If He Had Been with Me
by Laura Nowlin
Contents
Chapter 1
Overview
The narrator reconstructs a rainy-night car crash involving Finny and his girlfriend, Sylvie, after an argument. Sylvie is ejected and, in the narrator’s imagined aftermath, tells police what sparked the fight. The narrator insists that the argument’s cause is bound to her and believes being with Finny might have averted tragedy.
Summary
The chapter opens with the narrator admitting she was not present the August night Finny crashed his red car, yet her imagination has fixed the scene in visceral detail. Finny drives with his girlfriend, Sylvie Whitehouse, in heavy rain as they argue, approaching his nineteenth birthday.
The narrator stresses that while others deem the argument’s topic unimportant, it is crucial to her own story. In her mind’s eye, she sees the accident site: rain-slicked road, flashing emergency lights, and Sylvie later sitting in a police car, talking about what caused the fight.
The imagined crash unfolds: Finny, distracted by the argument, reacts to a sudden swerve and overcorrects. He wears a seat belt and remains physically unharmed, while Sylvie, unbelted, is thrown through the windshield. The narrator lingers on the surreal image of Sylvie’s weightless suspension before she hits the pavement and is knocked unconscious, improbably suffering only minor cuts.
In the quiet after the impact, Finny sits shocked and uninjured, his mind blank. The narrator mentally urges him to stay in the car and in that suspended moment, believing this is the fulcrum on which fate could turn. But she acknowledges he never does, implying a looming consequence and her conviction that, had she been with him, everything might have been different.
Who Appears
- NarratorFirst-person voice imagining Finny’s crash; fixates on the argument’s cause and believes her presence could have changed events.
- FinnyDriver in the rainy-night crash; distracted by an argument, uninjured in the impact but poised to make a consequential choice.
- Sylvie WhitehouseFinny’s girlfriend; argues with him, is ejected from the car, later imagined telling police what sparked the fight.