Only Colours

Chapter 5

Jude didn't tell Mikey to go away when Mikey sat next to him at lunch the next day, and Mikey thanked him by not interrupting him while he was working on his homework. Well, for a while, anyway.

"You can come over to my house this afternoon and finish it then," Mikey said around a mouthful of apple. "My mum said you can come over whenever you want. You could even stay the night again. We could play video games. Do you like video games?"

"I'm not coming over today," was all Jude said in response. He wasn't angry, at least.

"Why?"

"I can't just stay over at your place every day."

"But you could, my mum said—"

Jude shook his head. Annoyance was rising in his colours. "No, I can't. I don't care what your mum said. Now be quiet while I finish this."

'Be quiet' was better than 'shut up', so Mikey figured they'd made progress. He didn't understand why Jude wouldn't just stay with them if Jude's mum wasn't nice, but arguing about it seemed to do nothing but make Jude angry.

Finn was still sitting next to Mikey at lunch and in classes, and Mikey was both surprised and pleased by that. He had expected Finn to leave when he realised Mikey had so little to offer him. Didn't Finn have other friends? Friends who talked to him and acknowledged him and... did friend stuff with him? Did being glad that he stuck around rather than doing something that might make him happier make Mikey a bad person?

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Mikey was terrified when his next PE class came around, though he didn't let it show on his face. His mum had told him he wouldn't have the same teacher anymore, but still. What if they'd forgotten to change his teacher or what if all PE teachers knew each other and were friends and this one hated him as well? Or what if—oh. Jude was waiting for him down at the oval.

Mikey ran the rest of the way down. He couldn't tell Jude all the things he was worried about without breaking his rules, so he just stood very close to him as he looked around instead.

"You have a new teacher," Jude assured him. "Your old one was fired."

Fired? Mikey hadn't expected that. He knew his mum and Jude had been angry about what had happened, but he'd expected the people in charge to take the teacher's side. He thought they'd say, well, because Mikey overreacted to being touched only a little, it was okay for the teacher to hold him down.

"Your teacher's here," Jude said, nodding towards a set of colours standing a short distance away. "Do you want me to like... tell you what she says? I don't think youre bullshitting me about not being able to hear people. It doesn't make much sense, but whatever. I read this book and there's this disorder where you can still see fine, but your brain can't like... recognise and identify objects and faces and stuff. I don't think that's what you have, but weird shit can happen to brains."

Mikey stared at the ground. He took a deep breath in and let it out. "There's no one there."

"Well, that's just straight bullshit," Jude said. The teacher must have said something, because he turned to look at her. "He's not that fragile, and if he is, he needs to stop hanging around me because I'm not willing to pretend to believe everything he says." Jude nodded along for a few moments, then turned back to Mikey. "She says you can just sit out and do your homework or whatever."

Mikey fidgeted his shoes against the grass. "I was the goalie last time."

"You got hit in the face by a ball last time."

"Well, yes, but the ball didn't go in the goal. I don't watch sports, but I think sometimes goalies hit the ball with their head to block it."

"Do they also fall down?"