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I eventually turned back towards the tree, treading back through the ocean of mud. Enfeebled, dry, almost dead, and yet was a part of Finny and me too.
It was the present now and many things have changed of course. The more things remain the same, the more things change. Devon was still here but was submerged in a waxy, museum-like polish for new students instead of its old encasement of war preparation and anxiety. Our Super Suicide Society of the Summer Secession tree grew moribund and still remained. The infirmary stood proudly without Dr. Stanpole, who retired a few years after my class graduated the Devon School. Even Brinker Hadley, Leper Lepellier, and the rest had grown and had their own families, except for me. My love had died years ago. But yet our youth and innocence remained in the school and hide in our suicide tree.
“What I like best about this tree, what I like is that it’s such a cinch.” Finny’s voice rang through my head, rattling my brain like a gong. All my memories of Phineas flooding through my racing mind, again and again, almost never-ending. I looked frantically through the rain that soaked my body in fear and perturbation. “Gene, do you want me to go first?”
“Finny?” I gasped. The muddy ground became a battlefield as my soggy clothes became armor. The passerby students gave me a funny look, handing me faces with one eyebrow raised and almost a chiding grin. How could these children know anything about war? “He’s long gone.” I reminded myself over and over again as I just stood there, just admiring the black steeple in the rain.
“You shouldn’t be standing here in the rain. Are you a visitor?” A student ran up to me, holding a red umbrella to cover my head. My clothes were already soaked in rain and mud while my sopping strands of hair dripped water into my face and shoulders. There was no point for me to cover myself anyways. “Excuse-”
“Yes. I was just admiring this black steeple.” I answered. I interrupted him, leaving his face bewildered and confused. His eyebrows furrow profusely as his lips tilted downward.
“It's almost dead.” He kicked the withering stump twice that shook the tree softly, the last of its brown, tattered leaves floating down slowly onto the damp mixture of grass and mud.
“It was alive when I was a student here.” I argued, “My ro- my best friend always climbed the tree and jump straight into the Devon.”
“That’s suicidal.”
“He brought me and our other friends to jump as well. Funny enough, we called our group the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Secession.” And through that justification, I had brought up a new idea. To jump down from the tree into the clear waters of the upper Devon River one last time. One last time, that is what Finny would have wanted. “That’s what I’m going to do right now.”
“It’s still raining.” The boy commented as I began to strip my clothes in front of him. I unbuttoned the buttons of my dress shirt, which used to be white but was now translucent because of the rain, with my right hand as my left reached for my belt. “You’re nuts.”
“That’s what I used to call Finny.” I unlaced and kicked off my now ruined oxford shoes to the pile of clothes I left by the stump of the tree, soaking all the dirt, raindrops, and mud from the ground like a sponge. I was left in my underwear as I climbed up the wooden pegs that were surprisingly still intact and working, yet still old and weathered after fifteen years. My head was unusually light and shaken by a shock like it was fifteen years ago when I first climbed the tree. I stopped at the branch, the same branch Finny and I jumped down for the first time. The same branch where we would start of each Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session meetings. The same branch that I jounced Finny off of and “shattered” his leg. The same branch that started it all and where it ended.
“Jump!” The memory of Finny’s voice infiltrated my mind as I jumped.
Crashing through the fog that hung over the river like a blanket and hit the soft mud, that was now littered with rocks and candy wrappers, with my legs I asked, “Who’s next?” Finny would have said that.
“I guess I am,” the boy responded as he too stripped of the same Devon uniform Finny and I had worn years ago. A clean and pressed white dress shirt that must be neatly tucked into ironed khakis was now soiled and sitting next to my own clothes. The boy climbed slowly up the pegs, similar to how I did the first time I jumped, and then stopped at a different branch, one next to the usual. He stared at the river and me with my serious, brown locks that were now drenched by the pure and clean water of the Devon River.
“Stop admiring the damn view and jump!” I yelled as the boy flung himself off and flopped on the hard surface of the river. He resurfaced and to my surprise, he was laughing. His lips curled upwards along with his droll, blonde bangs as his green eyes shone a jovial and immature glint, Finny’s jovial and immature look. Finny was here all along.
“Whatever happened to your best friend?” He asked as his question dug me out of my stupor. I felt tears pool up in my eyes, the salty tears mixing with the raindrops as they swam down my wet cheeks and onto my neck. It was there that all the pictures of Phineas flashed through my eyes and replaced the boy. One in the Devon uniform the first day I met him, one with him in his underwear from the first time we jumped from the tree, and even in his iconic pink shirt and his tie that was wrapped around his waist.
“My best friend died fifteen years ago.”