CHAPTER 4 - WOUNDED
This chapter (and the next two coming) deals with how Fin handles the start of mourning her father's death (including her state of mind at this point, for which this chapter is named), and how Lo (as mentioned in the preview last chapter) helps her through. A warning of one instance of mild language in the first part.
At about 7:30, nearly an hour after she received the news of her father's untimely passing, Fin was still in the girls' room at the staff house. As a result of hearing that disturbing news, Fin now did not feel like surfing with her friends at the Office, but instead had spent the past hour in the bedroom, alternating between crying and processing her thoughts, thinking about her mother's description of her father's last moments. She had not bothered to change from her regular outfit into her surfing gear, but instead had changed into her sleepwear, figuring she would go straight to bed and sleep when she was done crying.
Fin was sitting on the side of her bed, still weeping softly, when she heard the room door open behind her. Realizing someone was coming in, she became silent and remained sitting where she was when that person stepped inside.
"Hey Fin, you all set to hit the waves?" Lo, who had walked into the room after coming from dinner at the Pirate Ship with her mother, said as she saw Fin on her bed. When Fin did not answer, Lo became puzzled. "Fin? Didn't you hear me?" the rich girl then asked.
"Leave me alone," a despondent Fin, who recognized Lo's voice but did not turn around, muttered.
Lo then became concerned when she heard Fin's response. "What's going on? Is something wrong?" she said.
"Nothing's wrong," Fin replied, denying that she was having a problem. "I just want some time to myself to think."
Lo, however, was not convinced by Fin's answer and sensed otherwise. "I think there is something wrong," she said, closing the door gently behind her. "Want to talk about it?"
"NO!" Fin snapped tersely, her voice rising. "Can't I have some time to myself without people thinking something's wrong with me?"
"Fin, this is me you're talking to," Lo said, appealing to her friend as she approached her bed. "It's just the two of us here. Reef's not here to bug you and there's no one else in here either. You can talk to me, you can tell me whatever you want to."
"I told you, there's nothing wrong," Fin said, still in denial. "And there's nothing to talk about either."
"It's okay," Lo said as she walked over to sit down beside Fin. "We don't have to talk unless you want to..." As she sat down though, Lo noticed that Fin's left cheek was wet. "Fin? You've been crying," she remarked.
Immediately, Fin turned her face away from Lo, not saying a word and not wanting her to see she had been crying. "Okay, now I know something's wrong," Lo said, now becoming worried. "Fin, talk to me...please." She then put her hand on Fin's left shoulder, trying to get an answer. "Did Reef say something to get you upset?"
"No," a hesitant Fin replied quietly, still not looking at Lo.
Lo then gasped. "Did he do something to upset you?" she asked.
"No," Fin said again. "It's not Reef, he didn't do anything."
"Oh," Lo said, knowing that Fin's response had removed her excuse to go and verbally rip Reef a new one for doing or saying something bad enough to hurt Fin. After a brief pause, something else dawned on Lo. "Wait, was it Bummer?" she wondered aloud. "Did he say or do..."
"It's not Bummer either," Fin interrupted, then she turned to face Lo. "I just got some news about my dad," she said, emotion coming back into her voice.
"Oh, no," Lo said, now getting some idea what was troubling Fin. "What is it?"
"My mom called me an hour ago," Fin explained. "She told me Dad was in a car accident last night involving a drunk driver..."
Lo gasped again when she heard Fin's news. "How bad?" she asked.
"Real bad," Fin said, starting to become upset again over mentally replaying what her mother had told her. "He w-w-was taken to the hospital and...and th-th-the doctors tried to h-h-help him, but...but..." She was unable to bring herself to finish that sentence, as she then began to bawl.
Lo did not need to hear Fin finish her story, understanding its outcome. Starting to feel some emotion herself, then feeling a rush of compassion, she let Fin come to her and begin crying on her shoulder as she put her arms around her to comfort her. "I'm sorry, Fin," Lo said while holding her friend. "I'm sorry about your dad and what happened to him."
"Why did it happen to him?" Fin, who was as angry about the cause of her father's death as she was sad about the death itself, wailed as she clung to Lo and leaned her head against Lo's. "Why? Why did he have to pay the price for the other driver's damn stupid mistake?"
"I wish I knew, Fin," Lo said, putting her right hand on the back of Fin's head to try to calm her. "I wish I knew."
