I start to sing my favorite Boy Parade song, the one that most reminds me of her. My mom looks at my dad, his eyes fixed on the road, and then she joins in.
Back at home, I sit at my desk thinking about my mother’s question: Why do I want to start a magazine?
I stare at the board on my wall. My notes are spilling over and across the wall itself and reaching toward the closet. I open the wandering notebook and flip through the pages. On the first empty one, I write: Germ—noun \’jarm\ the origin of something; a thing that may serve as the basis of further growth or development.
I read this over and add: Germ is for everyone.…
I cross this out.
I try again: Germ is meant to entertain, inform, and keep you safe.…
I cross this out too.
I think of Finch and Amanda, and then I look at the closet door, where you can still see the thumbtack holes from my calendar. I think of the big black “X”s that marked off the days because all I wanted was for them to be behind me.
I turn to a new page and write: Germ Magazine. You start here. And then I rip it out and add it to my wall.
* * *
I haven’t heard anything from Finch since March. I’m not worried anymore. I’m angry. Angry at him for leaving without a word, angry at myself for being so easy to leave and for not being enough to make him want to stick around. I do the normal post-breakup things—eating ice cream out of the carton, listening to better-off-without-him music, choosing a new profile photo for my Facebook page. My bangs are finally growing out, and I’m starting to look like my old self, even if I don’t feel like her. On April 8, I gather the few things I have of his, pack them into a box, and slide them into the back of my closet. No more Ultraviolet Remarkey-able. I’m Violet Markey once again.
Wherever Finch is, he has our map. On April 10, I buy another one so that I can finish this project, which I have to do whether he’s here or not. Right now the only things I have are memories of places. Nothing to show for them except a couple of pictures and our notebook. I don’t know how to put all of what we’ve seen and done together into one comprehensive something that will make sense to anyone but me. It—whatever we did and were—doesn’t even make sense to me.
On April 11, I borrow Mom’s car, and she doesn’t ask where I’m going, but as she hands me the keys, she says, “Call or text when you get there and when you’re on your way home.”
I head to Crawfordsville, where I make a halfhearted attempt to visit the Rotary Jail Museum, but I feel like a tourist. I call my mother to check in, and afterward I drive. It’s a warm Saturday. The sun is bright. It almost feels like spring, and then I remember that, technically, it is. As I drive, I keep my eye out for a Saturn SUV, and every time I spot one, my heart does this wild leap into my throat, even though I tell myself: I’m done. I’m over him. I’m moving on.
I remember what he said about how he loved driving, the forward motion of it, like you might go anywhere. I picture the look on his face if he could see me behind the wheel right now. “Ultraviolet,” he’d say, “I always knew you had it in you.”
When Ryan and Suze break up, he asks me out. I say yes, but only as friends. On April 17, we eat dinner at the Gaslight, which is one of the fancier restaurants in Bartlett.
I pick at my meal and do my best to focus on Ryan. We talk about college plans and turning eighteen (his birthday’s this month, mine’s in May), and while it’s not the most exciting conversation I’ve ever had, it is a nice, normal date, with a nice, normal guy, and there’s something to be said for that right now. I think about how I’ve labeled Ryan just like everyone labeled Finch. I suddenly like his solidness and sense of permanence, as if what you see is what you get, and he will always be and do exactly what you expect him to be and do. Except for the stealing, of course.
When he walks me to my door, I let him kiss me, and when he calls me the next morning, I answer.
On Saturday afternoon, Amanda shows up at my house and asks if I want to hang out. We end up playing tennis in the street, like we did when I first moved here, and afterward we walk up to the Dairy Queen and order Blizzards. That night, we go to the Quarry, just Amanda and me, and then I text Brenda and Shelby and Lara and the three Brianas, and they meet us there. An hour later, Jordan Gripenwaldt and some of the other Germ girls have joined us. We dance till it’s time to go home.
Friday, April 24, Brenda and I go to the movies, and when she invites me to sleep over, I do. She wants to talk about Finch, but I tell her I’m trying to put him behind me. She hasn’t heard from him either, so she lets me be, but not before she says, “Just so you know, it’s not you. Whatever reason he had for leaving, it must have been a good one.”
We stay up till four a.m. working on Germ, me on my laptop, Brenda flat on her back on the floor, legs up the wall. She says, “We can help guide our readers into adulthood like Sherpas on Mount Everest. We give them the truth about sex, the truth about college life, the truth about love.” She sighs. “Or at least the truth about what to do when boys are complete and total prats.”
“Do we even know what to do when that happens?”
“Not at all.”
I have fifteen emails from girls at school wanting to be contributors, because Violet Markey, bell tower hero and creator of EleanorandViolet.com (Gemma Sterling’s favorite blog site), has started another magazine. I read them aloud, and Brenda says, “So this is what it’s like to be popular.”
By now, she’s pretty much my closest friend.
VIOLET
April 26
On Sunday, around ten thirty in the morning, Kate Finch shows up at our door. She looks as if she hasn’t slept in weeks. When I invite her in, she shakes her head. “Do you have any idea where Theo might be?”
“I don’t hear from him anymore.”
She starts nodding. “Okay.” She nods and nods. “Okay. Okay. It’s just that he’s been checking in every Saturday with Mom or me, either by email or voicemail when he knows he won’t get us live. I mean, every Saturday. We didn’t hear from him yesterday, and then this morning we get this weird email.”
I try not to feel jealous of the fact that he’s been checking in with them but not me. After all, they’re his family. I’m only me, the most important person in his life, for a while at least. But okay. I get it. He’s moved on. I’ve moved on too.