“I don’t know.” There’s still so much I don’t know about him. I guess now I’ll never know it. “I don’t think his parents wanted to admit anything was wrong.”
“He was trying to fix himself because of you.”
I know she wants to make me feel better, but this only makes me feel worse.
The next day, in U.S. Geography, Mr. Black stands at the board, where he writes JUNE 4 and underlines it. “The time has come … people … your projects are due soon … so focus, focus … focus. Please come to … me with any … questions, otherwise I will … expect you to … turn them in on time … if not before.”
When the bell rings, he says, “I’d like to … talk to you, Violet.” I sit in my seat, next to the desk Finch once sat in, and wait. After the last person leaves, Mr. Black closes the door and sinks into his chair. “I wanted to check in … with you to see … if you need any help … and also to tell you … to feel free to turn in whatever … you have so far … I obviously … understand … that there are extenuating … circumstances.”
Extenuating Circumstances. That is me. That is Violet Markey. Poor forever-changed Violet and her Extenuating Circumstances. Must treat her carefully, because she is fragile and might break if expected to do the same as everyone else.
“Thanks, but I’m okay.” I can do this. I can show them I’m not some china doll, handle with care. I just wish Finch and I had pulled together all our wanderings, and maybe documented each one a little better. We were so busy being in the moment that I don’t have much to show for it except a half-filled notebook, a few pictures, and a marked-up map.
That evening, I torture myself by reading our Facebook messages, going back to the very beginning. And then, even though I know he’ll never read it, I open our notebook and start to write.
Letter to Someone Who Committed Suicide
by Violet Markey
Where are you? And why did you go? I guess I’ll never know this. Was it because I made you mad? Because I tried to help? Because I didn’t answer when you threw rocks at my window? What if I had answered? What would you have said to me? Would I have been able to talk you into staying or talk you out of doing what you did? Or would that have happened anyway?
Do you know my life is forever changed now? I used to think that was true because you came into it and showed me Indiana and, in doing that, forced me out of my room and into the world. Even when we weren’t wandering, even from the floor of your closet, you showed the world to me. I didn’t know that my life forever changing would be because you loved me and then left, and in such a final way.
So I guess there was no Great Manifesto after all, even though you made me believe there was. I guess there was only a school project.
I’ll never forgive you for leaving me. I just wish you could forgive me. You saved my life.
And, finally, I simply write: Why couldn’t I save yours?
I sit back, and above my desk are the storyboard Post-its for Germ. I’ve added a new category: Ask an Expert. My eyes move past these to the piece of paper that describes what the magazine is about. They rest on the last line: You start here.
In a minute, I am up and out of my seat and searching my room. At first, I can’t remember what I’ve done with the map. I feel this white rush of panic, which leaves me shaky, because what if I’ve lost it? It will be another piece of Finch, gone.
And then I find it in my bag, on my third time checking, as if it appeared out of thin air. I spread it out and look at the remaining points that are circled. There are five more places to see on my own. Finch has written numbers beside each one so that there’s a kind of order.
VIOLET
Remaining wanderings 1 and 2
Milltown, population 815, sits close to the Kentucky border. I have to stop and ask someone how to get to the shoe trees. A woman named Myra points me toward a place called Devils Hollow. It doesn’t take long to run out of paved road, and soon I’m driving down a narrow dirt trail, looking up, which is what Myra told me to do. Just when I think I’m lost, I come to a fourway intersection that sits surrounded by woods.
I pull the car over and get out. In the distance, I can hear the sound of kids yelling and laughing. Trees stand at all four corners, their branches filled with shoes. Hundreds and hundreds of shoes. Most are draped across the limbs by the laces like oversized Christmas ornaments. Myra said she wasn’t sure how it began, or who left the first pair, but people travel from all over just to decorate the trees. There’s a rumor that Larry Bird, the basketball player, left a pair up there somewhere.
The quest is simple: leave a pair behind. I’ve brought a pair of green Chuck Taylors from my closet, and a pair of yellow Keds from Eleanor’s. I stand, head tilted back, trying to decide where to put them. I’ll hang them together on the original tree, the one heaviest with shoes, which has been struck by lightning more than once—I can tell because the trunk looks dead and black.
I pull a Sharpie from my pocket and write Ultraviolet Remarkey-able and the date on the side of one of the Chuck Taylors. I hang them low on the original tree, which looks too fragile to climb. I have to jump a little to reach the branch, and the shoes bob and twist before settling. I hang Eleanor’s Keds beside them.
That’s it then. Nothing more to see. It’s a long way to drive for trees of old shoes, but I tell myself not to look at it that way. There might be magic here too. I stand watching for it, shading my eyes against the sun, and just before I walk back to the car I see them: way up on the highest branch of the original tree, hanging all alone. A pair of sneakers with fluorescent laces, TF in black on both shoes. A package of blue American Spirits pokes up from the inside of one.
He was here.
I look around as if I might see him right now, but it’s just me and the kids who are laughing and hollering from someplace nearby. When did he come? Was it after he left? Was it before that?
Something nags at me as I stand there. The highest branch, I think. The highest branch. I reach for my phone, but it’s in the car, and so I run the short distance, throw open the door, and lean across the seat. I sit half in, half out, scrolling through my texts from Finch. Because there aren’t many recent ones, it doesn’t take long to find it. I am on the highest branch. I look at the date. A week after he left.
He was here.