All the Bright Places

I read through the other texts: We are written in paint. I believe in signs. The glow of Ultraviolet. It’s so lovely to be lovely in Private.

I find the map, my finger following the route to the next place. It’s hours away, northwest of Muncie. I check the time, turn on the engine, and drive. I have a feeling I know where I’m headed, and I hope it’s not too late.

The World’s Biggest Ball of Paint sits on the property of Mike Carmichael. Unlike the shoe trees, it’s a designated tourist attraction. The ball not only has its own website, it’s listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s a little after four o’clock by the time I get to Alexandria. Mike Carmichael and his wife are expecting me because I called them from the road. I pull up to the structure where the ball apparently lives—in a kind of barnlike shed—and knock on the door, my heart beating fast.

When there’s no answer, I try the handle, but it’s locked, and so I walk up to the house, heart going faster because what if someone has been there since? What if they’ve painted over whatever Finch might have written? It’ll be gone then, and I’ll never know, and it will be like he was never even here.

I bang harder than I mean to on the front door, and at first I think they aren’t home, but then a man with white hair and an expectant smile comes walking out, talking and shaking my hand and telling me to call him Mike.

“Where are you from, young lady?”

“Bartlett.” I don’t mention that I’ve just come from Milltown.

“That’s a nice town, Bartlett. We go there sometimes to the Gaslight Restaurant.”

My heart is beating into my ears, and it’s so loud, I actually wonder if he can hear it. I follow him to the barn-shed, and he says, “I started this ball of paint nearly forty years ago. The way it came about, I was working in this paint store back in high school, back before you were born, maybe back before your parents were born. I was playing catch in the store with a friend and the baseball knocked over this can of paint. I thought, I wonder what would happen if I painted it one thousand coats? So that’s what I did.” Mike says he donated that ball to the Knightstown Children’s Home Museum, but in 1977 he decided to start another one.

He nods at the barn and unlocks the door and we walk into a big, bright room that smells like paint. There, in the middle, hangs this enormous ball, the size of a small planet. Paint cans cover the floor and wall, and another wall is lined with photographs of the ball in different stages. Mike tells me how he tries to paint it every day, and I cut him off and say, “I’m so sorry, but a friend of mine was here recently, and I wanted to see if you remembered him, and if maybe he might have written something on the ball.”

I describe Finch, and Mike rubs his chin and starts nodding. “Yep, yep. I remember him. Nice young man. Didn’t stay long. Used this paint over here.” He leads me to a can of purple paint, the color written on the lid: Violet.

I look at the ball, and it isn’t purple. It’s as yellow as the sun. I feel my heart sink. I look at the floor and almost expect to see it lying there.

“The ball’s been painted over,” I say. I’m too late. Too late for Finch. Too late once again.

“Anyone who wants to write something, I get them to paint over it before they leave. That way it’s ready for the next person. A clean slate. Do you want to add a layer?”

I almost say no, but I didn’t bring anything to leave, and so I let him hand me a roller. When he asks what color I want, I tell him blue like the sky. As he searches the cans, I stand in place, unable to move or breathe. It’s like losing Finch all over again.

Then Mike is back and he has found a color that is the color of Finch’s eyes, which he can’t possibly know or remember. I dip the roller into the tray and cover the yellow with blue. There’s something soothing about the mindless, easy motion of it.

When I’m finished, Mike and I stand back and look at my work. “Don’t you want to write anything?” he says.

“That’s okay. I’ll only have to cover it up.” And then no one will know I was here either.

I help him put the paint away and clean up a bit, and he tells me facts about the ball, like that it weighs nearly 4,000 pounds and is made up of over 20,000 coats of paint. Then he hands me a red book and a pen. “Before you leave, you have to sign.”

I flip through the pages until I find the first blank spot where I can write my name and the date and a comment. My eyes run over the page, and then I see that only a few people were here in April. I flip back a page, and there it is—there he is. Theodore Finch, April 3. “Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!”

I run my fingers over the words, the ones he wrote just weeks ago when he was here and alive. I read them again and again, and then, on the first blank line, I sign my name and write: “Your mountain is waiting. So … get on your way!”

As I head home to Bartlett, I sing what I can remember of Finch’s Dr. Seuss song. When I pass through Indianapolis, I think of trying to find the nursery where he collected flowers in winter, but instead I keep driving east. They won’t be able to tell me anything about Finch or why he died or what he wrote on the ball of paint. The only thing that makes me feel better is that, whatever Finch wrote, it will always be there, underneath the layers.

I find my mom and dad in the family room, my dad listening to music on his headphones, my mom grading papers. I say, “I need us to talk about Eleanor and not to forget that she existed.” My dad removes his headphones. “I don’t want to pretend like everything’s fine if it isn’t, like we’re fine if we’re not. I miss her. I can’t believe I’m here and she isn’t. I’m sorry we went out that night. I need you to know that. I’m sorry I told her to take the bridge home. She only went that way because I suggested it.”

When they try to interrupt me, I talk louder. “We can’t go backward. We can’t change anything that happened. I can’t bring her back or bring Finch back. I can’t change the fact that I sneaked around to see him when I told you it was over. I don’t want to tiptoe around her or him or you anymore. The only thing it’s doing is making it harder for me to remember the things I want to remember. It’s making it harder for me to remember her. Sometimes I try to concentrate on her voice just so I can hear it again—the way she always said, ‘Hey there’ when she was in a good mood, and ‘Vi-o-let’ when she was annoyed. For some reason, these are the easiest ones. I concentrate on them, and when I have them, I hold on to them because I don’t ever want to forget how she sounded.”