All the Bright Places

by Jennifer Niven

  “Go for it. We’ve left everything the way it was—you know, for when he comes back.”

  If he comes back.

  Upstairs, I shut the door to his bedroom and stand there a moment. The room still smells like him—a mix of soap and cigarettes and the heady, woodsy quality that is distinctly Theodore Finch. I open the windows to let some air in because it’s too dead and stale, and then I close them again, afraid the scent of soap and cigarettes and Finch will escape. I wonder if his sisters or mom have even set foot in this room since he’s been gone. It looks so untouched, the drawers still open from when I was here last.

  I search through the dresser and desk again, and then the bathroom, but there’s nothing that can tell me anything. My phone buzzes, and I jump. It’s Ryan, and I ignore it. I walk into the closet, where the black light has been replaced by a regular old bulb. I go through the shelves and the remaining clothes, the ones he didn’t take with him. I pull his black T-shirt off a hanger and breathe him in, and then I slip it into my purse. I close the door behind me, sit down, and say out loud, “Okay, Finch. Help me out here. You must have left something behind.”

  I let myself feel the smallness and closeness of the closet pressing in on me, and I think about Sir Patrick Moore’s black hole trick, when he just vanished into thin air. It occurs to me that this is exactly what Finch’s closet is—a black hole. He went inside and disappeared.

  Then I examine the ceiling. I study the night sky he created, but it looks like a night sky and nothing more. I look at our wall of Post-its, reading every single one until I see there’s nothing new or added. The short wall, the one opposite the door, holds an empty shoe rack, which he used to hang his guitar from. I sit up and scoot back and check the wall I was leaning against. There are Post-its here too, and for some reason I didn’t notice them the last time.

  Just two lines across, each word on a separate piece of paper. The first reads: long, last, nothing, time, there, make, was, to, a, him.

  The second: waters, thee, go, to, it, suits, if, the, there.

  I reach for the word “nothing.” I sit cross-legged and hunched over, thinking about the words. I know I’ve heard them before, though not in this order.

  I take the words from line one off the wall and start moving them around:

  Nothing was to him a long time there make last.

  Last a long time make there nothing was to him.

  There was nothing to make him last a long time.

  On to the second line now. I pluck “go” from the wall and place it first. “To” moves next, and so on until it reads: Go to the waters if it suits thee there.

  By the time I’m back downstairs, it’s just Decca and Mrs. Finch. She tells me Kate has gone out to look for Theo and there’s no telling when she’ll be back. I have no choice but to talk to Finch’s mom. I ask if she’d mind coming upstairs. She climbs the steps like a much older person, and I wait for her at the top.

  She hesitates on the landing. “What is it, Violet? I don’t think I can handle surprises.”

  “It’s a clue to where he is.”

  She follows me into his room and stands for a moment, looking around as if she’s seeing it for the first time. “When did he paint everything blue?”

  Instead of answering, I point at the closet. “In here.”

  We stand in his closet, and she covers her mouth at how bare it is, how much is gone. I crouch in front of the wall and show her the Post-its.

  She says, “That first line. That’s what he said after the cardinal died.”

  “I think he’s gone back to one of the places we wandered, one of the places with water.” The words are written in The Waves, he wrote on Facebook. At 9:47 a.m. The same time as the Jovian-Plutonian hoax. The water could be the Bloomington Empire Quarry or the Seven Pillars or the river that runs in front of the high school or about a hundred other places. Mrs. Finch stares blankly at the wall, and it’s hard to know if she’s even listening. “I can give you directions and tell you exactly where to look for him. There are a couple of places he could have gone, but I have a pretty good idea where he might be.”

  Then she turns to me and lays her hand on my arm and squeezes it so hard, I can almost feel the bruise forming. “I hate to ask you, but can you go? I’m just so—worried, and—I don’t think I could—I mean, in case something were to—or if he were.” She is crying again, the hard and ugly kind, and I’m ready to promise her anything as long as she stops. “I just really need you to bring him home.”

