All the Bright Places

She’s waiting for me
. The thought fills me, but I can still feel the
darkness working its way up, through my fingers, trying to grab hold.
Less than 2 percent of people in the U.S. kill themselves by drowning,
maybe because the human body was built to float. The number one country in
the world for drowning, accidental or otherwise, is Russia, which has twice as
many deaths as the next highest, Japan. The Cayman Islands, surrounded by
the Caribbean Sea, has the fewest drownings of all
.
I like it deeper, where the water feels heaviest. Water is better than running
because it blocks everything out. Water is my special power, my way to cheat
the Asleep and stop it from coming on.
I want to go even deeper than this, because the deeper the better. I want to
keep going. But something makes me stop. The thought of Violet. The
burning sensation in my lungs. I stare longingly at the black of where the
bottom should be but isn’t, and then I stare up again at the light, very faint but
still there, waiting with Violet, over my head.
It takes strength to push myself up, because I need air by now, badly. The
panic comes back, stronger this time, and then I aim myself for the surface.
Come on
, I think. 
Please come on
. My body wants up, but it’s tired. 
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry, Violet. I won’t leave you again. I don’t know what I was thinking.
I’m coming
.
When I finally hit the air, she is sitting on the bank crying. “Asshole,” she
says.
I feel my smile go and I swim toward her, head up, afraid to put it under
again, even for a second, afraid she’ll freak out.
“Asshole,” she says, louder this time, standing, still in her underwear. She
wraps her arms around herself, trying to get warm, trying to cover up, trying
to pull away from me. “What the hell? Do you know how scared I was? I
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searched everywhere. I went as deep as I could before I ran out of air and had
to come back up, like, three times.”
I want her to say my name because then I’ll know it’s okay and I haven’t
gone too far and I haven’t just lost her forever. But she doesn’t, and I can feel
a cold, dark feeling growing in the pit of my stomach—every bit as cold and
dark as the water. I find the outer edge of the Blue Hole where there’s
suddenly a bottom, and I rise up out of it until I’m next to her, dripping on the
bank.
She pushes me hard and then again, so I go jolting backward, but I don’t
lose my footing. I stand there as she slaps at me, and then she starts to cry,
and she is shaking.
I want to kiss her but I’ve never seen her like this, and I’m not sure what
she’ll do if I try to touch her. I tell myself, 
For once it’s not about you, Finch
.
So I stand an arm’s length away and say, “Let it out, all that stuff you’re
carrying around. You’re pissed off at me, at your parents, at life, at Eleanor.
Come on. Let me have it. Don’t disappear in there.” I mean inside herself,
where I’ll never get to her.
“Screw you, Finch.”
“Better. Keep going. Don’t stop now. Don’t be a waiting person. You lived.
You survived a really horrible accident. But you’re just … there. You’re just
existing
like everyone else. Get up. Do this. Do that. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Over and over so that you don’t have to think about it.”
She shoves me again and again. “Stop acting like you know how I feel.”
She’s pounding at me with her fists, but I just stand, feet planted, and take it.
“I know there’s more in there, probably years of shit you’ve been smiling
away and keeping down.”
She pounds and pounds and then suddenly covers her face. “You don’t
know how it is. It’s like I’ve got this angry little person inside me, and I can
feel him trying to get out. He’s running out of room because he’s growing
bigger and bigger, and so he starts rising up, into my lungs, chest, throat, and I
just push him right back down. I don’t want him to come out. I can’t let him
out.”
“Why not?”
“Because I hate him, because he’s not me, but he’s in there and he won’t
leave me alone, and all I can think is that I want to go up to someone, anyone,
and just knock them into space because I’m angry at all of them.”
“So don’t tell me. Break something. Smash something. Throw something.
Or scream. Just get it out of you.” I yell again. I yell and yell. Then I pick up a
rock and smash it into the wall that surrounds the hole.
I hand her a rock and she stands, palm up, like she’s not sure what to do. I
take the rock from her and hurl it against the wall, then hand her another. Now
she’s hurling them at the wall and shouting and stomping, and she looks like a
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crazy person. We jump up and down the banks and storm around smashing
things, and then she turns on me, all of a sudden, and says, “What are we,
anyway? What exactly is going on here?”
It’s at that moment that I can’t help myself, even though she is furious,
even though she maybe hates me right now. I pull her in and kiss her the way
I’ve always wanted to kiss her, a lot more R-rated than PG-13. I can feel her
tense at first, not wanting to kiss me back, and the thought of it breaks my
heart. Before I can pull away, I feel her bend and then melt into me as I melt
into her under the warm Indiana sun. And she’s still here, and she isn’t going
anywhere, and it will be okay. 
I am carried off. We yield to this slow flood.
… In and out, we are swept;… we cannot step outside its sinuous, its
hesitating, its abrupt, its perfectly encircling walls
.
And then I push her away.
“What the hell, Finch?” She is wet and angry and staring at me with large
gray-green eyes.
“You deserve better. I can’t promise you I’ll stay around, not because I
don’t want to. It’s hard to explain. I’m a fuckup. I’m broken, and no one can
fix it. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. I can’t love anyone because it’s not fair to
anyone who loves me back. I’ll never hurt you, not like I want to hurt
Roamer. But I can’t promise I won’t pick you apart, piece by piece, until
you’re in a thousand pieces, just like me. You should know what you’re
getting into before getting involved.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re already involved, Finch. And in case
you haven’t noticed, I’m broken too.” Then she says, “Where did you get the
scar? The real story this time.”
“The real story’s boring. My dad gets in these black moods. Like, the
blackest black. Like, no moon, no stars, storm’s coming black. I used to be a
lot smaller than I am now. I used to not know how to get out of the way.”
These are just some of the things I never wanted to say to her. “I wish I could
promise you perfect days and sunshine, but I’m never going to be Ryan
Cross.”
“If there’s one thing I know, it’s that no one can promise anything. And I
don’t want Ryan Cross. Let me worry about what I want.” And then she
kisses me. It’s the kind of kiss that makes me lose track of everything, and so
it may be hours or minutes by the time we break apart.
She says, “By the way? Ryan Cross is a kleptomaniac. He steals stuff for
fun. And not even things he wants, but everything. His room looks like one of
those rooms on 
Hoarders
. Just in case you thought he was perfect.”
“Ultraviolet Remarkey-able, I think I love you.”
So that she doesn’t feel she has to say it back, I kiss her again, and wonder
if I dare do anything else, go any further, because I don’t want to ruin this
moment. And then, because I’m now the one thinking too much, and because
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she is different from all other girls and because I really, really don’t want to
screw this up, I concentrate on kissing her on the banks of the Blue Hole, in
the sunshine, and I let that be enough.
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