Shades Of Blue

1. Waiting

Neel

September

Age 20

It was as though Neel had been waiting the entirety of his twenty years alive. Always waiting, his patience ever wearing thinner. When he was young, he seemed to have an infinite amount of patience. Some people have their patience chipped at over the years. Neel had had pieces of composure hacked off just to test him. The last two years had been especially trying, draining Neel of his youthful optimism and enduring hope. He didn't hope for much anymore, only this. He would wait, just as he had for so long before. For this, Neel was willing to wait an eternity, set to sit in this coffee shop until his heart no longer beat in his chest and his body decayed.

August

Age 11

Neel Jones grew up in Merit Harbor, a suburb-like town outside of Toronto. He thought of himself as an average boy, a good kid with nothing to complain about aside from his unruly, wavy black hair. Neel's parents both immigrated from India and Britain in the early 1980s, making him the first in his family to be born in Canada.

That summer, Neel was fortunate enough to be put on the same baseball team as his best friend Isaac and a couple kids he knew from school. One of those kids was called Powder. No one used his real name. He was quiet, small, and skinny, easily the subject of schoolyard jeers. He was pale, so pale that light seemed to bounce off of him to blind Neel every time he looked at him. He wore his hair long, down to his shoulders, straight and blonde. Although Isaac and Neel's other friends made fun of Powder, Neel never felt the need to participate. Cruelty didn't come naturally to him.

It had been during baseball practice that everything changed. Neel was the back catcher as usual while Isaac pitched and Powder eagerly waited to steal home base. As quiet as Powder was, the boy was a fierce competitor.

Isaac had thrown the ball and began to run to home base where he, Powder, and Neel collided. Isaac knocked Powder off course as he slid into home base, steering his foot directly into Neel's outstretched glove that caught the ball. Isaac had snuck a kick into Powder's ribs as he declared with pride, "out!"

Powder's bright blue eyes had widened as Neel slipped off his catcher's mitt. Neel's hand was bent in a strange direction.

Breaking his wrist had a much bigger impact than Neel would have guessed. At school, he was popular, never wanting for companionship. He was a happy kid but found himself in solitude once he was put into a cast. Suddenly, Neel was alone while the other kids went to the public pool each day without him. Soon, it seemed his friends had forgotten about him, no longer inviting him to anything, even if it wouldn't impinge on his cast. His best friend, Isaac sometimes visited him, an increasingly rare occurrence. Usually, Isaac spent his days at the skate park, not bothered by Neel's absence.

To battle this lonely summer, Neel's mother, Mrs. Jones reached out to Mrs. Archer, who lived one street over. The Archers had two children, twins Ellie and Powder.

Ellie was away at summer camp that year, leaving her brother behind. Powder, like Neel, lacked for friends. Their respective mothers decided he was to be Neel's playmate for the summer, or at least until the cast was cut off.

Powder was strange. Always quiet, never smiling, usually keeping to himself. Neel couldn't understand it, the way he was repelled by social interactions while Neel reveled in them. They had spent the last few weeks meeting up everyday, yet Powder's walls hadn't budged. Little did he know, Neel was taking note, finding the cracks in those walls to snake through. While Powder's stone face and silence put off the other kids, he had Neel intrigued. He spoke so little, yet always seemed to be deep in thought. Neel felt that he had to know what Powder was thinking, if only so he could finally crack the code. Was Powder some weird freak like Isaac always said, or was he just a normal, quiet kid? The latter, and much less interesting theory was more likely to be closer to the truth.

On an afternoon in mid-August, Neel flexed his left hand open and closed as he sat on the stoop leading up to his front porch. Finally, he had been freed from that horrible cast, leaving his left hand and wrist paler than the rest of his sun-soaked skin. With his two-toned forearm, he wiped the beads of sweat that gathered at his brow. It was too hot today. Luckily, Neel's father offered to drive them to the movies. The theater's air conditioning was always cranked up too high in the best possible way.

Leaning forward on the steps, Neel's dark eyes squinted as they checked up and down the street. Powder had gone home to fetch movie money from his parents. It took less than a minute to ride his bike from Neel's house to his own, yet a half hour had passed and he wasn't back. Neel got up and popped his head in through the open screen door to his house. "Did he call?" he shouted to his mother in the next room.

"Did who call?" she wondered back.

Growing concerned, Neel thought over his options. "I'm going for a bike ride," he told her and headed back down the steps. He fetched his bike from the garage, mounted it, and sped through the alley that connected their streets. The houses were, on Powder's side, too big in some cases. He had told Neel that one of his neighbors lived in one of those huge houses all alone. Neel thought that was terribly sad, he could never be on his own like that in such a big home. In opposition, Powder said he hoped to live in such solitude one day.

Powder's house was big with large, gaping windows that let the entire neighborhood peek into the dining room. Above, on the second floor were the quarter arched windows of the twins' bedrooms. Neel didn't know whose window was whose, going only off of Powder mentioning it in passing. He had pointed out that both siblings' respective bedroom windows reminded him of a movie he'd seen about a demonic house, their windows arched and staring out at the surrounding neighborhood like sad eyes. Once Powder had brought this to his attention, Neel always felt watched when he was outside of that house. It wasn't frightening, just unnerving. When the clear blue sky reflected off of the glass, the windows reminded Neel of Powder's eyes.

Setting his bike to the side of the driveway, Neel put down the kickstand and eagerly jogged up to the front door. He pressed his finger to the small, circular button and rang the doorbell. A sweet, calming melody rang throughout the house, muffled to Neel through the walls and door.

Please be Mrs. Archer, Neel thought. Anyone but Powder's dad.