Autumn begins high school as a near-stranger to childhood best friend Finny after their close friendship dissolves before ninth grade.

Both Autumn and Sasha pursue the same boy, Jamie, but Jamie chooses Autumn to date.

Finny begins dating a girl named Sylvie, and Autumn watches their relationship grow closer at the bus stop each morning.

Autumn and Finny are placed in the same sophomore honors English class, forcing them into daily proximity once again.

Autumn marches up to Finny sitting at her group's disputed lunchroom table, and he gathers his things and quietly leaves.

Finny receives an expensive sports car from his absent father, and Autumn begins listening for its sound arriving each night.

When Finny appears badly injured during a soccer game, Autumn suddenly realizes for the first time that she is in love with him.

Autumn and Finny are assigned as partners during their senior year physical education class, slowly rebuilding their old bond.

Autumn invites Finny to her Halloween party and he attends with Sylvie, easing some of the tension that had grown between them.

Jamie confesses to Autumn that he fell in love with Sasha and that they slept together just before prom.

After three days of Autumn refusing to leave her bed, Finny comes over and takes her out for ice cream.

Autumn finishes her novel and allows Finny to read it, leading to their first intimate night together.

Finny leaves Autumn's home to break up with Sylvie in person, driving away as it begins to rain.

Finny gets out of his crashed car to check on Sylvie and steps into an electrified puddle, dying instantly.

Autumn attempts suicide, wakes in the hospital, and begins to consider living when she thinks she might be carrying Finny's child.

Autumn begins high school separated from childhood best friend Finny after their close bond dissolves before ninth grade, and both navigate new relationships while slowly gravitating back toward each other. Autumn dates the charming but controlling Jamie, while Finny grows closer to Sylvie, and the two former friends exist as strangers despite daily proximity. A shared gym class during senior year reopens their friendship, and small moments together gradually rebuild what years apart had worn away. When Jamie shatters Autumn's trust by admitting he fell in love with Sasha, Finny becomes her emotional anchor through the heartbreak and pulls her out of depression. Their rekindled closeness becomes romantic the night Finny reads Autumn's novel, but their happiness is instantly cut short when Finny is killed in a freak accident while driving to end things with Sylvie. Left devastated, Autumn attempts suicide but wakes in the hospital clinging to the possibility that she may be carrying Finny's child.

The central love story between Autumn and Finny.

Autumn and Sasha eat lunch alone on the Steps to Nowhere until a new circle of friends gradually forms around them.

Jamie visits Autumn's home for the first time and Finny unexpectedly lets himself in through the back door to borrow eggs.

Autumn buys a tiara at the mall and starts wearing one to school each day despite teasing from classmates.

Jamie gives Autumn a promise ring and a new tiara on Valentine's Day while Finny and Sylvie appear to be arguing nearby.

Brooke confides to her friends the morning after the Spring Fling dance that she slept with her boyfriend, Noah.

At the Fourth of July fair, Autumn looks back to find Finny tenderly petting the goat that Jamie had dragged her away from.

Autumn's mother falls into a severe depressive episode and must be hospitalized while Autumn's father is away on a business trip.

Autumn, her mother, Angelina, and Finny take a campus tour of Springfield together and all fall in love with the school.

Angie announces at Autumn's Halloween party that she is pregnant and that she and Dave plan to get married.

Angie and Dave hold a quick courthouse wedding that Autumn and her closest friends attend together.

Autumn's parents sit her down and tell her that their marriage is ending and they are getting divorced.

Finny and Sylvie are crowned prom king and queen while Jamie promises Autumn during the evening that he will never leave her.

Autumn discovers that she and Finny can see directly into each other's bedrooms through their neighboring windows.

Autumn and Finny visit Angie's newborn daughter together at the hospital, and Autumn convinces a reluctant Finny to hold the baby.

Late at night, Autumn hears footsteps approaching her bedroom expecting Finny, but her mother walks through the door instead.

Autumn builds a new social world from scratch during freshman year, forming bonds over shared lunches on the Steps to Nowhere and cultivating friendships that anchor her through high school. Small but meaningful moments — a tiara bought on impulse, a goat at a summer fair, a college campus that feels like destiny — quietly shape her sense of self and her unspoken connection to Finny. As the years pass, Autumn's friend group navigates teen pregnancy, courthouse weddings, and shifting loyalties while Autumn's family fractures under the weight of her parents' failing marriage. The milestones of prom night and graduation mark the formal close of high school even as Autumn's personal world begins to unravel around her. Autumn and Finny grow quietly closer through ordinary moments — shared windows, a hospital visit, a borrowed evening — before a single late-night footstep confirms that everything has already gone terribly wrong.

The friendships, family milestones, and social moments shaping Autumn's world.

Autumn's friends take a magazine quiz together and conclude the results prove that Finny is secretly in love with Autumn.

Finny comes home drunk from a party and ends up sitting on Autumn's cold porch, asking whether she truly loves Jamie.

Alexis falsely accuses Autumn of being pregnant in front of their class, and Finny's expression visibly changes when Autumn tells him she is a virgin.

Autumn learns through her mother that Sylvie broke up with Finny over Christmas and feels unexpectedly furious at Sylvie for hurting him.

After Jamie accidentally gives Autumn a black eye while sledding, Finny hurries to her side and fashions her a proper ice pack.

After overhearing Angelina's painful breakup with her boyfriend, Autumn receives unexpected advice from Angelina to marry her first love.

Autumn visits a psychiatrist, admits she feels sad most days, and receives her first prescription for antidepressants.

In a senior year creative writing class, Autumn writes about the New Year's Eve kiss Finny gave her at the end of eighth grade.

Finny's friend Jack privately tells Autumn that Finny has been in love with her since middle school and asks her not to hurt him.

Autumn whispers that she loves Finny aloud while lying beside him as he sleeps, finally voicing what she has long suppressed.

Finny calls Autumn after nearly a week of distance and tells her he will break up with Sylvie when she returns from Europe.

Finny and Autumn compare their memories of their falling-out and discover they each remember the events of eighth grade very differently.

Autumn realizes she no longer holds any strong romantic feelings for Jamie while spending an ordinary evening watching a movie with Finny.

Finny wakes Autumn after reading her novel and reveals that he kissed her in eighth grade because he was already in love with her.

Autumn waits alone in a hospital bed for pregnancy test results, believing things will turn out the way they were always meant to be.

Beneath the surface of Autumn's high school years, a series of charged moments slowly expose the depth of feelings she and Finny have long refused to name. A drunk conversation on a porch, a magazine quiz taken as a joke, and a sobering visit to a psychiatrist each force Autumn a little closer to truths she is not yet ready to face. After Jamie's betrayal strips away her self-deception, Finny's friend Jack confirms what Autumn has both suspected and feared — that Finny has loved her since childhood. The summer that follows unravels years of misremembering as Autumn and Finny compare their clashing memories of the past and realize how profoundly different their stories have always been. A novel Autumn wrote to hide her feelings becomes the key that finally unlocks everything between them, but tragedy arrives before their future can begin, leaving Autumn alone in a hospital waiting for a test result that might give her a reason to survive.

The hidden feelings, painful discoveries, and emotional shifts driving Autumn and Finny's story.

Laura Nowlin

Novel

Fiction

Guide