All the Bright Places

I dive 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.”

I want her to say my name because then I’ll know it’s okay and I haven’t gone too far and I haven’t just lost her forever. But she doesn’t, and I can feel a cold, dark feeling growing in the pit of my stomach—every bit as cold and dark as the water. I find the outer edge of the Blue Hole where there’s suddenly a bottom, and I rise up out of it until I’m next to her, dripping on the bank.

She pushes me hard and then again, so I go jolting backward, but I don’t lose my footing. I stand there as she slaps at me, and then she starts to cry, and she is shaking.

I want to kiss her but I’ve never seen her like this, and I’m not sure what she’ll do if I try to touch her. I tell myself, For once it’s not about you, Finch. So I stand an arm’s length away and say, “Let it out, all that stuff you’re carrying around. You’re pissed off at me, at your parents, at life, at Eleanor. Come on. Let me have it. Don’t disappear in there.” I mean inside herself, where I’ll never get to her.

“Screw you, Finch.”

“Better. Keep going. Don’t stop now. Don’t be a waiting person. You lived. You survived a really horrible accident. But you’re just … there. You’re just existing like everyone else. Get up. Do this. Do that. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Over and over so that you don’t have to think about it.”

She shoves me again and again. “Stop acting like you know how I feel.” She’s pounding at me with her fists, but I just stand, feet planted, and take it.

“I know there’s more in there, probably years of shit you’ve been smiling away and keeping down.”

She pounds and pounds and then suddenly covers her face. “You don’t know how it is. It’s like I’ve got this angry little person inside me, and I can feel him trying to get out. He’s running out of room because he’s growing bigger and bigger, and so he starts rising up, into my lungs, chest, throat, and I just push him right back down. I don’t want him to come out. I can’t let him out.”

“Why not?”

“Because I hate him, because he’s not me, but he’s in there and he won’t leave me alone, and all I can think is that I want to go up to someone, anyone, and just knock them into space because I’m angry at all of them.”

“So don’t tell me. Break something. Smash something. Throw something. Or scream. Just get it out of you.” I yell again. I yell and yell. Then I pick up a rock and smash it into the wall that surrounds the hole.

I hand her a rock and she stands, palm up, like she’s not sure what to do. I take the rock from her and hurl it against the wall, then hand her another. Now she’s hurling them at the wall and shouting and stomping, and she looks like a crazy person. We jump up and down the banks and storm around smashing things, and then she turns on me, all of a sudden, and says, “What are we, anyway? What exactly is going on here?”

It’s at that moment that I can’t help myself, even though she is furious, even though she maybe hates me right now. I pull her in and kiss her the way I’ve always wanted to kiss her, a lot more R-rated than PG-13. I can feel her tense at first, not wanting to kiss me back, and the thought of it breaks my heart. Before I can pull away, I feel her bend and then melt into me as I melt into her under the warm Indiana sun. And she’s still here, and she isn’t going anywhere, and it will be okay. I am carried off. We yield to this slow flood.… In and out, we are swept;… we cannot step outside its sinuous, its hesitating, its abrupt, its perfectly encircling walls.

And then I push her away.

“What the hell, Finch?” She is wet and angry and staring at me with large gray-green eyes.

“You deserve better. I can’t promise you I’ll stay around, not because I don’t want to. It’s hard to explain. I’m a fuckup. I’m broken, and no one can fix it. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. I can’t love anyone because it’s not fair to anyone who loves me back. I’ll never hurt you, not like I want to hurt Roamer. But I can’t promise I won’t pick you apart, piece by piece, until you’re in a thousand pieces, just like me. You should know what you’re getting into before getting involved.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re already involved, Finch. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m broken too.” Then she says, “Where did you get the scar? The real story this time.”