“Finn.” Maia’s voice sounded as if it were buried several feet underground, the dirt, the earth keeping it from breaking Finn’s haze. “Finn,” she repeated, this time placing a hand gently on his shoulder, bringing her voice closer to the surface. He jumped slightly. “Yeah, I’m sorry, Mai, I’m… I-I’m,” Finn stuttered when he looked down at the eulogy he’d written, its paper mindlessly torn to shreds in his lap. “I know,” Maia whispered, her hand still soft against her brother. “And you don’t need it,” she assured him, nodding to the writing. Finn lifted his hand and placed it on hers. “Is it…” he started, exhaling a fragile breath. “Yeah, it’s time,” she answered, her voice laden with heartache. “They’re getting ready to start soon.” Finn nodded and slid Maia’s hand off of his shoulder so he could hold it at his side when they walked to join their family and friends. The parade of regretful black-wearers drove Finn further away from the acceptance that any of this was reality, yet he fumbled through the nightmare nonetheless until the crowd relocated to the pews.
He sat by his family –– by Maia, his father, and Milo. And he failed in his attempt to listen to the service. It went in one ear and out of the other while the space in between worked to make sense of anything. How was it possible that Asher had been alive just a week ago? Planning for their summer trip to visit California, helping Finn fix his car’s busted engine, and teasing Finn about pink shirt he’d worn to her shop. Asher’s life spun around him in golden spirals. Sometimes all he could do was step back and watch the way she glistened in the sunlight she created. And then, he was just supposed to accept the fact that her light had dimmed and shut off completely, that the spirals turned to ash at his feet. That she was gone? That she was gone?
“And now, Asher’s brother, Finn, would like to say a few words.”
Several sets of grieving eyes fell on him then, their gaze a million slashes to his skin, but his attention was on the small stage, bare for him to try to fill it. He stood up and walked forward. People used to tell Asher and Finn that they looked similar all the time growing up, but whatever it was that elicited that observation was gone that day. The ambition in Finn’s eyes and the blush on his cheeks were both gone, replaced by something hollow and lifeless. He looked down at what was left of his eulogy to avoid the sea of people who faced him and Asher’s portrait just to his right. “Thank you,” Finn’s words charged mic feedback to screech throughout the room. He brought his head back a little. “For coming today.” His conversational opening felt deeply insincere and so did the words he’d torn to pieces, so he slid the paper to the slide of the podium. “Uh, I’m not really sure what to say. It was always… It was always Asher who knew what to say, so I’m not really sure what to…” Finn let himself look over at the picture they’d put up for Asher’s funeral, her smile effortless, her vision sharp, like she was surveying everyone who sat in this room. He recognized where the picture had been taken, the oak tree in the front yard of their childhood New York home casting a slight shadow over her features. Finn’s smile was slight but present when he continued. “I remember this one time when we were both about eight or nine or so and I bet Asher five dollars that I could climb that big tree in our front yard.” He looked at his dad, watching his teary eyes brim with remembrance. “She agreed. She bet me the money and the entire time I climbed, or well, tried to climb that tree, she stood beneath me to catch me if I fell. And that’s Asher. That’s my sister. She is bold and she is rude and blunt and tougher than anyone else, and will fight for you every single day because she will never bet against you. I will never stop loving her because she never let me fall.” Finn felt as though another person had spoken aloud when he stepped back to notice that his cheeks were wet with tears. He planted his feet back on the ground again, looking up to see the hellish scape his story had reprieved him from and the words were gone again. Done for. Silently, he saw how he had further assaulted the paper in his hands and abandoned its pieces on the podium when he went back to his family. The brown hues of Asher’s portrait seemed to watch over Finn just like they had the day of the oak tree. Except this time, there was no one to catch him when his hands slipped from the branches.
