All the Bright Places (18 page)

Ryan comes right over to me. “We saw you take off during the fire alarm.”

Roamer gives Finch a nasty look. “Is this part of the geography project? Are you wandering the riverbed or just each other?”

“Grow up, Roamer,” I say.

Ryan rubs my arms like he’s trying to warm me up. “Are you okay?”

I shrug him off. “Of course I’m okay. You don’t need to check up on me.”

Finch says, “I didn’t kidnap her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Roamer says, “Did he ask you?”

Finch looks down at Roamer. He has a good three to four inches on him. “No, but I wish you would.”

“Faggot.”

“Lay off, Roamer,” I snap at him. My heart is battering away because I’m not sure what’s going to happen here. “It doesn’t matter what he says—you’re just looking for a fight.” I say to Finch, “Don’t make it worse.”

Roamer gets up in his face. “Why are you all wet? Decide to finally shower after all this time?”

“No, man, I’m saving that activity for when I see your mom later.”

Like that, Roamer jumps on Finch, and the two of them go rolling down the bank into the water. Joe and Ryan just stand there, and I say to Ryan, “Do something.”

“I didn’t start this.”

“Well, do something anyway.”

Roamer swings and hits Finch’s face with a thud. He swings again and again, his fist smashing into Finch’s mouth, into his nose, into his ribs. At first Finch isn’t fighting back—he’s just blocking the shots. But then he has Roamer’s arm twisted behind his back, and he’s plunging his head into the water and holding it under.

“Let him go, Finch.”

He either doesn’t hear me or isn’t listening. Roamer’s legs are thrashing, and Ryan has Finch by the collar of his black sweater, and then by the arm, and is pulling on him. “Wyatt, some help here.”

“Let him go.” Finch looks at me then, and for a second it’s like he doesn’t know who I am. “Let him go.” I snap it at him like I’m talking to a dog or a child.

Just like that, he lets him go, straightens, picks Roamer up,
and drops him onto the bank, where he lies coughing up water. Finch goes stalking up the hill, past Ryan and Joe and me. His face is bloody, and he doesn’t wait or look back.

I don’t bother going back to school, because the damage is done. Because Mom won’t expect me home yet, I sneak over to the parking lot, unlock Leroy, and ride to the east side of town. I cruise up and down the streets until I find the two-story brick colonial.
FINCH
, it says on the mailbox.

I knock on the door, and a girl with long black hair answers. “Hey,” she says to me, like she’s not surprised I’m there. “So you must be Violet. I’m Kate.”

I’m always fascinated by how the same genes rearrange themselves across brothers and sisters. People thought Eleanor and I were twins, even though her cheeks were narrower and her hair was lighter. Kate looks like Finch, but not. Same coloring, different features, except for the eyes. It’s strange seeing his eyes in someone else’s face.

“Is he here?”

“I’m sure he’s up there somewhere. I’m guessing you know where his room is.” She smirks a little, but in a nice way, and I wonder what he’s told her about me.

Upstairs, I knock on his door. “Finch?” I knock again. “It’s Violet.” There’s no answer. I try the door, which is locked. I knock again.

I tell myself he must be sleeping or have his headphones on. I knock again and again. I reach into my pocket for the bobby
pin I carry with me, just in case, and bend down to examine the lock. The first one I ever picked was to the closet in my mom’s office. Eleanor put me up to it because that’s where our parents hid the Christmas presents. I discovered lock picking was a skill that comes in handy when you want to disappear during gym class or when you just need some peace and quiet.

I give the knob a shake and then put the bobby pin away. I could probably pick this lock, but I won’t. If Finch wanted to let me in, he would.

When I get back downstairs, Kate is standing at the sink smoking a cigarette out the kitchen window, her hand dangling over the sill. “Was he in there?” When I say no, she throws her cigarette down the garbage disposal. “Huh. Well, maybe he’s asleep. Or he could have gone running.”

“He runs?”

“About fifteen times a day.”

It’s my turn to say, “Huh.”

