wish it didn’t. It kind of crept up on me, that exact feeling—months of Connie being too busy to hang out, and then heading off for Europe. The shock of Leo leaving for good. Maybe it’s why I’ve been gravitating toward Finn this whole summer. We’re both trying to catch up to people who seem like they’re already gone.

I know he’s thinking the same thing when he says, “I’m glad you’re here, though.”

“Well, I’m probably not the one to be giving advice on families right now,” I admit. “But I think you have to call your mom.”

For once he isn’t fidgeting or trying to stay a step ahead for a laugh. “What am I supposed to do, apologize?”

“Maybe nobody has to say sorry,” I say quietly. “Maybe you just have to talk.”

The words settle there in the branches. We’re closer than we’ve ever been, but entire universes apart—Finn in his bedroom, me in the parking lot, both trying to relive things that happened too fast to fully live when they happened.

Finn interrupts the silence with a groan. “You know, I was gonna spend the summer trying to impress you. And here I am snotting it up stuck in a tree.”

“I mean, I’m still impressed,” I say, trying to lift the mood. “This height’s no joke. You’re basically the alpha of every squirrel on the island now.”

“Except how the hell am I supposed to get back down?”

“Slowly. And at the mercy of Gaby the camp ghost.”