Finny didn't seem the least bit surprised that I was going with him. He shouldn't have. I always ended up going along with whatever he had to say.

"You know," I mentioned, as we drove toward the skating rink, "Leper's not going to join."

Phineas cast me a sidelong glance. "Well, over the phone, he promised that he would," he told me, with a triumphant nod. "Put that in your biscuit and eat it."

I laughed at this absurd comment. "Biscuit?" I questioned. "Where in the world did you come up with that?"

"No idea," he replied, with a grin.

"Will Peach be there tonight?" I asked after a long silence.

"Nah," he said. "It's not really her scene, I guess. I have to work everyday next week...I thought we agreed that it was only a weekend thing, but apparently not. She's such a masochist."

"Sorry, man," I said, not knowing what I was apologizing for.

We arrived at the skating rink. I was already wearing my in-lines. Eventually, after getting sick of the disgusting skating rink skates smell, I had had to buy my own. Finny similarly had a pair of his own. They were pink. Mine were blue, thankfully.

We skated inside. Well...to be technical, Finny skated. I grabbed onto the back of his shirt and was pulled inside.

I saw Ollie. He had been inducted into the club the Tuesday after the fight. I also saw Brinker and Tom, whom we had met one night during a meeting. He wasn't in the club, technically, but he usually made it a point to talk to us.

A familiar song was playing, so Finny shuffled over to the rink, with me trying very hard to keep up. I had hardly improved since the first time I had begun skating. Finny hadn't improved either, although he didn't really need to.

As usual, I was left in the dust, while Finny glided across the floor with ease. I bumped into several people, mostly girls, which gave them the idea that I was some kind of a pervert. I got a lot of nasty looks, and a bit of painless slapping.

When Finny noticed my predicament, he slowed down to give me the chance to catch up. As soon as I was in earshot, he said, "I think it's about time I gave you another lesson. After all, you can't go on skating around like you're insane and keep my company."

There was his arrogant side coming out again. He thought he was so much better than me. I didn't leave my studying to go there and be insulted. I didn't hear anything else he was saying to me. I was bubbling with rage. I saw Brinker only a few feet away. Finny was within reach of me. Suddenly, my weight shifted, and I barreled into Finny, sending him scrambling towards Brinker. He knocked Brinker down, and then flipped over halfway and went down with a thud, and a large cracking sound.

Everything seemed to stop. I could hear my breath catch in my throat. I could hear Finny moaning in pain. I could hear my skates rolling in rhythm with my heartbeat. I have never, and never will again skate as well as I did in that moment. I neither stumbled, nor titled. I skated just as well as Finny did.

The music was halted. "Is he oh-kay?" the announcer demanded, as I knelt beside him. No one answered, so she said nothing more and went to call an ambulance.

Brinker sat up, jarred out of his mind by what had happened. Having taken a class on healthcare and believing that he knew more about the subject than anyone present, Brinker began to ask questions that seemed to me irrelevant.

"Finny, is your vision swimming?" Brinker demanded, in an uppity tone.

"How should I know?" Finny groaned, holding his head.

"Are you experiencing difficulty in breathing?"

"No!"

"Is your heart functioning properly?"

"God, Brinker, would you leave me alone?" Finny wailed. It was the first time I had seen him truly angry at someone in a long time.

Brinker's face turned pale at this, and he didn't say anything else. He didn't have too much time to think about it, because soon the paramedics arrived.

I looked up when I saw, them, and then back to Finny, as if to reassure him, when I noticed that there was a large blotch of red on his green pants. He was bleeding.

The paramedics knelt beside me, and asked that everyone back up. I stood up and backed up a step, in amazed wonder at what had just happened. Questions flew through my mind. Did I just do this? Was it a conscious action? Had I purposefully hurt the only person I had ever really loved? Had I hurt my best friend, the one individual that I trusted more than I did myself?

I put my mind on hold and listened to what the paramedics were asking him.

"Where does it hurt?" one of them asked.

He felt a bit more obliged to answer them than he did Brinker. "Everywhere," he responded, wrenching in pain.

While the first EMT was asking him questions, probably to get him mind occupied, the other was ripping off the leg of his pants. He opened a large first aid kit and shuffled through it until he found some gauze. He cleaned away some of the blood that was gushing from right above Finny's knee. I felt like I could vomit, but decided I should be more supportive than that.

I heard the second EMT whisper to the first, "The fibula has punctured the skin."

My throat suddenly felt really dry. What had I done? I felt a lump in the back of my throat, and couldn't swallow it down. My eyes were stinging. I had never felt guilt so strongly before, and I wanted to crawl away and die.

I was jolted from my thoughts by Finny's cries of pain. The second EMT was putting pressure on Phineas's knee and asking if it was hurting. Obviously, it was.

Soon, a gurney was brought in to carry Finny to the ambulance. He said nothing to me. He knew what I had done. I didn't ask to go with them. My head began to pound in my skull. I felt like vomiting again, but called my mom to come and get me instead.

