All the Bright Places (24 page)

Her eyes go narrow, like she’s trying to see if I’m joking or not.

“I’m serious. There’s a lot left to figure out, but I know I want
Germ
to be original.”

Bren throws back her head and laughs, kind of diabolically. “Okay,” she says, catching her breath. “I’m in.”

When I see Finch in U.S. Geography, he looks tired, like he hasn’t slept at all. I sit beside him, across the room from Amanda and Roamer and Ryan, and afterward he pulls me under the stairwell and kisses me like he’s afraid I might disappear. There’s something forbidden about the whole thing that makes the electric currents burn stronger, and I want school to be over forever so we don’t have to come here at all. I tell myself that we can just take off in Little Bastard and head west or east, north or south, till we’ve left Indiana far behind. We’ll wander the country and then the world, just Theodore Finch and me.

But for now, for the rest of the week, we see each other only
at school, kissing under stairwells or in dark corners. In the afternoons we go our separate ways. At night we talk online.

Finch:
Any change?

Me:
If you mean my parents, no
.

Finch:
What are the odds of them forgiving and forgetting?

The truth is, the odds aren’t very good. But I don’t want to say this because he’s worried enough, and ever since that night, there’s something pulled in about him, as if he’s standing behind a curtain.

Me:
They just need time
.

Finch:
I hate to be all Romeo and Juliet about this, but I want to see you alone. As in when we’re not surrounded by the entire population of Bartlett High
.

Me:
If you came over here and I sneaked out or sneaked you in, they really would lock me in the house forever
.

We go back and forth for the next hour thinking up wild scenarios for seeing each other, including a faked alien abduction, triggering the citywide tornado alarm, and digging an underground tunnel that would stretch from his side of town to mine.

It’s one a.m. when I tell him I have to get some sleep, but I end up lying in bed, eyes open. My brain is awake and racing, the way it used to be before last spring. I turn on my light and sketch out ideas for
Germ
—Ask a Parent, book playlists, monthly soundtracks, lists of places where girls like me can get involved. One of the things I want to create is a Wander section where readers can send in pictures or videos of their favorite grand, small, bizarre, poetic, nothing-ordinary sites.

I email Brenda and send Finch a note, in case he’s still awake. And then, even though it’s jumping the gun a little, I write to Jordan Gripenwaldt, Shelby Padgett, Ashley Dunston, the three Brianas, and reporter Leticia Lopez, inviting them to contribute. Also Brenda’s friend Lara, and other girls I know who are good writers or artists or have something original to say:
Dear Chameli, Brittany, Rebekah, Emily, Sa’iyda, Priscilla, Annalise …
 Eleanor and I
were
EleanorandViolet.com, but as far as I’m concerned, the more voices here, the better.

I think about asking Amanda. I write her a letter and leave it in my drafts folder. When I get up the next morning, I delete it.

On Saturday, I eat breakfast with my parents and then I tell them I’m going to ride my bike over to Amanda’s house. They don’t question me about why I want to hang out with this person I barely like or what we’re planning to do or when I’ll be back. For some reason, they trust Amanda Monk.

I ride past her house and continue across town to Finch’s, and the whole thing is so easy, even though I have this weird stitch in my chest because I just lied to my parents. When I get there, Finch makes me crawl up the fire escape and climb in the window so I don’t run into his mom or sisters.

“Do you think they saw?” I brush the dust off my jeans.

“I doubt it. They’re not even home.” He laughs when I pinch his arm, and then his hands are on my face and he’s kissing me, which makes the stitch disappear.

Because his bed is stacked with clothes and books, he drags
a comforter out of his closet and we lie on the floor, the blanket wrapped around us. Under the covers, we get naked and heated, and afterward we talk like children, the blanket up over our heads. We lie there whispering, as if someone might hear us, and for the first time I tell him about
Germ
. “I think this could actually be something, and it’s because of you,” I say. “When I met you, I was finished with all this. I didn’t think it mattered.”

