All the Bright Places (14 page)

Before I die …
 it says on what looks like a giant chalkboard. And there below these giant white letters are column after column, line after line, that say
Before I die I want to __________
. And the blanks have been filled in with different colors of chalk, smudged and half melted from the rain and snow, in all different handwriting.

We walk along reading.
Before I die I want to have kids. Live in London. Own a pet giraffe. Skydive. Divide by zero. Play the piano. Speak French. Write a book. Travel to a different planet. Be a better dad than mine was. Feel good about myself. Go to New York City. Know equality. Live
.

Finch bumps my arm and hands me a piece of blue chalk.

I say, “There’s no space left.”

“So we make some.”

He writes
Before I die I want to
and draws a line. He writes it again. Then he writes it a dozen more times. “After we fill these up, we can keep going on the front of the building and down the other side. It’s a good way to figure out just why we’re here.” And I know by “here” he doesn’t mean this sidewalk.

He starts writing:
Play guitar like Jimmy Page. Come up with a song that will change the world. Find the Great Manifesto. Count for something. Be the person I’m meant to be and have that be enough. Know what it’s like to have a best friend. Matter
.

For a long time, I just stand there reading, and then I write:
Stop being afraid. Stop thinking too much. Fill the holes left behind. Drive again. Write. Breathe
.

Finch stands over my shoulder. He is so close, I can feel his breath. He leans forward and adds:
Before I die I want to know a perfect day.
He steps back, reading it over, and steps forward again.
And meet Boy Parade.
Before I can say anything, he laughs, rubs it out, and replaces it with:
And kiss Violet Markey.

I wait for him to erase this too, but he drops the chalk and brushes the dust off his hands, wiping them on his jeans. He gives me a crooked grin, and then he stares at my mouth. I wait for him to make a move. I tell myself,
Just let him try
. And then I think,
I hope he does
, and the thought alone sets off the electric currents and sends them shooting through me. I wonder if kissing Finch would be that different from kissing Ryan. I’ve only kissed a handful of boys in my life, and they were pretty much all the same.

He shakes his head. “Not here. Not now.” And then he jogs toward the car. I jog after him, and once we’re inside, and the engine and the music are on, he says, “Before you get any ideas, that doesn’t mean I like you.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because I see the way you look at me.”

“Oh my God. You are unbelievable.”

He laughs.

Back on the road, my mind is racing. Just because I wanted him to kiss me for, like, one second doesn’t mean I like Theodore Finch. It’s just that it’s been a while since I’ve kissed someone who isn’t Ryan.

In our notebook, I write
Before I die I want to …
 but that’s as far as I get, because all I see is Finch’s line floating on the page:
And kiss Violet Markey
.

Before Finch takes me home, he drives straight to the Quarry in downtown Bartlett, where they don’t even check our IDs. We walk right in, and the place is crowded and smoky, and the band is loud. Everyone seems to know him, but instead of joining the band onstage, he grabs my hand and we dance. One minute he acts like he’s in a mosh pit and the next we’re doing the tango.

I shout over the noise, “I don’t like you either.” But he just laughs again.

On the way back to Violet’s house, I think up epitaphs for the people we know: Amanda Monk
(I was as shallow as the dry creek bed that branches off the Whitewater River)
, Roamer
(My plan was to be the biggest asshole I could be—and I was)
, Mr. Black
(In my next life, I want to rest, avoid children, and be paid well)
.

So far she’s been quiet, but I know she’s listening, mostly because there’s no one else around but me. “What would yours say, Ultraviolet?”

“I’m not sure.” She tilts her head and gazes out over the dash at some distant point as if she’ll see the answer there. “What about yours?” Her voice sounds kind of drifting and far off, like she’s somewhere else.

I don’t even have to think about it. “Theodore Finch, in search of the Great Manifesto.”

She gives me a sharp look, and I can see she’s present and accounted for again. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means ‘the urge to be, to count for something, and, if death must come, to die valiantly, with acclamation—in short, to remain a memory.’ ”

She goes quiet, as if she’s thinking this over. “So where were you Friday? Why didn’t you go to school?”