Though I didn't want to, my mom insisted that we go to the hospital. We arrived an hour and a half after Finny had been taken into the ambulance. I was shaking with fear as I was shown the way to his room. He would hate me. He would hate me more than he hated cabbage. I almost snickered at that, but still felt too nervous to do anything of the sort.

My mom told me that she would wait for me in the lobby while I went in to see Finny. This gave me a great opportunity to tell him what had happened and make it up to him somehow. As I made my way to the room, B14, I silently rehearsed what I would say to him, how I would kindly explain what I had done.

I opened the door, and saw him lying there, his mother and Peach sitting quietly at his side. They looked up at me when I entered and smiled slightly. I couldn't tell him in front of them. I supposed that it would have to wait.

I noticed that Finny was sleeping. He had an I.V. in his left arm, and a few tubes here and there.

"How is he?" I asked, my voice shaking.

Peach shrugged. "Tired, I guess."

Finny's mother sniffled into a handkerchief, with her name embroidered into it. "My poor, sweet Finny! Why did this have to happen?"

My guilt began to throb again. Peach and Adora, which was Finny's mother's name, were so innocently unsuspecting of what had really happened. I didn't think I even knew for sure. My mind was like a puzzle with some of the pieces missing.

"What did the doctor say?" I wondered out loud.

"Not much," Adora said, blowing her nose.

Peach put her arm around Adora to comfort her. "Don't worry, everything will be fine."

"I hope so," was the shy response. "It seems like just yesterday when I was sending him off to school for the first time..."

I felt like such a heel. I had hurt Finny, Peach, and Adora all in one clumsy, reckless move. Had it been purposeful? Had I really meant to do it?

As if in response to my thoughts, Finny whimpered and moved around a bit before opening his eyes.

"OH, god, it hurts!" he cried. Finny had always been the kind of person who would whine and complain all day if he even had so much as a hangnail. This was ghastly. I could see a bit of whitish bone splintering through his kneecap. It looked probably worse than it felt. The urge to heave came again and I was forced to leave the room and rush into the restroom, where I relieved this notion, giving me very little comfort.

I returned to the room, only to be informed that I would have to leave again. Adora and Peach had already gone to the waiting room. I left and met up with Adora, Peach, and my mom.

"I just don't understand how something like this could have happened," Peach was saying. "Gene, you were there. What happened?"

My face had to have turned pale at that moment. "I don't really know," I lied. "I-I wasn't watching. I looked up and he was lying on the floor."

They seemed to be satisfied, as they came up with their own variations of how it could have happened.

It was then that Brinker came into the lobby. He didn't see us, because he went straight to the receptionist and asked her which room Finny was in. When she informed him that he would have to wait, he looked over at us and came to sit with us.

"Hey, everyone," he greeted, looking mostly at me. "Is it bad?"

"The doctor said that it was a messy break, but he should be oh-kay after surgery," Peach answered.

Brinker's head sunk into his shoulders a little. "I feel largely responsible for what happened," he admitted. "I mean, if I could've kept my balance a little better, then he may not have fallen..."

I stared at his eyes, full of remorse and regret. Regret that should have been flickering in my eyes. Remorse that should have been eating at my soul! Yet, I remained essentially silent. I couldn't bring myself to tell the truth after I had lied to them only moments before.

"Oh, it's not all your fault," Adora said, softly. "I'm sure Finny will understand." She turned to me. I swallowed hard. I knew she would convict me of something. "Gene, would you go to our house and pick up a few of Finny's clothes and things, please? I don't want to leave him.."

I couldn't respond, but my mom did for me. "We would be glad to. Come on, Gene, I'll let you drive if you like."

I was too nervous to drive, but didn't tell her. I drove down the interstate, a panicky, uneasy mess. If Finny had knocked me into Brinker, and broken my leg, he would have been apologizing as soon as I hit the floor. I was too much of a coward to do that, though. I could never be as brave as Phineas.

I screeched to a stop in front of Finny's house and hopped out of the car. My mom switched over to the driver's side. "I'm going to go call your dad. My cell phone's back at the hospital in my purse. I'll go find a payphone. Be ready to go when I come back." She pulled out of the driveway and into the street.

I felt sick. I wanted to vomit again, but didn't think that there would be enough in my stomach to. I slowly punched in the code and pondered inside. I barely made it up the stairs, before my stomach felt like it was sinking in again.

When I got into Finny's room, his cat ran out, sensing that its owner was missing, and an unfamiliar person was in his place. As soon as I stepped into Finny's unoccupied bedroom, it was as if all the pain and guilt I had been feeling was lifted. Something about the memories of times we had had in that room dug me out of the dirt of shame that I was buried in.

I almost lost myself in the feelings the room brought to me. After marveling at the different aspects of it, I realized that there was, indeed a reason for me to be there. I saw a pair of pants hanging on the closet doorknob. I stuffed them into a gym bag, along with a pair of socks, and some boxer shorts. I scanned through the closet, looking for a comfortable t-shirt to go along with the pants. It was then that I spotted Finny's pink Tommy Girl shirt.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had put on the pink shirt, and was admiring myself in the mirror. I was slightly shocked to see that Finny was grinning back at me from the reflection. When had I become so much like him, and yet still so different?