Finn is God is, on this enchanted evening, in love with a wonderful guy.
Julie Seagle Going to write a book called, "Binge, Screw, Loathe." It will be about a hateful woman who travels across the U.S. visiting all-you-can-eat brothels.
Julie giggled at Finn's reference to the musical South Pacific. She knew where he was now.It was the Friday night of Thanksgiving break, and Julie was itching to get back to Boston and end the torture that this trip had become. She hadn't bothered to return any of her friends' phone calls and even had her mom tell callers that she hadn't come home for the break. Since the scene on Thursday, she'd pretty much been holed up in her bedroom working, and except for one snarly conversation about her lousy attitude, her mother had left her alone. She had nearly finished her paper on poverty and took a break from spell-checking to go online.
Her email held twenty-some messages from friends in Ohio wondering why she wasn't home; there was nothing worse than missing the most badass party at Jacob O'Malley's tonight! Whatever. Nothing from Seth, but his parents had decided that the holiday weekend in Vermont was going to be technology-free.She and Celeste had taken to studying at the coffeehouse after school once a week, and Seth had proved to be completely unfazed by Flat Finn's presence. He was an all-around good guy: smart, funny, a hard worker, sweet to Julie, and patient. Between classes, homework, Seth's job, and Julie's long days with Celeste, it'd been hard to get together alone more than once a week, if that. So their relationship was on a slower track than normal. While most of Julie's friends from school spent nearly every night with their boyfriends in the dorms, Julie and Seth were taking it slow. Being responsible. Smart. Methodical.But Julie thought that was a good thing.
They held hands and messed around a little in his car, and Julie wasn't rushing into anything else. So far Seth had understood. Not that he wasn't a good kisser, because he was. And not that Julie didn't have raging hormones, because she did. She just wasn't in a huge rush.A lot of Julie's time was eaten up by the exorbitant amount of schoolwork that she had. She was killing herself to keep up, and it was paying off with excellent grades. Even her calculus class was going better than she'd hoped, and Matt had helped her out more than a few times whenever she'd needed it. For someone so intellectually smug, he was a surprisingly good teacher, and they often studied together at night. So far she hadn't found any opportunity to help him out with anything, of course, but one could hold out hope that there might be an occasion where Matt got stumped.Julie wasn't holding her breath on that one.She stretched her arms above her head and yawned. It was only ten o'clock, but she was worn out.
This trip home had hardly been energizing. She deleted a few more messages and then saw that there was one from Finn. Julie and Finn had been in touch regularly over the past few months. In fact, she checked her email more often than she liked to admit. He liked receiving her updates on Celeste, and she liked all the cool pictures from his travels.She read his email because she was fairly confident that Finn was not going to invite her to an annoying party, make her wear a holiday outfit, or proselytize about why those in poverty deserve what they got.
Julie-Hope your trip home is going well? I'm in the Cook Islands. Fan-freakin'-tastic here!Wanted to give you a heads up: I heard that Flat Finn sustained an injury the other day. Nothing major, though. Something to do with Matt, a steaming iron, and maniacal shouts of, "There are no wrinkles allowed in this house! You may be flat, but you're not smooth enough yet for this family!" From all reports, Matt Dearest had an alarming, fortunately temporary, reaction to the traditional Thanksgiving moo shu pork. Celeste bonked him over the head with an LL Bean umbrella, and he returned to his normal state. I think she should've hit him again, but that's just my opinion.-Finn
Clearly the Watkins household was falling apart in her absence.
Finn-Ohio is... not that great actually. Family members are driving me crazy. Thanksgiving was a nightmare. I spent twenty minutes listening to my oldest cousin reenact some stand-up comedian's routine from Comedy Central (not funny and poor delivery), tried to get my aunt interested in what I was reading in my Eng. Class (failure level=high), observed a paper turkey go up in flames (an appropriate holiday sign regarding good taste), and verbally abused my offensive uncle (well-deserved) in an explosive scene that will live on in memory for years to come.Can't wait to get back to Boston for a million reasons. Need to return to normal. Will assess damage to Flat Finn and berate Matt for his outburst.How are the Cook Islands? The South Pacific must be amazing. Any chance you're awake now? I need someone normal to chat with. I don't know what time it is there...-Julie
Two minutes later, she heard back.
Julie-I'm up. I'm five hours earlier than you are. Turn on FB chat!-Finn
Oh. By chat she hadn't actually meant chat, as in instant message chat. She hadn't felt like IMing with anyone in ages. Not only did she now feel so far removed from her old life, but also she loathed all the IM and texting abbreviations and acronyms. She was a snob like that and knew she fell into the minority of people her age. How was she supposed to know that DQMOT meant Don't quote me on this? And that crap like CUL8ER? Blech. It was all so cutesy and corny. B4N? Seriously, just say goodbye like a normal person. OK, true she used the occasional LOL and WTF, but trying to translate an entire sentence that had been abbreviated into a few letters was more than she wanted to deal with. Julie suspected that billions of brain cells were being killed each hour as people shortened language into indecipherable code. As much as she loved technology, this sort of lingo was one of her top pet peeves. And now she was about to do it again with Finn. She'd probably have to pull up some online dictionary to translate this conversation, but she went on to Facebook's chat anyway.
Julie Seagle
Hey!
Finn is God
Hey, back!
And then she panicked. Well, this had been a dumb idea. Why had she said chat? What was she supposed to say now? It's not like she actually knew Finn, and here she'd gone ahead without thinking and agreed to this. And she couldn't very well back out now.