The Colour of the Light

By William Livingstone

Sitting in the chair by the window Kelly looked out over the mismatched plaza, settling her eyes in turn over the old and new buildings, wondering if the previous occupants of the city had foreseen the next stage in its development.

She clucked her tongue from the roof of her mouth, twisting around in the black computer chair to throw a juice carton over-arm at the silver bin in the corner. She turned back and smiled as she heard the impact of the cardboard on scrunched up papers.

“Score one for Kelly Harding, star player freshly recovered from a nasty sprain.”

The smile vanished after too short a time, though. The streets were busy today and she could see all of the people clearly as they fought their way home or to wherever it was they went in the front of their cars. Horns blasted from below, upsetting the steady hum of the fan that moved back and forth beside her.

Her parents were out at a friend’s house for the evening but that didn’t necessarily mean she was free. The only key was with them, which meant she couldn’t leave without the door being left unlocked, unless she took the four floor dive to the pavement below.

She didn’t consider it seriously for too long.

“I wish I wasn’t fifteen sometimes,” she didn’t notice that she’d spoken out loud.

She held her arms above her head and yawned slowly, smiling at the same time just for the fun of it, and because it cheered her up.

She looked at the walls around her, searching for something fun to investigate, to organise or arrange differently, funnily. It was no good, her inspiration needed something fresh to work with and her parents hadn’t left anything fun for her.

The phone rang and she picked it up.

“Kelly, it’s me.” It was Uncle David. He sounded exhausted.

“Hi Uncle, what’s up?” she asked, neutrally.

“Your parents are dead Kelly, their Volvo, the car was…crushed by a lorry when they turned. I’m coming to get you now; we’ll go to the morgue together...”

She put the phone back down and tried to think nothing because the world seemed so big.

“Fuck,” she said, and nothing more until her Uncle arrived and she started crying and calling her parents’ names.

Two years later a boy walked into the shop and almost tripped over the carpet, which Kelly had tried to stick down with staples and double-back tape.

He made the staples pop out and go flying across the room and Kelly winced as he swore and hurried after them. He bought them over to the counter and gave them to Floe.

“Nice goin’ there stud,” She said, none too helpfully Kelly thought.

Kelly pretended to work and moved her head occasionally to allow her eyes to take in a bit more of him each time. She liked him, because, well, just because.

As he walked around the various stands, magic, juggling balls and clubs, games and dice and so on she made a decision and acted on it straight away. She wrote her telephone number on a piece of paper and stepped out from behind the counter.

The other customers in the shop were mostly regulars and perhaps that was why she did what she did, because she was worried he would just drift away and not come back to the shop again.

“Excuse me? I’m Kelly.” She offered her right hand, which was shaken with a curious smile. “Can I help you with anything?”

His smile did not disappear; it widened just a little, which made her smile too.

“I’m just looking around thanks.” He turned back and she went for it, feeling powerful and amazing as she caught his arm with her hand.

“Uh, listen, here’s my number, if you want to go out sometime…” She stopped short, he’d taken her hand. He leaned closer to her and whispered into her ear.

“No thanks, your tits are too small.”

She backed away from his touch and slapped him hard.

He turned his face back and smiled a horrible smile, one cheek turning scarlet.

“Maybe if I’d known you were into that first…” he said, and walked out.

Floe just looked at her. Martin, her manager, almost fired her on the spot but Floe persuaded him not to, somehow.

Kelly went home early. When she got in she just sat down, thinking, before she eventually made herself some lunch to fix the gnawing in her stomach.

“I need a proper boyfriend,” she mused, unknowingly echoing millions of single and non-single women across the centuries in countries all across the world. In fact if there had been a sort of strange fairy that responded to such cries as this it would be so overworked that a day as a junior nurse would seem like a trip to a deserted Caribbean beach by comparison.

She made herself eat all of the beef sandwiches she had made, then sat and festered on the sofa, trying not to think but failing miserably.

