All the Bright Places

by Jennifer Niven

  “That’s great.” I almost say something about Finch, but then I’m not sure what to say because I don’t know what we are or if we’re anything. “Thanks for telling me. I hope Suze knows what a good guy you are.”

  He nods, gives me his signature smile—I can see the dimple—and then says, “I don’t know if you heard, but Roamer went after Finch today in gym.”

  “What do you mean ‘went after’?”

  “Whatever. Banged him up a little. Roamer’s an asshole.”

  “What happened? Like, to them? Did they get expelled?”

  “I don’t think so. It was Kappel’s class, and he’s not going to report Roamer and risk losing him for practice. I gotta go.” A few steps away, he turns. “Finch didn’t even try to defend himself. He just stood there and took it.”

  In the cafeteria, I walk past my regular table, past Amanda and Roamer and the audience gathered there. I can hear Roamer talking, but I can’t hear what he’s saying.

  I walk to the other side of the room, toward a half-empty table, but then behind me I hear my name. Brenda Shank-Kravitz is sitting with the three Brianas and a dark-haired girl named Lara at a round table by the window.

  “Hey,” I say. “Do you mind if I join you?” I feel like I’m the new girl again, trying to make friends and figure out where I fit.

  Brenda picks up her backpack and sweater and keys and phone and all the other things that are spilled across the table and dumps them onto the floor. I set my tray down and sit next to her.

  Lara is so small, she looks like a freshman, even though I know we’re in the same class. She is telling the story of how, just five minutes ago, she accidentally, without meaning to, told her crush she loved him. Instead of crawling under the table, she just laughs and keeps eating.

  Then the Brianas are talking about life after high school—one is a musician, one is planning to be a copy editor, and the other is practically engaged to her longtime boyfriend. She says she might run a cookie shop one day or write book reviews, but whatever she does, she’s going to enjoy everything she can while she can. The boyfriend joins us, and the two of them sit side by side looking comfortable and happy and like they really might be together forever.

  I eat and listen, and at some point Brenda leans over and says in my ear, “Gabe Romero is poison.” I raise my water bottle and she raises her soda can. We tap them together and drink.

  VIOLET

  The weekend

  By now, the wandering is really an excuse to drive somewhere and make out. I tell myself I’m not ready because to me sex is a Big Deal, even if some of my friends have been doing it since ninth grade. But the thing is, my body feels this strange, urgent tug toward Finch like it can’t get enough. I add a category to my Germ board—Sex Life—and write a few pages in our wandering notebook, which is slowly turning into my journal/sounding board/place to brainstorm material for the new webzine.

  Before Amanda and I stopped being peripheral semi-friends, I remember sleeping over at her house and talking to her older brothers. They told us that girls who Do are sluts and girls who Don’t are teases. Those of us who were there that night took this to heart, because none of the rest of us had older brothers. When we were by ourselves again, Amanda said, “The only way around it is to stay with one guy forever.” But does forever have a built-in ending …?

  Finch picks me up Saturday morning, and he looks a little battered. We don’t even drive that far, just to the Arboretum, where we park the car, and before he reaches for me, I say, “What happened with Roamer?”

  “How’d you hear about Roamer?”

  “Ryan told me. And it’s kind of obvious you were in a fight.”

  “Does it make me look hotter?”

  “Be serious. What happened?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about. He was being an asshole. Big surprise. Now, if we’re done talking about him, I’ve got other things on my mind.” He climbs into the back of Little Bastard and pulls me after him.

  I feel like I’m living for these moments—the moments when I’m just about to lie down beside him, when I know it’s getting ready to happen, his skin on mine, his mouth on mine, and then when he’s touching me and the electric current is shooting through me everywhere. It’s like all the other hours of the day are spent looking forward to right now.

  We kiss until my lips are numb, stopping ourselves at the very edge of Someday, saying not yet, not here, even though it takes willpower I didn’t know I had. My mind is spinning with him and with the unexpected Almost of today.

