All the Bright Places

Lit. Love. Life.
I’m not sure what these are supposed to be—
categories or articles or just nice-sounding words.
Even though it isn’t much yet, I take a picture and send it to Finch. I write:
Look what you’ve got me doing
. Every half hour, I check for a response, but
by the time I go to bed, I still haven’t heard from him.
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FINCH
Days 23, 24, 25 …
Last night is like a puzzle—only not put together: all the pieces are scattered
everywhere and some are missing. I wish my heart wouldn’t beat so 
fast
.
I get out the books again and read the good words Decca left behind, but
they blur on the page so that they don’t make sense. I can’t concentrate.
And then I start to clean and organize. I take down every single note until
the wall is blank. I shove them into a trash bag, but this isn’t enough, so I
decide to paint. I’m sick of the red walls of my room. The color is too dark
and depressing. 
This is what I need
, I think. 
A change of scenery. This is why
the room feels off
.
I get into Little Bastard and drive to the nearest hardware store and buy
primer and ten gallons of blue paint because I’m not sure how much it will
take.
* * *
It takes many, many coats to cover the red. No matter what I do, it seeps right
through, like the walls are bleeding.
By midnight, the paint still isn’t dry, and so I gather up the black comforter
and shove it into the back of the linen closet in the hall, and I dig around until
I find an old blue comforter of Kate’s. I spread this on my bed. I open the
windows and move my bed into the middle of the room, and then I climb
under the blanket and go to sleep.
The next day, I paint the walls again. It takes two days for them to hold the
color, which is the clear, bright blue of a swimming pool. I lie on my bed
feeling easier, like I can catch my breath. 
Now we’re talking
, I think. 
Yes
.
The only thing I leave alone is the ceiling, because white contains all the
wavelengths of the visible spectrum at full brightness. Okay, this is
technically true of white light and not white paint, but I don’t care. I tell
myself that all the colors are there anyway, and this gives me an idea. I think
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of writing it as a song, but instead I sign onto the computer and send a
message to Violet.