The Pop in Greyscale

“Have a great first day of being 14 Dylan!” Amma called after me as I walked out the sparkly pink door. It was the Monday morning after my birthday, and I was to walk to the bus stop at the end of my colorful block to be picked up by the school bus. Our pink house sat next to a purple house, which sat next to a yellow house, on the other side of which was my stop.

“Just think, high school is coming soon!” added Mam, her blue eyes sparking as she turned to wink at Amma.

I cringed and turned to look at them before splitting off from my siblings and turning off my driveway to the left. “Geez guys, it’s not that big a deal!” I called in response, before hiding my head of orange hair under my hood in fake shame and beginning to walk down the street, ignoring my moms calling after me from my front door.

This was the last year I would walk alone to the bus stop, as next year I would join my older sister to be picked up for high school at their stop down the street in the other direction, in front of the Unicorn Days corner store. My younger brother was in elementary, which picked up in front of Unicorn Days as well.

I rounded the corner of the yellow house, meeting my best friend Calvin who walked from a different pink house down another street.

Calvin was from my moms’ donor family. He had two dads. Every few years when they all had decided to have a new kid, both of Calvin’s dads would donate the necessities to my moms, then both my moms would have a baby and one kid would go to Calvin’s family. Not every family was matched up so formally like that, but our families went way back and found it easier to work out the logistics with their friends. Calvin and I were donor-recipient twins, as were our older and younger siblings. None of them were as good of friends as Calvin and I were though.

“Yo Dylan, what’s up?” Calvin greeted me.

“Hey Cal! I can’t believe my Amma and Mam, they shouted embarrassing stuff my whole walk down here because yesterday was my birthday.”

“I’m so lucky I got dads instead of moms,” Calvin replied with a laugh.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Think about Zach’s dads. They’re worse than my moms!”

“I just never want to be with anyone who wants to be loud and annoying,” said Calvin. He switched to a quieter voice. “Honestly, the colors have been getting brighter for me lately.”

The bus pulled up, a sparkly rainbow contraption glittering in the sun. The doors opened, and bright pink smoke and glitter puffed out for a moment. As it calmed, the driver waved us onboard.

“New paint,” the driver muttered.

Calvin and I slid into our usual bench, and I spoke to him in a low tone, “What about the colors??”

Calvin turned a bright shade of pink and craned his head to whisper in my ear.

“Dylan, I think I really like Max,” Calvin confessed. “I never really noticed him, or anyone else before. But all of a sudden it’s like I can see everything in ultra color. That purple hair of his, I just can’t help but stare at it. I feel like he just glows.”

“Max is nice,” I said in response. “I think he’s a great choice if you want to date somebody.”

“You think so?” Calvin asked. “I don’t even know if he knows I exist though.”

I shrugged and suggested, “Why don’t you try to talk to him?”

“No!” Calvin exclaimed. “There’s no way my stupid yellow hair could possibly pop to him.”

I thought about telling Calvin that yellow was a complimentary color to purple, and that I had English class with Max and he had actually told me that he was quite fond of yellow. But I was glad the bus pulled up to the school at that very moment, because I didn’t want the conversation to drift any closer to a secret I had – that the colors weren’t getting brighter for me the way it was supposed to be happening during puberty. They were getting more faint.

****

Calvin and I didn’t share any classes on Mondays until geography, our final class of the day. So during my other classes, I texted Cal motivation to talk to Max, and practiced squinting at some of my classmates, contorting my vision to try and make some of their colors pop.

Henry had very pleasant green hair. He did a great job matching his outfits to it, so it was very aesthetically pleasing. But it was just an observation on my part, I didn’t feel anything except to notice that the color was nice.

Donovan had bright pink hair and he knew he’d won the jackpot. People couldn’t get that color from a box if they tried, but it came naturally on him. But did I think it was special? Not really, at least not any more than the admiration I would give any natural pink-head.

I scrunched up my eyes, trying desperately to see some of these glowing colors that some of my friends had started seeing. I kept my eyes away from the girls, because everyone knew that girls weren’t supposed to be what got glowy.

As I looked around, I found myself defeated when not only did it seem like the colors weren’t popping, but my world was becoming even more greyscale. Even the bright blue double doors at the front of the school building hadn’t looked the way they usually did when I walked in.

I sighed and turned to my schoolwork. I would reconvene with Calvin later. Maybe if he’d had the courage to speak to Max then talking with him could convince my brain to do what it was supposed to do.

****

On the way to geography class towards the end of the day, I ran into a classmate named Melanie who had geography as well.

“Hi Dylan! Mind if I walk with you?” she asked.

“Sure,” I responded, not expecting what would happen next.

