The Simplicity of Colour

My world is painted in a slanted grayscale.

Time spins slowly, pacing my days out in front of me. I turn up at school to a full classroom, bustling halls, and crammed lockers. Hundreds of girls talking, planning, learning. Teachers writing names and equations on the board, study halls full of the rustling of paper, coming from worksheets or passing notes. Club rooms packed with noise, enthusiasm and progress. I sit in the hallways, reading from The Castle of Otranto or penning my own tales.

I arrive home to empty sitting rooms, an ash-filled fireplace, and a desolate apartment. 

A note sits on the kitchen counter, a cream-coloured card glaringly obvious against the black marble and dusk. Fanciful script scrapes grey hills over the colour, giving the impression of speech.

Andalaiah, we’ll be home tomorrow evening. Reheat the korma in the fridge! Don’t forget to go to bed before ten. We love you.

Love, I think, staring down at the card. How could love be so empty?

I take the stairs up to my bedroom, which overlooks Central Park. Looking out, I see the trees stretching beyond. The leaves, which have forever been described to me as emerald green, look like limestone sand. My orange bed sheets stay a gradient of grey, no matter how many times I look.

Only the spines of my books give colour to the room. The Hunger Games emits red, blue, and gold. Frankenstien shows white and green. Alice in Wonderland displays brown and baby blue. I trace my fingers over every book, lightly tapping on each and every cover, running a hand down the spines and titles. 

My schoolbag, which I’d set on my bed, calls to me. It, too, is a haunting grey, and it almost blends into the background. I unzip it and carefully, I remove my laptop. I open google, then google docs, and the world springs into my hands. 

Letters cover the pages, shaping and predicting what I have penned My hands shake over the keyboard as the cursor flickers above the button. 

I lose myself in the words.

Before I know it, the clock hits ten.

I don’t care enough to make dinner. I don’t want to face the empty kitchen or the empty stairs. I’m used to it now, I think, as I simply draw the covers over my body and try to fall asleep.

****

The bright lights of the sunrise flood into my room, despite the curtain I’d drawn to block them. It’s Seven A.M., leaving me no time at all to get ready. I throw on the nearest set of jeans and skip breakfast again, taking no time to glance at our dusty kitchen.

Cold winds blow through the city, sending shivers down our spines. Pine needles grow on trees beyond our city’s limits, and the crowds thicken along Central Park and Times Square. I trek my way through the people, each one dressed head-to-toe, down towards eighty-third street.

I enter my school to the same routine. The crowds are talking, flowing, as the bell rings from somewhere above. Time moves as it always does: continuously – slowly, pacing itself into the segments of a high-school schedule.

And then it stops.

Before my eyes, a single person moves through the crowd, her motions fluid and flawless. Smooth skin and brilliant, curly hair. A backpack slung over her shoulder, a piece of bubblegum in her hands, and pale colour illuminating her every step.

Words do not, for once, describe this. They could not – should not. There is nothing I could say, nothing I could type or pen, that would encompass the feeling of colour, complete and unchecked. Love.

Not love, I think, as time creeps back into my monotone. Not love, I whisper, as my eyes trace her until she leaves my line of sight.

I return to time and attend my classes empty-minded.

****

She flits from my view, impossible to miss. The warm glow seems to split the world apart in a way that I cannot ignore, and I find my eyes following her more often than not.

Before I can even think of approaching her, she finds me first. 

The clock’s just hit twelve when she starts to make her way towards me, dodging the crowd and mess of the cafeteria. I look through Valperga again, hoping she’ll miss me entirely. I’m not so unlucky.

“Hey.” She says, almost awkward in the way she approaches. “What's- uhm, sorry. Could you tell me your name?” I blink up at her. She seems almost like a cut-out, so stark against my self-imposed background.

“Oh,” I croak, my pitch cracking embarrassingly. “Yeah, yes. I’m Andalaiah. What do- what's yours? Your name, I mean?”

I cringe at the sound of my voice, crackling and catching on my dry lips in an uncomfortable effort of self-sabotage. 

She smiles at me, and my vision grows a little brighter. “Elivette De Leon, at your every service.” 

“That’s beautiful.” I blurted out, almost on autopilot, like ink flowing on to a sheet of paper. 

Elivette laughs, bright orange like her skirt. “Sounds a bit too much like olive, if you ask me. But hey, thanks. I appreciate it.”

There is nothing that could ever describe this, I think. “I don’t know, I like it. It’s, it’s Victorian, almost.” I say, absentminded in my response, far too focused on her brilliantly bright smile.

“Yeah. Hey, are you part of the book club?” She asks me, and I shake my head. “Nah, didn’t think you were. Why don’t you come join us one of these days? We’re reading The Rebecca Notebook currently. It’s cool.”

“Oh! Oh yeah, yes, alright.” It’s awkward, but I get the feeling that Elivette doesn’t really mind. “I’ll uhm, try to drop by.”

