Embryo is talking about symptoms and hypomania and psychotic episodes when the bell rings. I stand more abruptly than I mean to, which sends my chair clattering into the wall and onto the floor. If I’m suspended above the room, looking down, I can see how this would be mistaken for a violent act, especially as large as I am. Before I can tell him it was an accident, he is on his feet.
I hold up my hands in a gesture of surrender, and then hold out my hand—an olive branch. It takes him a good minute or two, but he shakes it. Instead of letting go, he jerks my arm forward so we are almost nose to nose—or, given our height difference, nose to chin—and says, “You are not alone.” Before I can tell him, Actually I am, which is part of the problem; we are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial, he tightens his grip until I worry my arm will snap off. “And we are not done discussing this.”
The next morning, after gym, Roamer walks by and says, “Freak,” under his breath. There are still a lot of guys milling around, but I don’t care. To be more accurate, I don’t think. It just happens.
In a flash, I have him up against the locker, my hands around his throat, and I’m choking him until he turns purple. Charlie is behind me, trying to pull me off, and then Kappel is there with his bat. I keep going, because now I’m fascinated by the way Roamer’s veins are throbbing, and the way his head looks like a lightbulb, all lit up and too bright.
It takes four of them to get me off him because my fist is like iron. I’m thinking: You put me here. You did this. It’s your fault, your fault, your fault.
Roamer drops to the floor, and as I’m being dragged away, I lock eyes with him and say, “You will never call me that again.”
VIOLET
March 10
My phone buzzes after third period, and it’s Finch. He tells me he’s waiting outside, near the river. He wants to drive down south to Evansville to see the Nest Houses, which are these huts woven out of saplings that were created by an Indiana artist. They’re literally like birds’ nests for humans, with windows and doors. Finch wants to see if there’s anything left of them. While we’re down there, we can cross the Kentucky border and take pictures of ourselves, one foot in Kentucky, one in Indiana.
I say, “Doesn’t the Ohio River run the entire border? So we’d have to stand on a bridge—”
But he keeps right on like he doesn’t hear me. “As a matter of fact, we should do this with Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.”
“Why aren’t you on your way to class?” I’m wearing one of his flowers in my hair.
“I got expelled. Just come out here.”
“Expelled?”
“Let’s go. I’m wasting gas and daylight.”
“It’s four hours to Evansville, Finch. By the time we get there, it’ll be dark.”
“Not if we leave now. Come on, come on, get on out here. We can sleep there.” He is talking too fast, as if everything depends on us looking at nest houses. When I ask him what happened, he just says he’ll tell me later, but he needs to go now, as soon as possible.
“It’s a Tuesday in winter. We’re not sleeping in a nest house. We can go Saturday. If you wait for me after school, we can go somewhere a little closer than the Indiana-Kentucky border.”
“You know what? Why don’t we just forget it? Why don’t I go by myself? I think I’d rather go alone anyway.” Through the phone, his voice sounds hollow, and then he hangs up on me.
I’m still staring at the phone when Ryan walks past with Suze Haines, hand in hand. “Everything okay?” he says.
“Everything’s fine,” I answer, wondering what on earth just happened.
FINCH
Days 66 and 67
The Nest Houses aren’t there. It’s dark by the time I stop in downtown New Harmony, with its brightly painted buildings, and ask everyone I can find about where the houses have gone. Most people haven’t heard of them, but one old man tells me, “Sorry you came all this way. I’m afraid they been ate up by weather and the elements.”
Just like all of us. The Nest Houses have reached their life expectancy. I think of the mud nest we made for the cardinal, all those years ago, and wonder if it’s still there. I imagine his little bones in his little grave, and it is the saddest thought in the world.
At home, everyone is asleep. I go upstairs, and for a long time I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, and I actually disappear before my eyes.
I am disappearing. Maybe I’m already gone.
Instead of feeling panicked, I am fascinated, as if I’m a monkey in a lab. What makes the monkey turn invisible? And if you can’t see him, can you still touch him if you wave your hand around in the place where he used to be? I lay my hand on my chest, over my heart, and I can feel the flesh and bone and the hard, erratic beating of the organ that is keeping me alive.
I walk into my closet and shut the door. Inside, I try not to take up too much space or make any noise, because if I do, I may wake up the darkness, and I want the darkness to sleep. I’m careful when I breathe so as not to breathe too loudly. If I breathe too loudly, there’s no telling what the darkness will do to me or to Violet or to anyone I love.
The next morning I check messages on our home voicemail, the landline my mom and sisters and I share. There is one from Embryo for my mother, left yesterday afternoon. “Mrs. Finch, this is Robert Embry from Bartlett High. As you know, I’ve been counseling your son. I need to talk to you about Theodore. I’m afraid it’s extremely important. Please call me back.” He leaves the number.
I play the message two more times and then delete it.
Instead of going to school, I go back upstairs and into my closet, because if I leave, I will die. And then I remember that I’ve been expelled, so it’s not as if I can go to school anyway.
The best thing about the closet: no wide-open space. I sit very quietly and very still and am careful how I breathe.
A string of thoughts runs through my head like a song I can’t get rid of, over and over in the same order: I am broken. I am a fraud. I am impossible to love. It’s only a matter of time until Violet figures it out. You warned her. What does she want from you? You told her how it was.
Bipolar disorder, my mind says, labeling itself. Bipolar, bipolar, bipolar.