After an hour watching an episode of The X-Files she changed clothes, thinking about the guy, working herself up into a steady rage, feeling it, getting ready to release it.

She spent the next twenty minutes thoroughly fucking up her punch-bag.

“Jack names the planets all to you, Jack names the…” She turned off the stereo, bored beyond belief, missing the rush of decking the punch-bag but knowing that if she did any more today she’d feel like she’d been the one getting a beating.

To take her mind off things she went over to the window and stared at nothing in particular, thinking about her life.

The streets were quiet around the plaza, or square as her parents had once called it, before they had died and taken their version of English with them. Kelly had preferred a multi-cultural dialect. For instance plaza was not American for square, as most people thought, but came from the Spanish. The flat was quiet and so were the streets, she needed to do something, anything, but what?

She grew hot suddenly when she realised her thoughts were becoming circular and stagnant, filled with unrelieved stress and loneliness.

Nights like these always sucked, it was like work had drained her inspiration away, she didn’t even want to do any of her summer college work, and she had a fair amount of that still to do. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy her reading for English, it was just that she felt like she’d be betraying her sense of fun and adventure by just sitting, even if it was reading a cool book. She just wanted something excellent to happen, just once, to her.

She watched a man come running across the plaza and vanish into a building opposite her. “He looks like he’s having fun, maybe he got a phone call from some lover, a photographer or an artist, saying she wanted him ‘Right now! Terrence, I love you, ohhh my Mr T!” She chuckled and kicked at the bin, wondering if she would always be able to cheer herself up like this, it felt good, inventing stuff, little scenarios.

It put the shine back on that the rest of her day had somehow taken off, and that was a good start, she guessed. Suddenly inspired, she went and got her phone book, the phone book and the telephone.

She sat down and went through her a-z of people she knew. Her mobile was on the fritz, so it was back to the old fashioned way of reaching out over the miles to talk to someone instantly wherever they were.

It was eight, she had an idea that only children would be asleep now, which ruled out a few of her family members. She saw them often anyway, people were always coming round with food, spending a few hours catching up when she wasn’t busy doing something, being somewhere else.

She dialled the first number she found.

She waited, but there was no answer, Haley must be out, that or she’d managed to fall from her window onto the garage roof again and was trapped there, starving.

Kelly tossed her coin because she couldn’t make up her mind, her friends just seemed toi have such bad luck sometimes.

The next lucky winner on Kelly’s dial-a-friend bonanza was in. She spoke to Don for a good half an hour, reminiscing, talking, chatting, laughing and generally communicating, which was good for Kelly’s morale. She put the phone down feeling a bit more complete, like she’d gotten something back that she thought she’d lost somewhere.

The next number she must have dialled wrong, because Christi lived alone and the voice on the end of the phone was a guy.

“Hello?”

“Oh hi, sorry, Is this Christi’s house?”

“No,” He sounded young.

“I’m really sorry to bother you. I must have pressed the wrong buttons or something,” she hated these calls, they were always weird, talking to a complete stranger.

“That’s okay, I’d sue you for disturbing me and my book but I don’t have a lawyer so don’t worry about it.” His voice was that serious-but-not tone and Kelly found herself laughing before she could help it.

“Finally, someone who appreciates my humour. Figures it’d be a complete stranger who’s probably making her only call for the year from a mental joint or something.”

“That’s not true at all. I’m actually on my way to prison to serve a life sentence and this is the last call I’ll get to make, so congrats, you’re the last outsider to hear my voice. Ever,” suddenly she had to know something, had to know it so bad she didn’t care what it sounded like. This guy had started the conversation anyhow; it was clearly his fault if she was a weirdo.

“What book are you reading?” she asked.

“Bill Clinton’s autobiography,”

“Seriously?” he sounded serious enough.

“Of course not, I value my brain. I’m reading ‘Soul Music’, it’s by Terry Pratchett. Who were you trying to call?” he sounded genuinely interested and this time she thought he really was.