“Really!?” She says, eyes shining like stars. “Great! That's, yeah, that's amazing. I’ve seen you reading that kind of stuff, like Frankenstein and such, and I thought you’d be interested in joining!”

And I can’t help but smile back at her, because there’s something so wonderfully thoughtful of her paying that much attention to me. Something so delicately beautiful, like a pair of paper-thin butterfly wings.

“Okay, great. I’ll see you later then, yeah? Yeah. Okay. Bye!” She waves, and then she's gone, flaming colour tailing her retreating form.

I nod to myself, turning back to my bookmarked page. “Yeah,” I mumble to myself, letting out a huff of laughter. “yeah, I’ll see you later.”

****

The book club is cosy, with two couches pushed up against the walls and three bean bags set in front of a coffee table. The colours would most likely be bright and vibrant, with reds and greens strung along the walls in forms of posters or bookshelves. 

Overall, I find the members of the club much more interesting than the room it's being held in.

We discuss the book of the month, which is The Rebecca Notebook. It’s one of my favourites, but I find myself reading it with the group anyway. The way the pages glow cream and beige every time Elivette brushes her fingers against them to point at a passage or sentence mesmerises me enough to stay.

Despite myself, I find the entire club's company happy. I have fun discussing the late wife’s mysterious death and the ashes of the mansion as it most certainly burns to the ground. When someone brings coffee or a snack in I soon don’t hesitate to take one. I still arrive at school to overwhelming crowds, but find solace not by the dirty water fountains or hidden corners, but on the reassuring yellow bean bag in The Solace Book Club. 

Before long, the November days have bled into early December, taking The Rebecca Notebook, and the club's gothic fiction unit, with them. I find that I barely mind the change of genre.

“Hey! Do you have your copy of A Christmas Carol?” Elivette asks me as I step into our clubroom. “I know I should really have mine, I’ve already got the ‘club leader’ talk and all from Nevaeh, but uhm, I was wondering if we could share a copy? And read together?”

“Sure.” I say, shrugging casually as I pull out my book. Elivette smiles lopsidedly at me, almost awkward in its fashion, and my heart beats faster. She sits next to me, sliding close, and there are the two of us sharing a one-person bean bag.

“Yeah? Awesome. Thanks, Andalaiah, really.” 

“Uhm, yeah, of course. It’s no problem, I promise.” But my words are stilted, and I feel like a badly-written character in a chick-flick. 

She smiles again, her brown-eyed gaze soft and inviting.

I turn back to the book, and my hands shake.

****

Along with December comes my parents annual New Years party, which they hold for their companies as a joint celebration of Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Years. Every year, without fail, they arrive the day after Christmas to start preparations.

So it should come as no shock to me that, on the twenty-sixth, I arrive home not to empty entrance ways or undusted furniture, but to newly-hung chandeliers and a roaring fireplace.

It should come as no shock, but still my hands shake on my backpack straps.

“Andalaiah?” My mother calls, and I think I could cry. “Where were you? I thought school got out at four?”

“It does,” I mumble, eyes cast down to stair at her grey shoes and colourless skin. “but I’ve- but I have bookclub.”

“You do? Oh. That’s new, you should’ve texted us!” She says, and her voice sounds excited, but her words have never been more distant. “I love you,” She says, then turns on her heel and heads back into our apartment. 

I raise my head, reaching up to push my hair back from my face. I watch her own hair flick around the corner, and she’s gone. “I did text you.” I whisper, but I know she doesn’t hear me.

Somewhere in the living room, my father is talking to somebody over the phone. The floor-to-ceiling windows need washing, they have dust coating the corners and splatters on their surfaces. A table will need to be set up in the other living room on the apartments opposite side, for the usual buffet-style food ensemble. But they threw the old table cloth out seven months ago, so they’ll need to order a new one now. 

That seems manageable, I think. It's longer than last year's checklist, but only by a little. I think I’ll be able to stay up in my room for the worst of it, for the grey I’d grown to forget.

Before resting on that thought for too long, I headed upstairs to my room. I draw my curtains, letting the heavy fabric settle over the landscape. I dig my computer out of my bag.

I try to open it, but my hands shake over the cover, and I find myself frozen still.

And I find that I hate it. The way my limbs freeze into place, stuck to my sides. Something I love so hard to do. I find I hate them, the people who have restricted me from this as well. 

For the first time since I’d joined The Solace Book Club, I put my computer away, and I fall asleep on an empty stomach.

****

Time returns to its pace, slowly creeping. I watch as my apartment changes from plain, uncleaned surfaces to shining countertops and decorated walls. It’s worse, I think, staring up at what i'm sure is meant to be a golden glitter banner. 

Everything is covered in things like these. Black and grey glitter, which is either silver or gold, coats the downstairs floor. It sticks to the floorboards, and no matter how many times I try to sweep it up, it always stays sticks. 

School is still, to its credit, brighter. My vision’s darker colours shed themselves for whites and light greys, even reds and oranges and browns when book club rolls around. 

