Paint by Number

The problem with all those old books is that nobody knew how to understand half of that fluffy, descriptive language, like “the trees were the deepest shade of green Marjorie had ever seen, and her heart danced”, or “his eyes were ice blue and made my heart melt to look directly into them, the blue like the ocean just before it almost froze.” How was anyone supposed to enjoy a book with all this crap in it? If colours were real, then it made people sad that they couldn’t see them. They sounded great. They sounded exciting, they sounded wonderful. What’s the point of reading these old novels, if half the time Nelly couldn’t even relate? But Nelly still did read novels. She couldn’t help it; they helped her get out of her own dull head. Yet she was one of the only few who bothered with them anymore. Most people don’t care to focus on what once was. It was too sad.

If you have never seen colour, do you imagine that the world is depressing? If multiple layers of grey seem uninspiring to you, but you have never seen anything but grey, wouldn’t you feel like it was all fine? If she didn’t try to read these old novels, maybe she would never know what she was missing. Maybe she would just be happy, bopping along, ignorant of everything else, like all the other idiots she went to school with. Blubbering messes, worried about who was going to go out with who on Friday night, who was going to the new flying drive in, who was headed to the vapor lounge (where you could smell artificial scents of things that used to exist). What was the point of even smelling cotton candy but never eating it? What was the point of anything they did in this dumb timeline? Nelly knew that everyone thought they lived in the worst time, and romanticized days gone by, when food was real and colours existed, but they really were in the worst timeline. They were! Grey, black, depressing, stupid, and just always the same with nothing real to it. It was the sameness that killed Nelly. Apparently at one time, there had been boxes of something called crayons that came in boxes of 152, and they were all different! Every single one of them was a different colour! Imagine!

Nelly had never jived with her college classmates, mostly because she still suffered things from long ago, and collected them and loved them and that made her an odd ball. Nobody else could understand reading their great grandmother’s super old dusty books, and why would they? Why would anyone want to read about what they didn’t understand? Why suffer and hold onto things that wouldn’t change. Why make yourself sick about what you were missing when there was no way to get it back? Nelly’s classmates didn’t understand choosing misery. And to them, that is what Nelly was doing. Choosing to focus on the negative. Yes, we didn’t see colour and people used to. So what? They had a lot of cool things now. You were supposed to put all your energy into the now, the future, the positives of life today. They were alive! They were lucky! They had flying drive ins, and genetically modified smells and Greyscale chips, which showed you whatever movie or video you wanted from around the world on your device at a moment’s notice. Focus on the good. That is what everybody else did.

Nelly hated looking at the children’s books. Sometimes in a chapter book aimed at middle schoolers, there would be drawings that she knew had probably been made in colour. Just once, she would like to know what the colour of the apple was. She’d like to imagine it slipping into her mouth. Some of the books that she has read said apples had come in more than one colour. Reds, and greens and dainty pinks. Did the colour change the way the apple tasted? Did the colour have taste? In one of her books a girl lined up her candy by colour and ate the red ones last. They didn’t have candy anymore. No more sugar. Sugar was long gone. The children’s books with the pictures were worse than the novels. There was more to miss, more to ache for.

During the college lunch break Nelly usually just took a food pill. What was the point of trying to stuff down the disgusting stuff they sold at the cafeteria, mash that barely counted as food, when you could just take a pill and get all of your nutrition needs met? It gave her more time to read and study, which was much better than spending all that time in the cafeteria, listening to the other young people yammer on, gossiping about their teachers. Nelly did not care for stuff like that. Nelly didn’t care for much really. Other than her books.

She was sitting outside, reading when T.J. approached her. “Hey,” he said, “I know that you love to read, and I always see you with these old books. My grandmother just died, and she left me a box of stuff to go through, as I always told her I wanted to study history and especially history in literature. I was wondering if you would want to come look at it with me?” Nelly looked up at T.J., who she never much considered before. He was unassuming, his hair messy, his clothes rumpled and old. But she had noticed him once reading a comic book, recalled the spark that sometimes came when you recognized a kindred. So, she knew they at least had something in common. “Okay,” she said, “actually that sounds cool.” T.J. smiled and said, “great, can you go after class today? Say five?”

“Yup, see you then.”

After the last class she had scheduled for the day, she went back to the spot where she was reading before. T.J. did not really tell her where to meet him, so she had to assume that he would come back here. Why did she never ask the questions she meant to? Why was her head always so messed up? And why did she constantly daydream about colour? Maybe she should quit the old books, she was tired of herself and her big ideas.

On the walk to T.J.’s apartment Nelly struggled to remember how to speak to people. T.J., T.J., T.J., oh yes remember that time she saw him with the book? Bring that up, she thought to herself, remember the spark of someone else like you?

