Just Like We Planned

I had applied to Boston College after I saw the place while on vacation, doubting I’d get in and, more importantly, doubting my mother would help foot the bill if I didn’t choose a place near enough that she could stop by any random day she felt like making sure that I remembered to eat now that she wasn’t around, or some other completely screwed up reason to believe that I couldn’t survive on my own. But for some completely bizarre, hard to believe reason I got a letter in the mail around Christmas with the most life-changing word inscribed on the heading: “Congratulations!” I was half expecting to see it addressed to some "Katherine" O' Malley or some other name that could have been confused with mine and sent to me by mistake. And even more surprising was how insane she thought me, after taking a look at the financial aid package I had been offered, for even hesitating to make up my mind, though of course, it still was not without crying as if I had died in a freak bus accident. With in a short amount of time she had returned to normalness and was getting out her check book to make out the first payment.
But I was the hesitant one. I wasn’t crazy. Boston was about a half a day away from home. I was okay with leaving my parents behind; I was supposed to be okay with that. I was eighteen for heaven’s sake, you were daft if you weren’t jumping for joy. But it wasn’t just my parents whom I was leaving behind, but my friends, the few I had. I didn’t have an overabundance of them like some girls did in high school. Whereas they had a whole address book full, I could count mine on one hand. But for me it wasn’t about the numbers, but about how much they cared and how much I could count on them to be there for me, ice cream in hand, when I was having a particularly bad day. There was rarely a day that went by when I didn’t see them, either by some preplanned day of gallivanting around town, some spur of the moment need to hang out at the local coffee shop and just catch up on the last twenty-four hours of our lives that had passed since we all had last seen each other, or just random occurrences when we’d stumble upon each others’ presences while downtown; our town was only so big and it would happen more often than one would think. The more I thought of it, the more bizarre it seemed that there would be one day in the not so distant future that we’d have to go weeks or months at a time with only phone calls and quirky little email messages to keep us from drifting apart.
Of the whole list of different colleges we were all planning on attending, mine was the furthest away. They were all staying safely within the confines of our lovely state of Pennsylvania, but I and my over rebellious, overly optimistic, need to escape everything that seemed to be holding me back from being completely and utterly happy with my life and where it was going, made me feel as if that was about the last thing I ever wanted to do. The one thing that made it okay was the little bit of hope that maybe Finn would follow me. I could get past my other friends leaving for college, all of us scattering in different directions, because it just seemed natural. It was a step we were all taking at the same time, just another thing to bond us all together. Sure, Finn and I were leaving at the same time as well, but Finn was different; with Finn it was always different.
Carey Finnegan, "Finn", and I had been friends ever since we were both still sea monkeys. Our parents were neighbors; our mothers, best friends. So naturally, we became likewise, though minus the gossiping over a day of shoe shopping; though I can’t say I never tried that of course. Unlike my other friends, he had been there for absolutely everything. He had been the one with whom I went crayfish-catching when I was about seven, and happened to be the one who helped me back home after I had fallen in, my knees skinned and my clothes completely drenched. And then years on down the line I had been the one help him, not back home, but to our old abandoned barn to sleep off his terrible first night of drinking, his parents asleep at home none the wiser. If there were ever two more inseparable people…well, there wasn’t. We were the two most inseparably bonded people I had ever met, like even those weird cases of Siamese twins joined at the head that you see on the Discovery health channel all the time. We were them, but much less inconvenient.
I guess I just had assumed that because Finn had been a part of every stage of my past, we’d continue to sail through life side by side like that was how it had always been meant to be. He had been such a part of my life that life didn’t feel like it would be life if he played a lesser role in it. We had grown up talking about how we’d finally get out of this town and that we would do it together, side by side. He had tossed around the idea of going to Boston and about trying his best to actually make a living off of his hobby of music. We leafed through books of information about one particular place, Boston College, which was conveniently a good place for writers and musicians like ourselves. Our eyes bugged out with excitement, like kids at Disneyland…and then, in a snap decision, he just changed his mind. The deadline came and went, and his blank application still sat upon his desk. We were leaving for college in a week, and rather that heading off in the same direction, he was backing up for some small public college only a few hours away from home, and for all intents and purposes I was moving a whole world away.
Part of me was insanely angry, but even more angry about how unjustified the emotion was. It wasn’t as if he didn’t get in, that he decided in the end that some other school was better suited for him, but that he didn’t even try. I never officially asked why he did it, but it was as if he wanted it to not even be an option for himself, like he was looking for an excuse for me as to why he was bailing on everything we had talked about ten times over. But then again, I couldn’t expect him to base his whole future on what plans I had just because his weren’t as neurotically figured out as mine had been for years now. I had always agreed with the statement that you should never schedule your future around other people because they might not always be there, that you should do what you believe what is right, not follow someone else and their path for the future, but tread in the way that you think is right for your own…and all that other philosophical junk. He couldn’t just toss out his plans simply to appease me, and if he did with that as his only motivation, it wouldn’t have made me any happier to tell you the truth. But for the longest time I had just assumed that our destinies ran parallel to each others', rather than completely askew.
He was going to be my lifeline, as he pretty much was already. I thought he was going to be the one thing to most easily convince my mother that I would not in fact die if I moved to a city any bigger that tiny old Aberdeen. Sure, Finn wasn’t the biggest, most intimidating guy imaginable, but by my mother’s definition, he was a guy and therefore capable of keeping young little defenseless me out of harm’s way. He would live next door, not with me of course because mother found that some how inappropriate for two youthful co-eds. She had never understood things between us in our high school days; she was most definitely not going to believe the platonic nature of two mixed gender friends when out of range of her little microscope. But for some reason, even though her tiny mind believed that as soon as we were out of her sight he and I would suddenly believe that rampant sexcapades between the two of us would be a brilliant idea, she would at least know that I was alive and breathing if he was around. It was the lesser of two evils. But he wasn’t going, so I guess in that respect she would be marginally happy. Some how, some way, she had managed to rearrange her logic. I would be journeying to the city alone, and she had granted me her permission, albeit warily, to go. Maybe she wanted some slasher to crawl in my bathroom window and do away with me, but our relationship wasn’t nearly that screwed up for me to believe such a thing. Maybe it was only me who thought things would be better if Finn was just there living next door in case I needed him.
I decided to go to Boston anyway, though not without a little whining and complaining, mostly to myself, about my self-centered disappointment. And of course I didn’t do so without a hint of bitterness, the thought that I was going to make sure that I had a better time than I could have ever imagined I would have had tugging around Finn’s dead weight. He was meant to pursue his future at Mansfield just as I knew in all of my being that Boston College was where I belonged and I had to understand that. I was going to be okay with his decision, just as he was okay with mine. I was going to smile and nod and be happy for him, but secretly I was going to make him regret not coming along with all of the crazy, unimaginably fun, stories I’d have to tell after a few months…hopefully.