“One, you worry about everything being filler, but the words you write will still be here when you’re gone. And two, you were finished with a lot of things, but you would have come around whether you met me or not.”

For some reason, I don’t like the way this sounds, as if a universe could exist in which I wouldn’t know Finch. But then we’re under the blanket again discussing all the places in the world we want to wander, which somehow turns into all the places in the world we want to Do It.

“We’ll take this show on the road,” says Finch, tracing lazy circles on my shoulder, down my arm, over to my hip. “We’ll wander every state, and after we check them off, we’ll go across the ocean and start wandering there. It will be a Wander-athon.”

“Wander-mania.”

“Wander-rama.”

Without consulting the computer, we list the places we might go, taking turns. And then for some reason I have that feeling again, as if he’s stepped behind a curtain. And then the stitch returns and I can’t help thinking of all I’m doing to be here—
sneaking around behind my parents’ backs, for one, lying to them, for another.

At some point I say, “I should probably go.”

He kisses me. “Or you could stay a little longer.”

So I do.

Noon. NYU campus, New York, New York.

My mom says, “Your father and I are glad to have this time with you, honey. It’s good for all of us to get away.” She means away from home, but I think, more than that, she means away from Finch.

I’m carrying our wandering notebook so that I can make notes on the buildings and the history and anything interesting that I might want to share with him. My parents are discussing how I can apply for spring admission next year and transfer from whatever school I choose for fall.

I’m more worried about why Finch hasn’t answered my last three texts. I wonder if this is the way it will be next year if I come to New York, or wherever I go—me trying to concentrate on college, on life, when all I’m doing is thinking about him. I
wonder if he’ll come with me, or if our built-in ending is high school.

My mom says, “It’ll be here before we know it, and I’m not ready. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.”

“Don’t start crying, Mom. You promised. We’ve still got lots of time to go, and we don’t know where I’m going to end up.”

My dad says, “Just an excuse to come see her and spend time in the city.” But his eyes go damp too.

Even though they don’t say it, I can feel all the expectation and weight surrounding us. It comes from the fact that they didn’t get to do this with their older daughter. They never got to take her to college and wish her a good freshman year, be safe, come home and see us, don’t forget we’re always a phone call away. It’s just one more moment they were cheated of, and one more I have to make up for because I’m all that’s left.

Before the three of us lose it right there, in the middle of campus, I say, “Dad, what can you tell us about the history of NYU?”

I have my own room at the hotel. It is narrow, with two windows, a dresser, and a giant TV cabinet that looks as if it might fall on you and crush you while you sleep.

The windows are closed tight, but I can still hear the noises of the city, which are so different from the ones I hear in Bartlett—sirens, yelling, music, garbage trucks rattling up and down.

“So, do you have a special boy back home?” my mom’s agent asked over dinner.

“No one in particular,” I answered her, and my parents exchanged a look of relief and conviction that yes, they did the right thing by chasing Finch away.

The only light in the room is from my laptop. I skim through our notebook, thick with words, and then through our Facebook messages—so many now—and then I write a new one, quoting Virginia Woolf:
“Let us wander whirling to the gilt chairs.… Are we not acceptable, moon? Are we not lovely sitting together here …?”

On the last Sunday of spring break it snows again, and for an hour or so, everything is white. We spend the morning with Mom. I help Decca in the yard, building a half-snow, half-mud man, and then we walk six blocks to the hill behind my grade school and go sledding. We race each other, and Decca wins every time because it makes her happy.

On the way home she says, “You better not have let me win.”

“Never.” I throw an arm around her shoulders and she doesn’t pull away.

“I don’t want to go to Dad’s,” she says.

“Me neither. But you know deep down it means a lot to him, even though he doesn’t show it.” This is something my mother has said to me more than once. I don’t know that I believe it, but there’s a chance Decca might. As tough as she is, she wants to believe in something.