  When he gets home, he writes me a message: I am thinking rather consistently of Someday.

  I write, Someday soon.

  Finch: Someday when?

  Me: ????

  Finch: *#@*!!!

  Me:

  Nine a.m. Sunday. My house. When I wake up and go downstairs, my parents are in the kitchen slicing bagels. My mom looks at me over the coffee mug Eleanor and I gave her one year on Mother’s Day. Rock Star Mom. She says, “You got a package.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “Someone left it on the doorstep.”

  I follow her into the dining room, thinking that she walks like Eleanor—hair swinging, shoulders back. Eleanor looked more like my dad and I look more like Mom, but she and Mom had the same gestures, same mannerisms, so everyone always said, “Oh my God, she looks just like you.” It hits me that my mother may never hear that again.

  There’s something in brown paper, the kind you wrap fish in, sitting on the dining-room table. It’s tied with a red ribbon. The package itself is lumpy. Ultraviolet, it reads on one side.

  “Do you know who it’s from?” My dad is in the doorway, bagel crumbs in his beard.

  “James,” my mom says, and makes little brushing motions. He rubs at his chin.

  I don’t have any choice but to open the package in front of them, and I just hope to God it’s nothing embarrassing because, from Theodore Finch, you never know.

  As I tug off the ribbon and rip at the paper, I’m suddenly six years old at Christmas. Every year, Eleanor knew what she was getting. After we picked the lock to my mom’s office closet, my sister would open her gifts and mine too, but not before I left the room. Later, when she wanted to tell me what they were, I wouldn’t let her. Those were the days when I didn’t mind surprises.

  Inside the brown paper is a pair of goggles, the kind you wear swimming.

  “Do you have any idea who they’re from?” Mom says.

  “Finch.”

  “Goggles,” she says. “Sounds serious.” She gives me a hopeful little smile.

  “Sorry, Mom. He’s just a friend.”

  I don’t know why I say this, but I don’t want them asking me what he means or what this is, especially when I’m not really sure myself.

  “Maybe in time. There’s always time,” she replies, which is something Eleanor used to say.

  I look at my mom to see if she realizes she’s quoted her, but if she does realize it, she doesn’t show it. She is too busy examining the goggles, asking my dad if he remembers the days he used to send her things when he was trying to convince her to go out with him.

  Upstairs, I write, Thanks for the goggles. What are they for? Please tell me you don’t want us to use them for Someday.

  Finch writes back, Wait and see. We’ll use them soon. We’re watching for the first warm day. There’s always one that sneaks in during the middle of winter. Once we nail the bastard down, we go. Don’t forget the goggles.

  FINCH

  The first warm day

  The second week of February there’s a blizzard that leaves the entire town without power for two days. The best thing about it is that school is canceled, but the worst thing is that the snow is so high and the air so bitter cold, you can barely stay out in it for more than five minutes at a time. I tell myself it’s only water in a different form, and I walk all the way to Violet’s, where we build the world’s largest snowman. We name him Mr. Black and decide he�
�ll be a destination for others to see when they’re wandering. Afterward, we sit with her parents around the fire and I pretend I’m part of the family.

  Once the roads are clear, Violet and I creep very, very carefully down them to see the Painted Rainbow Bridge, the Periodic Table Display, the Seven Pillars, and the lynching and burial site of the Reno brothers, America’s first train robbers. We climb the sheer, high walls of Empire Quarry, where they got the 18,630 tons of stone needed to build the Empire State Building. We visit the Indiana Moon Tree, which is a giant sycamore more than thirty years old that grew from a seed taken to the moon and brought back. This tree is nature’s rock star because it’s one of only fifty left alive from an original set of five hundred.

  We go to Kokomo to hear the hum in the air, and we park Little Bastard in neutral at the base of Gravity Hill and roll to the top. It is like the world’s slowest roller coaster, but somehow it works, and minutes later we’re at the peak. Afterward, I take her out for a Valentine’s Day dinner at my favorite restaurant, Happy Family, which sits at the end of a strip mall about fifteen miles from home. It serves the best Chinese food east of the Mississippi.

