Seeing+Color+(Part+One)+Danielle+W

 [Author's Note: Holy cow, Edana (the main character) is sooo annoying a points. I hope that doesn't unattract people. It's long, but it can be read in sittings, episodic but joined together. All opinions given off by characters are simply based upon their personalities, no harm done. It's supposed to be extremely cute at points and very emotional at others. Either way, it's up, and it needs a lot of editing to add more character development to it and what-not. Oh well.]

__Seeing Color __ =Part One Of Two: His Mellowness, Her Malevolence, and Their Childhood Together = By: Danielle Wilson

When I was just a child—back when the world actually seemed decent—I lied to him and told him that crimson was the most beautiful color in the world. It was an outright lie, but a lie that I spun around the two of us so easily and perfectly, and it was //our// little lie. It was the first thing I had ever shared with someone, as well as the last thing that anyone would want to share with me. Okay, so that might have been back when I was six; I’m certainly not six anymore. But that isn't the point, of course. The purpose of this little pointless contradictory spiel is that I //lied// to him—it wasn't even a little lie, either. It was about a God damned color for goodness sakes! A lie about something so obvious can't be kept for forever, and as soon as he delved into my little web of dishonesties—that day with the blood oath being the first time and major time—the more quickly our ties loosened until nothing was left except the thread and a spool. Sullivan's mother and my mother went to the same '//hospital'//, thus I was bound to knock into him at one point or another. And, without a doubt, that was what I had done. To be more precise, it was //he// that knocked //me// over, but that doesn't matter. Undoubtedly, I had gotten up, wiped off my plaid skirt and tucked-in white t-shirt, and stared at him rather crossly. He was still sitting on the ground, dumbfounded, and tears welled in his eyes. I had only seen this boy no more a few times before, and I was about to call this stranger boy stupid for being so fragile until I noticed what exactly I had banged off of him. On the ground there was a pair of sunglasses, larger than the boy's eyes and bulky too—really fancy, expensive ones. I bent down and picked up his sunglasses, pat him on the head like my mother would to me and my siblings, and slipped them back on. The shades were tinted baby-blue—awfully odd but cute, if you would ask me—and I could no longer see his eyes clearly. I swallowed. “Sorry,” I said, quite bitterly, and averted my direction. With a swift motion, as it seemed, I could hear the boy standing and grabbing my hand. The softness of his skin made me smile. “Let's not knock into each other anymore and just be friends,” he murmured quite gaily, rubbing his eyes under his glasses. His voice was pleasant somehow. I had nodded, not knowing how else to reply. It wasn't seen as the most lovely of meetings, but in the end it wasn't as horrible as it had at first seemed. He took me over to his little area next to a table and showed me how he drew people. “A circle,” he began, “but with no permanent marker. Make it perfect—there we go! And then you need to draw the almond eyes, and then two dots for the nostrils, and, and—“ I added on to it with a crayon and we both giggled at our creation. There, before us, was the most horrifyingly awful drawing of a person ever created. But, I assume that there will be no harsh feelings ever given from famous artists, because it was after all created by two five year olds in a large beauty parlor. “My mommy's here to get her make-up //applied//,” I told his casually and more sophisticatedly (my mother had used the term before, after all) and he nodded. “She wants to look really nice for my new daddy!” I threw my fists into the air and tried to extend the length between them. “I like my new daddy this much! He's always so nice to me,” I explained. “Well, my mama's here to get a real pretty hairdo for her next //performance// at the //theater//,” he replied, bobbing one eyebrow up and down as a way of saying “beat that, gal!”. So, on and on we talked and talked until our mouthes were dry and my sister came back over. She shook her head at the sight of Sullivan. “What's with you, Eddie?” she asked, dragging me away from my new friend. I pouted and crossed my arms. “Mom says that we can't //separate// under any //circumstances//! And there I was, looking all over the place for my own twin!” Sullivan stuck his hands beneath him, looked down with a faint blush from embarrassment. “Your sister won. I'm sorry, you can go now.” “It's not your fault,” I muttered, “it's Melanie's!” “Why would it ever be //my// fault?!” We bickered for a few minutes, too. Once we got to criticizing each other's shoes, Melanie tugged me away and I didn't bother stopping her. “Bye-bye, boy! I'll draw with you some other time!” “Bye-bye!” he replied, blushing. As Mel was about to pull me out of the room I noticed him looking up at a woman whose face was a more feminine version of his, and her eyes were gray and cold. My hand cupped around the back on my ear, and somehow I managed to hear the last thing that the woman said: “Come on, Sullivan, let's go back home now before your pa gets worried.” //So that's his name!// I thought, tugging on Melanie—I wanted to tell Sullivan my full first name too. We had only really talked about drawing and our families, and certainly he would like to know me for something more than “Eddie”. As soon as I got away from my sister's grasp and reentered the children's play room, Sullivan was gone. “Eddie!” Melanie reiterated over and over, and I obeyed.

That spring, when the flowers were blossoming in my mother's garden, I took the newspaper outside in an attempt to read it. The ink got over my hands and made my palms into a dirty, black mess. I wiped my hands on my pants with a twisted expression. I sat down on Mom's yard chair—thankfully she had already put the cushion on it—and started reading. It was mostly rather unchanging with the tone and no exciting rhymes or anything. To add to it, the words were oh-so complicated! I twitched slightly, trying to read it, until I came across a name that I knew far too well. //Ethan Russell//. “Mommy?” I asked. She was bending over to tend to a tomato plant. “Yes, Eddie?” she murmured and walked over to me, sitting down on the chair next to me. She scanned over the page, pausing painfully at the name. “Why is Ethan's name in here?” I asked. “Did he do something really special?” Ethan was my wonderful stepfather after all, and it just didn't seem fitting that he was in the newspaper. After all, he was kind to people more subtly—like how he would always kiss Melanie and my foreheads when we were at home and how he wouldn't stop smiling at my mother when we were in public, and he didn't make a show of his respectful ways very bluntly. “Yes, yes he did sweetheart,” she told me, cradling me in her arms. She held me there for a few minutes, and I didn't try to pull away. I personally preferred it this way; if I could, I would've stayed there forever. But when she felt it had been long enough, she tore away and went back to tending to her garden. Needless to say, I never saw Ethan very much after that.

Only a week after I saw Ethan's name in the newspaper Mel and I met up with Sullivan again. He was standing outside of our mommies' (well, my mother's former) 'hospital'. It took me a mere moment to recognize him—his sunglasses were a dead giveaway. He was holding his mother's hand. “Hey, boy!” I yelled to him, my feet guiding me to him where I patted his head like I had before. I had already forgotten his name. “Who is this gal, Sullivan?” his mother asked. “A girl I met....,” he said slowly. “Sullivan!” I repeated. “I want to finish our //illustration//!” I ignored his mother, shaking his hands up and down. I was grinning like a leopard and I think my mother and Melanie were too astounded by my outgoing behavior to comment on or scold me. “Oh, really? Yay!” He tapped his sunglasses to his face and skipped away from his mother. “Can we, Mommy? Can we go and draw?” His mother giggled, put a finger to her lips, and swayed her hips side to side in thought. “I guess if ya'll want,” she began, bending down and smiling at me, “as long as this girl's mother is alright with it. I myself don't see nothin' wrong with it.” She was wearing what seemed like a gardening hat with her soft-looking hair in a bun, and she wore sunglasses just like her son's. “I don't see anything wrong with it either,” my mother added, giving me a squeeze on my shoulder. “Maybe we can eat lunch together first. I'm starving.” So, we went to some sort of fast food serving place and ate. We split a pizza with the usual pepperoni and cheese toppings. Our mothers talked and talked until they were blue in the face. As for Mel, Sullivan and I, we wandered outside to the playground. Mel pointed out the names of the commercial characters that the slides were in the shapes of. Sullivan quickly went over to the swings. I followed him, this time me being the one to drag Melanie along, and we took turns pushing each other. Sullivan looked calm on the swings, telling me to just swing beside him, and I did. He was swifter with his jumping and landing than I was, and I naturally fell flat on my face when the time came to get off and join the bored Melanie. “Are you okay?” Sullivan asked me, lifting me up. I burst into laughter, even though the cut on my forehead stung more than anything. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I assured him. Melanie wanted to climb up the ladder and go into a little tunnel colored teal that overlooked the whole fast food shop, Sullivan was reluctant, shaking his head and turning red. “It’s okay, Sull,” I said, kissing his forehead like a mother. “I won’t let you fall.” After a moment of struggling at the top of the tunnel where my feet slipped on the tier (Melanie had to catch my leg, Sullivan was stammering and shutting his eyes tightly too often to help at all) we were all at the top. I gracefully led the group into the tunnel, but Sullivan cut in front of me, trying his hardest to get away from the frightening ladder. We all plopped down in the middle of the tunnel, taking turns looking through the peepholes, and started “delightfully” chatting. “I wish we could stay up here all day. That way I could avoid the world and all of the mean people in it,” Mel muttered. “Why would you want to do that?” I asked. “There’s some good people down below us, too. Mommy, Ethan, all of my friends in kindergarten…” “Sorry, Edana, I just guess you don’t see it all like me.” Melanie looked away, turning crimson in anger. “It just isn’t fair!” She through her fists in the air. “They think I’m just a kid! Like I’m not going to notice why Daddy isn’t here!” She shook her head. “Daddy just did something real special,” I told her. Mel didn’t have anything to be angry about. She was the one that all of the teachers preferred to me, she was really pretty—Mommy spent all of the clothes shopping money on her, too! In fact, if anything, I should’ve been the one yelling. But I saw the pain in her eyes, and I paused. “You don’t mean Ethan,” I accused. “Of course not!” She wiped the tears that were glossing over her eyes. “Real Daddy. I want him back. I hate na…na—ugh!” “Pneumonia?” Sullivan chimed in. “So that’s the criminal that got your daddy!” “Yeah!” I added. I still couldn’t see why Mel wasn’t just content with just having Ethan. “I don’t wanna be a Russell no more,” Mel sobbed, and I cringed. “I don’t wanna be hurtin’ no more…Edana, s-sa-ave me…” Once she was done crying, I took her hand and made Sullivan lead us to the slide. “You haven’t been down this one, right Mel?” I asked. It was a larger violent slide with a swoop and a twist. “I haven’t either. Sullivan here hasn’t either since he won’t even go up a ladder—he certainly wouldn’t slide down this beauty.” Sullivan blushed. With that, I forced my body down the slide, my first real friend and my mirror image twin in tow. We laughed when we reached the bottom and I maneuvered around so that I wouldn’t get crushed. Mommy caught Mel at the bottom in a hug, mumbling, “Let’s go home, babies.”

“Sull, why do you wear sunglasses?” I asked him one day as we were walking home from school. We lived a mile away from the school, but since our mothers couldn’t afford to drive us home, we would usually just walk. Sullivan tilted his head to the side. “Oh, I have something called Heremalopia,” he mumbled. “It’s a mouthful and I hate it.” “What’s that?” I asked, pausing at a stop sign. The group we followed every single day broke up, and that was how I knew that I was close to home. “It’s when you can’t see when it’s bright outside. I’m a nocturnal,” he said slyly. “So, you have to wear sunglasses to always block the light?” “Yup.” He sighed. “It makes me angry, though. I can’t take them off or else it hurts.” “Maybe I can fix it!” I chimed. “I can fix it for you! I can, I can!” He sighed. “A blind man can’t be fixed, just told,” he mumbled. That was the last time that we talked of that that day before I split away from him and walked to my house.

Sullivan and I were closer than I was even to my sister. Melanie became easily jealous and sought out revenge of sorts. So, to get back at my childish clinging to Sullivan, she took his hand one day and walked home with his hand in her grasp. Mel and Sull were better at conversing than I could ever be with Sull, and I stood back, watching helplessly. Melanie looked back twice, winking at me. “You…you…” I couldn’t take it anymore as we crossed the road again and there she was, giggling at Sullivan’s slow and safer speed. “Sullivan, there’s no need to be worried. Everyone around here knows that we’re gonna be okay. There’s even a crossing guard so little worried boys like you don’t worry!” Melanie told him. “True. But what if the crossing guard was to look away and a mean truck driver hit into us? I would then be more aware and be able to protect you,” he murmured. Melanie smiled and shook her pretty head, smiling. “Oh, but look at you now! While telling me all of that, you looked away from the road.” She started laughing. “We’re here now, anyways.” “Yeah.” I felt my body stiffen in anger. My stature straightened and I sent a chilling glare at Melanie. “Let’s walk to your house, Sullivan.” Melanie pointed into the wrong direction purposely. “Is it that’a way?” “No, it’s the other way, see?” He pointed to the top of a hill—his house stood out from all of the rest in the neighborhood, probably the entire city. “Yeah, that sounds nice, Mel.” Whether or not my imagination was getting the reality of the situation blinded, I still couldn’t manage to let her get away with stealing the last thing that I had. He was the only friend that I was able to keep, and my sister was manipulating him to befriending her! I was okay with her attending out little “meetings”, or making him a small pack of trifles when he went away to New York with his mother, but how dare she steal him! I felt my feet moving faster than my brain, and my arms did the deed. I shoved Mel to the ground, kicking, flinging limbs, and screaming at her. Melanie was crying before I had the chance to do anything wrong. “You have everything! You are liked by everyone! Mommy loves you more! The teachers say that you’re the best student they’ve ever had! You’re prettier than me, and you’re smarter! Why can’t I just have this one thing? Why can’t I have Sullivan to myself…?” I was sobbing too and I hugged her and she hugged me back. We were little mirror-image twins no matter if we liked it or not. I knew it: she had it a lot worse than me, even if she never showed her pain to the world. Sullivan, who was in the end the reason that we had gotten into this argument, stood quietly. He sighed and touched my cheek, wiping away my tears. “Don’t cry, Edana. Don’t get upset. It was mostly my fault for being ignoring my best friend.”

