All the Bright Places

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.