My mom drove really fast – and let me tell you something, I did not know she had that potential. I guess you learn something new everyday.

I spent most of the car ride to the hospital sat at the back, fiddling with my white cane and trying to pick out what the songs on the radio are, while listening to my mom and dad bicker over what we were going to do and how we were going to get there faster. The rain was pounding steadily on the hood of the car, and I re-adjusted the seatbelt against my neck so that it wasn't digging into my skin. My head and shoulder still kind of hurt from when I tumbled through the window, and the thoughts about Barry racing through my mind certainly did not help cope with the pain. The car stopped. 

"So you got a call?" I quietly asked my dad, but my mom answered.

"Yep. The hospital called us. Said he put us as his emergency contacts and when his maid – Nancy, I believe is her name – found him, the first thing she did was call 911. And now here we are."

"Barry's going to be alright, bud," my dad chimed in, and reached back to put his hand on my knee reassuringly. When I was younger dad would always stick his hand behind the driver's seat and ask me to give him a high-five, which at times was hard for little Finn (the blind thing and all). Whenever I had a tough day or if people were making fun of me, my dad would reach his hand back and let me hold it. His hand was so big that my little hand was fully wrapped within his, and no matter what happened that day I felt better. My hand's almost the same size as his now, so the effect was gone. It was a thing we did, and it only wore out a few years ago, when I started caring about the world and such.

"Okay," I brushed a strand of my hair off my face, "but what the heck is his situation? It's not serious or anything right?"

"Don't say 'heck', Finnegan," my dad ordered. I'm pretty sure if I had the ability to roll my eyes I would've rolled them so hard I would be blind anyway.

"Whatever," The car hit a bump and everything I had brought along with my clattered to the floor of the car. I scrambled them up, back onto the seat. When mom had told me it was Barry we needed to see, I immediately took anything that may belong to him; including 'Dotted Sidewalks' and 'Blue', which I figured would be something sentimental for him. I set everything down and cleared my throat, "What's his situation?"

"We don't know, Finnegan. Be quiet." My mom said, her voice full of tension, but sweet at the same time.

I shut up.

I'll be honest, I supposed it was Egan at first when my mom burst into my room, and I might as well have fainted right then and there from the fear I felt. There was this one time Egan gave us a real scare in sixth grade when he had an asthma attack from the cold air and almost died. Thankfully his mom was nearby and gave him his inhaler – which was right in the nick of time. Anyway, it almost disgusted me when I was not as worried when mom mentioned Barry. Well, in my defense, it was because my mind convinced me that there was no way Barry couldn't be in the hospital. He was Barry. My pain-in-the-butt tutor Barry, the spit-in-my-face Barry, and the trudge-through-hail-and-snow-for-a-class Barry. It was pretty dang simple. Barry was invincible to me ever since I knew him, and it never wore off, not even when I started to care about the world. Everything changed and either got worse or better... and I still hated Barry with all my heart and soul. It was a thing of ours.

Dad turned the radio up, and I finally realized that it was playing 'Kiss Me' by Sixpence None the Richer. Totally inappropriate song for the moment, because, a) nobody was going to be kissing (hopefully), b) Barry – my beloved jerk tutor – could very well be a goner, and c) the tune was much too happy and that's... well... inappropriate. As much as I tried to make it a movie scene, sometimes songs don't line up to feelings. Resting my head against the cold window, I kept my mouth open so the car vibrations wouldn't make me clack my teeth together noisily, but eventually mom swerved and I ended up receiving a minor concussion from banging my head on the glass.

"Sorry Finnegan, the roads are a mess today," mom called to me over the sound of the music.

"Life is a mess," I called back.

"I second that," my dad laughed and mom squeezed out a light chuckle. Dad reached his hand back and tapped my leg. I high-fived him.

-----/////-----

I had never really truly been inside a hospital before the day we went to see Barry (shocking I know). People were especially considerate of me, saying sorry if they even got in the way for a second, saying excuse me just to walk beside me, touching my shoulder gently when and if they bumped into me. I stayed close to my dad, and just waited with him while mom fussed around and tried to get us in to see Barry.

"Bud, let's take a seat," dad guided me over to the waiting area and we sat down in plastic chairs that creaked dangerously. I folded my white cane. I set my bag of Barry-stuff on the chair beside me. It clunked and silently hoped that it would stay put, because that always works with inanimate objects, of course.

I was just about to ask my dad if my bag was on the chair when he suddenly yelled over, "YEAH YOU GO AHEAD!" He laughed. "Your mother forgot her purse, silly goose."

I groaned. "Dad, please don't say silly goose."

"Why not?"

"It's not... dad...ly."

"Dad-ly?"

"You sound as if you're three years old, dad."

He pat my shoulder and chuckled, "I am mentally, in conclusion I can – and will! – say silly goose. Live with it, Finn, this is the real me. It's not a phase!" He literally cracked up at his own joke.

I scoffed, and slid down on my seat, until the hard chair made my tailbone ache. The hospital clamoured and I could hear little pitter-pattering high heels hitting the slippery floor in a huge hurry, probably to save some random person's life. I sighed, reached my feet out as far as I could get them and crossed my arms, and then that was the moment I was genuinely scared for Barry and that fact he had went to the hospital two times in the course of a few months. My feet hit a table of some sort and I continued kicking it absentmindedly.

