All the Bright Places (33 page)

Actually, I know exactly how that feels.

* * *

At an all-school assembly the second Thursday after Finch’s funeral, they bring in a martial arts expert from Indianapolis to talk to us about safety and how to defend ourselves, as if suicide is something that might attack us on the street, and then they show us this film about teenagers on drugs. Before they turn off the lights, Principal Wertz announces that some of the content is pretty graphic, but that it’s important we see the realities of drug use.

As the movie starts up, Charlie leans over and tells me the only reason they’re showing it is because there’s a rumor going around that Finch was on something, and this is why he died. The only people who know this isn’t true are Charlie, Brenda, and me.

When one of the teen actors overdoses, I walk out. Outside the auditorium, I throw up in one of the trash cans.

“Are you okay?” Amanda is sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall.

“I didn’t see you there.” I move away from the trash can.

“I couldn’t get through five minutes of that.”

I sit down on the floor, a couple of feet away from her. “What goes through your mind when you’re thinking about it?”

“About …”

“Killing yourself. I want to know what that feels like, what a person thinks about. I want to know why.”

Amanda stares at her hands. “I can only tell you how I felt. Ugly. Disgusting. Stupid. Small. Worthless. Forgotten. It just
feels like there’s no choice. Like it’s the most logical thing to do because what else is there? You think, ‘No will even miss me. They won’t know I’m gone. The world will go on, and it won’t matter that I’m not here. Maybe it’s better if I was never here.’ ”

“But you don’t feel that way all the time. I mean, you’re Amanda Monk. You’re popular. Your parents are nice to you. Your brothers are nice to you.”
Everyone’s nice to you
, I think,
because they’re too afraid not to be
.

She looks at me. “In those moments, none of it matters. It’s like that stuff is happening to someone else because all you feel is dark inside, and that darkness just kind of takes over. You don’t even really think about what might happen to the people you leave behind, because all you can think about is yourself.” She wraps her arms around her knees. “Did Finch ever see a doctor?”

“I don’t know.” There’s still so much I don’t know about him. I guess now I’ll never know it. “I don’t think his parents wanted to admit anything was wrong.”

“He was trying to fix himself because of you.”

I know she wants to make me feel better, but this only makes me feel worse.

The next day, in U.S. Geography, Mr. Black stands at the board, where he writes
JUNE 4
and underlines it. “The time has come … people … your projects are due soon … so focus, focus … focus. Please come to … me with any … questions,
otherwise I will … expect you to … turn them in on time … if not before.”

When the bell rings, he says, “I’d like to … talk to you, Violet.” I sit in my seat, next to the desk Finch once sat in, and wait. After the last person leaves, Mr. Black closes the door and sinks into his chair. “I wanted to check in … with you to see … if you need any help … and also to tell you … to feel free to turn in whatever … you have so far … I obviously … understand … that there are extenuating … circumstances.”

Extenuating Circumstances
. That is me. That is Violet Markey. Poor forever-changed Violet and her Extenuating Circumstances. Must treat her carefully, because she is fragile and might break if expected to do the same as everyone else.

“Thanks, but I’m okay.” I can do this. I can show them I’m not some china doll, handle with care. I just wish Finch and I had pulled together all our wanderings, and maybe documented each one a little better. We were so busy being in the moment that I don’t have much to show for it except a half-filled notebook, a few pictures, and a marked-up map.

That evening, I torture myself by reading our Facebook messages, going back to the very beginning. And then, even though I know he’ll never read it, I open our notebook and start to write.

And, finally, I simply write:
Why couldn’t I save yours?

I sit back, and above my desk are the storyboard Post-its for
Germ
. I’ve added a new category: Ask an Expert. My eyes move past these to the piece of paper that describes what the magazine is about. They rest on the last line:
You start here.

In a minute, I am up and out of my seat and searching my room. At first, I can’t remember what I’ve done with the map.
I feel this white rush of panic, which leaves me shaky, because what if I’ve lost it? It will be another piece of Finch, gone.

And then I find it in my bag, on my third time checking, as if it appeared out of thin air. I spread it out and look at the remaining points that are circled. There are five more places to see on my own. Finch has written numbers beside each one so that there’s a kind of order.

Milltown, population 815, sits close to the Kentucky border. I have to stop and ask someone how to get to the shoe trees. A woman named Myra points me toward a place called Devils Hollow. It doesn’t take long to run out of paved road, and soon I’m driving down a narrow dirt trail, looking up, which is what Myra told me to do. Just when I think I’m lost, I come to a fourway intersection that sits surrounded by woods.

I pull the car over and get out. In the distance, I can hear the sound of kids yelling and laughing. Trees stand at all four corners, their branches filled with shoes. Hundreds and hundreds of shoes. Most are draped across the limbs by the laces like oversized Christmas ornaments. Myra said she wasn’t sure how it began, or who left the first pair, but people travel from all over just to decorate the trees. There’s a rumor that Larry Bird, the basketball player, left a pair up there somewhere.

The quest is simple: leave a pair behind. I’ve brought a pair of green Chuck Taylors from my closet, and a pair of yellow Keds from Eleanor’s. I stand, head tilted back, trying to decide where to put them. I’ll hang them together on the original tree, the one heaviest with shoes, which has been struck by lightning more than once—I can tell because the trunk looks dead and black.

