Chapter 33

Autumn describes the acceleration into junior year and the new freedom of driving, with Jamie picking her up daily. The possibility of escaping tempts her, yet they always go to school. College brochures flood her mailbox, and Autumn sorts them by English education and creative writing options, forming a neat but idle pile.

On The Steps to Nowhere, Jamie talks business major plans while Autumn imagines a tidy, enclosed future together in a Victorian house, recognizing both its comfort and constraint. The imagery underscores Autumn’s mixed feelings about adulthood and fixed roles.

Autumn and Finny share a late-afternoon Honors English section without their usual friend groups. Their assigned seats place Finny directly behind Autumn, creating charged closeness they navigate by an unspoken rule not to speak in class. They maintain silence to avoid performing their social identities—popular Finn Smith and tiara-wearing Autumn, Jamie’s girlfriend—before classmates who don’t know their shared past.

During class, a girl flirts with Finny and asks about his plans. Finny says he wants to go to medical school, though he hasn’t chosen a specialty. Autumn privately reflects that this suits his lifelong instinct to help people, recalling Aunt Angelina’s mention of pediatrics, Doctors Without Borders, or psychiatry.

Autumn admires Finny’s clear direction without a fixed endpoint and envies his freedom to choose later. When the girl says she doesn’t know what she wants, Autumn resists turning to say that certainty can be more burdensome, revealing her own tension between desire, identity, and the future.