If He Had Been with Me

“My mother named me Autumn. People say to me “Oh how pretty,” and then the name seems to glide away from them, not grasping all the things that the word should mean to them, shades of red, change, and death.”

Autumn again touches on the theme of grief as she relates her name to both death and transformation. Her name alludes to fall, when leaves die and trees go into hibernation to prepare for winter, a season of ending, change, and darkness. This foreshadows how Autumn will feel hopeless and depressed with Finny’s death.

“For the first few days, Sasha and I eat lunch alone on what I start to call the Steps to Nowhere. The cement steps descend from the front courtyard down a hill to a field of grass and weeds that is used for nothing.”

Autumn depends on her friendship with Sasha, the only friend she has as high school begins. These lines are infused with darkness, describing the field as forlorn and weed-ridden. Though the novel is optimistic up until this point, the description of Autumn and Sasha’s lunch spot foreshadows the grief and despair to come.

“I’m thinking about it though. I’m thinking about going with Aunt Angelina to pick up Finny after soccer practice. I’m thinking about the cheerleaders asking me if he is my boyfriend. I’m thinking about sitting next to Finny on the bus the first day of school.”

Memories play a significant role in the novel. Autumn often finds herself ruminating about the relationship she and Finny shared before high school, sometimes nostalgically, and sometimes in a way that allows her to see events through new eyes. In this case, Jamie has suggested that Autumn should have been a part of Finny’s friend group.

Autumn reflects on her relationship with Finny and realizes for the first time that they could have developed a romantic relationship if they had remained friends. These lines foreshadow the moment she realizes she is in love with Finny and later, when she and Finny become intimate. The narrative uses repetition—“I’m thinking about”—to create rhythm and emphasis, and to reflect Autumn’s emotional urgency.

“It’s an hour later at a cheap jewelry store, while Sasha is looking for a necklace for her little sister, that I see the tiara. It’s silver with clear rhinestones, the kind they used to crown the homecoming court just two months ago. We laughed and rolled our eyes at the tradition, but at the time, I’d wanted a crown, just not what it symbolized.”

Tiaras become a symbol throughout the novel as Autumn adopts them as a part of her daily dress. When she finds the first one, she sees it as décor, not as a reward for being the prettiest or the most popular girl in school. By wearing tiaras, Autumn sticks out as odd and quirky among her schoolmates, and as creative by her friends. Autumn doesn’t want to be part of the herd mentality, but to be unique; her tiaras underscore this, becoming a physical symbol of Autumn’s unique personality.

“Winter is always a dead time for me. I wish I were like the trees. I wish I could feign death, or at least sleep through the winter.”

Allusions to clinical depression slip in slowly throughout the novel. Autumn’s discussion of winter and wanting to hibernate is one of the first hints that she’s depressed. The language here also foretells tragedy, Finny’s death, and Autumn’s suicide attempt—“dead time,” “I wish I could feign death.”

“I want to either be alone with Jamie or be alone with Finny.

The thought startles me, and I glance over at Finny’s handsome face, momentarily lit up by the lights in the sky. I never let myself think about what it is that makes me imagine us together sometimes or if it means anything. I love Jamie.”

Throughout the novel Autumn has thoughts of intimacy with Finny, even though they are only friends. At this point, Autumn is confused by her feelings; she insists that she loves Jamie, but suggests that her feelings are not as strong as she implies. Her confusion touches on The Impact of Adolescent Intimacy. Autumn doesn’t understand the complexity of her feelings, hinting at the naivety that led to the initial separation between her and Finny.

“And I love him. For all of my memory, I have loved him; I do not even notice it anymore. I feel what I have always felt when I look at him, and I have never before asked myself what it is exactly. I love him in a way I cannot define, as if my love were an organ within my body that I could not live without yet could not pick out of an anatomy book.

    I do not love him the way I love Jamie. It’s not the way I love Sasha or my mother or Mr. Laughegan.

    It’s the way I love Finny.”

A year after the novel begins, Autumn begins to admit to herself that she loves Finny. This touches on the trope of enemies to lovers, as Autumn and Finny are no longer friends and he is involved with her former friend group, whom she considers her enemies. These lines also explore the trope of friends to lovers: Finny was her best friend and they continue to have a friendly relationship despite their emotional distance.

These lines show that Autumn is maturing emotionally; she is beginning to understand that a person can love someone in different ways. It also presents a conflict as she struggles to separate her feelings for Jamie from those for Finny. These lines repeat “I love him” for emphasis and use a simile, where something is compared to something else using “like” or “as.” In this case, Autumn compares her love to an “organ” she couldn’t survive without.

