All the Bright Places

Bad mood
before tearing it up.
“When I was a kid, younger than Decca, there was this cardinal in our
backyard that kept flying into the sliding glass doors of our house, over and
over again until he knocked himself out. Each time, I thought he was dead,
but then he’d get up again and fly off. This little female cardinal sat and
watched him from one of the trees, and I always thought it was his wife.
Anyway, I begged my parents to stop him from banging into the glass. I
thought he should come inside and live with us. Kate called the Audubon
Society, and the man there said if it was his guess, the cardinal was probably
just trying to get back to his tree, the one that had been standing there before
someone came along and knocked it down and built a house on top of it.”
He tells me about the day the cardinal died, about finding the body on the
back deck, about burying him in the mud nest. “There was nothing to make
him last a long time,” Finch told his parents afterward. He said he always
blamed them because he knew they could have been the thing that made the
cardinal last if they’d only let it in like he’d asked them to.
“That was the first black mood. I don’t remember much that happened after
that, not for a little while at least.”
The worried feeling is back. “Have you ever talked to anyone? Do your
parents or Kate—or maybe one of the counselors …?”
“Parents, no. Kate, not really. I’ve been talking to a counselor at school.”
I look around the closet, at the comforter we’re sitting on, at the pillows,
the water jug, the energy bars, and that’s when it hits me. “Finch, are you
living in here?”
“I’ve been in here before. Eventually, it works. I’ll wake up one morning
and feel like coming out.” He smiles at me, and the smile seems hollow. “I
kept your secret; you keep mine.”
When I get home, I open the door to my closet and walk inside. It’s larger
than Finch’s but packed full of clothes, shoes, purses, jackets. I try to imagine
what it would be like to live in here and feel I couldn’t come out. I lie down
flat and stare up at the ceiling. The floor is hard and cold. In my head, I write:
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There was a boy who lived in a closet.…
But that’s as far as I get.
I’m not claustrophobic, but when I open the door and walk back into my
room, I feel like I can breathe again.
At dinner, my mom says, “Did you have a fun time with Shelby?” She
raises her eyebrows at my dad. “Violet drove to Shelby’s house after school.
As in 
drove
.”
My dad clinks his glass against mine. “Proud of you, V. Maybe it’s time we
talk about getting you a car of your own.”
They’re so excited over this that I feel even guiltier about lying. I wonder
what they’d do if I told them where I really was—having sex with the boy
they don’t want me to see in the closet where he’s living.
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