Afterwards, at home, I lie awake weighing up the pros and cons of Finn and Carla: The Sequel. It’s not looking good. Hollywood Execs would not take a risk on this script.
PROS
So gorgeous.
Doesn’t study much.
Does a lot of drugs.
Makes me feel things I’ve never felt.
Has cool friends.
Awesome mountainboarder.
SAYS HE LOVES ME.
CONS
Knows he’s gorgeous.
Keeps me from studying.
Makes me feel like I should do drugs when he does.
The comedowns are like repeatedly walking into a cactus while throwing up your own lungs and stomach, with a tiny person sitting on one shoulder scraping their nails down a blackboard and another in your head shouting paranoid thoughts over and over until you crack with depression and fall into a broken, sweaty sleep.
Sienna and Lauren don’t like him.
Can be a show-off.
Lied about his ex. Of THREE YEARS.
Who, by the way, is a totally freaking bona fide hottie. (Bitch.)
Makes me feel like a prize twat for trusting him.
I’m not sure the last pro really counts.
Has anything about him been real?
After a sleepless night, I get up to a dreary day and an even gloomier state of mind. Am I ready for another day of panic-revision, panic-plagiarism, ohmygod-I’m-so-unprepared-for-my-exams-super-freaking-out panic stations? Um, no. Even though I know how important it is for me to get the schoolwork done, it’s still second on my To Do list. I feel like … like … fucking GGGGggRRRRRrrrrRRRrrrrr!
I reread the pros and cons list and know what I have to do. But first, I need to find out the truth about Finn and Violet.
In school, I’m on edge. Wound tight, like a jack-in-the-box. I nibble at my fingernails, pulling at the skin with my teeth.
Turning into a corridor, I see Violet and Finn at the other end, heading out of the fire escape. I’ve geared myself up to end it for real with Finn, but I’m curious, too. Is he really as bad as Isaac made out and Sienna and Lauren say? I have to see it with my own eyes.
I have to see him kiss her.
I have to follow them.
I peel myself off the wall and walk to the corner of the PE block. The fire-escape door is open and I hear the screech of after-school basketball practice. I smell rubber and sweat. I peek at the ducks and dives of the B-team blue vests, and glimpse a red vest A-teamer sink a hoop. Four dozen rubber soles collide with the gym’s polished floor like a chorus of chirping birds. Shreeep … shreeep…
There’s a garage-cum-storeroom-cum-junkpit beyond the Astroturf courts. Everybody calls it the Asbestos Shed. It’s a sheltered area, tucked right at the back of the campus. Finn and Violet step inside and I grimace, thinking about what they might do in there, hidden away.
I stop about six feet from the wall of the shed.
I hear talking.
“Twenty. You know it’s twenty, Slink. Always has been.” Finn’s voice, cocksure and commanding, but still with a playful edge, echoes around the walls.
I summon the courage to move closer to the slightly open door. My breathing sounds loud in my ears. Slinky pipes up.
“I ain’t got twenty, but look, I got these. Come on. I know you do swapsies sometimes and I’ve really got to have some smoke for the weekend. Bro. Please. You know I’m good for it almost always.” He says “always” like the longer he says it the more true it will become.
“What you got, Mr Slinky, what you got?” Finn rubs his hands together, grinning like an excited shop assistant at a new delivery of the latest iPhone. “Don’t keep me waiting, Slink!”
“Knew you’d be game. Survey the goods.” The lanky dude pulls out a plastic press-lock bag, teeny-tiny, a couple of inches across. I can just about see something white in it. “2CBs. They’re a bit trippy.”
“Nice.” Finn takes the baggie and gives the weed to Slinky. “There’s an eighth there. Here’s yours, Vi.”
Violet takes a baggie full of pills from Finn.
“My hero.” She hides it in her bra, kisses him on the cheek and gets up to leave. I move behind the shed so she won’t see me, then start to cross the field, aiming for a gap in the fence where I can get out and walk the long route around the school grounds and back in through the front gate.
No one suspects the butterfly. They never dream that a creature so enchanting could be so deadly. The Monarch is captivating, intricately beautiful; its striking orange and black patterned wings are one of nature’s greatest works of art, but it has a secret. During its time as a caterpillar, it feeds on toxic milkweed, making it poisonous to birds and mammals and dangerous to the human heart. If Finn were a butterfly, I know which he would be.
It’s all starting to make sense. That day at the mountainboarding festival when Finn came back with a black eye. A deal gone wrong. And there was that time I saw Violet give him something. Money for drugs? I’ve been so caught up thinking they were flirting I haven’t had room in my head for the truth.
Finn may not be cheating on me.
But he’s dealing.
He lied about cutting out the drugs.
This is so messed up.
I schedule an emergency chat with Sal for this evening. I don’t tell her about the drugs, only that he lied about Violet and that I saw them together.
“Ditch him. Now,” she says, straight to the point as usual. I sigh and she asks, “Do you love him?”
“Thought I did.”
“Look, it boils down to this: You can’t be in love if you’re not in love.”
Her voice sounds tinny over the phone.
“That’s deep, Sal.”
“Hey, people pay for advice like that. You’re getting it for free. Seriously, he’s bad news. Cut him loose.”
“It’s just, he’s got a hold on me.”
“Well, get unheld.”
“OK. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”
“I’ll fire up the awesomobile to get you from the coach station.”
“You’ve still got that wreck?”
“Of course. It’s been in Mum’s garage, sleeping.”
“All right.”
“All right, what?”
“I’ll end it.”
“Good girl.”
I’ll do it. I’ll break up with him. I will.