All the Bright Places

VIOLET
Remaining wanderings 3 and 4
The Pendleton Pike Drive-In is one of the last of its kind. What’s left of it sits
in an overgrown field on the outskirts of downtown Indianapolis. Now it’s
like a graveyard, but in the 1960s the drive-in was one of the most popular
sites around—not just a movie theater, but a kiddie park with a mini roller
coaster and other rides and attractions.
The screen is the only thing that remains. I park on the roadside and
approach it from the back. It’s an overcast day, the sun hidden behind thick,
gray clouds, and even though it’s warm, I shiver. The place gives me the
spooks. As I tramp over weeds and dirt, I try to picture Finch parking Little
Bastard where I parked my car and walking to the screen, which blocks the
horizon like a skeleton, just as I’m walking now.
I believe in signs,
he texted.
And that’s what the screen looks like—a giant billboard. The back is
covered with graffiti, and I pick my way across broken beer bottles and
cigarette butts.
Suddenly I’m having one of those moments that you have after losing
someone—when you feel as if you’ve been kicked in the stomach and all your
breath is gone, and you might never get it back. I want to sit down on the
dirty, littered ground right now and cry until I can’t cry anymore.
But instead I walk around the side of the screen, telling myself I may not
find anything. I count my steps past it until I’m a good thirty paces in. I turn
and look up, and the wide white face says in red letters, 
I was here. TF.
In that moment, my knees give out and down I sink, into the dirt and the
weeds and the trash. What was I doing when he was here? Was I in class?
Was I with Amanda or Ryan? Was I at home? Where was I when he was
climbing up on the sign and painting it, leaving an offering, finishing our
project?
I get to my feet and take a picture of the skeleton screen with my phone,
and then I walk up to the sign, closer and closer, until the letters are huge and
towering above me. I wonder how far away they reach, if someone miles from
here can read them.
There is a can of red spray paint sitting on the ground, the cap neatly on. I
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pick it up, hoping for a note or anything to let me know he left it for me, but
it’s just a can.
He must have climbed up by the steel latticework posts that anchor the
thing in place. I rest one foot on a rung, tuck the paint can under my arm, and
pull myself up. I have to climb one side and then the other in order to finish it.
I write: