The Colors She Became, Based on Multiple True Stories
Brown: We heard the stories, how the hallways were battlegrounds, how people were outnumbered day by day. How if you stood alone there was a bigger chance of you getting killed. Freshman year was the beginning of everything, the beginning of our everything. Kelly and I entered high school together, with shared promises of a lasting friendship. We did everything together, and it felt as if it would always be this way, us against them. Always us, never them. Us against this place where people played spin the bottle to kiss their pain away.
Until Kelly met him, the one who always wore a brown leather jacket. Not the beautifully chocolate brown, but the dirt kind of brown, the worn out kind of brown. It couldn’t have been real leather; it resembled plastic, and the sleeves would peel back like scabbed skin, revealing what lay underneath. And there in the back, was a capitol “T” that looked like it had been drawn on. Uneven. Childish. I never knew what the “T” stood for. I would watch as he rested his hands on her petite body, the bell ringing in my ears. For the first time, she said “go on without me.” The words sounded casual, almost kind. By the end of the day the scent of fake leather and cigarettes clung to her. Latched onto her like a baby clinging to a mother.
Red: I never knew or understood how someone could change the way you see a color. There wasn’t a day she didn’t come in wearing red lipstick, red nails, red anything. It was consistent. More consistent than our time spent together. Before all of this, Kelly use to hate lipstick. She said it made her feel like she was wearing someone else’s mouth. We would sit on her bedroom floor braiding each other’s hair, laughing at the girls who wanted to grow up too fast. Back then we thought time was something we could outrun.
“what’s with all the red?” I asked her one afternoon. She shrugged like the answer meant nothing “he likes it on me.” But do you like it on you? was what I wanted to ask. I left it at that. But the question sat heavy on my tongue for weeks. I wanted to ask her who she was becoming? I was afraid she would ask me who I was without her. Her tan, bare face turned into powdered features. We never needed crowds, but crowds gathered around her like moths to a flame. She loved the spotlight. I loved the version of her that existed before it. The hallways seemed to shrink when we passed each other. We exchanged nothing but nods and tight smiles, the kind you give to strangers you once knew too well. Even when I couldn’t fully see her, I could always recognize the flash of red.
Black & Blue: SATs, trips, college applications, prom, love, like, hate; everything blurred into something shapeless. The guidance counselor’s office became my refuge, the one place where life still felt organized.
The day I saw her again, I noticed her hands first. They trembled like they didn’t belong to her. Like someone had borrowed her body and forgotten to return it. She stood with her back facing me. I wouldn’t have known it was her. I wouldn’t have even checked. But there are some people your body remembers before your mind does. I hadn’t planned to say her name. When it left my mouth, it sounded like a question i didn’t want answered.
“kelly?”
She turned slowly. A gasp flew out of me before I could stop it. Against her tanned skin were patches of black and blue. On her cheek, around her right eye, her bottom lip split in two, like a bruised fruit. Her eyes were bloodshot, already drowning. I said nothing. I had no words. So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I held her.
Once the first tear fell, the rest followed in a relentless stream. She buried her face into my shoulder, and I could feel her silently screaming, a storm she was trying to swallow before it destroyed her. Her tears soaked through my shirt as if she were trying to disappear inside me, to crawl back into the girl she used to be. I embraced her, and inhaled fake leather and cigarettes.