The day that I turned six, I set off to draw again with Sullivan. Mommy told me to call him up, and I did. “Sull?” “Eddie?” “You okay?” I asked, grinning. “Yeah. How about you, Edana? It’s your birthday, no?” “Yup! So you did remember!” I answered triumphantly. “Why wouldn’t I?” I could //hear// him just smiling on the other side. People say that you can’t hear things like that, but if you listen hard enough, you can hear the muscles in their face tightening and moving upwards. Believe me. “Can I come over to your house, Eddie? Mama isn’t here right now. She had to go to the theater again.” “Okay. Can your Dad drive you?” I asked, giving my mother a thumbs-up. She laughed and leaned back in the couch, falling asleep within a minute. “He’s at work,” he added. “Can I walk over?” “I don’t know,” I mumbled. I took the phone from my ear, walked over to the couch, and shook my mother awake. “Mommy, mommy, Sullivan is all home alone. Can he walk over, Mommy?” I asked. “Whatever, sweetheart,” she muttered in response, still-half asleep, and leaned back again. “Edana, this is what a hangover is like. Don’t ever allow yourself to get drunk enough to have one,” Mother added before she dove back to sleep. I nodded with a sense of sincerity and I put the phone against my ear again. “She said yes.” Sort-of…not really, I continued mentally. “Okay. I’ll be over there in a minute!” he answered. I could hear the phone hang up on the other side. I went over to the couch and sat next to my mother’s hung-over body. “I can’t wait ‘till Sullivan gets here,” I said repeatedly to myself, examining the clock. I could barely remember how I was able to tell time—it all seemed like a blur. Melanie was still asleep, and being that it was Easter, everyone else in the city was off down the road to watch the sunrise or something. I sighed. A few minutes passed. //Of course he won’t get here!// I thought. //He can’t just walk here all alone!// I have to go and find him! But I knew that I couldn’t. Mommy was in a daze and Melanie was all alone in our bedroom. It was just a wish for disaster. After all, since Ethan had left, I was supposed to act as the man of the family. It was quite the responsibility for a girl of six, and being that I had to protect them or all Hell would break loose, I decided against going out to find him. Within a good twenty minutes of sitting and waiting, I heard a knock at our door. //Sullivan,// I thought, //finally! It took him long enough!// I got off of the couch and wandered over to the door, opening it with less of a struggle than I normally had. There was Sullivan, a cross-shaped cut on his forehead, and a smirk across his face. “Eddie! Who would’ve thought that my best friend’s birthday was on the same day as when Jesus rose again?” He laughed. I was about to say that my birthday didn’t fall on Easter every year, but I didn’t bother. I was so happy to see him, after all. I was also going to tell him that I wasn’t Christian or even believed in God. My born father was a Native American from a tribe somewhere in Indiana, and my mother was a Native American activist (as well as a feminist, African-American activist, //and// an atheist, whatever that meant). To add to that, my mother was a born-Jewish woman whose idea of Easter was even less likable in her eyes. When we visited my grandparents or her siblings during the holiday season we celebrated Hanukkah. In fact, she was so against the whole thought of it that she didn’t want me to sing in the Christmas Concert at our school. She let me once she realized that the majority of the songs were snow-related, or Santa-related. (She hated God, and loved Santa. Hmph.) Still, I was so happy to see Sullivan that I kissed his forming cross-scab, did a little twirling dance, and woke up my mother with a shout, “Mommy!” “Wh-what is it already?” she muttered, sitting up at last. “Sull is here! Can we go outside?” I asked. “Whatever you wish, Eddie. Just don’t get hit by a car.” She collapsed into the cushion again. We wandered outside and into our backyard. I pointed to our picnic table and Sullivan obeyed, sitting on the wooden bench. I sat on the one facing the opposite way. The morning was wet and the air was filled with warm moisture. Sullivan tapped his sunglasses against his face and took out a piece of paper and some pencils from his jacket pocket. With that, we set off to draw something related to my birthday. “Do you like lady-bugs?” he asked, seeing one fly onto the paper as we drew a cylinder for the cake. “Not really.” “Butterflies?” “Nope.” “So what //do// you like?” he asked, getting rightfully impatient. “I like you,” I said and felt my face getting warm. “Well, duh! We all know that!” I laughed at his vanity. He laughed as well. “Let’s draw you and me, okay?” he suggested alas. “That way we can always remember it. Maybe we can take turns keeping it, too! We can frame it, as well…” “You’re getting ahead of yourself. Let’s just draw it first.” That was the first time that I was the calmer one. Normally I was the rambunctious, but maybe the thought of me being six while he was still five—and would be for another two months—but that was just a maybe. In fact, it was also probably the last time, now that I think about it. “Oh, okay Edana.” He smiled at me. “I know! I can draw you, and you can draw me!” “That's such a cool idea!” I returned. Then I started at my drawing, making him look as handsome as a six year old could, and worked at my creation nonstop until I finished his actually pretty elaborate face and his upper body and shirt. I peeked over at his. His lines were more simple and precise and they looked soft, while mine were all over the place, sketchy, and drawn with a heavy hand. Looking at the actual drawing, I deciphered my small eyes (which were laced with long eye-lashes) and wavy uncolored hair and bangs. I tilted my head; I actually looked pretty! I shrugged and continued with my drawing of Sullivan—his hands being the best of the drawing do to my actual acknowledgment of joints and finger length at a young age—and finished with sunglasses in his hand. I looked over at Sullivan. “Did you bring a box of crayons?” “What are those?” he asked. “I did, but we don't need them! I think our portraits look nice without crayon's to mess them up!” I was about to agree, since crayons usually did worse than better, but I at least wanted to color the basic things. “Can I at least color in the hair?” “Go ahead,” he grumbled. “What color are your eyes?” I returned. I had seen them a while back—the first time that we met face-to-face—but I couldn’t remember the exact hue. “Nothing,” he murmured without a change of expression. “Nothing?” I asked and burst into laughter. “Nothing! Your eyes have some color!” “No they