In the afternoon, we head over to my father’s house, where we sit inside, scattered around the living room, hockey playing on yet another giant flat screen that has been implanted into the wall.

Dad is alternately shouting at the television and listening to Kate talk about Colorado. Josh Raymond sits at my father’s elbow staring at the game and chewing each mouthful forty-five times. I know because I’m so bored, I start counting.

At some point, I get up and go to the bathroom, mainly just to clear my head and text Violet, who comes home today. I sit waiting for her to text me back, flipping the faucets on and off. I wash my hands, wash my face, rummage through the cabinets. I am starting in on the shower rack when my phone buzzes.
Home! Should I sneak over?

I write:
Not yet. Am currently in hell, but will leave as soon as possible
.

We go back and forth for a little while, and then I set off down the hallway, toward the noise and the people. I pass Josh Raymond’s room, and the door is ajar and he’s inside. I knock and he squeaks, “Come in.”

I go into what must be the largest room for a seven-year-old on the planet. The thing is so cavernous, I wonder if he needs a map, and it’s filled with every toy you can imagine, most requiring batteries.

I say, “This is quite a room you have, Josh Raymond.” I am trying not to let it bother me because jealousy is a mean, unpleasant feeling that only eats you from the inside, and I do not need to stand here, an almost-eighteen-year-old with a really sexy girlfriend, even if she’s not allowed to see me anymore,
and worry about the fact that my stepbrother seems to own thousands of Legos.

“It’s okay.” He is sorting through a chest that contains—believe it or not—more toys, when I see them: two old-fashioned wooden stick horses, one black, one gray, that sit forgotten in a corner. These are my stick horses, the same ones I used to ride for hours when I was younger than Josh Raymond, pretending I was Clint Eastwood from one of the old movies my dad used to watch on our small, non-flat-screen TV. The one, incidentally, we still have and use.

“Those are pretty cool horses,” I say. Their names are Midnight and Scout.

He swivels his head around, blinks twice, and says, “They’re okay.”

“What are their names?”

“They don’t have names.”

I suddenly want to take the stick horses and march into the living room and whack my father over the head with them. Then I want to take them home with me. I’ll pay attention to them every day. I’ll ride them all over town.

“Where’d you get them?” I ask.

“My dad got them for me.”

I want to say,
Not your dad
. My
dad. Let’s just get this straight right now. You already have a dad somewhere else, and even though mine isn’t all that great, he’s the only one I’ve got
.

But then I look at this kid, at the thin face and the thin neck and the scrawny shoulders, and he’s seven and small for his age, and I remember what that was like. And I also remember what it was like growing up with my father.

I say, “You know, I had a couple of horses once, not as cool as these here, but they were still pretty tough. I named them Midnight and Scout.”

“Midnight and Scout?” He eyes the horses. “Those are good names.”

“If you want, you can have them.”

“Really?” He is looking up at me with owl eyes.

“Sure.”

Josh Raymond finds the toy he’s looking for—some sort of robocar—and as we walk out the door, he takes my hand.

Back in the living room, my father smiles his camera-ready
SportsCenter
smile and nods at me like we’re buddies. “You should bring your girlfriend over here.” He says this like nothing ever happened and he and I are the best of friends.

“That’s okay. She’s busy on Sundays.”

I can imagine the conversation between my father and Mr. Markey.

Your delinquent son has my daughter. At this moment, she is probably lying in a ditch thanks to him
.

What did you think would happen? Damn right he’s a delinquent, and a criminal, and an emotional wreck, and a major-disappointment-weirdo-fuckup. Be grateful for your daughter, sir, because trust me, you would not want my son. No one does
.

I can see Dad searching for something to say. “Well, any day is fine, isn’t it, Rosemarie? You just bring her by whenever you can.” He’s in one of his very best moods, and Rosemarie nods and beams. He slaps his hand against the chair arm. “Bring her over here, and we’ll put some steaks on the grill and something with beans and twigs on it for you.”