All the Bright Places

by Jennifer Niven

  I find her on her floor, cutting words out of books she’s collected from around the house, including some of Mom’s romance novels. I ask if she has another pair of scissors, and without looking up, she points at her desk. There are about eighteen pairs of scissors there, ones that have gone missing over the years from the drawer in the kitchen. I choose a pair with purple handles and sit down opposite her, our knees bumping.

  “Tell me the rules.”

  She hands me a book—His Dark, Forbidden Love—and says, “Take out the mean parts and the bad words.”

  We do this for half an hour or so, not talking, just cutting, and then I start giving her a big-brother pep talk about how life will get better, and it isn’t only hard times and hard people, that there are bright spots too.

  “Less talking,” she says.

  We work away silently, until I ask, “What about things that aren’t categorically mean but just unpleasant?”

  She stops cutting long enough to deliberate. She sucks in a stray chunk of hair and then blows it out. “Unpleasant works too.”

  I focus on the words. Here’s one, and another. Here’s a sentence. Here’s a paragraph. Here’s an entire page. Soon I have a pile of mean words and unpleasantness beside my shoe. Dec grabs them and adds them to her own pile. When she’s finished with a book, she tosses it aside, and it’s then I get it: it’s the mean parts she wants. She is collecting all the unhappy, mad, bad, unpleasant words and keeping them for herself.

  “Why are we doing this, Dec?”

  “Because they shouldn’t be in there mixed with the good. They like to trick you.”

  And somehow I know what she means. I think of the Bartlett Dirt and all its mean words, not just about me but about every student who’s strange or different. Better to keep the unhappy, mad, bad, unpleasant words separate, where you can watch them and make sure they don’t surprise you when you’re not expecting them.

  When we’re done, and she goes off in search of other books, I pick up the discarded ones and hunt through the pages until I find the words I’m looking for. I leave them on her pillow: MAKE IT LOVELY. Then I take the unwanted, cut-up books with me down the hall.

  Where something is different about my room.

  I stand in the doorway trying to figure out exactly what it is. The red walls are there. The black bedspread, dresser, desk, and chair are in place. The bookshelf may be too full. I study the room from where I stand because I don’t want to go inside until I know what’s wrong. My guitars are where I left them. The windows are bare because I don’t like curtains.

  The room looks like it did earlier today. But it feels different, as if someone has been in here and moved things around. I cross the floor slowly, as if that same someone might jump out, and open the door to my closet, half expecting it to lead into the real version of my room, the right one.

  Everything is fine.

  You are fine.

  I walk into the bathroom and strip off my clothes and step under the hot-hot water, standing there until my skin turns red and the water heater gives out. I wrap myself in a towel and write Just be careful across the fogged-up mirror. I walk back into the room to give it another look from another angle. The room is just as I left it, and I think maybe it isn’t the room that’s different. Maybe it’s me.

  In the bathroom again, I hang up my towel, throw on a T-shirt and boxers, and catch sight of myself in the mirror over the sink as the steam starts to clear and the writing fades away, leaving an oval just large enough for two blue eyes, wet black hair, white skin. I lean in and look at myself, and it’s not my face but someone else’s.

  On my bed, I sit down and flip through the cut-up books one by one, reading all the cut-up passages. They are happy and sweet, funny and warm. I want to be surrounded by them, and so I clip out some of the best lines and the very best words—like “symphony,” “limitless,” “gold,” “morning”—and stick them on the wall, where they overlap with others, a combination of colors and shapes and moods.

  I pull the comforter up around me, as tight as I can—so that I can’t even see the room anymore—and lie back on my bed like a mummy. It’s a way to keep in the warmth and the light so that it can’t get out again. I reach one hand through the opening and pick up another book and then another. What if life could be this way? Only the happy parts, none of the terrible, not even the mildly unpleasant. What if we could just cut out the bad and keep the good? This is what I want to do with Violet—give her only the good, keep away the bad, so that good is all we ever have around us.

  VIOLET

  138 days to go

  Sunday night. My bedroom. I flip through our notebook, Finch’s and mine. I pick up the pen he gave me and find a blank page. Bookmarks and the Purina Tower aren’t official wanderings, but this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be remembered too.

  Stars in the sky, stars on the ground. It’s hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins. I feel the need to say something grand and poetic, but the only thing I come up with is “It’s lovely.”

  He says, “ ‘Lovely’ is a lovely word that should be used more often.”

  Then I get an idea. Over my desk, I’ve got this enormous bulletin board, and on it I’ve tacked black-and-white photographs of writers at work. I take these down and dig through my desk until I come up with a stack of brightly colored Post-its. On one of them, I write: lovely.