“I get these headaches sometimes. No big deal.” This isn’t an out-and-out lie, because the headaches are a part of it. It’s like my brain is firing so fast that it can’t keep up with itself. Words. Colors. Sounds. Sometimes everything else fades into the background and all I’m left with is sound. I can hear everything, but not just hear it—I can feel it too. But then it can come on all at once—the sounds turn into light, and the light goes too bright, and it’s like it’s slicing me in two, and then comes the headache. But it’s not just a headache I
feel
, I can
see
it, like it’s made up of a million colors, all of them blinding. When I tried to describe it to Kate once, she said, “You can thank Dad for that. Maybe if he hadn’t used your head as a punching bag.”

But that’s not it. I like to think that the colors and sounds and words have nothing to do with him, that they’re all me and my own brilliant, complicated, buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, godlike brain.

Violet says, “Are you okay now?” Her hair is windblown and her cheeks are flushed. Whether she likes it or not, she seems happy.

I take a good long look at her. I know life well enough to know you can’t count on things staying around or standing still, no matter how much you want them to. You can’t stop
people from dying. You can’t stop them from going away. You can’t stop yourself from going away either. I know myself well enough to know that no one else can keep you awake or keep you from sleeping. That’s all on me too. But man, I like this girl.

“Yeah,” I say. “I think I am.”

At home, I access voicemail on the landline, the one Kate and I get around to checking when we remember, and there’s a message from Embryo.
Shit
. Shit. Shit. Shit. He called Friday because I missed our counseling session and he wants to know where in the hell I am, especially because he seems to have read the
Bartlett Dirt
, and he knows—or thinks he knows—what I was doing on that ledge. On the bright side, I passed the drug test. I delete the message and tell myself to be early on Monday, just to make it up to him.

And then I go up to my room, climb onto a chair, and contemplate the mechanics of hanging. The problem is that I’m too tall and the ceiling is too low. There’s always the basement, but no one ever goes down there, and it could be weeks, maybe even months, before Mom and my sisters would find me.

Interesting fact: Hanging is the most frequently used method of suicide in the United Kingdom because, researchers say, it’s viewed as being both quick and easy. But the length of the rope has to be calibrated in proportion to the weight of the person; otherwise there is nothing quick or easy about it. Additional interesting fact: The modern method of judicial hanging is termed the Long Drop
.

That is exactly what it feels like to go to Sleep. It is a long drop from the Awake and can happen all at once. Everything just … stops.

But sometimes there are warnings. Sound, of course, and headaches, but I’ve also learned to look out for things like changes in space, as in the way you see it, the way it feels. School hallways are a challenge—too many people going too many directions, like a crowded intersection. The school gym is worse than that because you’re packed in and everyone is shouting, and you can become trapped.

I made the mistake of talking about it once. A few years ago, I asked my then good friend Gabe Romero if he could feel sound and see headaches, if the spaces around him ever grew or shrank, if he ever wondered what would happen if he jumped in front of a car or train or bus, if he thought that would be enough to make it stop. I asked him to try it with me, just to see, because I had this feeling, deep down, that I was make-believe, which meant invincible, and he went home and told his parents, and they told my teacher, who told the principal, who told my parents, who said to me,
Is this true, Theodore? Are you telling stories to your friends?
The next day it was all over school, and I was officially Theodore Freak. One year later, I grew out of my clothes because, it turns out, growing fourteen inches in a summer is easy. It’s growing out of a label that’s hard.

Which is why it pays to pretend you’re just like everyone else, even if you’ve always known you’re different.
It’s your own fault
, I told myself then—my fault I can’t be normal, my fault I
can’t be like Roamer or Ryan or Charlie or the others.
It’s your own fault
, I tell myself now.

While I’m up on the chair, I try to imagine the Asleep is coming. When you’re infamous and invincible, it’s hard to picture being anything but awake, but I make myself concentrate because this is important—it’s life or death.