“I know that someday I will die, and I know that someday I will lose my virginity; these two things seem equally probable, equally impossible.”

As Autumn matures, she begins to ponder some of the heavier issues that come with being human. Autumn reflects on her mortality as she considers the dangers of learning how to drive, foreshadowing Finny’s accident. Autumn also wonders about her first sexual experience, a common theme in YA novels.

“I try to picture Jamie and me breaking up. My first reaction is a shocking sense of relief; if Jamie and I broke up, it would mean that he wasn’t the great love of my life; I wouldn’t have to feel guilty anymore that I sometimes think about being with someone else, wondering if it would be better, maybe even perfect with him.”

Autumn’s reflections foreshadow her breakup with Jamie. She feels “relief” at the thought of breaking up with him, suggesting that Jamie is not the great love of her life, and that Finny is. The long second sentence, separated into clauses by semicolons, reflects the momentum and urgency of Autumn’s thoughts.

“‘I think we’re supposed to experience as much beauty as we can.’

‘Isn’t that the same as happiness too?’ Jamie says. I shake my head. The grass pulls at my hair.

‘No, because sometimes sad things are beautiful,’ I say. ‘Like when someone dies.’”

Autumn offers mature insight into the purpose of life while talking to her friends. Jamie doesn’t see things her way, suggesting their growing separation. Autumn insists that life is not about happiness or intimacy, but about experiencing beauty, which death and sadness are a part of. This is ironic, as Autumn will not see the beauty in Finny’s death, only the bleakness of his absence.

“I have to look away now. It hurts for him to smile at me like that, a friendly, easy smile that says nothing in particular, and therefore tells me everything I need to know about his feelings for me.”

Autumn and Finny spend much of the book missing cues about one another. Here, Autumn assumes that Finny’s friendly, easy smile means that he doesn’t care about her when, in fact, she learns later in the novel that he’s been in love with her since middle school. This touches on The Subjectiveness of Memories; Autumn’s false impressions of the past make her believe that Finny only sees her as a friend, not a potential romantic partner.

“My mother takes the prescription from me without saying anything and we drive by the drugstore before we go home. At first, she is constantly asking me if I took my medicine, then it drops off and no one says anything about it ever.

After a few weeks, I start to feel better, but whether it is because of the pills or because spring has finally come, I am not sure.”

Autumn is diagnosed with clinical depression during the winter, as has been foreshadowed. The doctor assures Autumn that it is not okay to be sad, touching a nerve. Autumn continues to deny that she is depressed, claiming that it is possible that she got better because winter ended. This reflects how Autumn minimizes her disorder throughout the novel, denying it even when its effects are profound. This exemplifies the shame that often surrounds mental disorders.

“This is friendship, and it is love, but I already know what they have not learned yet; how dangerous friendship is, how damaging love can be.”

Autumn is telling her story from a future point in time after Finny’s death. She alludes to the pain that awaits her friends in the future should they experience what happened to her and Finny. This is both a general comment on the harshness of life, and a more intimate expression of Autumn’s pain.

“And I’ve learned that if I try to warn anyone, they laugh. They don’t see that her tension and perfection are the only things holding her together. Even Aunt Angelina will frown and say that if my mother is learning to cut a few corners, it’ll be good for her, that perhaps she is learning to relax a little.”

Despite denying the magnitude of her own clinical depression, Autumn has a keen sense of the cycles that her mother experiences. She recognizes that the people who care for her mother do not want to acknowledge when another depressive episode is coming on, as denial is easier than seeing a loved one struggle. This reflects how Autumn resists the idea that she, too, has the same mood disorder.

“I had another appointment with Dr. Singh yesterday. He nodded at everything I said and refilled my prescription. I think of my fantasy home where the furniture—tables, chairs, and bed frames—are all piles of books. I wonder if he would nod thoughtfully at that too. Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life; that I am in love with both my lost best friend and my boyfriend and I need to believe in another life. He would write something down after that.”

Autumn continues to see her psychiatrist but hides the major conflict in her life, the fact that she loves two boys. The novel again raises a what-if: Would things have turned out differently if she told her doctor? This is a recurring idea within the novel and present in the title; if Autumn had been with Finny in high school, he might have lived.

Autumn also touches on her desire to escape life through reading, showing how she continues to struggle with reality.

