All the Bright Places (28 page)

He writes
I, want, to, have, sex, with, Ultraviolet, Remarkey-able
.

I write
Maybe,
which he immediately rips up.

And then I write
Okay.

He rips this up too.

Yes!

He slaps this onto the wall and then kisses me, his arm circling my waist. Before I know it, I’m on my back and he’s looking down at me, and I am pulling off his shirt. Then his skin is on mine, and I’m on top of him, and for a while I forget we’re on the floor of a closet because all I can think of is him, us, him and me, Finch and Violet, Violet and Finch, and everything is okay again.

Afterward, I stare up at the ceiling, and when I look over at him, there is this strange look on his face. “Finch?” His eyes are fixed on something above us. I poke him in the ribs. “Finch!”

Finally his eyes turn to mine and he says, “Hey,” like he just remembered that I’m there. He sits up and rubs his face with his hands, and then he reaches for the Post-its. He writes
Relax.
Then
Breathe deeply.
Then
Violet is life.

He fixes them to the wall and reaches for the guitar again. I rest my head against his as he plays, changing the chords a little, but I can’t shake this feeling that something happened, like he went away for a minute and only part of him came back.

“Don’t tell anyone about my fort, okay, Ultraviolet?”

“Like not telling your family you got expelled?”

He writes
Guilty
and holds it up before ripping it into pieces.

“Okay.” Then I write
Trust, Promise, Secret, Safe,
and place them on the wall.

“Ahhhhh, and now I have to start over.” He closes his eyes, then plays the song again, adding in the words. It sounds sad the second time, as if he shifted to a minor key.

“I like your secret fort, Theodore Finch.” This time I rest my
head on his shoulder, looking at the words we’ve written and the song we’ve created, and then at the license plate again. I feel this strange need to move closer to him, as if he might get away from me. I lay one hand on his leg.

In a minute he says, “I get into these moods sometimes, and I can’t shake them.” He’s still strumming the guitar, still smiling, but his voice has gone serious. “Kind of black, sinking moods. I imagine it’s what being in the eye of a tornado would be like, all calm and blinding at the same time. I hate them.”

I lace my fingers through his so that he has to stop playing. “I get moody too. It’s normal. It’s what we’re supposed to do. I mean, we’re teenagers.” Just to prove it, I write
Bad mood
before tearing it up.

“When I was a kid, younger than Decca, there was this cardinal in our backyard that kept flying into the sliding glass doors of our house, over and over again until he knocked himself out. Each time, I thought he was dead, but then he’d get up again and fly off. This little female cardinal sat and watched him from one of the trees, and I always thought it was his wife. Anyway, I begged my parents to stop him from banging into the glass. I thought he should come inside and live with us. Kate called the Audubon Society, and the man there said if it was his guess, the cardinal was probably just trying to get back to his tree, the one that had been standing there before someone came along and knocked it down and built a house on top of it.”

He tells me about the day the cardinal died, about finding the body on the back deck, about burying him in the mud nest.
“There was nothing to make him last a long time,” Finch told his parents afterward. He said he always blamed them because he knew they could have been the thing that made the cardinal last if they’d only let it in like he’d asked them to.

“That was the first black mood. I don’t remember much that happened after that, not for a little while at least.”

The worried feeling is back. “Have you ever talked to anyone? Do your parents or Kate—or maybe one of the counselors …?”

“Parents, no. Kate, not really. I’ve been talking to a counselor at school.”

I look around the closet, at the comforter we’re sitting on, at the pillows, the water jug, the energy bars, and that’s when it hits me. “Finch, are you living in here?”

“I’ve been in here before. Eventually, it works. I’ll wake up one morning and feel like coming out.” He smiles at me, and the smile seems hollow. “I kept your secret; you keep mine.”

When I get home, I open the door to my closet and walk inside. It’s larger than Finch’s but packed full of clothes, shoes, purses, jackets. I try to imagine what it would be like to live in here and feel I couldn’t come out. I lie down flat and stare up at the ceiling. The floor is hard and cold. In my head, I write:
There was a boy who lived in a closet.…
 But that’s as far as I get.