Smaller spaces are better, and my room is big. But maybe I can cut it in half by moving my bookcase and dresser. I pick up the rug and start pushing things into place. No one comes up to ask what the hell I’m doing, although I know my mom and Decca and Kate, if she’s home, must hear the pulling and scraping across the floor.

I wonder what would have to happen for them to come in here—a bomb blast? A nuclear explosion? I try to remember the last time any of them were in my room, and the only thing I can come up with is a time four years ago when I really did have the flu. Even then, Kate was the one who took care of me.

In order to make up for missing Friday, I decide to tell Embryo about Violet. I don’t mention her by name, but I’ve got to say something to someone other than Charlie or Brenda, who don’t do more than ask me if I’ve gotten laid yet or remind me of the ass-kicking Ryan Cross will give me if I ever make a move on her.

First, though, Embryo has to ask me if I’ve tried to hurt myself. We run through this routine every week, and it goes something like this:

Embryo: Have you tried to hurt yourself since I saw you last?

Me: No, sir.

Embryo: Have you thought about hurting yourself?

Me: No, sir.

I’ve learned the hard way that the best thing to do is say nothing about what you’re really thinking. If you say nothing, they’ll assume you’re thinking nothing, only what you let them see.

Embryo: Are you bullshitting me, son?

Me: Would I bullshit you, an authority figure?

Because he still hasn’t acquired a sense of humor, he squints at me and says, “I certainly hope not.”

Then he decides to break routine. “I know about the article in the
Bartlett Dirt
.”

I actually sit speechless for a few seconds. Finally I say, “You can’t always believe what you read, sir.” It comes out snarky. I decide to drop the sarcasm and try again. Maybe it’s because he’s thrown me. Or maybe it’s because he’s worried and he means well, and he is one of the few adults in my life who pay attention. “Really.” My voice actually cracks, making it clear to both of us that the stupid article bothers me more than I let on.

After this exchange is over, I spend the rest of the time proving to him how much I have to live for. Today is the first day I’ve brought up Violet.

“So there’s this girl. Let’s call her Lizzy.” Elizabeth Meade is head of the macramé club. She’s so nice, I don’t think she’d mind if I borrowed her name in the interest of guarding my privacy. “She and I have gotten to be kind of friendly, and that’s making me very, very happy. Like stupidly happy. Like so-happy-my-friends-can’t-stand-to-be-around-me happy.”

He is studying me as if trying to figure out my angle. I go on about Lizzy and how happy we are, and how all I want to do is spend my days being happy about how happy I am, which is
actually true, but finally he says, “Enough. I get it. Is this ‘Lizzy’ the girl from the paper?” He makes air quotes around her name. “The one who saved you from jumping off the ledge?”

“Possibly.” I wonder if he’d believe me if I told him it was the other way around.

“Just be careful.”

No, no, no, Embryo
, I want to say.
You, of all people, should know better than to say something like this when someone is so happy
. “Just be careful” implies that there’s an end to it all, maybe in an hour, maybe in three years, but an end just the same. Would it kill him to be, like,
I’m really glad for you, Theodore. Congratulations on finding someone who makes you feel so good
?

“You know, you could just say congratulations and stop there.”

“Congratulations.” But it’s too late. He’s already put it out there and now my brain has grabbed onto “Just be careful” and won’t let go. I try to tell it he might have meant “Just be careful when you have sex. Use a condom,” but instead, because, you know, it’s a brain, and therefore has—is—a mind of its own, it starts thinking of every way in which Violet Markey might break my heart.

I pick at the arm of the chair where someone has sliced it in three places. I wonder who and how as I pick pick pick and try to silence my brain by thinking up Embryo’s epitaph. When this doesn’t work, I make up one for my mother
(I was a wife and am still a mother, although don’t ask me where my children are)
and my father
(The only change I believe in is getting rid of your wife and children and starting over with someone else)
.