“Like all things that have become history, I now feel as if I always knew it, as if all through this story, it had been lurking in the shadows. The story underneath the story.”

Autumn reflects on the passing of the day exactly one year before Finny’s death. This alerts the reader to the fact that Autumn is telling her story in hindsight, aware of everything that will happen in the future. Autumn relays her experience through the eyes of a writer, describing it as “[t]he story underneath the story.” At this point, the narrative has not fully revealed the details of the tragedy.

“’I’m pregnant,’ Angie says. All of our heads swivel together. She’s standing at the top of the steps, just arrived. She wears her book bag on both shoulders, like a child.”

This quote is the beginning of a subplot where Autumn and her friends support Angie and her boyfriend, Dave. Autumn juxtaposes Angie’s reveal with her childlike appearance, underscoring Angie’s youth and naivety. The narrative again explores The Impact of Adolescent Intimacy, and foreshadows Autumn’s possible pregnancy at the novel’s close.

“Finny, my Finny, kissed me. It was horrible. It was strange and wonderful. It felt like I was watching a meteor shower and did not know if it meant the stars were falling and the sky was breaking apart […]”

Autumn doesn’t reveal that Finny kissed her in the eighth grade until near the end of the novel. Autumn has failed to consider that Finny might have romantic feelings for her. Autumn is naïve, which got in the way of a potential romantic relationship with Finny. Her misperception of him led to the distance between them and began the estrangement that kept them apart all through high school.

“Perhaps it is possible for us to have come full circle, from as close as two people can be to awkward strangers to nearly friends to—To what?”

Autumn finds herself considering the possibility that Finny might have feelings for her. Just like when she ran after Finny kissed her in the eighth grade, Autumn hides behind her relationship with Jamie to keep from seeing where her relationship with Finny might go. This again shows her naivety when it comes to intimacy and her fear of being hurt. It also touches on the many misunderstandings that plague Autumn’s relationship with Finny, both intentional and unintentional, and The Subjectiveness of Memories.

“Watching Finny keeps me from thinking about Jamie. Somehow, I don’t think Finny would mind if he knew. If I’m wondering what he’s saying to Sylvie, then I’m not wondering what Jamie might be saying to Sasha.”

Autumn and Jamie have broken up and Finny has stepped up to help her. Finny and Autumn’s mother are doing all they can to keep Autumn’s breakup from worsening her clinical depression. Autumn feels safe with Finny. This contrasts with Autumn’s relationship with Jamie. She clearly feels that Finny would support her no matter what, when there were instances with Jamie that they disagreed and he did not support her.

“’I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘We used to even get sick together and I ruined it all.’

If he were awake, he would say that it was okay, and he would mean it. But it’s not okay. Jack said that it took him forever to get over me, but that still meant he got over me.”

In the aftermath of her breakup with Jamie, Autumn is growing closer to Finny. She has a conversation with Finny’s friend, Jack, who reveals that Finny had a crush on her since middle school and was devastated that it never went anywhere. This is new information for Autumn that again suggests The Subjectiveness of Memories, as it casts events with Finny in a new light. At the same time, however, Autumn continues to not see how Finny still cares deeply for her, and that there is a chance he’d be open to a romantic relationship.

“I’m surprised the next time Sylvie calls when I am with him.”

Finny and Autumn have developed something of a bubble around themselves, forgetting that there is a world outside their relationship. Sylvie’s existence presents an obstacle as Finny and Sylvie are still in a relationship. The developing connection between Autumn and Finny is similar to Jamie and Sasha’s betrayal, leading to the potential for Finny to cheat and the necessity for him to break up with Sylvie. Finny and Autumn both faulted Jamie and Sasha for their actions, even as they are acting the same way.

“Sylvie lies on the other side of the puddle, safe and unmoving, only serving her purpose.

He kneels before her. He says her name. She does not move. He is filled with a fear and panic that matches my own in watching this moment. To steady himself, he lays his left hand down by her head.

Death happens to him more suddenly than I can describe to you or even care to imagine.”

Autumn concludes the scene that she began relaying in Chapter 1, Autumn describes the accident and aftermath that led to Finny’s death. Autumn is clear that she doesn’t blame anyone, but her despair is clear. This touches again on the theme of grief. The lines provide insight into her frame of mind in the aftermath of the tragedy, foretelling her suicide attempt. Painter slows down the scene by using short declarative sentences: “He kneels before her. He says her name. She does not move.”