The Girl Without Color

She was feeling gray. Emotions were distant and unreachable. Hours and days washed over her like waves upon a stony monolith. Nothing affected her; nothing could chip away at her cold exterior and blank interior.

The doctor had prescribed her at least seven doses of red. Her mother and father had taken this news solemnly, not knowing when they could afford the pricey pigment.

“You do realize she needs to be colored as soon as possible,” the doctor had told them sternly, as if they were not already in agony over their daughter’s monochromatic condition. “She can’t stay like this for long. If you miss the Rainbow Man’s next visit, I fear she will not make it through the winter.”

He had left them then, in a hurry to treat the Nasty Neons and Bloated Blues of the world. His vibrant coat flapped sharply around his lithe frame as he pounced out the door, shades of purple and orange swirling together proudly in a tangible testament to his brilliant mental health and bulging wallet.

The girl’s mother and father looked to each other silently once they were alone again with the sleeping form of their pale daughter. There was nothing either of them could say.

A few days later, the girl was out of bed, though her coloring was no better. She had managed to find the energy and the weak desire to follow two of her friends out to an abandoned children’s park. The three of them sat in rusty swings, watching the road for the Rainbow Man.

Marla, who tended to favor shades of green, was emanating a soft purple today. She gripped the crusty iron chains of her swing in barely suppressed excitement.

“I heard he has aquamarine,” she exclaimed. “Can you even imagine? Like really imagine? To be that icy cool, I would die to get my hands on that!”

“I don’t think you would,” Blain said, his usual shade of morose maroon intact. “Sometimes your declarations don’t make sense.”

“Sometimes your declarations don’t make sense,” Marla snapped back, before immediately frowning at the childishness of such a statement. “Sorry, I’m just excited.”

“What about you, Skarla?” Blain politely asked, trying to ignore the disturbing shades of overlapping grays that danced upon his sickly friend’s countenance. “What are your parents going to get you?”

Skarla looked up, staring at Blain for the first time that entire day.

“Hmmm?” she whispered. “Colors? None for me, I fear. Parents can’t afford.”

Marla and Blain looked at each other, shocked.

“But Skarla, you need it! More than all the rest of us!”

“It’s not so bad being gray,” she answered back softly. “I feel like me, if a rather sad and pathetic version.”

Marla started rummaging around in her pockets.

“Look, I have some red I’ve been saving, you know in case I ever need a little boost,” she said, ignoring Blain’s blank but blatantly judgmental gaze. “It’s just a thing I do, okay? It’s not bad.”

She handed Skarla a narrow vial of red. It was the cheap kind, the only version affordable by families in the valley, but still potent. All reds were.

“Just take a swig,” Marla encouraged. “You should have told me your parents were so low on extra color.”

Marla looked a tad embarrassed then at the possible rudeness of her remark, but Skarla, not surprisingly, appeared unfazed.

“But what will this do? How will it make me feel?” Skarla asked wonderingly as she stared at the bottle.

“You know the answer to that! It’ll make you feel alive!” Marla exclaimed.

“It’ll make you feel on fire, in a strictly literal sense,” Blain muttered.

“You’ll feel passionate about living!” Marla said, ignoring him again.

“Until the thudding crash when it runs out and you feel like shooting yourself,” Blain countered.

Marla whirled around in her swing, the rusted chains scratching and scraping as they tightened together.

“What is your problem with red?” she demanded. “You’re MAROON, for rainbow’s sake, you’re practically related.”

“No, not really,” Blain said solemnly. “I’m a red only if red had been been fully informed about the bleakness and pointlessness of life. That’s maroon.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Marla grunted.

“He’s here,” Skarla said abruptly, pointing to the distance, “I see the Rainbow Man.”

The three of them all gazed out upon the winding ribbon of road. A mile or two away, an explosion of color danced upon the bland horizon. Royal purples and electric greens, pastel pinks and happy yellows all shone out in a dizzying array of visual splendor. The landscape of the valley, a sickly brown or green when left unattended as it had been in the past winter weeks, was transformed. Countless bolts of Green #3, Grassy Spring Happiness, shot out from the epicenter of color, bathing the ground in rich sweeps of dazzling shine. Even the sky was changed, dull white to lavish Blue#2, Morning Sky Sparkle.

Marla had already hopped out of her swing in anticipation, even Blain had scooted forward, unable to take his eyes off the spectacle.

“What are we without color?” Skarla asked flatly, interrupting her friends’ transfixed gazes.

“Nothing,” Marla answered, clasping her hands together in the horror of such a thought.

“Dead,” Blain said a moment later, turning back to the oncoming parade of pigment.