  Half an hour later, I stand back and look at the board. It is covered in fragments—some are words or sentences that may or may not become story ideas. Others are lines I like from books. In the last column, I have a section for New Nameless Web Magazine. On three separate Post-its I’ve tacked beneath it: Lit. Love. Life. I’m not sure what these are supposed to be—categories or articles or just nice-sounding words.

  Even though it isn’t much yet, I take a picture and send it to Finch. I write: Look what you’ve got me doing. Every half hour, I check for a response, but by the time I go to bed, I still haven’t heard from him.

  FINCH

  Days 23, 24, 25 …

  Last night is like a puzzle—only not put together: all the pieces are scattered everywhere and some are missing. I wish my heart wouldn’t beat so fast.

  I get out the books again and read the good words Decca left behind, but they blur on the page so that they don’t make sense. I can’t concentrate.

  And then I start to clean and organize. I take down every single note until the wall is blank. I shove them into a trash bag, but this isn’t enough, so I decide to paint. I’m sick of the red walls of my room. The color is too dark and depressing. This is what I need, I think. A change of scenery. This is why the room feels off.

  I get into Little Bastard and drive to the nearest hardware store and buy primer and ten gallons of blue paint because I’m not sure how much it will take.

  * * *

  It takes many, many coats to cover the red. No matter what I do, it seeps right through, like the walls are bleeding.

  By midnight, the paint still isn’t dry, and so I gather up the black comforter and shove it into the back of the linen closet in the hall, and I dig around until I find an old blue comforter of Kate’s. I spread this on my bed. I open the windows and move my bed into the middle of the room, and then I climb under the blanket and go to sleep.

  The next day, I paint the walls again. It takes two days for them to hold the color, which is the clear, bright blue of a swimming pool. I lie on my bed feeling easier, like I can catch my breath. Now we’re talking, I think. Yes.

  The only thing I leave alone is the ceiling, because white contains all the wavelengths of the visible spectrum at full brightness. Okay, this is technically true of white light and not white paint, but I don’t care. I tell myself that all the colors are there anyway, and this gives me an idea. I think of writing it as a song, but instead I sign onto the computer and send a message to Violet. You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.

  VIOLET

  135, 134, 133 day
s to go

  Finch doesn’t show up at school for a week. Someone says he’s been suspended, others say he overdosed and was carted off to rehab. The rumors spread the old-fashioned way—in whispers and texts—because Principal Wertz has found out about the Bartlett Dirt and shut it down.

  Wednesday. First period. In honor of the Dirt’s demise, Jordan Gripenwaldt is passing out celebration candy. Troy Satterfield sticks two suckers in his mouth and says around them, “Where’s your boyfriend, Violet? Shouldn’t you be on suicide watch?” He and his friends laugh. Before I can say anything, Jordan yanks the suckers out of his mouth and throws them in the garbage.

  On Thursday, I find Charlie Donahue in the parking lot after last period. I tell him I’m working with Finch on a class project and that I haven’t heard from him for a few days. I don’t ask if the rumors are true, even though I want to.

  Charlie tosses his books into the backseat of his car. “That’s just his thing. He comes and goes when he wants.” He takes off his jacket and throws this on top of the books. “One thing you’ll learn is he is one moody old todger.”

  Brenda Shank-Kravitz walks up and past us and opens the passenger door. Before she gets in, she says to me, “I like your glasses.” I can tell she actually means it.

  “Thanks. They were my sister’s.”

  She looks like she’s thinking this over, and then she nods okay.

  The next morning, on my way to third period, I see him in the hallway—Theodore Finch—only he’s different. For one thing, he’s wearing a ratty red knit cap, loose black sweater, jeans, sneakers, and these fingerless black gloves. Homeless Finch, I think. Slacker Finch. He’s leaning against a locker, one knee bent, talking to Chameli Belk-Gupta, one of the junior-year drama girls. He doesn’t seem to notice me as I walk by.

  In third period, I hook my bag over my chair and take out my calculus book. Mr. Heaton says, “Let’s start by going over the homework,” but he barely gets the words out before the fire alarm starts blaring. I gather my stuff and follow everyone outside.

  A voice behind me says, “Meet me in the student parking lot.” I turn, and Finch is standing there, hands shoved into pockets. He walks away as if he’s invisible and we aren’t surrounded by teachers and faculty, including Principal Wertz, braying into his phone.