But they cannot stop the progression of time. Slow it, maybe, but to put a stop to it? That is something that even Elivette could not do, though I’ve no doubt she’s tried.

And so, before it feels like it should, a week has passed, and there are four hours before people flood the building.

I hear a knock on the door. “Andalaiah? I have your dress, for the party.” My fathers voice rings from the hallway. I tense.

“Yeah, okay. Uhm, come in?” I sound thorny even to myself, and he slowly opens the door. “Thanks…”

The dress was beautiful, really. Even without colour, saying the embroidery was impressive would be an understatement. The thread twisted flowers and rows of leaves into the fabric, with a long free-flowing skirt and tailored top. 

“It’s seafoam green!” He says. “A bit like your eyes, don’t you think?”

For a second, I don’t know what to say to that. I come to the realisation that I have no idea what my eyes look like. “Yeah, sort of.” I whisper, and I can hear my voice break.

He looks concerned for a moment, but then the doorbell rings.

“Oh uhm, sorry. I’ll be back up?”

“Don’t worry about it, dad.” I say. “Really. I can put this on alone.”

He hesitates. Looking anxiously at the door, he sighs. I smile. “Okay, darling. See you at the party, alright?”

“Mhm.”

My father leaves quickly, shuffling down the stairs to answer the door. I can ever so vaguely hear the catering team arriving, bringing food and a tablecloth with them.

Four hours, I repeated in my mind. Four hours, then not again. I could do four hours.

It didn’t take long for those hours to pass, as I read and took notes on any range of my books. But I can’t ignore it forever, and when there's five minutes left, I tentatively reach for the embroidered clothing.

Regrettably, it fits me perfectly. The admittedly dazzling dress slips on my body seamlessly, the top almost like a second skin. It only takes me a minute to do up the zipper, and soon i'm encased in grey.

I make my way down the stairs to hear music and chatting in the living room. The party seems to be in full swing, with business partners and employees laughing with one another next to a view of the city skyline covered in darkness. The bar, which is built into the wall, is fully restocked and serving drinks.

The adults seem less interested in their surroundings and more interested in telling stories about deals, and stocks. The sea of grey grows in my vision, swallowing the night whole.

And there’s twenty minutes until New Years.

But the sea of bodies does not stay grey. Just a flash puts me off my guard, and I focus carefully on the crowd. There, I see it; orange jumpsuit, a red flower in the hair, and a cream suit jacket covering the torso. What is she doing here?

“Andalaiah?”

Elivette stands in front of me, eyes wider than usual, stance relaxed but surprised. 

“Hi.” I say, and I can’t push down the smile that forces its way onto my lips, making my cheeks ache. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“I didn’t know you were coming! We should’ve made arrangements to meet up when we arrived!” She says excitedly, grabbing my hand and pulling me into the crowd of people. I shake my head and laugh, feeling slightly giddy. 

“Yeah, if I’d known you were coming, I might’ve helped my parents set the decorations this year. I’m afraid they might be a little gaudy.” 

She stops, turning to face me again, in the middle of the room. “Your family holds this thing? Are you kidding? That's awesome!” She spins around again, looking out the windows. “I don't know, maybe a bit gaudy, but the gold is cool.”

The decorations are gold, then. That makes sense.

I smile again slightly, but this time it’s something softer. I feel warm, watching her spin and talk so animatedly about something other than books. 

“Yeah, the gold is cool.” I say offhandedly. “But I like this year's tablecloth better than last years. It’s nicer.”

“Ooh! What was it last year? This is my first time here. Sorry. Your apartment is really nice!” Elivette says, continuing to smile as if the sun itself has blessed her. 

“It was blue. Not really sure which kind. We threw it out cuz’ someone spilled the good wine on it.”

She laughs at that, throwing her head back and letting her hair frizz around her face. She looks beautiful, moonlight framing her glowing form.

“Four minutes until New Years!” She gasps, pointing to the clock. People are dancing now, just swaying gently to whatevers playing through the speakers. “Come on come on come on! Let's dance!”

Before I can say anything, agreement or otherwise, I'm practically swept off my feet. She tugs me across the floor, wraps her arm around mine and puts her hand on my waist, pulling me closer. Neither of us really know what we’re doing, so we just stay like that, moving back and forth.

The minutes tick by, and I can feel the excitement in the air as the counting starts.

I should be used to it by now, I think. The monotone greys and the barely-there light.

I should be used to it now. So why do my hands still shake?

“You shouldn’t be here.” I whisper, like a confession drawn from starving lips. “It's New-Years. You should be with someone you love.”

“But that’s you,” She says, and the world bursts into colour. Violet spirals and deep pink polka-dots splatter my vision. The New York skyline turns dark blue and black, silver reflections and iron-coloured skyscrapers. Electric lights draw the sky, and still a thousand hearts pale in comparison to her eyes. 

The clock strikes twelve, and I kiss her.