  VIOLET

  April 26 (part two)

  I don’t go for her or for his dad or for Kate or for Decca. I go for me. Maybe because I know, somehow, what I’ll find. And maybe because I know whatever I find will be my fault. After all, it’s because of me he had to leave his closet. I was the one who pushed him out by talking to my parents and betraying his trust. He never would have left if it hadn’t been for me. Besides, I tell myself, Finch would want me to be the one to come.

  I call my parents to tell them I’ll be home in a while, that I’ve got something to do, and then I hang up on my dad, even as he’s asking me a question, and drive. I drive faster than I normally do, and I remember the way without looking at the map. I am scarily, eerily calm, as if someone else is doing the driving. I keep the music off. This is how focused I am on getting there.

  “If that blue could stay for ever; if that hole could remain for ever.”

  There was nothing to make him last.

  The first thing I see is Little Bastard, parked on the side of the road, right wheels, front and back, on the embankment. I pull up behind it and turn off the engine. I sit there.

  I can drive away right now. If I drive away, Theodore Finch is still somewhere in the world, living and wandering, even if it’s without me. My fingers are on the ignition key.

  Drive away.

  I get out of the car, and the sun is too warm for April in Indiana. The sky is blue, after nothing but gray for the past few months except for that first warm day. I leave my jacket behind.

  I walk past the NO TRESPASSING signs and the house that sits off the road and up a driveway. I climb up the embankment and go down the hill to the wide, round pool of blue water, ringed by trees. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it the first time—the water is as blue as his eyes.

  The place is deserted and peaceful. So deserted and peaceful that I almost turn around and go back to the car.

  But then I see them.

  His clothes, on the bank, folded neatly and stacked, collared shirt on top of jeans on top of leather jacket on top of black boots. It’s like a greatest hits of his closet. Only there. On the bank.

  For a long time, I don’t move. Because if I stand here like this, Finch is still somewhere.

  Then: I kneel beside the stack of clothes and lay my hand on them, as if by doing so I can learn where he is and how long ago he came. The clothes are warm from the sun. I find his phone tucked into one of the boots, but it’s completely dead. In the other boot, his nerd glasses and car keys. Inside the leather jacket, I find our map, folded as neatly as the clothes. Without thinking, I put it in my bag.

  “Marco,” I whisper.

  Then: I stand.

  “Marco,” I say louder.

  I pull off my shoes and coat and set my keys and phone beside the neat stack of Finch’s clothing. I climb onto the rock ledge and dive into the water, and it knocks the breath out of me because it’s cold, not warm. I tread circles, head up, until I can breathe. And then I take a breath and go under, where the water is strangely clear.

  I go as deep as I can, heading straight for the bottom. The water feels darker the deeper I go, and too soon I have to push up to the surface and fill my lungs. I dive again and again, going as deep as I dare before running out of breath. I swim from one end of the hole to the other, back and forth. I come up and then go down again. Each time, I can stay a little longer, but not as long as Finch, who can hold his breath for minutes.

  Could
hold.

  Because at some point, I know: he’s gone. He’s not somewhere. He’s nowhere.

  Even after I know, I dive and swim and dive and swim, up and down and back and forth, until finally, when I can’t do it anymore, I crawl up onto the bank, exhausted, lungs heaving, hands shaking.

  As I dial 9-1-1, I think: He’s not nowhere. He’s not dead. He just found that other world.

  The sheriff for Vigo County arrives with the fire department and an ambulance. I sit on the bank wrapped in a blanket someone has given me, and I think about Finch and Sir Patrick Moore and black holes and blue holes and bottomless bodies of water and exploding stars and event horizons, and a place so dark that light can’t get out once it’s in.

  Now these strangers are here and milling around, and they must be the ones who own this property and this house. They have children, and the woman is covering their eyes and shooing them away, telling them to get on back in there and don’t come out, whatever you do, not till she says so. Her husband says, “Goddamn kids,” and he doesn’t mean his, he means kids in general, kids like Finch and me.

