VIOLET
March 21 and beyond
I knock on the door to his room but don’t get any answer. I knock again.
“Finch?”
I knock again and again, and finally I hear a shuffling, a crash as
something is dropped, a
goddammit
, and the door opens. Finch is wearing a
suit. His hair is cut short, buzzed very close, and between that and the stubble
on his jaw, he looks different, older, and, yes, hot.
He gives me a lopsided grin and says, “Ultraviolet. The only person I want
to see.” He moves out of the way so I can come in.
The
room is still hospital bare, and I have a sinking feeling because he’s
been to the hospital but didn’t tell me, and there’s something about all that
blue that makes me feel suffocated.
I say, “I need to talk to you.”
Finch kisses me hello, and his eyes are brighter than the other night, or
maybe it’s that he isn’t wearing glasses.
Every time he changes, it takes
getting used to. He kisses me again and leans sexily against the door, as if he
knows how good he looks.
“First things first. I need to know how you feel about space travel and
Chinese food.”
“In that order?”
“Not necessarily.”
“I think one is interesting and the other is really great to eat.”
“Good enough. Shoes off.”
I take my shoes off, which drops me an inch or two.
“Clothes off, midget.”
I swat at him.
“Later then, but I won’t forget. Okay. Please close your eyes.”
I close my eyes. In my mind, I’m going over the best way to bring up Life
Is Life. But he’s so much like himself again, even if he looks different, that I
tell myself that when I open my eyes, the walls
of his room will be painted
red and the furniture will be back where it was and the bed will be made
because that’s where he sleeps.
I hear the door to the closet open and he leads me forward a few steps.
“Keep them closed.” Out of instinct, I reach my hands out in front of me, and
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Finch lowers them to my sides. The Slow Club is playing, a band I like, all
plucky and bittersweet and kind of offbeat.
Like Finch
, I think.
Like us
.
He helps me sit, and I’m on what feels like a stack of pillows. I hear him
and feel him moving
around me as the door closes, and then his knees are
pressed to mine. I’m ten years old again, back in my fort-building days.
“Open.”
I open.
And I’m in space, everything glowing like the Emerald City. The walls and
ceiling are painted with planets and stars. Our Post-its still hang on one wall.
The blue comforter is at our feet, so the whole floor glows. Plates and
silverware and napkins are stacked next to containers of food.
A bottle of
vodka sits on ice.
“How did you …”
Finch points to the black-light bulb in the ceiling. “If you’ll notice,” he
says, holding a hand up to the skies, “Jupiter and Pluto are perfectly aligned
in relation to earth. It’s the Jovian-Plutonian gravitational chamber. Where
everything floats indefinitely.”
The only thing that comes out of my mouth is “Oh my God.” I’ve been so
worried about him, this boy I love, more worried than I knew until right this
moment, staring up at the solar system. This is the single loveliest thing
anyone’s ever done for me. It’s movie lovely. It feels somehow epic and
fragile, and I want the night to last forever, and knowing it can’t already has
me sad.
The food is from Happy Family. I don’t ask how he got it, if he actually
drove out there himself or maybe
got Kate to pick it up for him, but I tell
myself that he was the one who went all that way because he doesn’t have to
stay in this closet if he doesn’t want to.
He opens the vodka and we pass the bottle back and forth. It tastes dry and
bitter, like autumn leaves. I like the way it burns my nose and throat on the
way down.
“Where did you get this?” I hold up the bottle.
“I have my ways.”
“It’s perfect. Not just this—all of it. But it’s your birthday, not mine. I
should be doing something like this for you.”
He kisses me.
I kiss him.
The air is full of things we aren’t saying, and I wonder if he feels it too.
He’s being so easy and Finch-like that I tell myself to let it go, don’t think so
much. Maybe Amanda’s wrong. Maybe she only told me about that group to
get me upset. Maybe she made the whole thing up.
He fills our plates, and as we eat, we talk about everything except for how
he’s feeling. I tell him what he’s missed in U.S. Geography and talk about the
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