As I looked at Melanie’s face smiling at me as she fell into step, everything changed. The colors faded away, and Melanie’s dark body was silhouetted against the light walls of the hallway. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. There were no colors, but it was unmistakably a pop. I just didn’t know what it meant.

I could barely concentrate, but luckily Melanie didn’t ask me any questions on our walk to geography. The black and grey and white world around me had never seemed so beautiful and in focus.

I impatiently waited out the class, hating the fact that the colors were gradually returning throughout. I liked the absence of color, it made everything seem so striking.

As Calvin and I finally got out of class and headed to our return bus, I whispered to him under my breath.

“Calvin!” I hissed. “This really weird thing is happening to me and I don’t know what to do.”

“What is it?” he asked as we slid into our seats.

“There might be something wrong with me,” I said. “The colors haven’t been popping for me.”

“You’re still really young though,” Calvin replied. “My Papa said he didn’t want anything to do with my Dad until they were out of high school.”

“No it’s not like that,” I explained impatiently. “The colors are actually going away for me. Things aren’t getting brighter. They’re getting fainter. More black and white. And I was walking to geography with Melanie, and I felt something weird. I don’t know what it was but it’s not normal.”

Calvin pondered what I was saying. He took a breath and asked, “Dylan, why do you think it’s something wrong? Maybe not every person gets the bright colors.”

“But Melanie seemed to pop, even though it was in black and white!” I whispered urgently, throwing my hands into the air. “That’s only supposed to happen with boys.”

“Look it up!” suggested Calvin. “Maybe that’s how it works sometimes. And guess what!”

“What?”

“I talked to Max today!” Calvin told me with a grin. “You’re right, he’s really nice. He said he thinks my yellow hair matches his really well. I had luck today. So I think you’re gonna have luck too.”

****

I raced through my homework that night so I could jump onto the computer for as long as possible. I searched for instances of people losing their colors when they got older instead of their colors getting brighter.

I had never heard of such a thing before, but the internet delivered. I found report after report of people who had started seeing their colors fade around the same age that I was. It wasn’t common, but it turns out that lots of people had experienced this before. And what was different about all of them, was that every boy who experienced the loss of color, didn’t turn out to be interested in another boy.

I clicked on the bio page of an author who had written some children’s books. His name was Nathaniel Holland, and he had three kids. But he didn’t have a husband and a recipient family. He had a wife.

I couldn’t believe it. That’s what my experience with Melanie must have been. I wasn’t interested in boys at all, that’s how I was different. I felt like there was something wrong with me, but Nathaniel Holland seemed to live a happy life. Other people like him seemed to have happy lives.

I happened upon a forum where lots of people who experienced the colors going away could chat about it. One female user had posted, “I was trying so hard to be someone I’m not. I tried to appreciate my girlfriend’s beautiful blue hair, I tried to make her glow so hard in my vision. But I couldn’t live a lie forever. Eventually the colors disappeared forever, and I found my wonderful husband in greyscale. I’ve never been happier, and I have the most fulfilling life.”

I knew what I had to do. I may be a little different from the other boys around me, but I wanted my moms to know the truth. As embarrassing as they were, they always supported me, and so I hoped they would this time too.

I walked into the living room. My siblings had retreated to their rooms. Amma was putting leftovers from dinner in the refrigerator, and Mam was on the couch reading a book. They noticed me coming in and smiled at me.

“How’s it going Dylan?” Amma asked. “You seem a little nervous, is something going on?”

I took a breath and nervously twisted my hands together. I briefly wavered in my decision to tell them, but as I stood there looking at them, the pink countertops faded completely into a soft grey. Amma’s light blue hair turned a lovely bright white, and Mam’s purple pixie cut turned black and framed her light face. Neither of them had ever looked better. I smiled in resolve.

“I’ve heard all my life that one day all the colors will get brighter and glow more, and I’ll start to be able to see other boys differently.”

Amma and Mam just looked at me, waiting.

“Well, that hasn’t happened for me,” I continued. “And it’s not because it hasn’t happened yet. See, the world is actually going greyscale for me. And it’s beautiful, I love seeing the world that way. And guys, the thing is that it’s not boys that pop for me when things are black and white. It’s girls.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Mam stood up and came over to where I was standing, with Amma close behind.

They wrapped me in a hug, then they pulled back to look me in the eyes.

“Dylan, we love you just the way you are,” Amma told me.

Mam nodded and said, “Yes we do. Whichever way you see the world is perfect for us. And we don’t care if you find yourself a boy or a girl to be with. All we want is for you to be happy.”

I ducked back into their arms, overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. My moms loved me even though I saw in greyscale. I could like girls. There were so many possibilities I could feel opening up to me.

Calvin had had good luck today talking to Max. I started planning out the next time I could talk to Melanie. Calvin was right; maybe I could have luck too.