Fight With Fire

30

"When people performed in theaters, they needed these lighting booths for the crew. The backstage people would control everything to make the show run smoothly." Finn explains as we look out over the theater from above in the lighting booth.

There are two parts to the lighting booth. The main part, the one we are in, has a desk with panels with switches and buttons, rolling chairs tucked under the desk, and big black out windows looking over the audience and stage. The second part is behind a small door opposite to the doorway to the stairs. It is a smaller room that looks like a supply closet but is now cleared out.

"I just thought you would want a quiet place to go now that you gave up the library." Finn says scratching his neck subconsciously. I smile and wrap my arms around his waist.

"Thank you." I say tucking my head against his chest. Finn chuckles softly squeezing my shoulders.

"Do you want to play a game?" Finn says as he leads me into the second smaller room.

"What game?" I ask watching Finn slide a pile of thin books in front of us as we sit side by side on the floor.

"These are children's books. This one is a book version of I spy." Finn takes the book from the top and starts flipping through it. "So there is a list of items that we need to find on the left of each page. I will start from the bottom of the list and you will start from the top. Whoever finds more wins a point."

Finn flips the page to a beach scene and we start finding items: umbrella, shovel, bucket, mermaid, red hat, blue hat, yellow hat. They keep going and we keep searching until we are both looking for the last item: the rainbow fish. First we were both searching the water, examining every fish but none of them were more than one colour.

"There! Rainbow fish! I win!" I said pointing to a little boy on the side of the page who is holding up a small blue, purple, yellow, orange, green, and red fish.

"Oh come on! How are you supposed to find a fish when it isn't in the water?" Finn complains making me laugh. "This is not over Sanders! We're just starting."

I don't know how much time passes but I don't care. Finn and I went through the book, searching in graveyards, forests, and desserts. The final page was a classroom. We have found every item but the scissors but we aren't in a hurry because I am already winning by so much.

"I can't find them." I say moving back from the book and giving up on the search.

"You know what this reminds me of?" Finn asks smiling at me. He gave up looking for the scissors pretty quickly and is sitting with his back against the wall. I close the book and move to sit across from Finn with my back against the wall. The room is so small that Finn's legs almost touch the wall next to me.

"What?" I ask staring into his green eyes. I am so relaxed in this moment that I can't imagine leaving.

"When we were in our 5th year here and we were making something with paper. The twins had thrown all the scissors out the window except for one pair. I think it was Blake who found them and when everyone saw him they all charged for the scissors. When everyone finally separated, a bunch of people had cuts, Olivia had her eyebrow cut off, and then there was you. "Finn is laughing so much it is hard to understand what he was saying. "Everyone turned to see you with the scissors sticking out of your leg and blood everywhere. We were all waiting for you to explode but when you noticed them you just said 'Ha ha, I got the scissors'."

"Well you would've rubbed it in too if you came out of that with the scissors." We both laugh and Finn shakes his head in mock disappointment. I punch him playfully and he laughs harder.

"Do you remember when we had the paper airplane mail system? We would write notes and instead of passing them around, we would fold them up into mini paper airplanes and throw them across the room. Except they would never end up where they were supposed to." Finn's eyes squint in amusement when he laughs and they dance when he talks about the past. He must miss being young because then he didn't have to worry about accidentally bumping into people. He could also have a normal conversation without others making sure they didn't say anything to infuriate him. "So you couldn't chose who the note was to. I would always get these notes with drawings of dogs pooping." Finn laughs at the memory. I don't add to the story even though I remember it because I'm afraid I'll bring him back to the reality. "The teacher didn't care and whenever they'd land on her desk she's read them allowed. Most of the time they would just say 'hi' but sometimes they would really funny." Finn laughs again and then his gaze lands on me.

"What about that time that all you guys were trying to show off and you tried to do a backflip. You hit your head on your desk knocking it over in the process." I start trying to get Finn laughing again.

"The pencils!" Finn interrupts and laughs. "I remember that I was stealing everyone's pencils. When the desk feel over the pencils went everywhere and everyone started tripping on them."

"You were legend when we were younger. Remember when you helped everyone escape the classroom and we all went to play on the giant structure."

"You're the one calling me a legend? The only reason I remember the escape because of your giant fall after." I narrowed my eyebrows. "Do you not remember?" He asked and I shook my head. "While we were all playing on the structure, you climbed up on top of the giant dome over on top. I still don't know how you got up there. Anyway, as soon as we all noticed you fell right off. But you weren't hurt or anything. You landed on your feet and started running around."

"Are you sure that happened?" I ask laughing at the story but still not believing it's real.

"Of course! Ask anyone." Finn answers defensively. I smile seeing Finn completely comfortable. I have never taken the time to notice how his eyebrows knit together when he's thinking or how he constantly taps his fingers on the floor in a steady beat or how you can tell exactly how he feels by studying his beautiful green eyes. He stares at me for a long time almost daring me to look away.

"There are the scissors by the way." I say as I break the prolonged eye contact to point them out. Finn just shakes his head slowly before reaching behind him.

"Now let's play a game that I have a chance at." Finn says holding up a small box that I soon learn has 52 cards. They all have different numbers and symbols on them. Finn explains some basic principles and how the cards work. "Some of the card games can be very hard but we're going to work our way through all of them." I nodded as Finn started dealing us each a small pile of cards.

"What are we playing?" I ask picking up and sorting my deck. Finn smiles at me over his cards.

"Go fish."