All We Ever Wanted(21)
“Good. Well, then. Thank you all for coming,” Walter said, shaking my hand, then Kirk’s. Finally, he turned to Finch and said, “Okay, young man. You may return to class.”
“Yes, sir,” Finch said, getting to his feet. He glanced at his father, then stood up a little straighter.
“Anything else you want to say here, son?” Kirk prodded him.
Finch nodded, took a deep breath, then shifted his gaze from his father to Walter. “I just want to say…that I’m very sorry, again, for all the trouble I’ve caused, and I’m ready to take the consequences, whatever they may be.”
His words sounded sincere, and I had to believe that he was genuinely remorseful. After all, he was my son. He just had to be sorry.
But as Walter nodded and patted him once on the back, I caught a glint of determination in Finch’s eyes. Something that channeled his father and made me shiver a little inside.
It was official. I hated my life. Like literally everything about it. I mean, I knew it could be way worse. I could be homeless or have a terminal disease or live in a country where militants throw acid on girls when they try to go to school. But beyond those kinds of true tragedies, it was really hard to find anything to be grateful for lately.
For starters, my dad had busted me for drinking and was really upset and angry and disappointed in me (the disappointed part hurt the worst). Second, there was a photo of my boob, nipple and all, being passed all around school. But I probably could have gotten over those two things. Because I knew Dad would eventually forgive me, and the photo, while humiliating, at least wasn’t ugly. It was actually sort of artsy and cool, even though I’d never have admitted that to anyone. Even my best friend, Grace, said I looked good in it. My hair was arranged perfectly on the bed. And my black slip dress was super cute, worth every dollar of my babysitting money. Honestly, the shot almost looked like I posed for it, minus the nipple. The nipple was what made it so horrible. And the caption about the green card, which was so rude to immigrants. It made me think of the Sayed family, whose backyard abutted ours and who were just about the nicest people you could ever imagine. They’d actually become American citizens a couple years back (I babysat their toddler during their ceremony), but I knew they still got anti-Muslim you-don’t-belong-here type comments from a few losers in our neighborhood. Mostly, though, we lived near really cool people—lots of artists and musicians—people who would never say something so offensive and bigoted.
So yeah, I got why Dad was upset about the nipple and caption. I did. But the part that really crushed my heart was that Finch Browning was responsible for it all. The boy I’d been obsessed with for going on two years. Finch was a popular senior—way out of my league—and had a beautiful girlfriend named Polly, who was as perfect as he was. In other words, it was a waste of time for me to like him, even before this happened. But you can’t help the way you feel—and my feelings were real. Grace, who is very protective of me, sometimes annoyingly so, tried to tell me that it was just a stupid crush. After all, she said, I didn’t really know him. But I felt like I did know him, that’s how closely I observed him, day in and day out. I knew, for example, that Finch was on the quiet, serious side compared to the other loud boys in his friend group, but he could be really funny in a sarcastic, low-key way. I knew that he was very smart and in all honors classes. His locker was insanely organized, and the inside of his car was clean and neat (I may have peeked in it a time or two), and he was never late or rushing to class at second bell. He had his shit together. Of course his executive functioning, as our guidance counselors called it, wasn’t the main attraction. As is often the case with a crush, there was just something about him that drew me to him. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.
Finch was just so, so cute. I loved his wavy blond hair and his deep blue eyes and the confident way he walked and how hot he looked in his basketball uniform (although he managed to look really good in his school uniform, too). Mostly, though, I loved the way he looked at me. I remembered the first time he ever gave me that look. It was last year, on about the third day of school, back when I was brand new. We were in the dining hall, both of us putting up our trays after lunch, and he gave me a double take, followed by a slight smile. It melted me, and it wasn’t the last time it happened. There was something undeniable between us—something that wasn’t one-sided. A little charge of electricity.
About three months ago, when I’d finally admitted my feelings to Grace, and told her about Finch’s ongoing eye contact with me, she tried to say that he was just flirty that way, and that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. He would never break up with Polly. But even she had to admit that it meant something when he started following me on Instagram, going back and liking several of my older selfies. At the very least, we agreed, he thought I was pretty.
Then, last Friday, we got the invite to Beau’s party. Once again, we were in the dining hall, only this time Finch came up to me and Grace as we stood in the salad-bar line.
“Hey,” he said, looking right at me.
“Hey,” I said back, dying inside.
“What’re you girls doing tomorrow night?” he asked.
I started to tell him the truth, which was absolutely nothing, but Grace gave him some other answer about various options we had.
“Well, Beau’s having a few people over. If you want to stop by, that’d be cool.”