All the Bright Places

House of no
yelling
and sticks it onto the wall. Then he hands me a pen and a pad of Post-
its. “Want to try?”
“Just anything?”
“Anything. Positive ones go on the wall, negative on the floor over there.”
He points to this heap of ripped-up paper. “It’s important to get those down,
but they don’t need to hang around after you do. Words can be bullies.
Remember Paula Cleary?” I shake my head. “She was fifteen when she
moved to the States from Ireland and started dating some idiot guy the other
girls loved. They called her ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ and worse and wouldn’t let her
alone until she hanged herself in a stairwell.”
I write 
Bully
and hand it to Finch, who rips it into a hundred pieces and
throws it on the heap. I write 
Mean girls
and then shred it to bits. I write
Accidents, Winter, Ice,
and 
Bridge,
and tear at the paper until it’s only dust.
Finch scribbles something and slaps it to the wall. 
Welcome.
He scribbles
something else. 
Freak.
He shows it to me before destroying it. He writes
Belong,
which goes on the wall, and 
Label,
which doesn’t. 
Warmth,
Saturday, Wander, You, Best friend
go up, while 
Cold, Sunday, Stand still,
Everyone else
go into the heap.
Necessary, Loved, Understood, Forgiven
are on the wall now, and then I
write 
You, Finch, Theodore, Theo, Theodore Finch,
and post them up.
185

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We do this for a long time, and then he shows me how he makes a song out
of the words. First he rearranges them into a kind of order that almost makes
sense. He grabs the guitar and strums out a tune and, just like that, starts
singing. He manages to get every word in, and afterward I clap and he bows
with the top half of his body since he’s still sitting on the floor, and I say,
“You have to write it down. Don’t lose it.”
“I don’t ever write songs down.”
“What’s all that staff paper there?”
“Ideas for songs. Random notes. Things that’ll become songs. Things I
might write about someday, or started once but didn’t finish because there
wasn’t enough in them. If a song’s meant to stay around, you carry it with you
in your bones.”
He writes