“Is he here?”
“I’m sure he’s up there somewhere. I’m guessing you know where his room is.” She smirks a little, but in a nice way, and I wonder what he’s told her about me.
Upstairs, I knock on his door. “Finch?” I knock again. “It’s Violet.” There’s no answer. I try the door, which is locked. I knock again.
I tell myself he must be sleeping or have his headphones on. I knock again and again. I reach into my pocket for the bobby pin I carry with me, just in case, and bend down to examine the lock. The first one I ever picked was to the closet in my mom’s office. Eleanor put me up to it because that’s where our parents hid the Christmas presents. I discovered lock picking was a skill that comes in handy when you want to disappear during gym class or when you just need some peace and quiet.
I give the knob a shake and then put the bobby pin away. I could probably pick this lock, but I won’t. If Finch wanted to let me in, he would.
When I get back downstairs, Kate is standing at the sink smoking a cigarette out the kitchen window, her hand dangling over the sill. “Was he in there?” When I say no, she throws her cigarette down the garbage disposal. “Huh. Well, maybe he’s asleep. Or he could have gone running.”
“He runs?”
“About fifteen times a day.”
It’s my turn to say, “Huh.”
“You never can tell what that boy’s going to do.”
FINCH
Day 27 (I am still here)
I stand at the window and watch her climb onto her bike. Afterward, I sit on the shower floor, the water beating down on my head, for a good twenty minutes. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror.
I turn on the computer because it’s a connection to the world, and maybe that’s what I need right now. The brightness of the screen hurts my eyes, and so I dim it way down until the shapes and letters are near shadows. This is better. I sign onto Facebook, which belongs only to Violet and me. I start at the beginning of our message chain and read every word, but the words don’t make sense unless I hold my head and repeat them out loud.
I try to read my downloaded version of The Waves, and when that isn’t any better, I think, It’s the computer. It’s not me. And I find a regular book and thumb through it, but the lines dance across the page like they’re trying to get away from me.
I will stay awake.
I will not sleep.
I think of ringing up ol’ Embryo. I go so far as to fish his number out from the bottom of my backpack and punch it into my phone. I don’t press Call.
I can go downstairs right now and let my mom know how I’m feeling—if she’s even home—but she’ll tell me to help myself to the Advil in her purse and that I need to relax and stop getting myself worked up, because in this house there’s no such thing as being sick unless you can measure it with a thermometer under the tongue. Things fall into categories of black and white—bad mood, bad temper, loses control, feels sad, feels blue.
You’re always so sensitive, Theodore. Ever since you were a little boy. Do you remember the cardinal? The one that kept flying into the glass doors off the living room? Over and over, he knocked himself out, and you said, “Bring him in to live with us so he won’t do that anymore.” Remember? And then one day we came home and he was lying on the patio, and he’d flown into the door one too many times, and you called his grave a mud nest and said, “None of this would have happened if you’d let him come in.”
I don’t want to hear about the cardinal again. Because the thing of it is, that cardinal was dead either way, whether he came inside or not. Maybe he knew it, and maybe that’s why he decided to crash into the glass a little harder than normal that day. He would have died in here, only slower, because that’s what happens when you’re a Finch. The marriage dies. The love dies. The people fade away.
I put on my sneakers and bypass Kate in the kitchen. She says, “Your girlfriend was just here looking for you.”
“I must have had my headphones on.”
“What happened to your lip and your eye? Please tell me she didn’t do that.”
“I ran into a door.”
She stares hard at me. “Everything okay with you?”
“Yeah. Super. I’m just going for a run.”
When I get back, the white of my bedroom ceiling is too bright, and so I turn it blue with what’s left of the paint.
VIOLET
133 days to go
Six o’clock. Living room of my house. My parents sit across from me, their brows creased and unhappy. It seems Principal Wertz called my mother when I failed to come back for the rest of third period, or show up for my fourth-, fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-period classes.
My dad is still dressed in the suit he wore to work. He does most of the talking. “Where were you?”
“Technically, just across the street from school.”
“Where across the street?”
“The river.”
“What in the hell were you doing at the river during school, during winter?”
In her even, calm voice, Mom says, “James.”
“There was a fire alarm, and we were all outside, and Finch wanted me to see this rare Asian crane …”
“Finch?”
“The boy I’m doing the project with. You met him.”
“How much is left to do on this project?”
“We have to visit one more place and then we need to put everything together.”
Mom says, “Violet, we’re very disappointed.” This is like a knife in my stomach. My parents have never believed in grounding us or taking away our phones or computers, all the things Amanda’s parents do to her when she gets caught breaking the rules. Instead, they talk to us and tell us how disappointed they are.
Me, I mean. They talk to me.
“This isn’t like you.” Mom shakes her head.
Dad says, “You can’t use losing your sister as an excuse to act out.” I wish, just once, they’d send me to my room.
“I wasn’t acting out. That wasn’t what it was. It’s just—I don’t cheer anymore. I quit student council. I suck at orchestra. I don’t have any friends or a boyfriend, because it’s not like the rest of the world stops, you know?” My voice is getting louder, and I can’t seem to do anything about it. “Everyone goes on with their lives, and maybe I can’t keep up. Maybe I don’t want to. The one thing I’m good at I can’t do anymore. I didn’t even want to work on this project, but it’s kind of the only thing I have going on.”