“T.J. what was that book you were reading at school?” “Oh, that was a comic book, it’s pictures with words coming out of little speech bubbles the characters have above their head. This one is called Spiderman Brand New Day. Can you imagine what it must have been like to see all the colours? Not just in the comic book I guess, but like the world. Imagine the way the sky might look, when the sun is up or down, to see more than greyscale. I hate how much I wish that.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” whispered Nelly. I wish I could be more like everyone else and just try to forget about it.” It wasn’t exactly groundbreaking to want to see colours, I mean, the world could agree that seeing colours was probably better, but it was probably better to have had trees and dogs too. But for some reason, Nelly only thought about the colours. Dreamed about the colours. Obsessed about the colours. Ruined her life, with her head down, thinking about colours. Bright like the orange sun, lilac purple blushing her skin perfectly, the vibrant reds and greens of the parrot’s wings. The word was just…... so much richer once. Why did they have to live in grey? What had happened? Was this a punishment for humans being so mean to the world?

Once they reached T.J.’s apartment complex, Nelly was trying to tell her thoughts to shut the heck up and allow her to go to the dingy apartment as a normal person. Someone who could engage in a conversation, look at someone in their dark eyes, laugh at a normal time. The apartment was sparsely furnished and depressing (was anything not depressing in all grey? Wouldn’t Nelly like to know what a ‘pop of colour” felt like, wouldn’t she like to understand a line that she had memorized in a book once, ‘colours are the smiles of nature’. I guess their nature did not smile, well not that there was much nature left anyways, but that was beyond the point).  Nelly was just tired of being angry.

T.J. asked her if she wanted some water, and when she nodded yes, he went to the filtration system and poured her a tall glass. Water didn’t have any colour, that’s why she liked it, there was nothing to see, so there was nothing to miss. He left to get the box from the other room, and Nelly drank the water, looking around depressingly. T.J. was back quickly, carrying a large box, edges frayed, bottom looking about to drop out. As he gently put it down on the table, Nelly noticed the sweat under his lip. For one sharp moment, she wanted to lick it away.

T.J. dug to the bottom to pull out some books, magazines, comic books and wait, what was that? A paint by number colouring book, which had a little package of crayons attached to it, in brittle plastic. The white spaces in the book were numbered and had a corresponding number that was assigned to each crayon. The book had never been used. “Wow,” Nelly said, “I spend a lot of time looking at old things, but I have never seen one of these things I don’t think.” She opened the ancient paper, and it made a crinkly noise, loud and harsh in the silent apartment. The book was beautiful, little fairies and flowers and trees, drawn in incredible patterns, intricate details and stunning line work.

“I don’t think I had seen these before either. But when I looked through the box earlier, I was happy to see it, the drawings are lovely. And I think we were lucky that they came with crayons, and not markers or paint, as those would definitely be worn out by this time. The crayons should work, even if they are brittle and broken you can still use them.” They don’t dry out like the other ones. “T.J., I know this is old and maybe important to you, but do you think we can try to colour one of the pictures? I know that it isn’t the same, because we can’t see the colours the same way, but I’d still like to try, maybe we can notice the different grey scales in a cool way.” T.J. nodded his consent. “We know that these things are not really worth anything these days, so let’s try it, why not. It’s not like my grandmother is going to miss them,” he smiled.

They moved to his small, plastic, white kitchen table. They sat down and looked at each other nervously smirking. Perhaps two early twenty somethings, about to colour in a paint by number colouring books made for adults, wasn’t for everyone. But it seemed to be for them.

As Nelly opened the old plastic, T.J. set about trying to choose which paper they were going to try to colour in. He settled on a large-scale flower bouquet, a sun shining behind it, beautiful, fluffy clouds. “This one okay with you?” he checked. She nodded and picked up the first crayon. “Okay so number one seems to go on these stalks under the flowers and in some of the flowers. Let’s do that one first.” He handed her the number one crayon and she pressed it down to the page, as hard as she could, to make sure some of the crayon would transfer to the page. As she did T.J. gave her a weak smile, encouraging her. At that exact moment, there seemed to be a sound like a page ripping, but bigger, louder, stronger. When she looked at the page though, there was no rip at all. Instead, she saw green. She saw green? She saw green? She didn’t know that this was what green was called, or what green was, but deep down she knew it was green. She looked up warily at T.J. and he was staring at the page, at her hand, eyes wide. So, it looked like he too saw the colour. They stared at each other for a few minutes, then back down at the page, then back up. It was like they forgot how to speak, the green was so beautiful. Silently T.J. handed her another crayon, number two, and she pressed it to the page, on the petal part on top of the stem. Pink appeared. It made Nelly want to scream and shout. What the heck was going on? Would everyone be able to see these colours or just her and T.J.? And would every one of these colours come onto the page? Because they were the only ones in their dumb town who loved books, was this magic just for them? Before she could stop herself, she grabbed the next crayon from the package and then kissed T.J. right on the lips, where she could see the sweat forming.

“Let’s keep this between us for now,” she whispered, as yellow appeared on the page beneath them, the best thing that Nelly had ever, ever seen.