  The first warm day falls on a Saturday, which is how we end up in Prairieton at the Blue Hole, a three-acre lake that sits on private property. I collect our offerings—the stubs of her SAT number 2 pencils and four broken guitar strings. The air is so warm, we don’t even need jackets, just sweaters, and after the winter we’ve been through so far, it feels almost tropical.

  I hold out my hand and lead her up the embankment and down the hill to a wide, round pool of blue water, ringed by trees. It’s so private and silent that I pretend we’re the only two people on earth, which is how I wish it could be for real.

  “Okay,” she says, letting out a long breath, as if she’s been holding it all this time. The goggles hang around her neck. “What is this place?”

  “This,” I say, “is the Blue Hole. They say it’s bottomless, or that the bottom is quicksand. They say there’s a force in the middle of the lake that sucks you down into an underground river that flows right into the Wabash. They say it leads you to another world. That it was a hiding place for pirates burying treasure, and for Chicago bootleggers burying bodies and dumping stolen cars. That in the 1950s a group of teenage boys went swimming here and disappeared. In 1969, two sheriff’s deputies launched an expedition to explore the Hole, but they didn’t find any cars or treasure or bodies. They also didn’t find the bottom. What they did find was a whirlpool that nearly sucked them down.”

  I’ve ditched the red cap, gloves, and black sweater, and am wearing a navy pullover and jeans. I’ve cut my hair shorter, and when she first saw me, Violet said, “All-American Finch. Okay.” Now I kick off my shoes and yank off the shirt. It’s almost hot in the sun, and I want to go swimming. “Bottomless blue holes exist all over the world, and each one has these kinds of myths associated with it. They were formed as caverns, thousands of years ago during the last ice age. They’re like black holes on earth, places where nothing can escape and time and space come to an end. How bloody awesome is it that we actually have one of our own?”

  She glances back toward the house and the car and the road, then smiles up at me. “Pretty awesome.” She kicks off her shoes and pulls off her shirt and pants so that, in seconds, she is standing there in only her bra and underwear, which are a kind of dull rose color but somehow the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.

  I go totally and utterly speechless and she starts to laugh. “Well, come on. I know you’re not shy, so drop your pants and let’s do this. I assume you want to see if the rumors are true.” My mind draws a blank, and she juts one hip out, Amanda Monk–style, resting a hand on it. “About it being bottomless?”

  “Oh yeah. Right. Of course.” I slide off my jeans so I’m in my boxers, and I take her hand. We walk to the rock ledge that surrounds part of the Hole and climb up onto it. “What are you most afraid of?” I say before we jump. I can already feel my skin starting to burn from the sun.

  “Dying. Losing my parents. Staying here for the rest of my life. Never figuring out what I’m supposed to do. Being ordinary. Losing everyone I love.” I wonder if I’m included in that group. She is bouncing on the balls of her feet, as if she’s cold. I try not to stare at her chest as she does because, whatever else he is, All-American Finch is not a perv. “What about you?” she asks. She fits the goggles into place. “What are you most afraid of?”

  I think, I’m most afraid of Just be careful. I’m most afraid of the Long Drop. I’m most afraid of Asleep and impending, weightless doom. I’m most afraid of me.

  “I’m not.” I take her hand, and together we leap through the air. And in that moment there’s nothing I fear except losing hold of her hand. The water is surprisingly warm and, below the surface, strangely clear and, well, blue. I look at her, hoping her eyes are open, and they are. With my free hand, I point below, and she nods, her hair fanning out like seaweed. Together, we swim, still linked, like a person with three arms.

  We head down, where the bottom would be if there was one. The deeper we go, the darker the blue becomes. The water feels darker too, as if the weight of it has settled. It’s only when I feel her tug at my hand that I let myself be pulled back up to the surface, where we break out of the water and fill our lungs. “Jesus,” she says. “You can hold your breath.”