I’m not claustrophobic, but when I open the door and walk back into my room, I feel like I can breathe again.

At dinner, my mom says, “Did you have a fun time with
Shelby?” She raises her eyebrows at my dad. “Violet drove to Shelby’s house after school. As in
drove
.”

My dad clinks his glass against mine. “Proud of you, V. Maybe it’s time we talk about getting you a car of your own.”

They’re so excited over this that I feel even guiltier about lying. I wonder what they’d do if I told them where I really was—having sex with the boy they don’t want me to see in the closet where he’s living.

“The cadence of suffering has begun.”
—Cesare Pavese

I

am

in

pieces.

After U.S. Geography, Amanda tells Roamer to go on ahead and she’ll catch up. I haven’t spoken a word to him since Finch got expelled. “I need to tell you something,” she says to me.

“What?” I haven’t said much to her either.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“Amanda, I’m going to be late for class.”

“Promise first.”

“Fine, I promise.”

She’s talking so low I almost can’t hear her. “I saw Finch at this group I go to. I’ve been going a while, even though I don’t really need to, but my mom is, like, making me.” She sighs.

“What’s the group?”

“It’s called Life Is Life. It’s this—it’s a support group for teenagers who’ve either thought about suicide or tried it.”

“And you saw Finch there? When?”

“Sunday. He said he was there because he swallowed a bunch of pills and had to go to the hospital. I thought you should know.”

I stay through last period, only because I have a test. Afterward, I grab Leroy and ride directly to Finch’s house. He doesn’t know I’m coming, and when I get there, no one answers the door. I find some pebbles in the driveway and throw them at his window, and with every
ping ping
against the glass, my heart jumps. Then I sit down on the front step, hoping his mom or his sisters will appear and let me in. I’m still sitting there twenty minutes later, the house as closed up and silent as when I arrived, and finally I head home.

In my room, I don’t even bother taking off my coat and scarf. I open my laptop and send Finch a Facebook message. He answers right away, like he’s been waiting.
So tomorrow’s my birthday.…

I want to ask where he was and was he there the whole time and did he know that I was outside his house. I want to ask about the hospital, but I’m worried if I ask anything he’ll go quiet and disappear, so instead I write:
How should we celebrate?

Finch:
It’s a surprise
.

Me:
But it’s your birthday, not mine
.

Finch:
Doesn’t matter. Come over at six. Be hungry
.

I knock on the door to his room but don’t get any answer. I knock again. “Finch?” I knock again and again, and finally I hear a shuffling, a crash as something is dropped, a
goddammit
, and the door opens. Finch is wearing a suit. His hair is cut short, buzzed very close, and between that and the stubble on his jaw, he looks different, older, and, yes, hot.

He gives me a lopsided grin and says, “Ultraviolet. The only person I want to see.” He moves out of the way so I can come in.

The room is still hospital bare, and I have a sinking feeling because he’s been to the hospital but didn’t tell me, and there’s something about all that blue that makes me feel suffocated.

I say, “I need to talk to you.”

Finch kisses me hello, and his eyes are brighter than the
other night, or maybe it’s that he isn’t wearing glasses. Every time he changes, it takes getting used to. He kisses me again and leans sexily against the door, as if he knows how good he looks.

“First things first. I need to know how you feel about space travel and Chinese food.”

“In that order?”

“Not necessarily.”

“I think one is interesting and the other is really great to eat.”

“Good enough. Shoes off.”

I take my shoes off, which drops me an inch or two.

“Clothes off, midget.”

I swat at him.

“Later then, but I won’t forget. Okay. Please close your eyes.”

I close my eyes. In my mind, I’m going over the best way to bring up Life Is Life. But he’s so much like himself again, even if he looks different, that I tell myself that when I open my eyes, the walls of his room will be painted red and the furniture will be back where it was and the bed will be made because that’s where he sleeps.