"Don't sit like that, bud."

"Dad, you seriously have to stop calling me bud."

"Hey, I'm not going to stop calling you bud until you've got a bud yourself, you hear?" He laughed and I groaned internally.

"You're implying that I am going to have a life in the future."

"Well, no, not exactly, bud."

I immediately sat upright when my mom ran back into the waiting area in a big bang, her keys jingling and her shoes squeaking against the floor. She must've worn her sneakers that day, and it was pretty weird, considering the fact that my mom was not the exercise-freak kind of mom.

"Alright, I've got my purse – sit up, Finnegan!" I sat up. "Anyway, my purse, and now we can go see Barry. He's in room 31."

"He's okay, right?" I asked, elongating my words to cover up my worry. My dad didn't seem worried at all, but that was the usual for him; he always tried to remain the big ol' strong man that I could depend upon. My mom, on the other hand... was on the verge of a panic attack. That was not a surprise.

"He's okay, he's okay," mom panted, and dragged me along into a hall that seemed empty. Since I lived in a smallish town, the hospital was small as well, and that meant most of the walk to Barry's room was eerily quiet. My stomach churned, "so what happened to him, mom?"

"Heart attack."

"Heart...heart att-...heart attack? And you guys thought this wasn't important to tell me?" I babbled, and eventually my dad shut me up.

"He's alright, Finn. We're just here to look at how he's doing. It's not a huge problem; the hospital has got it under control."

I sighed exasperatedly and continued walking with my parents, my mind racing and hoping that the hospital indeed had Barry in a good condition. And all that time I was so keen on the fact I hated Barry, when in reality my heart was beating harshly in the fear that his heart was not beating harshly enough.

Soon we reached the room that Barry was supposedly in, Room 31, where he was on a bed and surrounded by beeping machines that were there to tell him that he was not dead. The steady beat of his heart monitor calmed me down, and my parents both went towards Barry to say stupid things like, "we were so worried about you", and "how are you feeling?" and "get well soon." I tried to act cool and not have a care in the world but it kind of shook me up to see (well, not see, but still) Barry in a situation like that, encompassed by beep beep beeps and my parents' words of encouragement.

"Finn, your dad and I are going to get something to eat from the cafeteria, you want to come along or stay with Barry?" My mom touched my shoulder gently and I turned my head towards her.

"I'll stay," I responded, and opened up the bag of Barry-stuff I had brought for Barry.

"We'll see you both soon," dad ruffled my hair and they both left in a hurry. I shook my head around a few times to set my hair back in place, but it just made the loose strands tickle the tops of my eyebrows. My mom had been pressuring me to cut my mop of hair into something more sophisticated – like a young James Bond or whatever – yet my dad always told me to leave it for a couple years and watch me turn into a rockstar. I picked neither, obviously. Parent opinions need to be ignored at times.

I sat down on the nearest chair I could find and fiddled with my fingers, listening to the beep beep sound. My mouth had this kind of gross feeling to it, and that was most likely because I hadn't eaten anything and it had to be at least noon by then. The hospital itself also had a gross feeling to it, a thick factory-like smell made me feel uneasy and not at home. I ran my fingers through my hair to get the pieces away from my face, but it just flopped back down. I started to wonder how long Barry's hair was, or if he had hair at all.

"Hey, Barry?" I finally said.

Nothing.

"It's Finnegan. Finnegan Annson?"

I reached into my bag and took out the CD case of Stevie Wonder's best hits, and set it down on the table beside Barry. "Here's your CD," I sat back down and sighed, "I bet they only play good music in the hospital, huh?" I started laughing but eventually I was embarrassing myself so I stopped.

"They don't play any music, Finnegan; this is a hospital, not a club."

"Barry! How are you feeling?" I asked him.

"I'm alright, thank you for asking."

"I um, oh! I brought the uh, books you gave me. Because usually hospitals don't have braille. Honestly, I don't know, I'm not a hospital expert or anything. There's 'Dotted Sidewalks' and 'Blue', so I'll just leave them here," I set them both on his bed, and sat back down.

"Thank you, but keep them, Finnegan. We already had this conversation." He grunted, and I figured that he was sitting up. "Have you begun reading 'Blue'?"

"No, no I haven't," I said nervously. How stupid was it that I was scared for not finishing an assignment that he hadn't even assigned, while he was half-dead on a hospital bed? 

"That's alright. How's that Orenda of yours?"

My throat clenched and I bit down on my bottom lip. She was probably sobbing at home because of how I treated her, and I really didn't want to talk to Barry about that. "She's good."

"Good?"

"Just grand! Perfect, even."

"Great." The beeps started up again, and I finally spoke up.

"Actually, not great. I lied. Orenda's not grand. Things are going absolutely terrible, and I feel like life is hitting me from all around, but I don't know where everything is coming from."

"Want to talk about it?"

