Looking At Years Past - A Separate Peace Continuation

This is my version of what happens after the book A Separate Peace ends.

“No, No, No, No No!”, I screamed at the top of my lungs, “I did not push him out of the tree! For the last time he lost balance and fell out.” I exclaimed as I tried to project my voice above the excessive shouting of questions. Then with tears streaming down my face like rain from the sky above I wiped my face with enough time to see Finny walk over to me. With his head red enough to explode and his eyes almost done burning a hole through the back of my head he finally yelled getting louder and louder , “Did you push me out of the tree? Did you? Did you?! Tell me Gene, tell me now!” He, my best friend and the only one I really truly do care about asked with all the anger in the world, if I tried to kill him.

“I… I…I can’t lie to you. I did push you… bu…”I stammered, while backing up before he started building up speed to charge at me. He ran as fast as he could with his broken leg while Brinker, Leper and many other Seniors dressed in their graduation robes tried to run after him before he could reach me. But they were not fast enough. While he came closer and closer he reached into his night pants for his swiss pocket knife that he must have grabbed off his dresser before we left the room. Then finally reached me, just moments before the others, shoving me to the ground while bending over inching his silver bladed swiss army knife closer to my neck.

“I ought to kill you”! Finny wailed, right before I woke up out of breath. “Oh thank the Lord that it was only a dream.” I said with only being able to get short breaths out.”

That is the 12th time this month I have had a dream of that sort. Drenched in sweat with beads of it still pouring down my face. I struggled out of bed and limped over to my dresser,one foot in front of the other, to grab my water. After a refreshing gulp I limped back over to my bed, calmed down  and pulled the covers back over my head and passed out. Because tomorrow was a special day. The day that Finny left me alone in this world all by myself.

Earlier the next morning I awoke to my remembrance of what day it was. It was the day Finny died and I remember that day like it was yesterday.

It was 10:05 at night and Brinker and the other Seniors broke into our dorm and said “We’re taking you out” as flatly as he could, dragged us out of bed and they took us to the First Building. The words “Here Boys Come to Be Made Men” was inscripted on the building archway above the doors the we walked through.

Once inside the building they told us to sit down, so we walked to the front row of the seats and sat. I noticed right when we got in that all the windows in the room were darker than usual but I remembered that it was 10:00 o’clock at night! As the night went on Brinker and the others asked more and more questions, but more towards Finny. But one of those out of all changed my whole life.

Brinker asked “Who else was there, Leper Lepellier was there ,wasn’t he?”

“Yes”, a Senior in the group answered.

After the excess chatter ended Brinker gained control of all of our ears again and said “Leper was always the exact type when it came to details. He could have told us where everybody was standing, what everybody was wearing. The whole conversation that day, and what the temperature was. He could have cleared the whole thing up. Too bad.”

There was what had seemed like the longest silence in the world before Finny turned around and glanced at me for a moment ,but I did not return his look. That is when he turned back towards the front, looked at the ground and whispered in a voice almost loud enough to be heard and whispered “Leper’s here.”

After that two word phrase, life went faster than the speed of light itself.Brinker ordered a group of the Seniors to go get him from where they saw him last, in Dr. Carhart’s office. When they got back they did not waste any time questioning him.In all that Leper did not answer the questions how Brinker wanted him to. You could tell by the cherry red glow in his face that he was agitated. In turn for Brinkers anger Leper got even more angry. During the middle of the argument Finny got all worked up to the point where He shouted at the top of his lungs, “I just don’t care.Never mind!” He jumped up  out of his seat and rushed to the top of the stairs where he took a step down then tumbled the rest of the way. Dr. Carhart was summoned soon after. He propped Finny on a chair before he took him to his office.Once the Doctor brought him back to the infirmary he knew just what to do. He said that it was a clean break for being the second one in the same spot. So because of that he would do it the next day.