“You never can tell what that boy’s going to do.”

I stand at the window and watch her climb onto her bike. Afterward, I sit on the shower floor, the water beating down on my head, for a good twenty minutes. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror.

I turn on the computer because it’s a connection to the world, and maybe that’s what I need right now. The brightness of the screen hurts my eyes, and so I dim it way down until the shapes and letters are near shadows. This is better. I sign onto Facebook, which belongs only to Violet and me. I start at the beginning of our message chain and read every word, but the words don’t make sense unless I hold my head and repeat them out loud.

I try to read my downloaded version of
The Waves
, and when that isn’t any better, I think,
It’s the computer. It’s not me
.
And I find a regular book and thumb through it, but the lines dance across the page like they’re trying to get away from me.

I will stay awake
.

I will not sleep
.

I think of ringing up ol’ Embryo. I go so far as to fish his number out from the bottom of my backpack and punch it into my phone. I don’t press Call.

I can go downstairs right now and let my mom know how I’m feeling—if she’s even home—but she’ll tell me to help myself to the Advil in her purse and that I need to relax and stop getting myself worked up, because in this house there’s no such thing as being sick unless you can measure it with a thermometer under the tongue. Things fall into categories of black and white—bad mood, bad temper, loses control, feels sad, feels blue.

You’re always so sensitive, Theodore. Ever since you were a little boy. Do you remember the cardinal? The one that kept flying into the glass doors off the living room? Over and over, he knocked himself out, and you said, “Bring him in to live with us so he won’t do that anymore.” Remember? And then one day we came home and he was lying on the patio, and he’d flown into the door one too many times, and you called his grave a mud nest and said, “None of this would have happened if you’d let him come in.”

I don’t want to hear about the cardinal again. Because the thing of it is, that cardinal was dead either way, whether he came inside or not. Maybe he knew it, and maybe that’s why he decided to crash into the glass a little harder than normal that day. He would have died in here, only slower, because that’s what
happens when you’re a Finch. The marriage dies. The love dies. The people fade away.

I put on my sneakers and bypass Kate in the kitchen. She says, “Your girlfriend was just here looking for you.”

“I must have had my headphones on.”

“What happened to your lip and your eye? Please tell me she didn’t do that.”

“I ran into a door.”

She stares hard at me. “Everything okay with you?”

“Yeah. Super. I’m just going for a run.”

When I get back, the white of my bedroom ceiling is too bright, and so I turn it blue with what’s left of the paint.

Six o’clock. Living room of my house. My parents sit across from me, their brows creased and unhappy. It seems Principal Wertz called my mother when I failed to come back for the rest of third period, or show up for my fourth-, fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-period classes.

My dad is still dressed in the suit he wore to work. He does most of the talking. “Where were you?”

“Technically, just across the street from school.”

“Where across the street?”

“The river.”

“What in the hell were you doing at the river during school, during
winter
?”

In her even, calm voice, Mom says, “James.”

“There was a fire alarm, and we were all outside, and Finch wanted me to see this rare Asian crane …”

“Finch?”

“The boy I’m doing the project with. You met him.”

“How much is left to do on this project?”

“We have to visit one more place and then we need to put everything together.”

Mom says, “Violet, we’re very disappointed.” This is like a knife in my stomach. My parents have never believed in grounding us or taking away our phones or computers, all the things Amanda’s parents do to her when she gets caught breaking the rules. Instead, they talk to us and tell us how disappointed they are.

Me, I mean. They talk to me.

“This isn’t like you.” Mom shakes her head.

Dad says, “You can’t use losing your sister as an excuse to act out.” I wish, just once, they’d send me to my room.

“I wasn’t acting out. That wasn’t what it was. It’s just—I don’t cheer anymore. I quit student council. I suck at orchestra. I don’t have any friends or a boyfriend, because it’s not like the rest of the world stops, you know?” My voice is getting louder, and I can’t seem to do anything about it. “Everyone goes on with their lives, and maybe I can’t keep up. Maybe I don’t want to. The one thing I’m good at I can’t do anymore. I didn’t even want to work on this project, but it’s kind of the only thing I have going on.”