I hear the door to the closet open and he leads me forward a few steps. “Keep them closed.” Out of instinct, I reach my hands out in front of me, and Finch lowers them to my sides. The Slow Club is playing, a band I like, all plucky and bittersweet and kind of offbeat.
Like Finch
, I think.
Like us
.

He helps me sit, and I’m on what feels like a stack of pillows. I hear him and feel him moving around me as the door closes,
and then his knees are pressed to mine. I’m ten years old again, back in my fort-building days.

“Open.”

I open.

And I’m in space, everything glowing like the Emerald City. The walls and ceiling are painted with planets and stars. Our Post-its still hang on one wall. The blue comforter is at our feet, so the whole floor glows. Plates and silverware and napkins are stacked next to containers of food. A bottle of vodka sits on ice.

“How did you …”

Finch points to the black-light bulb in the ceiling. “If you’ll notice,” he says, holding a hand up to the skies, “Jupiter and Pluto are perfectly aligned in relation to earth. It’s the Jovian-Plutonian gravitational chamber. Where everything floats indefinitely.”

The only thing that comes out of my mouth is “Oh my God.” I’ve been so worried about him, this boy I love, more worried than I knew until right this moment, staring up at the solar system. This is the single loveliest thing anyone’s ever done for me. It’s movie lovely. It feels somehow epic and fragile, and I want the night to last forever, and knowing it can’t already has me sad.

The food is from Happy Family. I don’t ask how he got it, if he actually drove out there himself or maybe got Kate to pick it up for him, but I tell myself that he was the one who went all that way because he doesn’t have to stay in this closet if he doesn’t want to.

He opens the vodka and we pass the bottle back and forth. It
tastes dry and bitter, like autumn leaves. I like the way it burns my nose and throat on the way down.

“Where did you get this?” I hold up the bottle.

“I have my ways.”

“It’s perfect. Not just this—all of it. But it’s your birthday, not mine. I should be doing something like this for you.”

He kisses me.

I kiss him.

The air is full of things we aren’t saying, and I wonder if he feels it too. He’s being so easy and Finch-like that I tell myself to let it go, don’t think so much. Maybe Amanda’s wrong. Maybe she only told me about that group to get me upset. Maybe she made the whole thing up.

He fills our plates, and as we eat, we talk about everything except for how he’s feeling. I tell him what he’s missed in U.S. Geography and talk about the places left to wander. I give him his birthday present, a first edition of
The Waves
I found in a little bookstore in New York. I inscribed it:
You make me feel gold, flowing too. I love you. Ultraviolet Remarkey-able.

He says, “This is the book I was looking for at Bookmarks, at the Bookmobile Park. Anytime I went into a bookstore.”

He kisses me.

I kiss him.

I can feel the worries fading away. I’m relaxed and happy—happier than I’ve been in a while. I am in the moment. I am here.

After we finish the food, Finch takes off his jacket and we lie side by side on the floor. While he examines his book, and
reads sections aloud to me, I stare up at the sky. Eventually, he lays the book on his chest and says, “You remember Sir Patrick Moore.”

“The British astronomer with the TV show.” I raise my arms toward the ceiling. “The man we have to thank for the Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect.”

“Technically, we have ourselves to thank, but yeah, that’s him. So on one of his shows, he explains the concept of a giant black hole in the center of our galaxy. Understand this is a very big deal. He’s the first person to explain the existence of a black hole in a way that the average person can understand. I mean, he explains it in a way that even Roamer could get.”

He grins at me. I grin at him. He says, “Shit, where was I?”

“Sir Patrick Moore.”

“Right. Sir Patrick Moore orders that a map of the Milky Way be drawn on the TV studio floor. With the cameras rolling, he walks toward the center describing Einstein’s general theory of relativity and goes into some facts—black holes are the remnants of former stars; they’re so dense that not even light can escape; they lurk inside every galaxy; they’re the most destructive force in the cosmos; as a black hole passes through space, it engulfs everything that comes too close to it, stars, comets, planets. I mean everything. When planets, light, stars, whatever, pass that point of no return, it’s what’s called the event horizon—the point after which escape is impossible.”