Table Of Content

All The Bright Places 1. All The Bright Places 2. Contents 3. FINCH 4. VIOLET 5. FINCH 6. I write: Reason for not jumping: Too messy. Too public. Too crowded. 7. Eleanor Markey, 18, a senior at Bartlett High School and member of the student congress, lost control of her car on A Street Bridge at approximately 12:45 a.m. 8. FINCH’S RULES FOR WANDERING 9. VIOLET 10. FINCH 11. VIOLET 12. FINCH 13. VIOLET 14. FINCH 15. VIOLET 16. FINCH 17. VIOLET 18. FINCH 19. VIOLET 20. FINCH 21. VIOLET 22. FINCH 23. FINCH 24. VIOLET 25. FINCH 26. VIOLET 27. FINCH 28. VIOLET 29. FINCH 30. VIOLET 31. VIOLET 32. FINCH 33. FINCH 34. VIOLET 35. VIOLET 36. FINCH 37. VIOLET 38. FINCH 39. VIOLET 40. FINCH 41. FINCH 42. VIOLET 43. VIOLET 44. FINCH 45. FINCH 46. VIOLET 47. FINCH 48. FINCH 49. VIOLET 50. FINCH 51. VIOLET 52. VIOLET 53. FINCH 54. VIOLET 55. VIOLET 56. VIOLET 57. April 26 (part two) 58. VIOLET 59. VIOLET 60. VIOLET 61. VIOLET 62. VIOLET 63. VIOLET 64. AUTHOR’S NOTE 65. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 66. ABOUT THE AUTHOR All The Bright Places This book was produced in EPUB format by the Internet Archive. The book pages were scanned and converted to EPUB format automatically. This process relies on optical character recognition, and is somewhat susceptible to errors. The book may not offer the correct reading sequence, and there may be weird characters, non- words, and incorrect guesses at structure. Some page numbers and headers or footers may remain from the scanned page. The process which identifies images might have found stray marks on the page which are not actually images from the book. The hidden page numbering which may be available to your ereader corresponds to the numbered pages in the print edition, but is not an exact match; page numbers will increment at the same rate as the corresponding print edition, but we may have started numbering before the print book's visible page numbers. The Internet Archive is working to improve the scanning process and resulting books, but in the meantime, we hope that this book will be useful to you. The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 to build an Internet library and to promote universal access to all knowledge. The Archive's purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. The Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages, and provides specialized services for information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities. Created with abbyy2epub (v.1.6.7) This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters (with the exception of the creators of the World’s Largest Ball of Paint and the Blue Flash and Blue Too roller coasters), are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. Text copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Niven Jacket photographs (flowers) copyright © 2015 by Neil Fletcher and Matthew Ward/Getty Images Hand-lettering and illustrations copyright © 2015 by Sarah Watts All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC. Excerpt from Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss, TM and copyright © by Dr. Seuss Enterprises L.P. 1990. Used by permission of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. All rights reserved. Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/teens Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Niven, Jennifer. All the bright places / Jennifer Niven.—1st ed. p. cm. Summary: “Told in alternating voices, when Theodore Finch and Violet Markey meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school —both teetering on the edge—it’s the beginning of an unlikely relationship, a journey to discover the ‘natural wonders’ of the state of Indiana, and two teens’ desperate desire to heal and save one another.”—Provided by publisher Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-385-75588-7 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-385-75589-4 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-385-75590-0 (ebook) — ISBN 978-0-553-53358-3 (inti. tr. pbk.) [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Suicide—Fiction. 3. Emotional problems— Fiction. [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Suicide—Fiction. 3. Emotional problems— Fiction. 