don’t,” he added. “That stuff…it doesn’t exist.” “But you can see it, so it does!” I still had no idea of what he was talking about. “No, I can't!” “What do you mean? Everyone can see color.” “It doesn’t exist.” We went on like that for a while until I sighed and sat back, coloring his eyes gray like his mother’s. He didn’t argue after a few rounds, and I was the only one screaming. “What is wrong with you, Sullivan? I don’t know what you’re talking about! Why are you so mean?!” He sighed alas. “I’m //monochromic//. I can’t see color, Edana. My dad said that it’s okay though—he tells me this to get me off of his back—he says that it’s okay that I can’t see this color stuff because it doesn’t exist anyway.” I was withdrawn. He kept on reiterating “I can’t see color” until I couldn’t even stand those for words. I burst into tears and got my side of the paper went. My liquid sorrow for my friend covered the arms of the drawing. Sullivan wiped it away and wiped my eyes. “Happy Birthday, Edana,” I said to myself coldly, wondering if Sullivan was right about the whole color things. I looked at the crayons and clenched my fists. //No,// I thought, //his dad is lying to him! But why?//

That half-tear-covered, half-covered, half-me-and-half-of-Sullivan picture was the only way that I could get through the dark days while I was six. All that summer Sullivan and I played together, me attempting to convince him that color was real. Sullivan mostly told me things about his church. I didn’t mind, actually—some things were very interesting. I simply couldn’t see how he believed in this God yet he couldn’t believe that color existed. “So He can do anything?” I asked him one day. “He is the Ruler or this world, after all, so he can do everything, right?” “Yup!” Sullivan said. “God can do anything and everything! He can do more than you can imagine—just about everything!” “So, it’s His fault that my daddy died of Pneumonia?” I asked. I felt tears again. “I now have someone to blame! Finally! It’s His fault for everything!” “No!” he yelled. Sullivan shook his head. “He does everything for a reason. He doesn’t make mistakes.” I shook my head. “But it’s His fault that my mommy’s Jewish family was in trouble seventy years ago, and they were all killed, and it’s also His fault that my daddy’s family were put to a reservation to stay the rest of their days and die!” “He did it for a reason!” “Okay.” I wanted to punch Sullivan for saying that. If he did it for a reason, then this Ruler of the Heavens was a mean guy. “But if he can do everything, then why did he give the world color and make you color blind?” As you would expect, he was withdrawn at that point, as well. When he did reply, he changed the subject, for better or worse. “You can see color. What’s the most beautiful color of them all?” It took me only a moment to think about it. “Red,” I said. “It’s the most beautiful color because it is the most natural color.” It was an outright lie. Red was what people called me. I was a Native American—a Red Indian girl—and people liked to poke fun at that. Actually, I was more of a pink…but that doesn’t count. Red, though, was the color of blood, of fire—of nasty, “unreal” things that people preferred to avoid. And here I was, saying that it was the most beautiful. I went on to explain to him the different colors of the races, and the different colors of the trees and things that were seen as beautiful. “Roses are red,” I whispered to him, and he blushed. “Only the red ones are the ones that people care about. Think about it.” “Huh…” After a few months of this, I had perfectly spun this idea of colors around him. He didn’t believe it, obviously, but he saw it almost as a fairytale. Every time that I told him about the beauty of the different colors, he looked at me with a certain awe but restraint. He shook his head and touched my hand gingerly, as if even //I// were a dream, as if nothing in the world could really exist. His birthday came, and so did first grade. We sat together on the school bus the first day, holding hands as if everything would collapse if we didn’t. We were no longer the smallest ones in the school! It was a relief. But I took a look at all of the other little gentle boys that were entering kindergarten, and all of the little roughhousing girls too, and wondered if any of the boys were colorblind, of if any of the girls were red. Would they meet like we had? It had to be a cycle after all. “Sometimes I wish Daddy wouldn’t yell at Mommy,” he told me soberly one day. “Sometimes I wish that they loved each other like real mommies and real daddies do.” “There’s no such thing as real mommies and real daddies loving each other,” Mel told him with a scowl. “It’s a myth!” She was beginning to love that phrase. “There has to be some little boy or girl that has a mommy and a daddy that love each other,” I said. “I’m jealous of him or her, though.” “I just like having a mommy.” Mel pouted. “I wish our real daddy was still alive. Maybe then we could //live// the myth.” “Silly!” I said. “I don’t think he loved Mother so much. Why would he just go and die like that if he did?” “Of course they loved each other!” Melanie yelled at me. “Don’t talk until you know the //diff-nence// between the facts and the myths!” “What //diff-nence//?” “The story Mommy tells me all of the time about Daddy. Daddy’s mommy hated the reservation they were sentenced to when the white men came and took away their land. She hated the customs, the dress—she wanted to be with the white people. But she couldn’t because she had a son that needed to be taught the customs and be in the tribe because he was destined to be the leader. Well, Daddy’s mommy grew up and spent most of her time with the white people until she died of cancer. She put in her will that all of her money would go to her son. Mommy came along then and Daddy and Mommy fell in love. He spent all of his money on our house. They had us two until when we were real little when Daddy passed away. Well, even now, it is said that Daddy’s old tribe put a curse on him, saying that everything will go back to red, the main color of the tribe. See, Eddie?” “Wow, Edana, there’s so much of a story behind your family!” Sullivan chimed. “I wish my family was so big and special!” “No family’s anywhere near big and special.” I shook my head. “Only the smallest things are special. The bigger it is, the more plentiful, the less special. Law of Dr. Seuss. ‘A person’s a person, no matter how small.’ //Especially// when small.” “Ah,” Sullivan agreed. “I see what you mean!” “I’m sure your family is great,” Mel told Sullivan and blushed. “My daddy is always at work at my mommy is always off at the stage acting. I don’t think //ingidoring// your son is so great.”

