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Thanks for the goggles. What are they for? Please tell
me you don’t want us to use them for Someday.
Finch writes back,
Wait and see. We’ll use them soon. We’re watching
for the first warm day. There’s always one that sneaks in during the
middle of winter. Once we nail the bastard down, we go. Don’t forget the
goggles
.
138
FINCH
The first warm day
The second week of February there’s a blizzard that leaves the entire town
without power for two days. The best thing about it is that school is canceled,
but the worst thing is that the snow is so high and the air so bitter cold, you
can barely stay out in it for more than five minutes at a time. I tell myself it’s
only water in a different form, and I walk all the way to Violet’s, where we
build the world’s largest snowman. We name him Mr. Black and decide he’ll
be a destination for others to see when they’re wandering. Afterward, we sit
with her parents around the fire and I pretend I’m part of the family.
Once the roads are clear, Violet and I creep very, very carefully down them
to see the Painted Rainbow Bridge, the Periodic Table Display, the Seven
Pillars, and the lynching and burial site of the Reno brothers, America’s first
train robbers. We climb the sheer, high walls of Empire Quarry, where they
got the 18,630 tons of stone needed to build the Empire State Building. We
visit the Indiana Moon Tree, which is a giant sycamore more than thirty years
old that grew from a seed taken to the moon and brought back. This tree is
nature’s rock star because it’s one of only fifty left alive from an original set
of five hundred.
We go to Kokomo to hear the hum in the air, and we park Little Bastard in
neutral at the base of Gravity Hill and roll to the top. It is like the world’s
slowest roller coaster, but somehow it works, and minutes later we’re at the
peak. Afterward, I take her out for a Valentine’s Day dinner at my favorite
restaurant, Happy Family, which sits at the end of a strip mall about fifteen
miles from home. It serves the best Chinese food east of the Mississippi.
The first warm day falls on a Saturday, which is how we end up in Prairieton
at the Blue Hole, a three-acre lake that sits on private property. I collect our
offerings—the stubs of her SAT number 2 pencils and four broken guitar
strings. The air is so warm, we don’t even need jackets, just sweaters, and
after the winter we’ve been through so far, it feels almost tropical.
I hold out my hand and lead her up the embankment and down the hill to a
wide, round pool of blue water, ringed by trees. It’s so private and silent that I
139
pretend we’re the only two people on earth, which is how I wish it could be
for real.
“Okay,” she says, letting out a long breath, as if she’s been holding it all
this time. The goggles hang around her neck. “What is this place?”
“This,” I say, “is the Blue Hole. They say it’s bottomless, or that the bottom
is quicksand. They say there’s a force in the middle of the lake that sucks you
down into an underground river that flows right into the Wabash. They say it
leads you to another world. That it was a hiding place for pirates burying
treasure, and for Chicago bootleggers burying bodies and dumping stolen
cars. That in the 1950s a group of teenage boys went swimming here and
disappeared. In 1969, two sheriff’s deputies launched an expedition to explore
the Hole, but they didn’t find any cars or treasure or bodies. They also didn’t
find the bottom. What they did find was a whirlpool that nearly sucked them
down.”
I’ve ditched the red cap, gloves, and black sweater, and am wearing a navy
pullover and jeans. I’ve cut my hair shorter, and when she first saw me, Violet
said, “All-American Finch. Okay.” Now I kick off my shoes and yank off the
shirt. It’s almost hot in the sun, and I want to go swimming. “Bottomless blue
holes exist all over the world, and each one has these kinds of myths
associated with it. They were formed as caverns, thousands of years ago
during the last ice age. They’re like black holes on earth, places where
nothing can escape and time and space come to an end. How bloody awesome
is it that we actually have one of our own?”
She glances back toward the house and the car and the road, then smiles up
at me. “Pretty awesome.” She kicks off her shoes and pulls off her shirt and
pants so that, in seconds, she is standing there in only her bra and underwear,
which are a kind of dull rose color but somehow the sexiest things I’ve ever
seen.
I go totally and utterly speechless and she starts to laugh. “Well, come on. I
know you’re not shy, so drop your pants and let’s do this. I assume you want
to see if the rumors are true.” My mind draws a blank, and she juts one hip
out, Amanda Monk–style, resting a hand on it. “About it being bottomless?”
“Oh yeah. Right. Of course.” I slide off my jeans so I’m in my boxers, and
I take her hand. We walk to the rock ledge that surrounds part of the Hole and
climb up onto it. “What are you most afraid of?” I say before we jump. I can
already feel my skin starting to burn from the sun.
“Dying. Losing my parents. Staying here for the rest of my life. Never
figuring out what I’m supposed to do. Being ordinary. Losing everyone I
love.” I wonder if I’m included in that group. She is bouncing on the balls of
her feet, as if she’s cold. I try not to stare at her chest as she does because,
whatever else he is, All-American Finch is not a perv. “What about you?” she
asks. She fits the goggles into place. “What are you most afraid of?”
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I think,
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