The Colors of Your Soul

a story by happysmiley474

Prologue


Weirdo. Freak.

I'll never forget the day I heard those words, that day in art class. It was almost eight years ago, when I was nine. I loved art then. It was my favorite subject, my best subject, and the one in which I always took home the grade that my mother loved best. Every teacher from kindergarten on forward had scrawled, each in their own script-y handwriting, on my report card: artistically skilled, a future Picasso, award-winning art skills. So on that one day during art in fourth grade, I was confident of showing this exemplary skill, of impressing the teacher and making up for the holes in her confidence for me, from all the technical stuff that I hated. My feet were freezing in the just-bought sandals that my mother had made me wear that morning, and the draft from the opened window made my teeth chatter. I picked up my crayons and colored pencils. The theme was 'My Family'. I remembered doing this in kindergarten, but this time, I'd told myself, I'd do a better job, because I was four years older now then I was then. Surely my artistic skills would have improved.

I was intent on inching away from the stick figures that were so prominent in my class, instead drawing my family just the way they looked to me, how they shone in all their different colors. Nobody was watching me. Nobody told me about what I wasn't supposed to do.

At the end of the class Ms. Pierce, the teacher, picked up our papers and hung them all on the blackboard in front of the class.

"Now," She said. "Does anyone want to come up and explain to everyone about your family?"

The class was silent. Nobody raised their hand.

Ms. Pierce narrowed her eyes. "Anybody?" She asked. "Okay, well, Cassandra," She said, smiling at me from over her spectacles. I had been sitting straight up, wanting to get picked, although I was too shy to raise my hand. "Why don't you come up?"

She took my drawing from under a purple magnet and glanced at it. What I saw flash across her face that very second was not awe or appreciation, as I had expected, but confusion—confusion and disappointment. Nevertheless, she handed me the piece of paper and I held it up in front of me, beaming at the class.

"This is my family." I said.

Already I could feel whispers erupting from the back of the class. Ms Pierce looked behind her and brought her finger up to her lips, but it was no use. People were staring at my picture the way they might stare at an alien.

Flustered, I continued.

"This is my dad," I said, indicating a person with a head of dark hair and big glasses, buried under the olive-green haze that I loved so much. "He is green because—" Here, I stopped. I didn't know why he was green. He just was. "He is green because he was born that way." I went on, explaining how my mother was burnt orange, a sort of tangerine color, how my little baby brother was lemon sorbet.

Ms. Pierce's smile grew a little forced. "Thank you, Cassandra." She said, when I finished. "Now, how about you, Megan?"

Megan beamed quite the same way I had, and went up to the front of the room, holding up a picture that looked almost like mine, except… where was the color? Where was that haze? I was confused. Looking at the other drawings stuck on the board, I noticed they all didn't have colors. Not the way mine did.

"This is my baby sister," She said. "And this is my big brother. He is eighteen years old."

I couldn't take it anymore. I raised my hand.

"Yes, Cassandra?" Ms. Pierce asked.

"Where is the color?" I asked.

Megan looked at me. "It has color." She said, pointing at the picture of her baby sister, who was wearing a cotton-candy pink shirt, and at her mother, who was wearing a mustard-yellow one and jeans.

"Yes." I said. "I know. But what's their color?"

I heard the same whispers behind me again. I turned to look at the rest of the class, certain they would agree. "Where is their light?" I asked again. "The color from their hearts." Someone laughed, and I grinned, thinking they were laughing at Ms. Pierce and Megan for not understanding instead of me.

Megan looked nervous and scared. "They are colored." She said again.

Ms. Pierce looked at me. "That'll be quite enough, Cassandra." She said sharply. "Stop interrupting Megan." I saw the purplish black of anxiety slicing through her celery-green soul.

"But—" I started. I felt humiliated. My voice grew quieter and quieter. "Can't you see?" I whispered. "Look! Megan is purple with pink dots, and Matt is bluish green…"

This time, when the class laughed, I knew it was directed at me.

Weirdo, Someone whispered from behind me.

Freak, another voice.

I froze and bit my lip so hard I drew blood. It couldn't be. It was impossible. The color, this color radiating from everyone. Nobody could see it? Was it possible that only I lived in a world where I saw the color of each and every person's souls?

Ms. Pierce's voice, angry, frustrated, startled me. The anxiety was gone and in its place was the deep orange of annoyance. "Stop talking nonsense, Cassandra." She said. "Is this the way you would have wanted to be treated when you were presenting?"

I hadn't given up yet. Somewhere in my nine-year old heart there still burned a hope that it was all a joke, some kind of oh-so-funny prank that I could laugh about later. "We…" I said quietly. "We have colors."

Ms. Pierce sighed exasperatedly. "People do not have colors. Who put such an idea in your head?"

My last hope—gone.

I felt dead, still, inside. I crossed my legs tightly and prayed for the class to end, so I could go back home and never have to face these people again.

It wasn't that easy. Ms. Pierce took me to the guidance counselor—we had one only because the elementary and the middle school were connected—and the woman, Mrs. McDougal, called my parents.

The look on my mother's face as she walked through the door was one I knew—even then—I would never forget. It was the look of a person who had been betrayed, tricked by the person they loved most. It was the deepest of blacks that radiated through her burnt orange haze, so strong that it showed obviously even through the orange. It looked like Halloween.

By the time they came I was already worn out. I had repeated my theory to Mrs. McDougal, who just kept looking at Ms. Pierce the whole time, who was shaking her head; in a way that said now you know what I mean.

So I pretended like I had been making up the whole thing. I sat there saying things like 'I'm sorry, it won't ever happen again", "I was fooling around", and "It was stupid." I felt my heart being wrenched apart every time I said those things, but it was for my own good, I told myself. They'd have probably sent me to a mental hospital if I'd said anything else.

The guidance counselor smiled at me at the end of the session, glad she had gotten the truth, or what she thought was the truth, out of a stubborn fourth-grade girl.

We left for home and in the car, it was silent. Too silent. My father tried to make jokes of the whole situation, but my mother was rigid, hard as always. In the middle of the ride my father gave up, and all was quiet again.

Once at home I kicked off my sandals and stepped into my sneakers. There was a place in the middle of the woods my parents always forbade me to go where I always went to watch the people strolling down in the streets, and the faint color they seemed to radiate. The sight was so beautiful—purples and pinks and blues and yellows all mixed in to create a vivid palette of colors—that sometimes I would stay there for hours.

This time, though, I sat for only a few seconds. I buried my head in my arms and didn't cry. Sadness was the emotion I knew would be best portrayed, the emotion most seen, even from underneath the color that nobody else saw. Even when I was little, I knew that and never cried. Because crying just brought you farther into your depression, and I didn't want anyone to know that I was sad.

Now there was no reason not to, but I didn't do it anyway.

I was a freak. A weirdo.


Hopefully (keyword) this will be the prologue to a longer story... I tend to just throw away stories as soon as I write them... If I get enough interest and comments I might keep going on. I hope you like it; I came up with it today while I was flipping through the channels and I came upon Danny Phantom... The storyline isn't going to be as cheesy and predictable, though.

Reviews and crtiques appreciated!!!!

-happysmiley474