I told myself I'd post another chapter today if we got another snow day, and we did, so, here I am. (Two days off in a row, woohoo!)
Review Responses:
JustVildaPotter: Oh yeah! We're back, baby! GET EXCITED! (Which you did.) Jorgelino Josephino De La Coffee. Beautiful. And also, yes, my Jenry! Thank you! I'm just as excited that this story is back! (Okay, maybe not as excited as you are, but close.)
Now on to your snow day chapter!
Chapter 41- Finch
Sunday, September 19, 1999, 7:30 a.m.
Half a glass of water being sloshed on his face was the strangest wake-up call Finch had ever experienced. And he'd shared a bunk bed with Albert more than once. "Hey!" He groaned, blinking from the bright florescent lights that Jacobi had turned on after dumping water on the boy's face. Across the dining room, an identical cry rang out as Sniper was given the same treatment.
"Get up, both a' you," Jacobi ordered.
Sniper sat up, linked her fingers together as she raised her arms up to stretch, then fell back on top of the table she'd slept on. "Can't we get some breakfast or nothin'?"
"Ya can have a glass a' water." As he said this, Jacobi slammed a cup onto the table beside Finch's head, splashing him a second time. "Drink up."
Finch rolled his eyes, not wanting to move to a sitting position. "Gee, that's generous of ya."
"You kids can't say I don't give you nothin'." Sniper must have opened her mouth to protest, because Jacobi added, "An' before you say water is nothin', just ask a fish. In the desert."
When Jacobi had disappeared, leaving that remark to hang in the air, Finch pushed his back off the table. He gave Sniper- who had sat up at the same time- a quizzical look. "Why do old people talk?"
Sniper shrugged. "To prove they's still alive." Absentmindedly, she glanced toward the clock on the wall. A split second later, she sprang to her feet, knocking over her water glass, but not bothering to pick it up as she muttered, "Shit. Shit. Shit."
"What?" Finch asked, getting to his feet and instantly regretting placing weight on his sprained ankle. Grabbing the table, he steadied himself, repeating, "What is it?"
Combing her hair with her fingers so as to rid it of its disheveled, tablehead state, Sniper explained, "I stayed 'ere all night. My dad's gonna kill me."
A wave of nausea came over Finch then, but it wasn't caused by his injury. He tried to swallow back the sick feeling as phrases rushed through his mind. Things he'd said to Sniper the day before, when she had betrayed the strike. Awful, shitty words said by an awful, shitty best friend. Him.
"Snipes, hang on!" Finch hobbled forward. He had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming in pain. A sprained ankle sure did hurt like hell.
Sniper did not hang on. "We'll talk lata', okay?" she told him, rushing out the door.
Lifting his right foot off the ground completely, Finch hopped after her. More than once, he nearly lost his balance and collapsed, but he still made it out the door in good time. "Sniper?"
"What?" She demanded, whirling around and throwing her arms up in the air.
Finch braced himself against the outer wall of the restaurant, right leg still bent at the knee to keep his ankle away from the ground. "We need ta talk."
"Not now. There ain't time. I gotta get home."
"Teresa?" asked a man's voice. Approaching Sniper from behind were two people Finch knew very well: Mr. Wah, Sniper's father, and Ms. Cortes, Finch's mother.
"Oh crap," Sniper muttered, turning slowly to her father. "Hey, Da-"
"Where have you been?" Mr. Wah spat, fury in his eyes.
Sniper gestured toward Jacobi's. "Here."
Ms. Cortes glared at her son, hands on her hips. "Patrick? Y'all were here this whole time?"
"Yes ma'am," Finch answered pleasantly.
"Then what-" the woman brandished a folded newspaper, and Finch tried to hobble backwards before he saw she was only unfolding it- "are ya doin' in this picture?"
The paper was The New York Sun, and front and center, above the fold, was a picture of the newsies. Most of them, anyway. Sniper, who was not in the photo, having sat that day out, explained, "That's from Friday. I swear Finchy was at the restaurant all a' yesterday, workin' with me."
"You don't work at a restaurant, Teresa," Mr. Wah pointed out.
"Sometimes I do, I've toldja before."
"This is a payin' job?" Finch's mother asked Sniper.
"Yes."
"And you work with 'er, Patrick? Funny, I haven't seen a cent a' yer wages."
Finch swallowed. He'd always given the tips he made from his occasional shifts at Jacobi's to Albert or Race or someone else, knowing his mother was sure to take the money if she knew it existed. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I'll give it to ya next time."
Ms. Cortes made a hmpf sound, but said nothing more on the subject.
Mr. Wah, however, had another question. "If you were working all night, boy, then what happened to your leg?"