I pull a Sharpie from my pocket and write
Ultraviolet Remarkey-able
and the date on the side of one of the Chuck Taylors. I hang them low on the original tree, which looks too fragile to climb. I have to jump a little to reach the branch, and the shoes bob and twist before settling. I hang Eleanor’s Keds beside them.

That’s it then. Nothing more to see. It’s a long way to drive for trees of old shoes, but I tell myself not to look at it that way. There might be magic here too. I stand watching for it, shading my eyes against the sun, and just before I walk back to the car I see them: way up on the highest branch of the original tree, hanging all alone. A pair of sneakers with fluorescent laces,
TF
in black on both shoes. A package of blue American Spirits pokes up from the inside of one.

He was here
.

I look around as if I might see him right now, but it’s just me and the kids who are laughing and hollering from someplace nearby. When did he come? Was it after he left? Was it before that?

Something nags at me as I stand there.
The highest branch
, I think.
The highest branch
. I reach for my phone, but it’s in
the car, and so I run the short distance, throw open the door, and lean across the seat. I sit half in, half out, scrolling through my texts from Finch. Because there aren’t many recent ones, it doesn’t take long to find it.
I am on the highest branch.
I look at the date. A week after he left.

He was here
.

I read through the other texts:
We are written in paint. I believe in signs. The glow of Ultraviolet. It’s so lovely to be lovely in Private.

I find the map, my finger following the route to the next place. It’s hours away, northwest of Muncie. I check the time, turn on the engine, and drive. I have a feeling I know where I’m headed, and I hope it’s not too late.

The World’s Biggest Ball of Paint sits on the property of Mike Carmichael. Unlike the shoe trees, it’s a designated tourist attraction. The ball not only has its own website, it’s listed in the
Guinness Book of World Records
. It’s a little after four o’clock by the time I get to Alexandria. Mike Carmichael and his wife are expecting me because I called them from the road. I pull up to the structure where the ball apparently lives—in a kind of barnlike shed—and knock on the door, my heart beating fast.

When there’s no answer, I try the handle, but it’s locked, and so I walk up to the house, heart going faster because what if someone has been there since? What if they’ve painted over whatever Finch might have written? It’ll be gone then, and I’ll never know, and it will be like he was never even here.

I bang harder than I mean to on the front door, and at first I think they aren’t home, but then a man with white hair and an expectant smile comes walking out, talking and shaking my hand and telling me to call him Mike.

“Where are you from, young lady?”

“Bartlett.” I don’t mention that I’ve just come from Milltown.

“That’s a nice town, Bartlett. We go there sometimes to the Gaslight Restaurant.”

My heart is beating into my ears, and it’s so loud, I actually wonder if he can hear it. I follow him to the barn-shed, and he says, “I started this ball of paint nearly forty years ago. The way it came about, I was working in this paint store back in high school, back before you were born, maybe back before your parents were born. I was playing catch in the store with a friend and the baseball knocked over this can of paint. I thought, I wonder what would happen if I painted it one thousand coats? So that’s what I did.” Mike says he donated that ball to the Knightstown Children’s Home Museum, but in 1977 he decided to start another one.

He nods at the barn and unlocks the door and we walk into a big, bright room that smells like paint. There, in the middle, hangs this enormous ball, the size of a small planet. Paint cans cover the floor and wall, and another wall is lined with photographs of the ball in different stages. Mike tells me how he tries to paint it every day, and I cut him off and say, “I’m so sorry, but a friend of mine was here recently, and I wanted to see if you remembered him, and if maybe he might have written something on the ball.”

I describe Finch, and Mike rubs his chin and starts nodding. “Yep, yep. I remember him. Nice young man. Didn’t stay long. Used this paint over here.” He leads me to a can of purple paint, the color written on the lid:
Violet.

I look at the ball, and it isn’t purple. It’s as yellow as the sun. I feel my heart sink. I look at the floor and almost expect to see it lying there.

“The ball’s been painted over,” I say. I’m too late. Too late for Finch. Too late once again.

“Anyone who wants to write something, I get them to paint over it before they leave. That way it’s ready for the next person. A clean slate. Do you want to add a layer?”

I almost say no, but I didn’t bring anything to leave, and so I let him hand me a roller. When he asks what color I want, I tell him blue like the sky. As he searches the cans, I stand in place, unable to move or breathe. It’s like losing Finch all over again.

Then Mike is back and he has found a color that is the color of Finch’s eyes, which he can’t possibly know or remember. I dip the roller into the tray and cover the yellow with blue. There’s something soothing about the mindless, easy motion of it.

When I’m finished, Mike and I stand back and look at my work. “Don’t you want to write anything?” he says.

“That’s okay. I’ll only have to cover it up.” And then no one will know I was here either.

I help him put the paint away and clean up a bit, and he tells me facts about the ball, like that it weighs nearly 4,000 pounds and is made up of over 20,000 coats of paint. Then he hands me a red book and a pen. “Before you leave, you have to sign.”

I flip through the pages until I find the first blank spot where
I can write my name and the date and a comment. My eyes run over the page, and then I see that only a few people were here in April. I flip back a page, and there it is—there he is.
Theodore Finch, April 3. “Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!”

I run my fingers over the words, the ones he wrote just weeks ago when he was here and alive. I read them again and again, and then, on the first blank line, I sign my name and write:
“Your mountain is waiting. So … get on your way!”