As Fin continued sobbing on Lo's shoulder, she suddenly felt a few drops of liquid fall on the back of her own shoulder. "Lo?" she said, pulling away a moment. "Lo, are you crying too?" she added as she noticed that the hotel heiress also had tears streaming down her face.
"I'm sorry," Lo apologized with a nervous giggle. "It's not something I can help doing. I've always been empathetic to someone's suffering if it happens when they're near me. If they feel sad about something and they start crying, then I start to cry too." Fin then resumed crying on Lo's shoulder, and Lo wrapped her arms around Fin again and held her. "It's okay, Fin. You can cry as much as you want to, just let it out," Lo said softly, feeling more tears flow from her eyes and down her cheeks out of empathy as she continued to comfort the surfer girl and console her over her father's death. "I'm here for you."
Meanwhile, downstairs in the staff house living room, Reef, Ripper and Lance, now joined by Ty, had hooked up the game console from the guys' third-floor room to the widescreen TV and were getting ready to start their surfing video game tournament. Because Reef and the others had not been in the staff house at the time Fin ran upstairs to her room after she got her phone call from home, none of them (aside from Lo) were aware of the bad news Fin got, or of her current state of mind after the call.
"Okay, everything's all set," Reef declared as he turned on the game deck and waited for it to warm up. "That means you all better get set for the uncrowned king of video games at Surfer's Paradise to claim his crown."
"More like the 'court jester' of video games, dude," Lance countered. "Once it's all said and done, I'll be the one taking the title."
"Is that so, mate?" Ripper joined in. "Look, Lance, you and me are best buds, but tonight, it's every man for himself in this tourney, and when we're done, I'll be the last man standing."
"Better be careful 'bout overestimating yourselves then, guys," Ty said. "While you're all debating who's gonna be the surfing video game king, someone may come in and take that crown right from under your noses - and that someone's gonna be me."
"We'll see about that, bra," Reef said.
"Okay, let's draw numbers to see who's gonna face who," Ty said while dropping folded slips of paper into a baseball cap. "Whoever draws 1 will face 3 in the first game, and 2 will face 4 in the second with the winners meeting in the final for all the marbles." The guys then each drew a slip of paper from the cap and unfolded them to see who drew which number.
"Yes! Right on!" Reef crowed triumphantly, showing off his slip of paper to the others. "I'm Number One! I'm Number One!"
Ripper grumbled to himself over Reef's bragging when he took a look at his paper. "I got 2," the Australian surfer said.
Lance then checked his paper. "I drew 3, so it looks like I got Reef in the first game," he said.
"Then that means Ty gets Ripper in the second," Reef said. "Okay Lance, step right up and prepare to meet your match."
"My match, huh?" Lance said, then he looked around the living room. "Sorry, I don't see him here," he joked, shrugging his shoulders. "Must've pulled a no-show."
A chagrined Reef glared at Lance, who laughed along with Ripper and Ty, but he refused to let Lance's joke stop him as the two surfers stepped up to play the first game in the STOKE tournament. With the simultaneous two-player setup, Reef and Lance maneuvered their way through the game's obstacle course to rack up points while watching out for hazards along the course route.
Reef and Lance ended up keeping the game a close one as each player made their way through each of the five men (represented by a surfboard in the game) allotted to them in the game, coming down to the last man each had. Lance had a slight edge over Reef in points going into the last leg of the game and seemed sure that he would take the win - when he began to feel a sneeze coming on. He tried twice to stifle the sneeze, but felt it coming back on him each time. When he tried a third time to stifle the sneeze, Lance was unable to stop it in time and he let out a loud sneeze, causing him to lose his balance and fall off his board simulator. With that, Lance's surfboard game sprite on the TV screen collided with a water buoy on the course, ending his last turn and the game for him.
"YES!" Reef said triumphantly, raising his arms in the air as he celebrated his win in the first game of the STOKE tournament. "Game over, suckaaaa! One down, one to go!" Reef then jumped off his board and did a victory dance in the middle of the living room. "Lance my man, I'm Captain Kirk and you just got red-shirted!"
"Right, dude, real funny," Lance said as he got up, not too thrilled with Reef's obnoxious victory celebration or his post-game trash-talking, though he realized he brought it on himself in part by his pre-game ribbing of Reef. "Okay, Ripper, Ty, step on up," he then called to his friends. "You're next."
Next chapter, Lo, acting out of friendship, compassion and love, continues her efforts to console Fin. Plus, what will David do to impress Kelly during an evening together?