Violet and Finch wake up the next morning at Purina Tower and quickly realize they fell asleep, that the Markeys will be panicking. When they get to her house, her mother is crying and her father is furious. Finch tries to say that it wasn’t Violet’s fault and asks them not to blame her, but they say he has to go. Inside, her parents tell her that he is troubled and unpredictable, and not the kind of person she should be spending time with. They have found out that he lied about his father, and that he was the boy in the bell tower. She is no longer allowed to see him.
When Finch gets home, his dad is there; his mother called him when the Markeys called her, and he is in a violent mood. He tries to attack Finch, but he unnerves him by laughing, grabbing his wrist, and telling him he will never do that again. Violet and Finch check in on each other over messenger, and Finch says that, despite everything, she showed him that there is such a thing as a perfect day. When Finch shows up at her house the next day, her parents don’t let him in.
Finch moves into his closet and studies the Eight Steps to Surviving Quicksand. At school, Violet expects everyone to be able to tell that she has lost her virginity, but only Brenda guesses. She and Finch see each other in school and kiss under the stairwell, but otherwise are left to messaging. Violet invites Brenda and a handful of other girls to write for Germ, and then on Saturday morning, after a week of not seeing Finch outside of school, she lies to parents that she’s going to Amanda’s. Instead, she goes to Finch’s, where they sleep together under his comforter on the floor, and talk about all the places they’d like to wander.
Violet and her parents go to New York over spring break. They visit NYU and her parents discuss how she could transfer there in the spring. But Violet is distracted; Finch hasn’t answered her last few messages. She wonders if that’s what it will be like next year—her in college, supposed to be living her new life but always thinking about him. At the end of the week, when Finch and his sisters are at weekly dinner, his dad says he should bring Violet over some time. This enrages Finch, who can only imagine what the conversation would have been like between his dad and Mr. Markey. After the dinner, even though Violet had messaged that she was home and could sneak over, Finch gets in his car and drives.
He needs to get away and feels like the car is slowing him down, so he pulls over in the middle of nowhere and starts running, sprinting as hard and fast as he can in an unknown direction, until he hits farmland. He approaches a farmhouse with cars in the driveway. An older woman opens the door. Finch tells her he knows she’s closed and has company, but he needs some flowers for his girlfriend. Her husband comes outside and gathers the brightest flowers in bloom. They won’t let him pay. When Finch gets to Violet’s house and gives her the flowers, she is touched: she had been upset about the snow, but he brought her spring.
Finch’s health is declining. He can’t focus on anything, can’t remember how much time has passed, feels like he’s trapped in quicksand. In his meeting with Mr. Embry, he tells a half-truth—he says his father is upsetting him—and Embry is confused, because Finch had told him that his father died in a hunting accident. Finch then has to backtrack, and say that his father did the best he could when he was alive, which pains him to say. Mr. Embry asks Finch what he knows about bipolar disorder, which only makes him angrier: it is a label given to crazy people, a way to explain people away with a term. After the meeting, Roamer calls Finch a freak in gym class, and Finch loses it, choking Roamer until he goes purple. Finch gets expelled.
He calls Violet, tells her to come meet him, and says that they’re going to drive to the Nest Houses on the Kentucky border. She tells him it’s a four-hour drive and says they can’t go today. She then asks why he got expelled. He ignores her, saying he needs to go to the Nest Houses as soon as possible; he’s going to go on his own, which he would rather do anyway. When he finally gets there, the houses are gone. Finch deletes a voicemail from Embry that was meant for his mother and goes back to his closet, where he descends even deeper into his depression. That night, he swallows half a bottle of sleeping pills, then runs to the hospital to have his stomach pumped.
Analysis:
This marks the fall, or the beginning of the end. Finch and Violet were existing in a delicate harmony, and that has been disrupted—her parents will never trust him again. They are so afraid because of what happened to Eleanor that their tolerance for risk is very low. Of course, this is damaging to Finch, since his biggest fear is hurting Violet.
Finch’s depression tracks with his physical relationship to space. Here, he retreats to the small, claustrophobic space of his closet, trying to hold onto the warmth he can remember and trying to protect himself from the menace of open space, where he might hurt himself. He is a character who routinely finds meaning in metaphor, and in this scene he is fixated on the image of quicksand to describe what he is experiencing. The steps for how to escape quicksand all have symbolic resonance with his situation with the Markeys.
When Violet is physically far—in New York—Finch shuts down, not responding. Strikingly, we don’t get any chapters from his perspective during this time at all; it is almost like the narrative structure of the novel is lending itself to a symbolic shift; Violet’s story, and Violet’s life, are beginning to take precedence.
Still, Finch doesn’t want to lose Violet, and it’s clear that he senses her slipping away—or perhaps senses himself slipping away—when he drives and runs countless miles to pick flowers for her. Objects carry a lot of significance in this novel: they have the “your turn” rock, they have the notebook, Violet has the goggles Finch gave her, and now she has the flowers he gives her. He is always trying to communicate some deeper meaning to her, and this time is no exception. Her namesake is a flower, his bright spot in the dark; the flowers he gives her are more than beauty in the winter: they are a symbol of his leading her through her season of grief.
When Mr. Embry mentions bipolar disorder, something snaps for Finch. He hates the idea of being reduced to a label, hates the idea of being stuck with this thing his whole life, hates the idea of being explained away like he isn’t a complex person with a complex inner life. The real descent starts here, and we can see Finch’s mood sour: he is acting rash, he gets angry with Violet, he deletes Embry’s messages, and he takes an overdose for the first time in the novel.
