Paper Towns — Chapter no 13

13.

We didn’t have a view of the front door or the garage from my bedroom:

for that, we needed to sit in the family room. So while Ben continued

playing Resurrection, Radar and I went out to the family room and

pretended to watch TV while keeping watch on the Spiegelmans’ front door

through a picture window, waiting for Margo’s mom and dad to leave.

Detective Warren’s black Crown Victoria was still in the driveway.

He left after about fifteen minutes, but neither the garage door nor the front

door opened again for an hour. Radar and I were watching some half-funny

stoner comedy on HBO, and I had started to get into the story when Radar

said, “Garage door.” I jumped off the couch and got close to the window so

that I could see clearly who was in the car. Both Mr. and Mrs. Spiegelman.

Ruthie was still at home. “Ben!” I shouted. He was out in a flash, and as the

Spiegelmans turned off Jefferson Way and onto Jefferson Road, we raced

outside into the muggy morning.

We walked through the Spiegelmans’ lawn to their front door. I rang the

doorbell and heard Myrna Mountweazel’s paws scurrying on the hardwood

floors, and then she was barking like crazy, staring at us through the

sidelight glass. Ruthie opened the door. She was a sweet girl, maybe eleven.

“Hey, Ruthie.”

“Hi, Quentin,” she said.

“Hey, are your parents here?”

“They just left,” she said, “to go to Target.” She had Margo’s big eyes,

but hers were hazel. She looked up at me, her lips pursed with worry. “Did

you meet the policeman?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He seemed nice.”

“Mom says that it’s like if Margo went to college early.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking that the easiest way to solve a mystery is to

decide that there is no mystery to solve. But it seemed clear to me now that

she had left the clues to a mystery behind.

“Listen, Ruthie, we need to look in Margo’s room,” I said. “But the

thing is—it’s like when Margo would ask you to do top-secret stuff. We’re

in the same situation here.”

“Margo doesn’t like people in her room,” Ruthie said. “’Cept me. And

sometimes Mommy.”

“But we’re her friends.”

“She doesn’t like her friends in her room,” Ruthie said.

I leaned down toward her. “Ruthie, please.”

“And you don’t want me to tell Mommy and Dad,” she said.

“Correct.”

“Five dollars,” she said. I was about to bargain with her, but then Radar

produced a five-dollar bill and handed it to her. “If I see the car in the

driveway, I’ll let you know,” she said conspiratorially.

I knelt down to give the aging-but-always-enthusiastic Myrna

Mountweazel a good petting, and then we raced upstairs to Margo’s room.

As I put my hand on the doorknob, it occurred to me that I had not seen

Margo’s entire room since I was about ten years old.

I walked in. Much neater than you’d expect Margo to be, but maybe her

mom had just picked everything up. To my right, a closet packed-to-

bursting with clothes. On the back of the door, a shoe rack with a couple

dozen pairs of shoes, from Mary Janes to prom heels. It didn’t seem like

much could be missing from that closet.

“I’m on the computer,” Radar said. Ben was fiddling with the shade.

“The poster is taped on,” he said. “Just Scotch tape. Nothing strong.”

The great surprise was on the wall next to the computer desk: bookcases

as tall as me and twice as long, filled with vinyl records. Hundreds of them.

“John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme is in the record player,” Ben said.

“God, that is a brilliant album,” Radar said without looking away from

the computer. “Girl’s got taste.” I looked at Ben, confused, and then Ben

said, “He was a sax player.” I nodded.

Still typing, Radar said, “I can’t believe Q has never heard of Coltrane.

Trane’s playing is literally the most convincing proof of God’s existence

I’ve ever come across.”

I began to look through the records. They were organized alphabetically

by artist, so I scanned through, looking for the G’s. Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmie

Dale Gilmore, Green Day, Guided by Voices, George Harrison. “She has,

like, every musician in the world except Woody Guthrie,” I said. And then I

went back and started from the A’s.

“All her schoolbooks are still here,” I heard Ben say. “Plus some other

books by her bedside table. No journal.”

But I was distracted by Margo’s music collection. She liked everything.

I could never have imagined her listening to all these old records. I’d seen

her listening to music while running, but I’d never suspected this kind of

obsession. I’d never heard of most of the bands, and I was surprised to learn

that vinyl records were even being produced for the newer ones.

I kept going through the A’s and then the B’s—making my way through

the Beatles and the Blind Boys of Alabama and Blondie—and I started to

rifle through them more quickly, so quickly that I didn’t even see the back

cover of Billy Bragg’s Mermaid Avenue until I was looking at the

Buzzcocks. I stopped, went back, and pulled out the Billy Bragg record.

The front was a photograph of urban row houses. But on the back, Woody

Guthrie was staring at me, a cigarette hanging out of his lips, holding a

guitar that said THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.