  Men are diving over and over, three or four of them—they all look the same. I want to tell them not to bother, they’re not going to find anything, he’s not there. If anyone can make it to another world, it’s Theodore Finch.

  Even when they bring the body up, swollen and bloated and blue, I think: That’s not him. That’s someone else. This swollen, bloated, blue thing with the dead, dead skin is not anyone I know or recognize. I tell them so. They ask me if I feel strong enough to identify him, and I say, “That’s not him. That is a swollen, bloated, dead, dead blue thing, and I can’t identify it because I’ve never seen it before.” I turn my head away.

  The sheriff crouches down beside me. “We’re going to need to call his parents.”

  He is asking for the number, but I say, “I’ll do it. She was the one who asked me to come. She wanted me to find him. I’ll call.”

  But that’s not him, don’t you see? People like Theodore Finch don’t die. He’s just wandering.

  I call the line his family never uses. His mother answers on the first ring, as if she’s been sitting right there waiting. For some reason, this makes me mad and I want to slam the phone off and throw it into the water.

  “Hello?” she says. “Hello?” There’s something shrill and hopeful and terrified in her voice. “Oh God. Hello?!”

  “Mrs. Finch? It’s Violet. I found him. He was where I thought he would be. I’m so sorry.” My voice sounds as if it’s underwater or coming from the next county. I am pinching the inside of my arm, making little red marks, because I suddenly can’t feel anything.

  His mother lets out a sound I’ve never heard before, low and guttural and terrible. Once again, I want to throw the phone into the water so it will stop, but instead I keep saying “I’m sorry” over and over and over, like a recording, until the sheriff pries the phone from my hand.

  As he talks, I lie back against the ground, the blanket wrapped around me, and say to the sky, “May your eye go to the Sun, To the wind your soul.… You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”

  VIOLET

  May 3

  I stand in front of the mirror and study my face. I am dressed in black. Black skirt, black sandals, and Finch’s black T-shirt, which I’ve belted. My face looks like my face, only different. It is not the face of a carefree teenage girl who has been accepted at four colleges and has good parents and good friends and her whole life ahead of her. It is the face of a sad, lonely girl something bad has happened to. I wonder if my face will ever look the same again, or if I’ll always see it in my reflection—Finch, Eleanor, loss, heartache, guilt, death.

  But will other people be able to tell? I take a picture with my phone, fake smiling as I pose, and when I look at it, there’s Violet Markey. I could post it on Facebook right now, and no one would know that I took it After instead of Before.

  My parents want to go with me to the funeral, but I say no. They are hovering too much and watching me. Every time I turn around, I see their worried eyes, and the looks they give each other, and there’s something else—anger. They are no longer mad at me, because they’re furious with Mrs. Finch, and probably Finch too, although they haven’t said so. My dad, as usual, is more outspoken than my mom, and I overhear him talking about That woman, and how he’d like to give her a piece of his goddamn mind, before Mom shushes him and says, Violet might hear you.

  His family stands in the front row. And it is raining. This is the first time I’ve seen his dad, who is tall and broad-shouldered and movie-star handsome. The mousy woman who must be Finch’s stepmom stands next to him, her arm around a very small boy. Next to him is Decca, and then Kate, and then Mrs. Finch. Everyone is crying, even the dad.

  Golden Acres is the largest cemetery in town. We stand at the top of a hill next to the casket, my second funeral in just over a year’s time, even though Finch wanted to be cremated. The preacher is quoting verses from the Bible, and the family is weeping, and everyone is weeping, even Amanda Monk and some of the cheerleaders. Ryan and Roamer are there, and about two hundred other kids from school. I also recognize Principal Wertz and Mr. Black and Mrs. Kresney and Mr. Embry from the counseling office. I stand off to the side with my parents—who insisted on coming—and Brenda and Charlie. Brenda’s mom is there, her hand resting on her daughter’s shoulder.