The day with the blood oath was a snowy day in January just after I had visited my aunt’s house to celebrate Hanukkah for eight days. I was wearing my new pair of mittens and an oversized jacket as I was waiting for Sullivan to walk to our house. It was practically a blizzard and it was his turn to hold the drawing. It was hard for me to let it go, especially since it was my only sanctuary, but I was going to hand it over as I promised. Mother was lying on the couch flipping through the channels on our blurry TV set. She had taken up smoking again and was dragging the cigarette from her discolored lips, huffing out a puff of smoke. She coughed and coughed until she sent a smile my way. “You going out to play with Sullivan, sweetheart?” “Yeah, I was thinkin’ about it,” I answered. I peered back out of the window again, waiting. “Good girl.” She coughed. “Where’s your sister?” “She went to sleep over her friend Ruth's house again, remember?” “Oh. Oh yeah.” She sighed. “Where does the time go to?” “To the clock,” I explained. She burst into uneasy laughter and I wondered why she ever bothered asking. “Oh, Eddie, can you take out the recyclable bin? I'm too tired to do it myself,” she proclaimed, not even having stopped with her giggling. I nodded and grabbed the bin from the kitchen. I strolled out of the house, hearing her hoarse, drunken laughter all of the way outside until I slammed the door. My ears were the first to freeze in the January wind. I was trembling as I walked the bin to the street. I dropped it to the ground without bending my back or legs in the slightest and all of the items in the container bounced upwards on impact. A little piece of shattered glass fell out of the bin and onto the ground. I bent down at stared at it for a few moments before I picked it up carefully with my mitten-covered hands. Oh, how naughty I was! I tossed it up and down and played with it until it made a small hole in my mittens. I paused, clutched it, and walked back and forth, waiting for Sullivan. Before long I saw the bundled-up Sullivan walking around the corner and into my yard. “Sullivan!” I exclaimed, embracing him with shear delight. His scarf was soft and it looked as if it was simply meant to strangle my poor friend. “Oh, Sullivan! I missed you so!” “We saw each other yesterday, remember?” he asked, chuckling slightly. “Yeah, but I like to see you every moment in between when I wake up and when I go back to sleep.” I punched him playfully on the shoulder. My piece of glass slipped from my grasp. I swiftly bent down to pick it up while Sullivan was too confused to respond. “...What's that, Eddie?” he asked at last. “It's my special piece of glass,” I explained with a sense of pride. “I found it.” “Oh, I saw this movie once,” Sullivan began, “where two boys used a piece of broken glass to make a //contract//.” “What's that?” “It's where two people make a promise that is wrote out and they sign it. If one person breaks it, the other can kill them!” He said the last two words in a traumatizing sort of way, leaning into me and tickling me in order to frighten me. I covered my eyes when he said it, but burst into a joyous laughter when he tickled me. “But the thing is Sull...what does glass have to do with it?” I said between giggles. “Because you sign your name in blood,” he elucidated, and I gaped at him in horror. “It sounds like it would hurt.” “Yeah.” He looked from me to his shoes. “Maybe we should make one.” “Why?” “So that we will always be friends.” He took out a pencil from his coat pocket. He brought pencils and drawing materials everywhere. “What should we make it on?” “We aren't gonna make one, are we?” I shivered, the thought of my glass shard slicing through my flesh hard to bare. “We are too!” he said, and burst into a blushing fit. I wondered if it was because of the cold. “I mean...just to make sure that you never leave...” “Come on,” I said, “we can make one on our picnic table. That way it'll always be here.” So we went and he slowly inscribed our oath with his pencil, and I deepened it with my glass shard. It read this: //“Edana Russell and Sullivan Parker prumis that thay will aways forever be the bes of friends. If thay don't fallo this prumis thay will never befriend somone agin.”// We were so proud of our little law that we not rejectingly rolled up our sleeves, took off our mittens, and prepared to get the blood. I was the first one. Sullivan took my glass piece and held my palm flat in his. I held my breath as he made a small sliver-sized slice and allowed the blood to drip from my palm. “Write your name here,” he explained. I put the index finger of my left hand into the slit of blood and wrote my name carefully on the table where he had shown me. Next up was Sullivan. I didn't even think about sanitizing the surface of his palm or the piece of glass as I sliced through his palm. Sullivan burst into a whimpering fit as the blood trickled down. Tears rolled down his cheeks. “Oh, Sull, don't cry!” I told him, kissing his cheek motherly. “It doesn't hurt that bad.” “It stings!” he sobbed. “Write your name, at least.” He obeyed between his shedding of tears. “Much better. Okay, lemme get you a band-aid, okay?”He nodded and wiped his eyes with his non-bleeding fist. I took him into the house took off our jackets while avoiding his injured hand and managed to pass my mother—who was sleeping to the sound of Nascar race cars humming—and into the bathroom. Opening the medicine cabinet I retrieved a white band-aid. I put the correct cream on his cut and used the band-aid to press the wound shut, and I did the same thing with mine because I knew that it would help the healing. Then the two of us sat on the floor of my malodorous bathroom, applying pressure to our wounds and sniffling back tears. “I left my piece of glass outside,” I murmured. “Good,” he told me somberly. “I don't want to see it anymore.” “Never forget our promise,” I told him sternly. “We'll have identical scars to prove that we made the promise.” “I know,” he said. “And I'm glad.” Moments of silenced passed until he whispered, “Say, Eddie, what's the color of blood? I can't remember.” I was sworn to silence. The recyclable truck passed with a honk. More silence. “Come on, Eddie! It's just a color.” “Okay! It's red.” I accidentally placed my hand on the toilet bowl. I grimaced and pulled away, wiping my hand on a towel. “It's red, Sullivan.” He looked at me as if I had betrayed him. Who would've said that the most beautiful color in the world was also a color that practically screeched destruction, pain, and blood! We stood up in unison, walked to the door in unison, but it was only Sullivan that put on his soft scarf and coat and left. It shouldn't have been that big of a deal, but it was. I had kept a secret from him. A lie about something so obvious can't be kept for forever, and as soon as he delved into my little web of dishonesties that first time—that day with the blood oath—the more quickly our ties loosened until nothing was left except the thread and a spool. It all went downhill from there.

