Colour Blind

chapter eight

-

What do you do when you're cornered in an alleyway with a knife to your throat being asked about a girl whom you know is in danger and that you care for but you're now dead to?

Well me, I choose to lie, the one thing we're taught as humans not to do as soon as we're old enough to understand basic logic.

"Who?" I ask, creasing my eyebrows in confusion.

"Violet Black, I saw you with her! I did!" he snarls in my face, his fouls breath raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck.

I cringe and turn away, but he forces me to look at him, digging the knife in deeper and retching my face to look at his.

"No, y-you must have the w-wrong person!" I protest, struggling slightly in fear, "please let me go! I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"Are you sure?" he asks, raising as eyebrow and dragging the blade across the skin on the left side of my neck, leaving a cut behind, "because if you're bullshitting me, I swear to god you will not live out the year."

"I am not." I confirm, and then he drops my shirt from his curled up fists, shoving me to the concrete, where I stay, not getting up.

"You'd better not be." he snarls, giving me a swift kick in the stomach, but I refuse to make a sound, so I curl back against the wall.

I don't dare to move so much as a muscle until I see that he has truly disappeared. I wince as I run my fingers across my neck, pulling them away to see them stained with dark, grey blood. I sigh and haul myself off the ground, running out of the alley into the black and white street.

My tailbone is throbbing, my stomach is queasy and my neck is stinging, but I just pull a hoodie on to hide it. I keep going, acting like it never happened, when my heart is about to jump out oft chest.

I keep going, all the way past the school, past the grey brickwork, past the rows of perfect, colourless houses and straight through my front door.

My mother is at work, as is my father, who's away for the month in America for his work, which requires him to 'be a father' through Skype. In other words, although he's my father, how good he is at it is another story, but he does Skype weekly, which is something.

I walk straight to the bathroom, my eyes meeting mine in the mirror, the skin as grey as the world around me. I tilt my chin up, examining the cut on my neck, and my fingers prod the sensitive, bruised skin on my tailbone. I sigh, deciding my wounds are not that bad.

I collapse onto my bed after cleaning the blood from the skin around my neck. My head is a jumble of thoughts, and I'm still slightly shocked, my thumping heart is proof of that.

I need to talk to Violet, but first, I need to calm myself down, so I close my eyes, steady my breathing, and try to think of something else.

I wish I never left school that morning.

***

The next morning, I'm back in the school corridors.

I keep my head down, drifting through the crowd unnoticed, but my eyes scan the grey faces for the one belonging to Violet Black. I look for her closed, grey eyes, her long, dark hair, but it's impossible in the sea of impatient people.

I finally spot her, after maths, I run down the polished floors, my sneakers sliding as I grab her arm, pulling her o the side.

"Violet, I need to talk to you!" I say quietly, but keeping my voice firm, "it's important."