“Just a friend,” Something seemed wrong with what she had just said, but she carried on, “she goes to the same college that I do and if you don’t mind me stating the obvious you’re clearly not her.”

“Well I feel better about my masculinity already, thanks for that.”

“Anytime,” she was actually having trouble not laughing, this was the best random she had ever spoken to, ever. She switched the phone to her other ear quickly, then tried to think of something else to say.

“Mmmm…” Not her best effort, by a long way.

“Do you read, then, or were you just curious?”

“I do read, yeah, I read a lot of books. I really like fantasy and adventure and ones where the girl always has a great time and meets some amazing people along the way. But I think I’m kinda getting into- ah, sorry.”

“No, go on, what are you getting into? I really like fantasy and books where the world isn’t quite as clear cut as it was before you read it, like social commentaries only not really strong ones, a bit more subtle, you know?”

“I think so. I’m getting into a fair amount of travel writing. It’s cool to see the world through the eyes of all these cool people who’ve been there and almost been eaten or something. But more than that I feel inspired to get out there when I read something like that, I just want to get away from my boss and my little lonely world and take off with a rucksack and a small animal that’ll protect me from being mugged, maybe a cougar… what is it?”

He was laughing down the phone, which made her smile and chuckle in return. It was a good laugh and she heard him saying in between laughing “A cougar, I like it!”

“I’m not holding you up am I? It’s just that I was making phone calls tonight because I was bored and now I’m not that bored because I’m talking to you and you sound quite interesting. Is it okay to talk some more?”

“Yeah, I have some college work to do later but it can wait. I go to Carimelle; it’s a pretty sweet college.”

“That’s cool,” She had a feeling she was missing something there but carried on anyway. “I go to the one across town from that, I’m doing english, sport and Yak handling and all theory relating to the under-valued animal known as the Yak.”

“That’s awesome, hope revision isn’t too hard for the theory; I hear Yak riding might be in the Olympics next year. I’m doing english, psychology and sociology, english is my favourite, I’m gonna fail psychology I think. Hang on a second, I’m going to get a drink okay?”

While she waited for him to return she pondered the feeling in her guts. She thought it was a mixture of excitement and contentment. She was talking to someone new and interesting for the first time in a long time; he wasn’t bizarre or telling her her, well, chest was not quite right or anything like that.

Plus he liked books and lived in the same town. Well of course he lived in the same town, she hadn’t dialled an area code when she made the call and had only gotten one or two digits wrong at most.

“I’m back. If you’re interested my name is, well, do you want to know my name? I mean, I’m nineteen and I like going to the park and stuff but I suppose you don’t know me so it’s up to you.”

She didn’t answer his question directly, instead she just went on her feeling. “I’m Kelly,” there, it was out, she’d told her name to a guy that she hadn’t even meant to call.

“I’m Ryan. Nice to theoretically meet you,”

“And you,”

Yeah it was, it really was.

“This is pretty cool, I thought my evening was gonna be bad, but then you phoned and this seems like the most random cool thing, even Han Solo would have been put off by these odds, you know?”

“I guess so, but Chewie wouldn’t, he would have just roared and charged in and started tearing people’s arms off and stuff.” Ah, he was a Star Wars fan, she guessed she sort of liked it, except for the Ewoks.

“In all seriousness, we should meet up and do something, like bowling or a coffee or whatever. What do you think?” He sounded nervous and hopeful, Kelly didn’t take long to decide.

“Yeah, great, we should. What about tomorrow evening?”

“Okay, where shall we meet?”

“The Fountain in the city centre, seven?”

“Sounds fine, I’ll bring an umbrella.”

“O-kay, maybe outside the fountain then, see you later.”

“Bye,”

“Bye,”

She put the phone down gently then went running around the flat, jumping over chairs, laughing and blabbing on about the chances of successfully navigating an asteroid field.

“3,721 to 1, eat that Solo!”