4. Indiana—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.N6434A1 2015 [Fic]—dc23 2014002238 Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read. v3.1 For my mother, Penelope Niven, my brightest place of all Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Part 1 Finch: I am awake again. Day 6 Violet: 154 days till graduation Finch: Day 6 (still) of being awake Finch’s Rules for Wandering Violet: 153 days till graduation Finch: Day 7 of the Awake Violet: 152 days till graduation Finch: Day 8 of the Awake Violet: 151 days till graduation Finch: Day 9 Violet: 151 days till graduation Finch: The night of the day my life changed Violet: 148 days till graduation Finch: Day 13 Violet: 147-146 days till freedom Finch: Day 15 (I am still awake) Violet: 145 days till liberation Finch: Day 15 (still) Finch: Days 16 and 17 Violet: 142 days to go Finch: Day 22 and I’m still here Violet: 138 days to go Finch: Days 23, 24, 25 ... Part 2 Violet: 135, 134, 133 days to go Finch: Day 27 (I am still here) Violet: 133 days to go Violet: Saturday Finch: Day 28 Finch: Day 30 (and I am awake) Violet: February 2 Violet: The weekend Finch: The first warm day Violet: The day of Finch: The day of Violet: The morning after Finch: What follows Finch: How to survive quicksand Violet: The week after Violet: Spring break Finch: Day 64 of the awake Finch: Days 65 and 66 Violet: March 10 Finch: Days 66 and 67 Finch: Day 71 Violet: March 18 Finch: Day 75 Violet: March 20 Violet: March 21 and beyond Finch: Day 80: (a muthaf#@*ing world record) Violet: The rest of march Part 3 Violet: April Violet: April 26 Violet: April 26 (part two) Violet: May 3 Violet: May—weeks 1, 2, and 3 Violet: Remaining wanderings 1 and 2 Violet: Remaining wanderings 3 and 4 Violet: The last wandering Violet: June 20 Author’s Note A cknowledgments About the Author The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. —Ernest Hemingway FINCH I am awake again. Day 6. Is today a good day to die? This is something I ask myself in the morning when I wake up. In third period when I’m trying to keep my eyes open while Mr. Schroeder drones on and on. At the supper table as I’m passing the green beans. At night when I’m lying awake because my brain won’t shut off due to all there is to think about. Is today the day? And if not today — when? I am asking myself this now as I stand on a narrow ledge six stories above the ground. I’m so high up, I’m practically part of the sky. I look down at the pavement below, and the world tilts. I close my eyes, enjoying the way everything spins. Maybe this time I’ll do it—let the air carry me away. It will be like floating in a pool, drifting off until there’s nothing. I don’t remember climbing up here. In fact, I don’t remember much of anything before Sunday, at least not anything so far this winter. This happens every time —the blanking out, the waking up. I’m like that old man with the beard, Rip Van Winkle. Now you see me, now you don’t. You’d think I’d have gotten used to it, but this last time was the worst yet because I wasn’t asleep for a couple days or a week or two—I was asleep for the holidays, meaning Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. I can’t tell you what was different this time around, only that when I woke up, I felt deader than usual. Awake, yeah, but completely empty, like someone had been feasting on my blood. This is day six of being awake again, and my first week back at school since November 14. I open my eyes, and the ground is still there, hard and permanent. I am in the bell tower of the high school, standing on a ledge about four inches wide. The tower is pretty small, with only a few feet of concrete floor space on all sides of the bell itself, and then this low stone railing, which I’ve climbed over to get here. Every now and then I knock one of my legs against it to remind myself it’s there. My arms are outstretched as if I’m conducting a sermon and this entire not-very- big, dull, dull town is my congregation. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I shout, “I would like to welcome you to my death!” You might expect me to say “life,” having just woken up and all, but it’s only when I’m awake that I think about dying. I am shouting in an old-school-preacher way, all jerking head and words that twitch at the ends, and I almost lose my balance. I hold on behind me, happy no one seems to have noticed, because, let’s face it, it’s hard to look fearless when you’re clutching the railing like a chicken. “I, Theodore Finch, being of unsound mind, do hereby bequeath all my earthly possessions to Charlie Donahue, Brenda Shank-Kravitz, and my sisters. Everyone else can go f—