  I hesitate and then start to run, bag slapping against my hip. I’m scared to death someone will come after me, but it’s too late to go back because I’m already running. I run until I catch up with Finch, and then we run faster, and no one has shouted at us to stop, come back here. I feel terrified but free.

  We race across the boulevard that cuts in front of the school, and alongside the trees that separate the main parking lot from the river that splits the town in half. When we come to a break in the trees, Finch takes my hand.

  “Where are we going?” I’m breathing hard.

  “Down there. But be quiet. First one to make a noise has to streak back to school.” He is talking fast, moving fast.

  “Streak how?”

  “Streak naked. That’s what ‘streaking’ means. It is, I believe, the very definition of the word.”

  I slip and slide down the embankment while Finch leads the way soundlessly, making it look easy. When we get to the edge of the river, he points across it, and at first I can’t see what he’s showing me. Then something moves and catches my eye. The bird is about three feet tall, with a red crown on a white head, and a charcoal-gray body. It splashes in the water and then pecks around the opposite bank, strutting like a man.

  “What is it?”

  “A hooded crane. The only one in Indiana. Maybe the only one in the United States. They winter in Asia, which means he’s about seven thousand miles from home.”

  “How did you know he was here?”

  “Sometimes when I can’t stand it over there”—he nods in the direction of the high school—“I come down here. Sometimes I go for a swim, and other times I just sit. This guy’s been hanging around about a week now. I was afraid he was hurt.”

  “He’s lost.”

  “Uh-uh. Look at him.” The bird stands in the shallows, pecking at the water, then wades deeper and starts splashing around. He reminds me of a kid in a swimming pool. “See, Ultraviolet? He’s wandering.”

  Finch steps back, shielding his eyes because the sun is peeking through the branches, and there is a crack as his foot comes down on a twig. “Bollocks,” he whispers.

  “Oh my God. Does that mean you have to streak back to school now?” The look on his face is so funny that I can’t help laughing.

  He sighs, drops his head in defeat, and then pulls off his sweater, his shoes, his hat, his gloves, and his jeans, even though it’s freezing out. He hands each item to me until he’s wearing only his boxers, and I say, “Off with them, Theodore Finch. You were the one who said ‘streaking,’ and I believe ‘streaking’ implies full-on nakedness. I believe, in fact, it is the very definition of the word.”

  He smiles, his eyes never leaving mine, and, just like that, he drops his boxers. I’m surprised because I only half thought he would do it. He stands, the first real-live naked boy I’ve ever seen, and doesn’t seem one bit self-conscious. He is long and lean. My eyes trace the thin, blue veins of his arms and the outline of muscle in his shoulders and stomach and legs. The scar across his middle is a bright-red gash.

  He says, “This would be a helluva lot more fun if you were naked too.” And then he dives into the river, so neatly that he barely disturbs the crane. He cuts through the water with broad strokes, like an Olympic swimmer, and I sit on the bank watching him.

  He swims so far, he’s just a blur. I pull out our notebook and write about the wandering crane and a boy with a red cap who swims in winter. I lose track of time, and when I look up again, Finch is drifting toward me. He floats on his back, arms folded behind his head. “You should come in.”

  “That’s okay. I’d rather not get hypothermia.”

  “Come on, Ultraviolet Remarkey-able. The water’s great.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Ultraviolet Remarkey-able. Going once, going twice …”

  “I’m fine right here.”

  “All right.” He swims toward me until he can stand waist-deep.

  “Where were you this time?”

  “I was doing some remodeling.” He scoops at the water, as if he’s trying to catch something. The crane stands still on the opposite shore, watching us.

  “Is your dad back in town?”

  Finch seems to catch whatever he’s looking for. He studies his cupped hands before letting it go. “Unfortunately.”

  I can’t hear the fire alarm anymore, and I wonder if everyone’s gone inside. If so, I’ll be counted absent. I should be more worried than I am, especially now that I’ve gotten detention, but instead I sit there on the bank.

  Finch swims toward shore and comes walking toward me. I try not to stare at him, dripping wet and naked, so I watch the crane, the sky, anything but him. He laughs. “I don’t guess you’ve got a towel in that enormous bag you carry around.”

  “No.”

  He dries off with his sweater, shakes his hair at me like a dog so that I get sprayed, and then pulls on his clothes. When he’s dressed again, he shoves his hat into his back pocket and smooths his hair off his face.

  “We should go back to class,” I say. His lips are blue, but he’s not even shivering.

  “I’ve got a better idea. Want to hear it?” Before he can tell me what it is, Ryan, Roamer, and Joe Wyatt come sliding down the embankment. “Great,” Finch says under his breath.

  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 cours
e 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.