He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts as he walked up the steps to the gray house just off Brattle Street in Cambridge. It was impossible to come home and not have a moment of pain. There would always be the split second of anticipation that Finn would be there. That he might come bounding down the stairs to tackle Matt in a spontaneous wrestling match, or that his music might be blasting so loudly from his room that the entire house would tremble from the booming bass. Matt would probably never get over it, but each day he had a touch of happiness in that moment of blind hope. He shook his head again.
He was edgy tonight, too, because it was impossible not to worry about what had gone on while he’d been at school today. Julie was an unknown factor that had played into Celeste’s day. Even Julie’s reassurances over the phone that Celeste was fine hadn’t comforted him much, because he didn’t like anyone else being involved. And saying that things were “fine” just had to be inaccurate. Things were never “fine” with Celeste. Even if picking up Celeste from school hadn’t been an outright disaster, something unusual, or strained, or difficult must have taken place. Julie had no long-term experience with Celeste, and just because Julie had done well with his sister over the matter of a few days didn’t mean that she knew what to say. And what not to say. It wouldn’t take much to push Celeste over the edge, and for all Matt knew, he was walking into a house now filled with a hundred Flat Finns. A Flat Army poised to defend and protect Celeste.
Matt would grab whatever leftovers he could find in the fridge and duck up to his room. He had a long night of schoolwork ahead of him.
It was immediately obvious when he stepped into the house that something was off, but he couldn’t quite narrow down what that something was. He could feel the tension in his shoulders increase as he walked into the kitchen, and he felt as though all of his senses were malfunctioning.
Julie turned to him and smiled. Without meeting her eyes, Matt set his messenger bag on one of the stools by the breakfast counter. He looked at the plate in front of him.
“What is this?”
“It’s a gastronomical representation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Julie put her hands on her hips. Her dark hair was in a loose ponytail, and she had on rolled-up jeans and a light, flowy top. “Don’t you see it?” she continued. “The clear depiction of the struggle for sexual identity as evidenced by the two phallic shapes?”
Matt stared at her. This girl was confusing. “What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about? It’s manicotti, you nut. What do you think it is?”
“I know that.” Even though Julie had just used the words sexual and phallic, he still had brain function, for God’s sake. “I was referencing the noticeable absence of takeout cartons. You made dinner?”
“Celeste and I made dinner,” Julie corrected him.
“And they did a wonderful job.” His mother appeared and placed her wine glass on the counter.
Matt briefly registered that Erin was drinking, but the lure of the food in front of him dulled any concern he had about that. He immediately sat down and started eating, barely hearing his mother as she talked to Julie. An actual home-cooked dinner? And … Celeste helped do this? This was entirely weird. But, God, did it taste good. Matt didn’t normally care for manicotti, but this dinner seemed like the best thing he’d ever eaten.
Someone had cooked for him. What a stupid thing to think. Or to care about.
“You’re home late. How was school? Did your meeting go well?” Erin asked.
Matt nodded and wiped his mouth with a napkin. A cloth napkin, at that. “Very good. Sorry I’m home late. And even sorrier that I’ve managed to double my workload by agreeing to be a research assistant.” This was also adding to Matt’s stress level. He would potentially be spending more time at school and therefore be less available to Celeste. Finding a way to make this work was going to be difficult.
“This is with Professor Saunders, correct? He has an excellent reputation, so this is an important opportunity for you.” Erin took a sip of her wine, and Matt looked away. “You’ll have to be incredibly diligent with your work.”
“I realize that.” Like he needed reminding about anything related to his academics. It wasn’t as though Matt had a long history of completely screwing up in school—he’d gotten into MIT, after all—yet his mother frequently implied that his education was somehow perilously hanging in the balance, and he might just crash off the academia scale at any given moment. “In fact,” Matt said as he stood up, “I should get upstairs and get to work. I’ll finish dinner up there. Thanks, Julie.” He took his bag and plate and started out of the kitchen. It had been a long day, and the last thing he needed was to be around Erin and her air of doubt around his competence. He stopped at the doorway. “Julie?”
“Yeah?”
“So things went all right today?” Asking her to pick up Celeste today had taken every ounce of nerve he had. But once—just once—he hadn’t wanted to drop what he was doing to attend to his sister. But he felt awful about it, as though he had let down Celeste yet again. Meeting with his professor had been important to him, because as much as he loathed the way his mother rode him constantly about his education, she hadn’t managed to kill his insatiable interest in learning. He’d delayed a year of school after Finn died. Wasn’t that enough to let him off the hook for asking Julie for help today? No, it wasn’t really. One day could change everything. He knew that all too well.
“Totally fine. I told you that when you called. Both times,” she said.
He admired the tone in her voice, the same one that she used a number of times the day they went apartment hunting. It actually was a bit Finn of her. She wasn’t being mean or making fun of him, but she could get away with slightly teasing him without making him feel bad. The way that she treated him like… well, like a normal person… was slightly jarring. Nice, but jarring in its familiarity. And he was both grateful and anxious from the lack of detail that she offered about the pickup.
“Okay. Thanks again.”
When he reached his room, he shut the door, opened his laptop and finished his dinner. He browsed a few of the message boards that he frequented and tried to focus on fine-tuning his attack on another user’s take on internet security. Matt loved internet security issues, but tonight his concentration was shaky. Eventually he caved to what he really wanted to do, which was check an e-mail account that he used on occasion, the one that the he used to write Celeste so that she could pretend to get e-mails from Finn. It was part of a fantasy world that she liked to maintain, a world in which Finn was still alive and sending her updates on his travels. Yes, it was a little crazy, but Matt knew that Celeste understood it was essentially a game. She knew it wasn’t real. Even Matt had to admit that there were moments when he didn’t mind concocting stories and tweaking pictures. He’d even made that Facebook page under “Finn is God” because he knew that Celeste would then sit with him on occasion and browse through photos and silly status updates. All this Finn stuff often seemed to be the only thing that drew Celeste into him. Or drew anyone into him, maybe.
Of course, he hadn’t planned on Julie sending Finn is God a friend request on Facebook. Or writing to him. It was so incredibly stupid to have replied to that first message when she let him know that she was staying in his room for a few days, but… hell, Matt just hadn’t been thinking. And the lie had already been set up, so he’d just gone with it. What was the alternative? Write her back and say, Actually, Julie, this isn’t Finn. It’s Matt, across the hall. Sorry, but Finn is dead, and my mother gave me a sharp one-liner about how we were all going to stick with Celeste’s preferred version of events just to make things easier, and that was that. No hard feelings? If Matt were honest with himself, he’d allow that it had been surprisingly nice to hide behind that degree of anonymity when he wrote her back. Julie would never meet this fictional Finn, so what did it really matter anyway? It wasn’t as if she would be around for very long. Nobody was around for very long because then they couldn’t all act like lunatics by letting Celeste pretend that Finn was alive and well and cleaning up elephant dung in Africa or whatnot.