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FINNEY AND CHERRY HID BENEATH THEIR PILLOW FORT!
He had tried to urge her to stay away. To distance himself from her, but all it took was one ask and he was back at her side.
They stared up at the blanket ceiling, neither of them finding anything to say.
"Can I ask you something?" Finney asked, turning his head to face the girl lying beside him. "You were a straight-A student. Top of the class. Then you just stopped showing up. Why?"
Cherry shrugged, before dropping the next sentence like it was nothing. "My mom killed herself a couple of months ago." Her voice was so quiet, like it wasn't real.
Finney took in her words and her blank expression as she let her eyes look up at the ceiling.
Her voice didn't even strain as she kept talking. "How can she just be here and then decide not to be? Why wasn't I enough to make her stay?"
"It wasn't about you."He informed, offering one of his hands to her. "How could it have been your fault?"
She took his hand in hers, wrapping her other one around their cupped hands like she was trying to provide him a sort of comfort, even though she needed it.
"I just don't know how I ended up here." She told him, her eyes staring at nothing like she wasn't processing what she was saying.
"In this house or this moment?" He asked, trying not to let his gaze linger on their intertwined hands.
"Here. School. With my friends. None of it's real. How do you do it, Finn? Hang out with people you hate?"
"I don't know. But it's a whole lot better than being depressed, right? When it really comes down to it, you're the only person who can make yourself feel bad."
Cherry stared up at the ceiling, praying that no tears were pricking at her eyes.
All of the negativity she'd harbored after her mom's death, all of her pent-up resentment for the people around her, was her own doing.
She didn't have anyone to blame.
"I wish I didn't have to feel any of this." She pleaded into the air.
"It's better to feel too much than nothing at all." Finney told her, removing his hands from hers.
"I can't ever have anything. It all gets ruined. All of it. Even you."
"That isn't true. How do you know that?"
"You don't understand. I can't have it. I don't deserve it."
