Into the Dark

Chapter Three

Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it's on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you've got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration.

-Taylor Swift

Realization swept over me like waves in the sea. He had the same grey eyes and untamed brown hair that I did.

"M-my brother? But how come I never knew you?" I asked. He sighed.

"I had to leave the city just as you did today. You were only about a year old when I left. Boys leave home at 6; girls move to Kin at 12."

"Talk about sexist," I muttered. Wyatt chuckled.

"It's not that. It just happens to be that boys become color-blind earlier than girls do," he said. We stood silently for a few seconds. Then, he enveloped me in a hug.

"I missed you," I said.

"Hm..how could you miss me when you didn't remember me?" he asked.

"Well, surely I had a faint memory of you when I was one. You know, you playing with me and stuff."

"Actually, all you did was eat, sleep, and poop. Nothing exciting really," he said.

"Wyatt?"

"Yeah?"

"You're ruining the moment," I grumbled.

"Oh, sorry," he said, releasing me from his bear hug. "We better get to the training facility, or Mr. Fairy will have our heads."

"Mr. Fairy?" I said, suppressing a laugh.

"Oh, believe me, he's a lot scarier than he sounds," Wyatt said. "We should get going."

****

The training facility was a large room, with white walls and a polished wooden floor. On either side of the room was a hoop and in the corner, there was a bench press.

"Is this a gym?" I asked. Wyatt gave me a confused look.

"Jim? We don't have any coach named Jim," he said. I smacked my forehead.

"Not Jim, gym. Like G-Y-M," I said. He frowned.

"Probably what a normal person named a training facility. Hey, I'm Jim," he said in a goofy voice, "and I'm gonna name this training facility after myself. I'm gonna be famous!" I laughed at his silly voice and his misunderstanding of gym.

Not paying attention to where I was going, I nearly bumped into a man standing in front of me. He was rather tall, at least 6 feet, and had bulging muscles. I gulped.

"Er...hi..Coach...uh..Fai-" I started. He grunted.

"Call me Coach Bruno," he said, and turned to Wyatt. "This the new kiddo?" Wyatt nodded.

"All right, Ms. Lydia, here's what we're going to do," he said, rubbing his hands together. "You're going to..."

I closed my eyes and prepared for the worst. Five-hundred push ups? Fifty laps?

"Stare at that wall for ten minutes," he said. "Oh, and you have your ticket, correct?" I nodded and took my pink ticket from my pocket. He snatched it from my hand.

"Student ID is 20375204. Remember that," he said, and tossed the ticket into his mouth and ate it. I stared at him in bewilderment.

"I was just kidding, silly. Ms. Kimberly tries to make this place organized. Booooring. Oh, and you have to wait for the others to arrive so that's what I meant by...you get it. You can sit on that bench and wait."

I nodded and went over to sit on the bench. Wyatt followed me.

"You'll be okay, right?" he asked in a brotherly way. I nodded. "I can stay with you if you want 'cause I'm fine with not going back to class. Ms. Finnick is a scary science teacher. I do NOT want to see her do the hula dance." He shuddered.

"I'll be fine," I said, giving him a reassuring smile. "You go back to your creepy teacher." He laughed and ruffled my hair, then left for science class.

I sighed and stared at the wall. It was actually rather interesting; it was a blend of different shades of black, gray, and white. It reminded me that I was with people like me.

Suddenly, the noise of shouts filled the air. I rolled my eyes. Boys. They came like a monstrous crowd, the girls following closely behind. They sat on the bench on either side of me.

"Okay, little kiddies!" Bruno said. I cringed when he said that like we were poor little sheep. "Today we will be running through a simulation of different amounts of gravity." What? Was that even possible?

"Yeah, it's possible," the girl to my right said. I gaped at her.

"You can read my mind?" I asked. She laughed.

"No, but your facial expression tells it all," she said, then turned her attention back to Coach Bruno. 

"We will be playing hoop-ball with low, medium, and high gravity," he explained. "We'll start off with medium so that you can get warmed up and then we'll go from low to high. Understand?" he said. I nodded along with the others although I had no idea what hoop-ball even was. 

"Okay, now you can shoot hoops," Coach Bruno said, and everyone rushed to get a funky-looking ball from the bin. I got one too, and it rolled it around in my hands. It was as big as a basketball, but could be squished to the size of a tennis ball.

I ran to one of the hoops and attempted to shoot it into the net. However, the ball stuck to my hands and wouldn't come off.

"Argh! How do you get this dang thing off?" I said.

"You're new here right? My name is Noland," said a boy that, in my opinion, looked like a fox. He had cunning hazel eyes, (again, just an assumption about the color) and a pointy nose.

"I don't give a crap what your name is! Just get this stupid thing off of my hands!!" I said.

"Aren't you a feisty one?" he said. I shot him a deadly glare. "Okay, okay, you just squeeze it and it comes off." Sure enough, when I squeezed it, it fell off.

"Thanks," I said. "But how do you play hoop-ball?" His eyes widened.

"You're kidding, right? Hoop-ball is the best game, ever!" he said. "You have to get the ball into the hoop. No more than two steps at a time." I nodded and threw the ball. It slid through the net perfectly.

"Hey, this isn't that hard," I said. Noland snorted.

"You wish," he said, and right then my feet floated off the ground. I gasped and looked around. No one looked the least bit surprised.

"Low gravity," Noland explained. "Have fun."

This was going to be just great, wasn't it?