All the Bright Places

I am on the highest branch.
I look at the
date. A week after he left.
He was here
.
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
227

---

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.