“I don’t know if this is a good idea.” Priya stands unsteadily in a pair of bright orange rental skates. “I can barely walk in this dress, never mind skate.”
“Maybe you can pull it up above your knees to get more range of motion?” I suggest.
“Or just hold onto the railing,” Theo offers.
“We waited in that huge ass line. We’re going skating. All of us,” Hannah shuts down her complaints.
Our group ventures onto the ice. The famous Rockefeller tree looms over the rink and pop music blares through the speakers. When the song changes to “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays” by *NSYNC, I whip around to face the group so I can lip-sync the lyrics at them while skating backward. “This song was my jam as a kid.”
“Oh, you think you’re the only one with moves,” Hannah teases, “I took skating lessons as a kid. Watch this!” She lifts one skate off the ice, bringing her leg back into a low arabesque. She wobbles on her standing leg before putting her foot down. The whole thing lasts about three seconds.
“I used to be more flexible and remember that being much more impressive,” she admits.
From my new angle skating backwards, facing the group, I see Priya hugging the wall a few yards behind us. I feel partially responsible for forcing her into this, and now she’s clearly struggling. I skate back to her and offer my arm.
“Hang onto me instead,” I tell her. “I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”
“I think I’m getting off after this lap.”
“Don’t do that! Seriously, I’ve got you. I’m a great skater.” I speed up ahead of her and execute a quick circle, doing the fancy crossovers I taught myself at the roller rink as a kid. “See!”
I skate back to her side and grab her arm, pulling us forward to catch up with the group. The song changes to “Mistletoe” by Justin Bieber and I steer us to avoid a group of young kids pushing traffic cones around the ice for balance, all but dragging Priya along.
“You’re going too fast,” she complains.
“All you have to do is hang on. Trust me!”
“Finn, I’m going to—”
Before she can finish her sentence, her skate catches on a divot in the ice and she step-step-steps trying to find her balance. There’s the sound of fabric ripping and silver beads spray over the ice. “Motherfucker,” Priya swears under her breath, but at least she’s regained her footing.
“That’s bad language,” a pigtailed girl in a pink coat stops short to chastise Priya.
Time slows down as Priya crashes into the tattletale kid. I feel her arm unlink with mine and watch with horror as she falls. Hard.
nineteen
Hannah
Christmas #10, 2017
My dad died.
The minute Finn says those three words, our fight is forgotten. I rush to him and wrap my arms around his middle. His face crumples into the top of my head, tears soaking into my hair, while Theo yells at the video camera in the corner.
“Brian, we’ve got a real emergency in here!” He waves his arms overhead like he’s signaling a plane on a desert island.
“C’mon, Brian, don’t be a wanker,” he tries again, and slams his palm against the door for emphasis. I’ve never seen Theo lose his temper, but all signs point to us being close.
After the longest two minutes of my life, Brian opens the door. “Sorry!” He’s out of breath and red-faced. “I was in the bathroom. I didn’t see you. I thought it would be fine. No one finishes in less than an hour. It’s our hardest room!”
The five of us brush past him into the cramped lobby without acknowledging his apology.
“Please don’t leave us a bad review,” he pleads, hovering on the outskirts of the circle we’ve formed around Finn, who has collapsed onto a shabby olive-green couch with his head in his hands.
Jeremy crouches in front of him, placing one hand on each of Finn’s knees. “What do you need?” he asks helplessly.
The rest of us don’t wait to be told what he needs and spring into action. I feel desperate to do something, anything to take his pain away, but I don’t know how, so I settle for getting him a glass of water while Priya conscripts a box of tissues from the check-in desk.
“There’s a five o’clock flight out of JFK,” Theo says as he scrolls through flights on his phone. “And a six p.m. out of LaGuardia.”
“Wait a second,” I interrupt. Four sets of eyes swivel toward me, even Finn’s. “Do you actually want to go?” This is directed at Finn, the first words I’ve spoken to him in a year. “You don’t have to, you know.”
“I don’t know,” he answers. His eyes dart around the circle like one of us might have the answer. “I probably should, right?”
“Fuck ‘should.’?” I sit down on the couch next to him and press my shoulder into his. “I asked, do you want to? Because you don’t have to.”
Finn takes a beat to deliberate. My heart breaks as I watch him. What an impossible position his father has put him in. If he wasn’t dead, I’d leave him a scathing voicemail right now. How dare he leave his son—his wonderful, warm, caring son—to be the bigger person. How dare he leave this world without making things right with him.
“I think I want to go,” Finn says. “Or, I don’t want to go so much as I’m afraid that, if I don’t, I’ll regret it.”
“So it’s a yes, then?” Theo asks. He has his credit card out, poised to enter it into whatever travel app he’s using. He looks at me for approval.
Finn nods at me.
“It’s a yes,” I confirm with the gravitas of a five-star general choreographing a military operation.
“Four seats or five?” Theo asks. “Jeremy, are you coming?”
Jeremy looks up from where he’s squatting in front of Finn. He looks like a deer caught in headlights. “Me? I can’t . . . ,” he says to Theo instead of Finn, like he knows enough to be embarrassed by his refusal.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now, Jeremy?” I snap.
“I have to work tomorrow. I need to feed my sea anemones or else I’ll have to start my experiment all over again.” This is undoubtedly the lamest excuse of all time.
* * *
? ? ?
?Theo, Priya, and I are all in middle seats on the six o’clock flight out of LaGuardia. When the airline upgraded Theo to first class on account of his frequent-flier status, he insisted Finn take his seat.
Before the flight, Theo and Priya ran home to pack a bag, while I went with Finn to his apartment to help him pack. I didn’t notice Jeremy had slinked away until the taxi pulled away from the curb at the escape room and it was only the two of us in the back seat, Finn clutching my hand in a vise grip on the cracked vinyl bench between us. I considered telling the driver to stop so I could go back and yell at Jeremy for his cowardice, but it’s probably better this way, just the four of us.
At his apartment, Finn sat on the couch catatonic, while I threw open drawers and closets and cabinets doing my best to round up everything he might need for the next few days. Boxer briefs, razor, toothbrush, pajamas. I threw in a worn copy of The Magicians from his bookshelf in case he couldn’t sleep on the plane. I know it’s his favorite and figured he could use some comfort right now.