Sniper started to make something up on the spot, getting as far as "He-" before her father cut her off.
"That wasn't a question for you."
"I tripped," Finch lied, unconvincingly. He set his foot down gingerly on the sidewalk, or at least tried to. Pain shot through his ankle immediately and he had to bend his knee again, gritting his teeth against the pain.
Ms. Cortes sighed. "I don't hear from you for weeks, then I find you in the paper and hear there's been a riot at your school." It surprised Finch to hear his mom sound almost concerned for his well-being. Not wanting to jinx it, he took only a moment let himself enjoy her apparent care for him. "An' now here y'all are, with black eyes and bruises all over ya."
Finch watched Sniper focus on the cement at her feet, as if looking down could prevent her father from noticing the aforementioned injuries. No surprise, this didn't stop the man in question from saying in a tone of thorough disappointment, "I told you to stay out of this protest business, Teresa. You gave me your word that you would."
"It's Patrick that encouraged her to lie, I'm sure," said Ms. Cortes in a voice that implied she was discussing the weather rather than insulting her son. "Lord knows he's been lying to me for weeks."
Finch opened his mouth to say something in indignation, but Sniper beat him to it. "I told him he could stay in our apartment," she volunteered, despite this being another untruth, for Finch had somewhat forced himself into staying at her place, while Sniper had simply not disagreed to the idea. "It's my fault he wasn't livin' wit you like he should a' been."
"For heaven's sake, Patrick!" Ms. Cortes yelled at her son. "You've gone an' corrupted this girl! She lies for ya, without hesitation."
The sick feeling that had occupied Finch's stomach earlier returned. His mom had a point; he was in the middle of the worst fight he and Sniper had ever had, and yet she was covering for him in the face of their respective parents. "She shouldn't be lyin' fer me," he admitted. "I didn't tell her to, but she is."
Ms. Cortes rolled her eyes to the heavens in disbelief at this claim. "Sure. You didn't tell her what to say."
"No, he didn't!" protested Sniper.
Mr. Wah shushed her. "That's enough about that, Teresa. We're going home."
"No. I'm staying with Finch." With this, she shot worried glances between her best friend and his mother.
Finch could tell what she was thinking, and he didn't want her thinking it. "I'm jus' fine on my own," he snapped, giving her a glare that was only going to escalate their argument.
Sniper didn't have a chance to fire back, because Mr. Wah ordered, "Now." Roughly, he grabbed his daughter's wrist and pulled her away from the restaurant. Finch could see his best friend was a couple inches taller than her father, and most likely stronger, but she didn't struggle any further. In fact, he thought he saw some amount of fear cross her face as the man dragged her down the street. Before they disappeared around the corner, he heard Mr. Wah admonish, "If we're quick, perhaps we can make it back without the neighbors seeing how battered you've made yourself."
And that was the end of that.
When the two Wahs were gone, leaving the rest of the street deserted, Ms. Cortes rounded on her son. "I can't believe you, Patrick, I truly can't. Turnin' that poor girl all 'battered'. I expected better from you."
Yeah, poor girl. "I'm not the one who hurt her." Halfheartedly, Finch stuck an obligatory "ma'am," at the end of his statement.
"You might as well 'ave been, draggin' 'er into a fight the way you did."
I didn't mean to make her mad, Finch thought, even though the fight he was thinking of was not the fight his mother was referring to. Aloud, he mumbled, "We didn't know the Delanceys' gang was comin'."
But that was a lie too. Sniper had warned them all about the two brothers, but Finch had more or less convinced everybody not to listen to her.
"A gang?" Finch's mother exclaimed, then shook her head with her next words. "I always knew you were trouble, Patrick, but I never realized just what ya were gettin' involved in. I should've known those friends of yours were bad news from the start."
"No, I ain't the one in-"
"Are you talkin' back ta me, young man?"
"I'm only tryin' ta..." Finch's eyes drifted to his mother's hands, one of which was clenching around the rolled up newspaper. Hurriedly, he backtracked, "No, ma'am."
"I certainly hope not. Remember, that attitude of yours is the reason you got yourself into the system once already. I don't wanna see that happen again."
No, you did that, Finch wished he had the courage to retort. But he couldn't. This was how it always was with his mother; everything was Finch's fault, even the problems she had caused him. And she was constantly making him feel bad about one thing or another, most commonly for events he had no control over. As often as possible, he tried to stay away from her, but sooner or later, she always caught up to him. For whatever reason, the woman clearly couldn't understand that her son didn't care to be around her because of the way he was being treated...
Which, Finch had just come to realize, was more or less what he had been doing to Sniper lately, after she rejected their kiss. He had to fix things with her, if only he could manage to stop making the argument worse.