I had already started. "It's like during autumn, when all the leaves are falling and the wind is blowing them onto your face, your hair, your jacket... but you don't know where the leaves are coming from. It's like anything can happen anytime without a single warning. Like you in the hospital? I mean, you could die tomorrow for all I know – not going to wish it upon you, but it's possible – and everything is just falling into an abyss."

I was aware that Barry usually didn't respond directly to my speeches, but it still kind of offended me when he said, "You really have a talent with words, have you ever considered writing?"

"No," I said bitterly. "I can hardly express my feelings while talking, much less write them down."

By then, mom and dad had come back, with a tray of food for us, and we sat around and ate with Barry. He didn't eat much, obviously. My parents talked to Barry about my current education plan, and the new laws and stuff, while I sat in the corner, much too cordial to tell them that I was tired and wanted to leave.

After the longest time, we headed off, and I picked up all my Barry-stuff that I had sprawled across the room. My parents said "get well soon" a million more times and eventually left the room, and I was left, cleaning up my bag and unfolding my cane.

"See you, Barry. Get well soon," I mimicked.

"Look, Finnegan, I want you to know that everything will turn out fine in the end. You have a good heart, and who knows? Perhaps you'll become a Great Blind One. And you best not let that Orenda go, someone like that doesn't come around often." That was possibly the most advice that was helpful Barry had ever given me.

"Thank you." I sighed, and walked towards the bed, until my thigh hit the mattress. "I'll try my best in school. And I'll try to over achieve and all that, as long as you stay with us. You better not die on me, Barry."

He grabbed my arm gently, yet I still flinched. "I'm not going to die."

Seemed like everyone was saying that to me those days.

-----/////-----

By the time we had gotten home, the rain was pounding against the ground so hard that I could feel it shake. Just by running to the door, so much rainwater got on my face that my glasses might as well have slipped right off my nose and into the ocean.

My mom made chicken soup and we all wolfed down our bowls, then my dad joked around about how Barry was probably going to try to educate the nurses about Stevie Wonder, in which we all laughed our butts off to because it had already happened. Then they both went off to work a little bit late, and I was all alone in the damp and cold bungalow and I found myself eyeing (just kidding, I was more like smelling) the paint supplies Orenda had gotten for me a while ago. They had been sitting in the middle of my room, collecting dust, as I pondered over whether or not I actually had the guts to paint something without supervision. I opened the Barry bag and dumped the insides out, all the books and CDs making an explosion on the ground.

My hand skimmed over the pile carefully, trying to find the thicker book that I recognized as 'Blue', and eventually I did get it, and eventually I did open it up and read the first page. It kind of surprised me that the book was actually written in novel format; i.e it was not empty pages of metaphors, but rather a paragraph of real thought and dialogue.

She never came back, but that never meant I did not go after her.

That was the first line. It got me pretty hopeful. The rest of the first chapter talked about their childhood, how they met, and how they drifted apart. It talked about how we are just a tiny ping pong balls amidst a galaxy of bowling balls, all ready to crush us and perhaps even kill us. It talked about how the world was so lost that no one even knew where they came from in the first place. It talked about how there had to be something better out there, if anywhere, or if there was even an out there.

After reading the first chapter and practically having an existential crisis, I grabbed the paint set and flipped open the sketchbook, picking any random tube of paint and paintbrush and smearing the colours all over the paper. I didn't know much about painting or painters or painters who paint, but the only thing that really stuck with me about any virtuoso was the story Barry told me about his other blind friend who passed away a couple years ago (heart attack, coincidence? I think not) who was perhaps one of the greatest painters that ever lived...ish. It was kind of cool how Barry always described him - absolutely fantastic and not at all glum about life. I looked up to that dude as one of the 'Great Blind Ones' for the longest time I could remember, until he died. 

I opened another tube of paint, the cap screwing off easily, and the paint coming out onto the palette I fished out effortlessly. If Orenda were there she would be saying something eccentric like herself, something like how the sky is magenta and the ground is white or vice versa. I tried my best to paint everything I was feeling, but there wasn't anything I could make sense of, except for the fact that I didn't want anything to change. It was stupid, but what else do fifteen year olds think of? I figured if everyone was so lost; why not forget about being found?

I breathed shakily as I set the paintbrush down, psychotic episode over; I felt the painting gently with my pinky, running my finger over the bumps and the still-goopy parts. And basically that's when everything washed over me, and the leaves started to fall in April... and I cried. Yeah, okay, I cried. I couldn't care less about that, honestly – and if I was to quote Orenda – screw gender stereotypes. It didn't matter.

I was sad.

-----/////-----

AUTHOR'S NOTE :)

I think I might be doing these more often, seeing as I really like talking to you amazing people hahah.

What did you think about this chapter? It's all getting a little bit confusing and poor Finn is getting a big bucket of sucky life combo for his meal (lol I'm not funny) (why am I embarrassing myself)

VOTE, COMMENT, AND FOLLOW ME IF YOU THINK I'M COOL

Questions!! 

Favourite season?

What's your favourite song?/if you are listening to a song right now, what is it? 

I LOVE YOU ALL HAVE A GREAT DAY HAVE A GREAT LIFE