Melanie loved to share things with me. Everything she got, whether it was a cookie, a barrette, or a new pair of shoes, she felt the need to share it with me. We were like each other's half, each of us thinking that the other half was some sort of Jesus. We admired each other's talents and tried to fix each other's flaws. Melanie might have had a few outbursts of cruelty, but she certainly was good to me. Melanie was the prettier, smarter, and more overall liked twin, but I gave no consideration to that when we were younger. Mother babied Mel more and neglected me. Melanie shared everything with me when Mommy was there though, trying to prove that we were equally deserving—well, everything except her friends. It was mostly because she had a bunch of snotty friends that didn't like me because of my random aggressiveness and how I wasn't perfect like Mel. After the day that I shoved her for trying to take away Sullivan Melanie completely stopped encouraging her friends to talk to me. The snottiest and most ignorant friend of Mel's was Ruth—a rich white girl who always glared at me and spent every waking moment mocking Melanie behind her back. Ruth was a ruthless tormentor of me and Sullivan tried to protect me in vain—after all, everyone liked Sullivan for some odd reason. Mel and I too had been being pulled apart as Sull and I were being pushed together. Mel was quickly learning the meaning of disloyalty. She sat far away from my desk in our classes, didn't bother saying goodnight to me when we were going to sleep, and shook her head when I hugged the portrait of Sullivan and I every other week. This went on for two years. With every week Melanie departed to Ruth's house to have a sleepover. With every day I spent more time with my best friend Sull more than I did my own twin. With every year Mother seemed to be getting more and more hopeless as she sunk into a sea of beer and cigarettes and part-time jobs. I held my tongue though—God, how I did—until there was one day where I couldn't take it. Melanie and I were premature, but I, being the strong and fierce girl that I was, grew quickly and went against all odds to survive. Mel however was small and weak for months. She had a terrible immune system, rarely being able to fight of illness of any sorts—just like our father had been. Thus, Melanie managed to fall to simple sicknesses every year or two. This particular time she was sleeping over at Ruth's house and she caught a fever. All Saturday I waited for my dear sister to return home but she never walked through our door. I was worried. Mother was pacing back and forth. At last I poked at Mommy's side. “Mom?” I asked. “Yes, Eddie?” she asked. “T-t-tell me why Mel isn't h-home yet,” I stuttered. “Please.” “Oh, she has a fever. No worries though, Mrs. Whitney said that she'll take care of her until she is healthy enough to come home. She doesn't want to bring her back here quite yet—it isn't good for a sick little girl to be moved,” Mother explained. I nodded. “But she's going to be alright, right?” “Of course.” “So why aren't you there with her?” “Because I simply can't bring you—you'll get sick and I don't want that,” she told me. “But Ruth and Ruth's baby brother are there. They're fine,” I argued. She was getting irritated. “Just be quiet, Eddie. Don't argue.” I nodded pitifully and headed outside to the front steps. I plopped down and did nothing but sit for a few hours. Sullivan was off in New York for something to do with modeling. He had become quite the word about town and I was becoming a little jealous. I had to admit that he was handsome—for a snot-nose annoying boy. Okay, so maybe I was a bit more than a little jealous. I looked out into the street. I clenched my fists, a sudden feeling of anger overwhelming me. “Well, this sucks!” I spat out at last. I wasn't supposed to use such profanity, but did it really matter when I was saying it to no one but myself? So, that day passed and the next day followed with the same amount of nonchalance. I was getting restless as I wondered if Mel was actually as okay as Mother had said. That night as I was getting ready to go to bed I saw lights outside of my window. Headlights! I thought, shaking slightly as I motioned to get Mommy. However, she was no where to be found as I figured out after a routinely search of the house. If she is able to go out now without even telling me, than why didn’t she go out to take care of Melanie before? I went into the living room and turned on the television to drown out the ominous silence that was creeping in on me. The loneliness felt unbearable for the rest of the hour until the door opened and Mother and Melanie entered. Melanie was pale and fragile looking as she was cradled in Mother’s arms. In Mel’s arms there was a little bundle that I couldn’t quite see. I quickly went to help Melanie into our bedroom as Mommy panted with desperation. “She’s going to be alright, Edana,” she told me as we tucked in the already asleep Melanie, “it’s just a mild fever; she’s going to be okay.” I felt her tears fall onto my small hands but I said nothing. Mother left me there with my sickly sister to go and smoke another cigarette. I watched over my frail twin with care until her breathing was normal and no longer with a wheezing sound. Then I too fell asleep. I heard the sound of small crying in my sleep. I broke apart from my dreams immediately and found Mel on her bed clutching the bundle, except this time a face was exposed. “What happened to Wendy?” I asked her, recognizing her prized doll already. “And why are you crying, Mel? You’re safe! No need to be worried.” “I’m such a terrible friend.” I noticed a large cut underneath her eye. I cringed. “How come? Melanie, why do you say so?” “Ruth’s mommy took care of me so nicely, but Ruth didn’t like it. She didn’t like how I threw up when we were having a tea party for one, and she even disliked the way that her mother seemed so attached to me.” “And how does that make you a bad friend?” “Ruth hurt Wendy and cut me with one of the pieces,” Melanie whispered, revealing her dear doll whose limbs were twisted off and whose face was covered in little splits. I felt ill. I wanted to object. “How in the heck does having been sick make you a bad friend?!” I asked. “Because I ruined her day—” “She ruined your face //and// Wendy!” Once again the anger balled up inside of me. I felt like I would explode with bitterness. “//She// is the terrible friend! If I could, I would rip her arms off and feed them to her, and burn her hair off, and, and…” “Don’t!” Melanie said. She seemed to be getting over her fever at this point. “Don’t hurt her! She’s still my best friend!” “Well, Sullivan is my best friend and he would never do a single thing to hurt me!” I remembered the blood oath and sighed. We hadn’t meant to hurt each other, though. We only meant to make a permanent promise, and it was only a tiny scar that would soon heal. “Look at what we have to prove it!” I skipped over to my bureau and picked up the double portrait we had made. I shoved it at her. “Best friends don’t hurt each other!” Melanie was sobbing even harder when she saw the drawing. I handed it to her and sighed once again. “Now, hold it, will you? I need to take care of some unsolved business.” With that I slid the small crack of the window up with ease and maneuvered upwards and allowed the top part of my body to fall out of the window as I did a roll on the ground, covering my head from a fatal injury. It was an utterly idiotic idea considering I could have simply left out the front door and Mother never would have noticed, but it being me, I simply had to put on a grand performance for my dear sister. “Don't follow me!” I yelled as I took off into the dark of night. What a bizarre, violent, and absolutely pointless idea it was. It was such a stupid thing to do out of rage. I was wearing a nightgown that consisted of a large t-shirt, plaid soft pants, and booty slippers. I was cold before I reached the ground. Still, with the love of my sister and my fury about how much this life sucked, I was practically invincible. I knew where Ruth lived. It was only about a mile to the west—and the sun fell earlier in the west. I raced off with dignity until I reached a vacant intersection. At that point I had been running and walking on and off for a good twenty minutes. Heaving out I made up my mind to continue to the right. I swear, a whole hour passed and I was getting nowhere. Only lamplights lit up my path and I was probably the craziest girl in all of the world, but I didn't think about it. Visions of Ruth's expression as I went in for the “kill” appeared constantly in my frantic mind. I was starting to think about how much of a stupid decision it