A few minutes later they had joined the flock of valley dwellers, pushing and shoving their way towards the Rainbow Man.

Skarla’s mother and father had found her and had grabbed a hold of her shoulders, using her as a battering ram of misery to part the crowd. Her slight gray form moved slowly through the sea of seeping colors, a dull comet amidst a sky of fading stars.

“Please, Rainbow Man!” Skarla’s father shouted once they reached the eye-blinding brilliance of the Rainbow Wagon. “Look! My daughter needs help! We have little money, but you can have whatev-“

The Rainbow Man interrupted him with an elaborate wave of his bejeweled hand, silencing the rabble of the crowd as well.

“This girl is sick,” he said, his voice rich and deep, swelling with multiple shades of amber and onyx. “For her, I charge nothing. She shall have the pick of my collection.”

There was a collective gasp from the crowd. The valley people were predominately poor, able only to buy the primary and secondary colors that were necessary for life. The more elaborate shades were only to be dreamed about, glimpsed once a season upon the shining visage of the Rainbow Man, but no more.  There was more than one valley dweller who secretly cursed the luck of the girl’s strange condition.

Skarla opened her mouth, searching for the words appropriate on this grand occasion, standing before her entire village and the most illustrious man in all the country.

“I thank you very much for your kind offer,” she said softly, “but if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stay the way I am.”

No one knew how to react to this, least of the Rainbow Man, himself. His bright purple lips trembled in anger or indignant rage. After a moment, this was replaced by placid acceptance. He turned his attention to Skarla’s parents.

“You were right,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height and letting his rainbow cloak of sun bursts and ocean waves flare around him. “She clearly needs help of a psychological as well as of a colored nature. But have no fear! My pigments shall cure her! This poor gray state renders her ignorant to the source of her salvation, but she shall soon see the light of reason!”

Skarla’s parents bowed to the Rainbow Man, tears streaming down their cheeks at the immense kindness and understanding of their miraculous benefactor. Around them, the crowd cheered, pleased with a happy ending provided, once again, by the arrival of the Rainbow Wagon.

“I’m really quite serious,” Skarla said, a bit louder now in order to gain traction against the swelling volume of the villagers, “I’m actually quite content with me. I’m not mindlessly happy or wonderfully passionate or blissfully exuberant, but I feel like me, for once.”

“What is she talking about?” Marla hissed to Blain from a few rows back in the crowd.

Blain shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

“I like feeling like me, that’s all,” Skarla continued. “It may be sad-looking and may often be full of sad feelings, but it’s me and nothing else. I’m not following trends of color or forcing myself to be happy when I’m not. It’s just me.”

The crowd considered this. The Rainbow Man shook his head as if trying to dispel an annoying thought from his head. He decided to shut this girl out of his mind, because she was not fitting well with his nicely ordered understanding of the world.

“Who’s next?” he bellowed with false cheeriness, taking a sneaky swig of Zesty Green to propel him through this madness. “We’ve got aquamarine! We’ve got the newest jewel tones fit for a queen! You want primary, we’ve got primary! Opulent Reds and Introspective Blues!”

The crowd took the cue from their Rainbow Man and wrote the strange girl with her strange words out of their consciousness. They clamored and shouted just as loud as before, throwing their money at the Rainbow Man in exchange for the emotions and the personalities their lives were lacking.

Skarla’s parents were right along with them, shoving the meager savings they had mustered in exchange for the pigments that their daughter, in her monochromatic state of craziness, had rejected.

Skarla pushed her way through the crowd unnoticed. She made her way through the color-obsessed individuals, walking through green grass that turned to dull browns the farther she went from the Rainbow Wagon.

Eventually she reached the park again. She sat in the rusty swing, metallic gray and rusty orange, and sighed contentedly to herself. She traced circles in the dirt with her shoe.

And then, all by herself, Skarla started to glow. Colors erupted from her body like brilliant rays of light escaping the confines of a musky grave. Real colors, true colors spread forth, a tidal wave of pigments that washed out even the Rainbow Man and his fervent disciples.

Skarla watched as a bolt of peachy yellow danced lightly across her fingers. She was surprised but not entirely shocked.

She looked out across the plains and saw the the villagers watching her. The Rainbow Man was staring at her, slack jawed, the vials of fake color falling from his limp hands, glass shattering and forgotten pigments spilling out upon the grass.

Skarla smiled at him. Then she smiled at all of the villagers. And as her entire body lit up in a vibrant light display of merry pinks and and rapturous oranges, the villagers, one by one, left the wagon of the Rainbow Man.