  “I practice,” I say, suddenly wishing I hadn’t said it at all, because it’s one of those things—like I am make-believe—that sounds better in my own head.

  She just smiles and splashes me, and I splash her back. We do this for a while, and I chase her around the surface, ducking under, grabbing her legs. She slips through my grasp and breaks into a breaststroke, clean and strong. I remind myself that she’s a California girl and probably grew up swimming in the ocean. I suddenly feel jealous of all the years she had before meeting me, and then I swim after her. We tread water, looking at each other, and suddenly there’s not enough water in the world to clean away my dirty thoughts.

  She says, “I’m glad we came.”

  We float on our backs, holding hands again, faces to the sun. Because my eyes are closed, I whisper, “Marco.”

  “Polo,” she answers, and her voice sounds lazy and far away.

  After a while, I say, “Do you want to go look for the bottom again?”

  “No. I like it here, just like this.” Then she asks, “When did the divorce happen?”

  “Around this time last year.”

  “Did you know it was coming?”

  “I did and I didn’t.”

  “Do you like your stepmother?”

  “She’s fine. She has a seven-year-old son who may or may not be my dad’s, because I’m pretty sure he was cheating with her for the past few years. He left us once, when I was ten or eleven, said he couldn’t deal with us anymore. I think he was with her then. He came back, but when he left for good, he made it clear it was our fault. Our fault he came back, our fault he had to leave. He just couldn’t have a family.”

  “And then he married a woman with a kid. What’s he like?”

  The son I will never be. “He’s just a kid.” I don’t want to talk about Josh Raymond. “I’m going in search of the bottom. Are you okay here? Do you mind?”

  “I’m good. You go. I’ll be here.” She floats away.

  I take a breath and dive, grateful for the dark of the water and the warmth against my skin. I swim to get away from Josh Raymond, and my cheating father, and Violet’s involved parents who are also her friends, and my sad, deserted mother, and my bones. I close my eyes and pretend it’s Violet who surrounds me instead, and then I open my eyes and push myself down, one arm out like Superman.

  I feel the strain of my lungs wanting air, but I keep going. It feels a lot like the strain of trying to stay awake when I can feel the darkness sliding under my skin, trying to borrow my body without asking so that my hands become its hands, my legs its legs.

  I di
ve deeper, lungs tight and burning. I feel a distant twinge of panic, but I make my mind go quiet before I send my body deeper. I want to see how far I can go. She’s waiting for me. The thought fills me, but I can still feel the darkness working its way up, through my fingers, trying to grab hold.

  Less than 2 percent of people in the U.S. kill themselves by drowning, maybe because the human body was built to float. The number one country in the world for drowning, accidental or otherwise, is Russia, which has twice as many deaths as the next highest, Japan. The Cayman Islands, surrounded by the Caribbean Sea, has the fewest drownings of all.

  I like it deeper, where the water feels heaviest. Water is better than running because it blocks everything out. Water is my special power, my way to cheat the Asleep and stop it from coming on.

  I want to go even deeper than this, because the deeper the better. I want to keep going. But something makes me stop. The thought of Violet. The burning sensation in my lungs. I stare longingly at the black of where the bottom should be but isn’t, and then I stare up again at the light, very faint but still there, waiting with Violet, over my head.

  It takes strength to push myself up, because I need air by now, badly. The panic comes back, stronger this time, and then I aim myself for the surface. Come on, I think. Please come on. My body wants up, but it’s tired. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Violet. I won’t leave you again. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m coming.

  When I finally hit the air, she is sitting on the bank crying. “Asshole,” she says.

  I feel my smile go and I swim toward her, head up, afraid to put it under again, even for a second, afraid she’ll freak out.

  “Asshole,” she says, louder this time, standing, still in her underwear. She wraps her arms around herself, trying to get warm, trying to cover up, trying to pull away from me. “What the hell? Do you know how scared I was? I searched everywhere. I went as deep as I could before I ran out of air and had to come back up, like, three times.”