had been. All I had ever wanted was to be Mel's knight, and now I was going to be a stranded failure. I heard chuckling and saw a group of older boys gather around me. They were grinning and smelt soothing in an odd way. They were tall and looked pretty aware of what they were doing, and I was wondering if I could ask them the direction to Ruth's road. However one of them, a tall white boy with a Mohawk and a smirk, grabbed my wrist as if to stop me before I could. “Who's this 'ere?” he asked with such a friendly tone that I couldn't decline. “My name's Edana, Mister,” I told him. I wasn't supposed to talk to strangers, my mother told me repeatedly, but she wasn't supposed to smoke or drink either and she did. “No, yah little kid. I meant, why are you trespassing on our property?” He gripped my wrist tighter. The others snickered. I blushed. “Oh, I did? I'm sorry, I won't anymore!” “Nah, you born 'here? Then you always have been trespassin', 'cause this is our turf. Ain't that right, Bird-Bite?” he asked another boy. Bird-Bite was an African American with cornrows and snakebite piercings. “Yeah, and it ain't right,” he added in a deep voice. “They don't know who //really// owns all of the Goddamn town. It's us, and it's always been us. Hell, we're the ones that keep down the damned population.” He sighed. “Our gang has been around since the beginning of time, yet you trashy screwers want to get us all put away like we're some sort of threat. We're the only truth the damn down has ever seen and they all know it.” He smelled like Ethan. I stood there in awe for a moment until I realized what they meant by 'keeping down the population'. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise up and I had to come up with something so that I could get away. I wasn't going to die just because I wanted to be a knight. “You're wrong, though. Blood might have come first, yes, the color of bloody red might've—but not in the way that you say. Red was the first color to find the country, and then everyone else took it from us! Red is the most beautiful of the colors! You guys are the trashy screwer-overs, not us,” I told them and felt regret immediately. “You little—” The white boy grabbed onto me and shoved me to the ground with such force that I almost thought that I would snap in two. The rest of the gang blocked out the light from the lamplights one by one, kicking at me and yelling. I heard a shout. “You guys are crazy!” Bird-Bite shouted as he pushed them out of my way. “We ain't just gonna kill a little girl! We were just 'posed to scare her! You're lunatics, you know that? She never did nothing wrong!” He lifted me up to my feet and gave me a shove as a head-start. “Run Goddammit! Go home! Run, I say, run!” With that, I did as I was told, never once looking back at Bird-Bite, never once getting lost on my journey. I ran nonstop until I reached the house for good measure, climbed into the window—Mel had kept it open—and collapsed into my bed with many a shake and stutter: “I didn't do it, Mel.” I saw her nod in the darkness and slip Sull and my double portrait into my arms. I stared at it and noticed something pretty odd. There was a picture of Melanie in between us, looking pretty with full eyelashes and a tiara in her elegant wavy hair. Naturally her drawing of herself was better than Sullivan and mine combined. I stared at Melanie, not feeling anger for this cruel doing. I simply smiled and hugged her. Needless to say, I started to get to hold the picture one every three weeks then on.

I found Mother crying on the couch one evening while Melanie was away as usual. She was just about to go to work, which she normally made herself rather pleasant for, but she seemed so out of it on this particular day. I tilted my head and tried to comfort her, but she literally pushed me away. She then snapped her head over at me and peered into my eyes as if she was trying to read my mind. “I'm only twenty-nine years old,” she said at once. A pause. “I vowed that I would love my daughters more than anyone in the world—more than my own self—but I disobeyed. I've made miserable existences of my young angels. Look at you two—well, not Mel 'cause she isn't here right now—but you two have no futures. I was supposed to raise you. My parents raised me to be a successful woman, but I was a horrible daughter. Now I'm raising you two to be miserable, and you're the best daughters a woman like I could have.” “You're a great mommy,” I told her. “You treat Melanie and me really good. You come into our room and tuck me back in every night because I kick my blankets off when I'm sleeping, and you know that I wake up shivering when you don't do it. Now don't cry about it.” “Since when have I been a good mother?” she asked, stroking my hair and looking at me with a strange sort of distance that I hated. “Girl, do you even remember your father?” “Not really,” I told her sheepishly. “But sometimes I hear his voice and sometimes I see him in my dreams. I can feel him right next to me—I know it is him because I can remember how it felt as he carried me on his back. I think I can see it, but it's shrouded in black. I wonder if every good memory becomes like that.” “Yes, only the bad ones are the ones that are really clear.” She sighed. “You have to promise that when I'm gone you'll remember me as clear as day. You have to promise me that. No one else will.” I felt tears welling in my eyes. “I promise I'll try Mommy.” “Your father was the best man that I knew. He made me someone. He looked up to me. He loved me. No man can ever capture my heart like that again.” I thought of how she smiled at Ethan. It was insincere. “I'm a stubborn woman, though. I don't want to forget and move on; I've dragged you two into it. Oh, Edana, I hate myself for it. And do you know how much Mel is like your father? From her little tics, to her love of words, she's practically his copy! And have you known how much you're like me, right? You look and act like me it's pretty darn scary. I always favored Mel over you, though. I always only wanted your father back. I tried to hide from myself. Edana, though, you have a good heart and a brain that thinks—unlike me. You're the only one that can be saved, Eddie!” She was sobbing again, holding me tightly in her arms in comparison to how she would always push me away. I felt tears running down my face, too. “You're the only one that can be saved because you're the strongest of us! I'm too far in and Mel is too weak! You must have faith, Edana!” “But I don't believe in God or angels or whatever exist because you told me that they don't, so I don't have faith,” I told her. “But you exist, don't you? Believe in yourself! Believe that you can do anything, because you can!” She coughed over me with her a-pack-a-day cough and wiped the tears from my eyes. “I was such a terrible mother, but I won't be anymore. I'll have faith. I'll believe in the God crap if I have to if it'll make me a better mother! I'll never let Ethan get to me again! I'll change my name—I'll change your name! I'll do anything to save you two!” “Why don't we make a blood oath?” I asked sentimentally. She laughed and pointed at the little indent in my flat chest. “We don't need to. We have our oath shown to the world right in the depths of our bosoms.” I nodded with such ambition that someone would've sworn that we would both become saints within a day. Mother sighed and dressed up more appropriately for work before she took off. I walked to Sullivan's house with my head high and told him of my plan. I even told his father (who, for the record, didn't raise his head for he was too busy writing out bills), and his mother (who was as delightful as ever as she gave me a Texan-style drumstick with barbecue sauce). I went as far as to say that Mommy wanted nothing to do with my previously-new daddy Ethan because he was a bad influence apparently (to which I stated reluctantly because I had always thought that he was the nicest guy on the planet) to which Mrs. Parker smiled. “I'm glad, especially now that he's out,” she whispered. I blinked, not understanding, but Sullivan took my hand and walked me home. I hadn't yet realized that even though Mother would go to church for a few months and would get to getting a full time job, she simply would never be real while doing it. I guess that's why when another year passed, she had broken her promise and moved back to smoking and being her usual self. As she had said, she was too far in to change. It was either having a fake perfect mother or having a real imperfect mother, and once I was nine I learned how dearly I appreciated the real one. In the March a few weeks before I turned ten, I learned the true meaning of what devotion really is.