"You never listen to me, that's the problem," was the first thing Finch heard when he returned his focus to his mother. "I warn you about those boys you insist are yer friends, tell ya ta stay with me, but still you prefer them. Enough ta jus' up an' leave your own mother. An' look where it gets ya." Ms. Cortes spotted a bruise on Finch's arm, just below the end of his t-shirt sleeve, and tapped it sharply. The impact was a bit too hard for it to be shrugged off as an accident, and Finch winced from the small jolt of pain. "Recently, ya won't tell me anythin'. You could've been livin' on the streets for the last month an' a half, an' I wouldn't have known. At least I could call you at that Teresa girl's apartment, but then you left her too. It's a real shame you dragged her into all this trouble. I would've liked ta get ta know 'er as your girlfriend."
Sorry to disappoint. "She ain't never gonna be my girlfriend," Finch muttered, at the lowest volume possible.
This was a mistake. "For cryin' out loud, Patrick!" Ms. Cortes exploded, "Speak up when yer talkin' ta me!"
Flinching, Finch raised his voice. "Yes, ma'am. Sorry."
His mother heaved an exasperated sigh. "I don't mean to be harsh, Patrick, really I don't, but you can be so... aggravatin' sometimes. It's a wonder your friends put up with it."
It was a wonder. Particularly that Sniper put up with him being a stubborn asshole, as he had been all week.
"So..." Ms. Cortes continued, "what's this protest business that's got the press so interested in my son?"
Finch didn't feel like going into the whole "Pulitzer's budget cuts" thing, so he gave the short explanation. "It's ta save the school theater program."
"The theater? Ya mean, where they have ya doin' ballet, like a girl?"
Well, that was an insult if Finch ever heard one. Not just to him, but also to Albert, all the other boys he knew that participated in dance, and the few girls he was acquainted with. "It ain't ballet, it's-"
"What did I say about mumblin'?"
"Yes, ma'am." Finch eyed the rolled up newspaper that his mom still held, hovering it beside her thigh. Then he went on with the explanation of the headline. "If the theater's shut down, Miss Medda loses her job."
"Miss Medda?"
"The teacher."
"Must be some teacher if y'all are this intent on protectin' 'er job."
"Yeah," said Finch, admitting, "she's almost like a mom to us," before he could stop himself.
A second afterwards, the cylindrical newspaper whisked through the air and smacked into his ear. There was such a sting to the impact that it made Finch stumble, falling hard on his sprained right ankle. He hissed in pain and gritted his teeth, grabbing hold of the injured spot as his leg buckled and he collapsed to the ground.
"Prefer yer teacher ova' me, do ya?" accused his mother.
Looking up at her, tears stinging his eyes, Finch responded "No," in as steady a voice as he could manage.
Again, she smacked him with the newspaper, but this time it hit his cheek. "What was that?"
Finch sharply sucked in a breath. "No, I don't prefer her, ma'am." Internally, he was thinking the very opposite of what he was saying. He wished Miss Medda was there now, witnessing what no one ever saw, what no one would see this morning, as it was Sunday and nobody happened to be walking by Jacobi's yet. Even Jacobi himself must have been busy in the kitchen, for he wasn't around to put a stop to the mistreatment either. Nobody was around for Finch when he needed them. Not even Sniper. This wasn't her fault, of course, it was her father's and her best friend's. He- Finch- in particular had screwed everything up, sent her away even when she'd offered to stay. And now he was paying for it.
Ms. Cortes offered him a hand, but Finch struggled to a standing position on his own, cheek and ear still burning from the beating he'd received. "Come on," ordered his mother, "let's go home. I'll fix ya some breakfast."
If he spent another minute with this woman, he was going to- well, he didn't know, exactly, but it wasn't going to be good. In short, he couldn't take being around her any more, at least not this morning. "I- I can't, ma'am." Finch made sure to speak up, enunciating every word so as not to be hit again. "I gotta help out Mr. Jacobi. Since it's my job an' all."
"Uh-huh."
"I'll bring back all the money I make. Promise."
"Fine. But I expect ta see ya at home fer dinner. In person, I mean. I ain't just talkin' about this."
Finch shuddered as she raised the newspaper to display the front page picture of the newsies. To his relief, she didn't hit him again. So, he swallowed, nodded, and replied, "Yes. Ma'am."
Woo? Yay for another chapter done?
I don't really wanna cheer for having caused this boy pain... But anyway, I hope you enjoyed!
Oh, and by the way, this is the new longest chapter! Finchy beat out Katherine!
Newsies that need hugs:
1. Henry
2. Finch
Please leave a review and tell me your thoughts on the chapter, if you would! It's really motivating, and I guarantee you I will get excited to read what you said.