“Hey,” I said. Ben looked over.

“Holy shitstickers,” he said. “Nice find.” Radar spun around the chair

and said, “Impressive. Wonder what’s inside.”

Unfortunately, only a record was inside. The record looked exactly like

a record. I put it on Margo’s record player and eventually figured out how to

turn it on and put down the needle. It was some guy singing Woody Guthrie

songs. He sang better than Woody Guthrie.

“What is it, just a crazy coincidence?”

Ben was holding the album cover. “Look,” he said. He was pointing at

the song list. In thin black pen, the song title “Walt Whitman’s Niece” had

been circled.

“Interesting,” I said. Margo’s mom had said that Margo’s clues never led

anywhere, but I knew now that Margo had created a chain of clues—and

she had seemingly made them for me. I immediately thought of her in the

SunTrust Building, telling me I was better when I showed confidence. I

turned the record over and played it. “Walt Whitman’s Niece” was the first

song on side two. Not bad, actually.

I saw Ruthie in the doorway then. She looked at me. “Got any clues for

us, Ruthie?” She shook her head. “I already looked,” she said glumly. Radar

looked at me and gestured his head toward Ruthie.

“Can you please keep watch for your mom for us?” I asked. She nodded

and left. I closed the door.

“What’s up?” I asked Radar. He motioned us over to the computer. “In

the week before she left, Margo was on Omnictionary a bunch. I can tell

from minutes logged by her username, which she stored in her passwords.

But she erased her browsing history, so I can’t tell what she was looking

at.”

“Hey, Radar, look up who Walt Whitman was,” Ben said.

“He was a poet,” I answered. “Nineteenth century.”

“Great,” Ben said, rolling his eyes. “Poetry.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

“Poetry is just so emo,” he said. “Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains.

In my soul.”

“Yeah, I believe that’s Shakespeare,” I said dismissively. “Did Whitman

have any nieces?” I asked Radar. He was already on Whitman’s

Omnictionary page. A burly guy with this huge beard. I’d never read him,

but he looked like a good poet.

“Uh, no one famous. Says he had a couple brothers, but no mention of

whether they had kids. I can probably find out if you want.” I shook my

head. That didn’t seem right. I went back to looking around the room. The

bottom shelf of her record collection included some books—middle school

yearbooks, a beat-up copy of The Outsiders—and some back issues of teen

magazines. Nothing relating to Walt Whitman’s niece, certainly.

I looked through the books by her bedside table. Nothing of interest. “It

would make sense if she had a book of his poetry,” I said. “But she doesn’t

seem to.”

“She does!” Ben said excitedly. I went over to where he had knelt by the

bookshelves, and saw it now. I’d looked right past the slim volume on the

bottom shelf, wedged between two yearbooks. Walt Whitman. Leaves of

Grass. I pulled out the book. There was a photograph of Whitman on the

cover, his light eyes staring back at me.

“Not bad,” I told Ben.

He nodded. “Yeah, now can we get out of here? Call me old-fashioned,

but I’d rather not be here when Margo’s parents get back.”

“Is there anything we’re missing?”

Radar stood up. “It really seems like she’s drawing a pretty straight line;

there’s gotta be something in that book. It’s weird, though—I mean, no

offense, but if she always left clues for her parents, why would she leave

them for you this time?”

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know the answer, but of course I had

my hopes: maybe Margo needed to see my confidence. Maybe this time she

wanted to be found, and to be found by me. Maybe—just as she had chosen

me on the longest night, she had chosen me again. And maybe untold riches

awaited he who found her.

Ben and Radar left soon after we got back to my house, after they’d each

looked through the book and not found any obvious clues. I grabbed some

cold lasagna from the fridge for lunch and went to my room with Walt. It

was the Penguin Classics version of the first edition of Leaves of Grass. I

read a little from the introduction and then paged through the book. There

were several quotes highlighted in blue, all from the epically long poem

known as “Song of Myself.” And there were two lines from the poem that

were highlighted in green:

Unscrew the locks from the doors!

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

I spent most of my afternoon trying to make sense of that quote,

thinking maybe it was Margo’s way of telling me to become more of a

badass or something. But I also read and reread everything highlighted in

blue:

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand . . . .

nor look through the eyes of the dead . . . . nor feed on

the spectres in books.

I tramp a perpetual journey

All goes onward and outward . . . . and nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and

luckier.

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

The final three stanzas of “Song of Myself” were also highlighted.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop some where waiting for you

It became a weekend of reading, of trying to see her in the fragments of

the poem she’d left for me. I could never get anywhere with the lines, but I

kept thinking about them anyway, because I didn’t want to disappoint her.

She wanted me to play out the string, to find the place where she had

stopped and was waiting for me, to follow the bread crumb trail until it

dead-ended into her.