  Charlie is standing with his hands folded in front of him, staring at the casket. Brenda is staring at Roamer and the rest of the crying herd, her eyes dry and angry. I know what she’s feeling. Here are these people who called him “freak” and never paid attention to him, except to make fun of him or spread rumors about him, and now they are carrying on like professional mourners, the ones you can hire in Taiwan or the Middle East to sing, cry, and crawl on the ground. His family is just as bad. After the preacher is finished, everyone moves toward them to shake their hands and offer condolences. The family accepts them as if they’ve earned them. No one says anything to me.

  And so I stand quietly in Finch’s black T-shirt, thinking. In all his words, the preacher doesn’t mention suicide. The family is calling his death an accident because they didn’t find a proper note, and so the preacher talks about the tragedy of someone dying so young, of a life ended too soon, of possibilities never realized. I stand, thinking how it wasn’t an accident at all and how “suicide victim” is an interesting term. The victim part of it implies they had no choice. And maybe Finch didn’t feel like he had a choice, or maybe he wasn’t trying to kill himself at all but just going in search of the bottom. But I’ll never really know, will I?

  Then I think: You can’t do this to me. You were the one who lectured me about living. You were the one who said I had to get out and see what was right in front of me and make the most of it and not wish my time away and find my mountain because my mountain was waiting, and all that adds up to life. But then you leave. You can’t just do that. Especially when you know what I went through losing Eleanor.

  I try to remember the last words I said to him, but I can’t. Only that they were angry and normal and unremarkable. What would I have said to him if I’d known I would never see him again?

  As everyone begins to break apart and walk away, Ryan finds me to say, “I’ll call you later?” It’s a question, so I answer it with a nod. He nods back and then he’s gone.

  Charlie mutters, “What a bunch of phonies,” and I’m not sure if he’s talking about our classmates or the Finch family or the entire congregation.

  Bren’s voice is brittle. “Somewhere, Finch is watching this, all ‘What do you expect?’ I hope he’s flipping them off.”

  Mr. Finch was the one to officially ID the body. The paper reported that, by the time Finch was found, he’d probably been dead several hours.

  I say, “Do you really think he’s somewhere?” Brenda blinks at me. “Like anywhere? I mean, I like to think wherever he is, maybe he can’t see us because he�
��s alive and in some other world, better than this. The kind of world he would have designed if he could have. I’d like to live in a world designed by Theodore Finch.” I think: For a while, I did.

  Before Brenda can answer, Finch’s mother is suddenly beside me, red eyes peering into my face. She sweeps me into a hug and holds on like she never plans to let go. “Oh, Violet,” she cries. “Oh, dear girl. Are you okay?”

  I pat her like you would pat a child, and then Mr. Finch is there, and he is hugging me with his big arms, his chin on my head. I can’t breathe, and then I feel someone pulling me away, and my father says, “I think we’ll take her home.” His voice is curt and cold. I let myself be led to the car.

  At home, I pick at my dinner and listen to my parents talk about the Finches in controlled, even voices that have been carefully chosen so as not to upset me.

  Dad: I wish I could have given those people a piece of my mind today.

  Mom: She had no right to ask Violet to do that.

  She glances at me and says too brightly, “Do you need more vegetables, honey?”

  Me: No, thank you.

  Before they can start in on Finch, and the selfishness of suicide, and the fact that he took his life when Eleanor had hers taken from her, when she didn’t get a say in the matter—such a wasteful, hateful, stupid thing to do—I ask to be excused, even though I’ve barely touched my food. I don’t have to help with the dishes, so I go upstairs and sit in my closet. My calendar is shoved into a corner. I unfold it now, smoothing it out, and look at all the blank days, too many to count, that I didn’t mark off because these were days I had with Finch.

  I think:

  I hate you.

  If only I’d known.

  If only I’d been enough.

  I let you down.

  I wish I could have done something.

  I should have done something. Was it my fault?

  Why wasn’t I enough?