“Ah, middle school. I can't wait for it to come,” Melanie murmured as she, Sullivan and I walked around the playground at our elementary school. “I certainly could,” Sullivan whispered. “Why?” Melanie and I returned with the tilting of our heads. We licked at pop-sickles that our teachers had given us. It was almost spring break and we had resorted to having a week of doing practically nothing at school. It seemed like a pretty good deal at the time. “Because I don't really want to grow up,” Sullivan admitted. “I mean, I want to grow up, I just want to skip over all of the bad times. His sunglasses sent off a glare that went into my eyes. He blushed and licked at his ice cream. “Maybe it'll all change, you know? Maybe Melanie won't be smart anymore, and Edana won't be a tomboy.” I frowned. “Things don't just change so quickly. We'll all be friends and that's all that matters.” We passed Ruth and some of her friends. Melanie didn't even look into her direction. I glared. “Our enemies will stay the same and so will our friends and family. Nothing changes really except our bodies and our vocabularies, for better or for worse.” I fixed the braids of my short hair and flattened out my jean shorts. “And maybe our fashion,” I muttered. “Maybe in another twelve years we won't even know each other,” he said. “We'll be scattered across the country and all alone.” “Don't think about the next twelve years, then—not in that light at least,” Melanie told him and patted his shoulder. “Think about who we're going to be in the next twelve years. Me? I want to be an architect.” “What's that?” I asked her, furrowing my eyebrows. She had never told me about that dream of hers. “It's someone who designs houses,” she answered with such remarkable pride. “Well, I'm going to be a poet!” I answered. “Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm as poor as dirt yet I'm a darn Jew!” “Who would’ve thought that Eddie would be the most prejudice person to her own people,” Mel muttered and shook her head. “My dream is ten times cooler and more realistic.” Sullivan burst into laughter. “Amazing.” Sarcasm. I could feel myself turning red. I covered my face up with hands. “And I want to be the next Leonardo da Vinci!” “You want to do art and invent something as exciting as the scissors?” I asked. “It doesn't surprise me,” I muttered, acting unamused despite how exciting it sounded. “So we all want to create things. Hm.” “But the point is that I don't want to think about the future,” Sullivan muttered. “I want to do art, but maybe I'll lose an arm or I'll become a doctor. Anything can happen.” “I know that, and that is what makes it all the more joyous to think about,” I told him as I watched Mel wander off to meet up with a few friends. He sighed. “Edana, I want to tell you something important.” “Tell me,” I begged. “I never thought that I'd meet you, or that I would ever know a thing about color.” He sighed. “How do I tell you this without making you angry? Well, let's just say that a few days ago, I woke up and I just accepted it.” “Accepted what?” “That is exists. That it's always been around me. It feels as if I've known all along...but I haven't at the same time. You helped me know. I feel...happy now that I know, but regretful that I'll never be able to cherish it like you or Melanie were able to. I can't distinguish colors or talk about the rainbow; they'd think that I'm silly. That I'm too childish.” I understood his words at once. I leaned into him and hugged him. “You can't touch it or feel it, but neither can I—I can only see it, experience how wonderful color is. You can't. I swear, I will //never// complain about anything ever again.”

Whether it was a coincidence or not, that day led into a horrible night, unknown to anyone. I fell asleep in my bed as usual, saying my usual “thank-yous” for Mel, Mother, and Sullivan being well to the Lord. Melanie kissed me drowsily and gave me her doll Wendy, muttering about how she wanted to go and sleep in Mother's bed with her. I was near-asleep but I was still aware of my emotions, and as soon as Melanie left the room, loneliness settled in rather quickly. “Come back!” I exclaimed in a tired voice, but she never did. I shrugged, decided not to bother her, and rolled back over into a deep sleep. Several times did I wake up in a sweat for no reason whatsoever only to let myself drift back again. What dream did I have that night? Well, I certainly will never recall it to its full extent. I just know that there was a picnic table and a scream. Then a noise pierced through my seemingly peaceful dream—a loud “bang!” and the sound of something falling. Then the door closing. Then more sounds of a far-away screaming that I couldn't decipher. It was peaceful though as it swayed me back and forth, and never was I alarmed at the noise. I just clutched Wendy in her little bundle and rolled over. I woke up coughing. It felt as if steam or something had gotten into the room. It was an odd feeling because, well, our bathroom was too far away to have the steam roll into here. To add to it, why would someone take a shower at this hour? I opened my eyes to the sight of smoke rising over my head. I shook my head, knowing that this was simply just a //terrible// dream. I could imagine that the air around me was blistering hot, but I was frozen. I noticed that I was wearing nothing but my usual pajamas, and not a sheet or quilt to cover me up; Mother hadn't fixed my blankets at midnight as she always did. Sighing with anxiety I reached for the ground in an attempt to grab my blankets so I could rid myself of this awful nightmare. I threw it back up, but I felt pain in my left hand. Don't! I yelled in my head and the pain erupted around my left side. I fidgeted around in an attempt to shake it off and burst into a weak scream. “Mel! Mom! What's going on—Mel, Mom, please! Pl—ah!” I screamed until I simply couldn't—I couldn't even breathe. I watched as the crimson conflagration rose about my bed until I simply couldn't—I couldn't see through the smoke, and my eyelids were so heavy and flimsy. I twitched and tried to sit up, stand, and run until the pain on my left arm and hand overpowered me and I laid motionless to avoid it best I could. I had once been an aggressive, “strong” girl. Now my helplessness would be the last thing that they would remember me by. As I was zoning in and out of consciousness I realized that Sullivan had our double portrait in his room this moment and he was sound asleep in his bed, waiting for the morrow so he could talk to me again. This thought made me happy—if no one else, he would remember me, right? At the moment I knew that it was none other than the truth, because I was the one that taught him to embrace color and life, and he did the same for me, and in our four years together we had made each other smile and laugh and do all of those wonderful things that few people remember when they grow up—but I was certain that Sullivan would. The most amazing thing I had ever experienced was the last moments before I fell unconscious when colors were swirling around me and the difference between fantasy and reality, something that used to span a thousand seas, was gone at last.