Finny, Gene, proper, neutral, normal - the words don't go together.
When he'd said I was his best pal, my answering silence seemed clear enough. To me that silence had been a big thing. I can only speak for myself, but to his generally optomistic ears, the silence probably had been a maybe, a maybe not. My educated guess. I haven't asked him what he thought; he may not even remember.
p.s. I've found out he remembers my asking, and I've told him how I didn't have the guts to say what needed saying. Did the moment, did my silence make no difference outside my head, where it set me off down a road of unforgivable stupidity?
Half my mind wonders if being brave and allowing Finny as a reciprocated best pal would have taken us into a proper neutral normal.
No that's plain wrong. Complication was: we already loved one another. But like adjacent seismic plates, there was no peace between us. Resolution of a growing tension was necessary. Crisis before rest.
One way or another this would be resolved - peace would happen, after violence.
He was pleasantly oblivious to all this, my making much from nothing.
So I'd had no answer for him in words. A silent recoil was as near as I'd come. I had no dubiously based bravery like his. Didn't want that kind of bravery - could kill you . . Where, after all would that kind of bravery have taken a person? Out on a branch with somone who might do him harm? Sound familiar?.
He knew me, and, I think, many things, not in the usual, sensible way, Finny expected something better than the world would offer. He had been foolish telling me I was his best pal, but eventually he hadn't been wrong. Sorry, Finny - it was instinct, nothing more; I didn't mean it (but I did).
Another version of a morning on the beach, after the night when he'd claimed me (as his best pal).
He was ahead of me, running; running along the wet, flat sandy edge of the sea. My bare feet followed his. As carefully as I could, I landed mine, one after another in the sharp wet prints he'd left - for me. It seems as if I'd done this before. Our feet were close to the same size (mine were wider), but our strides were equal. If I was careful and did it right, it would seem that only one person had run by. This was my game - my tribute, my wanting to be sunk in him. He was my best pal, and . . .
A gull's cries were close; with the third shriek I was fully awake, on the beach we'd just slept on. Next to me, the place where he been in the night was as empty as the his dreamed sandy footprints had been. He was gone. I sat up, crouched and stood, and there he was, walking off, making more footprints presumably. It was as if my dream was continuing as there he was, shod this time, my best pal, running ahead, seeming to dare me to make the dream real. Then he stopped and peed.
He finished and I called his name, called him back. The day was real, like his peeing on the sand - and my dreams were not real.
Trigonometry is very real and the chapter I hadn't committed to memory loomed during the ten mile bike ride back to Devon. I had a test ahead, that afternoon, one I would fail.