And then, because they won’t do it, I send myself to my room. I walk away from them just as my dad is saying, “First of all, kiddo, you are good at many things, not just one.…”

* * *

We eat dinner in almost-silence, and afterward my mother comes up to my bedroom and studies the bulletin board above my desk. She says, “What happened to EleanorandViolet.com?”

“I let it go. There wasn’t any point in keeping it.”

“I guess not.” Her voice is quiet, and when I look up, her eyes are red. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” she says, and then she sighs, and I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s a sigh full of pain and loss. She clears her throat and taps the paper that reads
New Nameless Web Magazine
. “So talk to me about this.”

“I might create another magazine. Or I might not. I think my brain just naturally went there because of EleanorandViolet.”

“You liked working on it.”

“I did, but if I started another one, I’d want it to be different. Not just the silly stuff, but also real thoughts, real writing, real life.”

She taps
Lit, Love, Life
. “And these?”

“I don’t know. They might be categories.”

She brings a chair over and sits next to me. And then she starts asking questions: Would this be for girls my age, or high school and beyond? Would I want to write all the content or work with contributors? What would be the purpose—why do I want to start another magazine to begin with?
Because people my age need somewhere they can go for advice or help or fun or just to
be
without anyone worrying about them. Somewhere they can be unlimited and fearless and safe, like in their own rooms
.

I haven’t thought most of this out, and so I answer, “I don’t know.” And maybe the whole thing is stupid. “If I do anything, I have to start over, but all I have is fragments of ideas. Just
pieces.” I wave at the computer, then at the wall. “Like a germ of an idea for this, and a germ of an idea for that. Nothing whole or concrete.”

“ ‘Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.’ Pearl S. Buck. Maybe a germ is enough. Maybe it’s all you need.” She props her chin in her hand and nods at the computer screen. “We can start small. Open up a new document or pull out a blank piece of paper. We’ll make it our canvas. Remember what Michelangelo said about the sculpture being in the stone—it was there from the beginning, and his job was to bring it out. Your words are in there too.”

For the next two hours we brainstorm and make notes, and at the end of it all, I have a very rough outline of a webzine and a very rough sketch of regular columns falling under the categories of Lit, Love, and Life.

It’s nearly ten when she tells me good night. Mom lingers in the doorway and says, “Can you trust this boy, V?”

I turn in my chair. “Finch?”

“Yes.”

“I think so. Right now, he’s pretty much the only friend I have.” I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.

After she goes, I curl up on my bed, computer on my lap. There’s no way I’ll be able to create all the content. I write down a couple of names, including Brenda Shank-Kravitz, Jordan Gripenwaldt, and Kate Finch with a question mark beside it.

Germ
. I do a search, and it’s available—www.germmagazine.com. Five minutes later, it’s purchased and registered. My stone.

I switch to Facebook and send Finch a message:
I hope you’re
okay. Came by to see you earlier, but you weren’t there. My parents found out about skipping school and aren’t happy. I think this may mark the end of our wandering.

My light is off and my eyes are closed when I realize that for the first time I’ve forgotten to cross off the day on my calendar. I get up, feet hitting the cool wood floor, and walk over to my closet door. I pick up the black marker that I always leave within reach, uncap it, hold it up. And then my hand freezes in midair. I look at all the days laid out until graduation and freedom and I feel a strange clutching in my chest. They are only a collection of days, less than half a year, and then who knows where I go and what I do?

I cap the marker and grab one corner of the calendar and rip it down. I fold it up and shove it into the back of my closet, tossing the pen in after it. Then I slip out of my room and down the hall.

Eleanor’s door is closed. I push it open and go inside. The walls are yellow and covered in pictures of Eleanor and her Indiana friends, Eleanor and her California friends. The California state flag hangs above her bed. Her art supplies are piled in a corner. My parents have been working in here, slowly organizing her things.