That day came and the Doctor was setting the bone and about to put the cast on when Finny stopped breathing. [Dr. Carhart told me along with all the others what had happened and they were devastated as was I but I alone could not shed a single tear for him. Until today……

When I woke up that morning the morning of 1973 I smelled something appalling. I spent an hours looking for it till I finally found it. It originated from the back of the Attic. So I pulled down the wooden ladder covered in splinters and made my way up. It got harder to breath each step I took to get to the top. But when I finally got up there it was pitch black and I had no clue where the light switch was or if I even had one. It took a few minutes to feel around till I finally found it.So I fliped the switch a few times till it turned on. Even then it did not help a lot. Working my way to the back of the room I dodged most the cobwebs and random boxes. But I ended up tripping on an old wooden but now rotted chest of Finny’s that I kept all these years but never opened. I had a debate with myself if I should open it or not. After seconds of grueling arguments and talking to  myself I came to a conclusion that I am crazy but I will open it. But first I had to get rid to this treterious scent that smelled of death and more death. I found where it was coming from. It was a group of dead baby birds that fell. It was probably from the storm the night before. The wind from outside must have pushed it off of the edge of the wooden rafters.

From there I disposed of it in the trash outside then went back inside and and made my way back up the splintered ladder. Now knowing what to avoid and where it is I went back to the chest. At that moment I started to wonder, “How am I going to get this open”, because it had a giant gold painted lock and I had no key. While deep in thought I noticed a light shimer out of the corner of my eye and to my astonishment there it was, the golden key that I needed.It was embedded in the side of the chest. As soon I noticed it I imedately snached it from the grip of the chest and thrusted it into the lock, turned the key and reached for the gold lined lid. As I shoved the lid open, it was almost like it was in slow motion. When the lid reached a halt all that was in there was notebook, notebooks and more notebooks. Till I took a closer look, and saw that they were journals with the words “Top Secret DO NOT OPEN” written all over them on every single one of them. There must have been at least 24!

I did not mind the silly words and reached in and picked up the warn away blue one that is now light blue and read off the front cover “My first Journal 1938 12 years old”.I was very intrigued because I knew nothing about any of this and me and FInny told me everything. So I opened the front cover and dusted off the page. The words were very faint, almost not legible. But I tried my best and found that it was all about the time we first met. It brought back so many memories. It mentioned when he fell and I came over to him and helped him up and introduced myself.

I grabbed the 2nd one eagerly wondering what it was about. It was about all the birthdays we shared together. Then it clicked inside my head. If he wrote down all this then he must have everything about our life when we were young. I dug through the chest faster and faster and read them all. Every last one of them and the next thing I knew It was 6 o’clock in the afternoon! Last I checked it was 10:30 something in the morning.

It was the last one out of all of them that I was most concerned with. The day before Finny died he was in the hospital and all this time I thought he wanted to kill me for pushing him out of the tree but looking in this journal he wrote he was sorry. Sorry that all this happened and he forgave me for everything.

While reading this I filled up with emotion but I don’t know wich one.Happy, sad,confused,frustrated,mad! I did not want to feel all of this. I have held it back all these years and it is not coming out now. But I did want to remember Finny so I hopped into my red ruby Ford Mustang and made my way to the cemetery after a few stops. I grabbed a picture frame, A picture of me an Finny and some flowers.

When I arrived the sky had darkened to a ash color and the winds started to pick up.I did not mind so I parked my car, shut my door, then stared blankly at the cold, lifeless, grey headstone and made my way over there slowly. Closer and closer I inched my way to my best friend till I stood at the foot of his grave. The wind blew my dark brown hair around on my face like a psycho waving around a dismembered limb. All that emotion I have helped back all these years finally crept it’s way to the surface of my skin as I tossed everything away in my arms and fell to my knees and with all my energy I screamed as loud as I could “Why did he have to go! Why him! Why not me! With a thud my head dropped to the surface of the grave and I let all of that emotion flow out of me. Like the rain that now poured from the sky my tears poured and poured and I could not hold it back nor did I try it was time. Time for me to shed the tears that I did not for Finny a long time ago.

Author's Note

This was written 2 years ago as of 2016 so please don't judge the grammar and spelling to hard lol. I just started writing.
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