The Color of Darkness COMPLETE NOVEL

Words

Mellifluous.

Hiraeth.

Petrichor.

Limerence.

Words are important. Vital. They change things. They create things.

Sometimes, they even destroy things.

I've been fascinated with words since I was a kid.

Enamored.

Captivated.

When I was eight years old, my mom entered me into a young writer contest that was sponsored by the local library in our small town of Dale, Colorado. When they meant "young writer", they probably should have said young adult, because everyone else who came to sign up was either in middle school or high school. That's the thing with words: you need to make your meaning clear or things may not go as planned.

Sometimes, it doesn't matter. Other times, however, the words make all the difference.

Anyway, the overwhelming presence of teenagers in the room didn't stop my mother at all. As soon as we got home from the library, she dug up her dad's ancient Smith Corona manual typewriter and settled it on the desk in my little basement room. "Here you go Andy," she had said. "You want to write? Write."

I did want to write, and my parents both knew it. See, I was practically born for words. By three years old, I had breezed through most of Mary Pope Osborne's The Magic Tree House series and had moved on to my dad's old Boxcar Children books. I loved to read more than most kids love ice cream and cartoons at that age. By the time I hit first grade, I could read and write better than most kids twice my age, and so I skipped a grade. Skipping a grade isn't like learning to ride your bike; it's a big deal, and it's not a simple as you think. Besides, though my reading and writing skills might have been pretty impressive, my math knowledge went about as far as "Sally had two apples and Matt gave her three more; how many apples does Sally have now?" I pretty much sucked at math then, and I still sucked at it well into high school.

So there I was, eight years old and competing against several kids twice my age who had sat through classes upon classes more than I had and learned much more than I had. I didn't win. No, first prize was awarded to some sixteen-year-old girl who wrote (in my opinion) an overly cheesy love story about some girl with a terminal illness. It was cliché, sure, but I learned then the difference between words we wanted to say and words other people wanted to hear.

Though I didn't actually win, I did come in third place with my poem about being afraid of the dark. Not of being afraid of the darkness itself, but of the absence of it. When I was a kid, nighttime was magical for me; during the night, I got to dream. Our family didn't have much money when I was growing up, and I was my own source of entertainment. I wrote of my love of my dreams, and of the darkness that carried them--and it got me twenty-five dollars cash and a brand-new leather bound notebook, the only new thing I had ever owned at the time.

Once my mom discovered my skill with words, she did everything she could to promote it. She bought books by the dozens (an impressive feat, given our financial situation), made sure I always had pen and paper handy, and, probably most important to me, they just let me do my thing. I loved my mom with all my heart for it.

Being a year younger than everyone else in my class was especially tough on a kid like me. More times than I could count I showed up in the kitchen after school, "Star Wars" lunch box in tow, tears tracking my dirt-stained cheeks after being pushed down by the bigger kids yet again. My mom always sank down to her knees beside me and held me gently until I stopped crying, stroking my hair lovingly with one hand, the other wrapped warmly around my back. She worked nights as a waitress at the truck stop while studying to become a nurse, so she was always available to me during the day. No matter what I needed, she would stop whatever she was doing to help me. I thought nothing would ever separate us; my mother's love made me, an awkward, petrified little kid, feel invincible.