A LOVE FOR COLORFUL LOVE

03 - Night

As if Sarah's life was a movie, she woke in the middle of the night to pebbles being thrown at her window. The noise they made was faint. It would have been silent under the usual monotonous buzz of her fan keeping her room bearable, but it had broken the previous day. No one really knows how or why; it just did. C'est la vie. The room was a strange calm, though. Sarah slept peacefully in a subtle pool of sweat, but that didn't bother her. She was only in a bra and her underwear with the blankets crudely shoved to her feet. 

Each pebble carried with it a sense of urgency and importance. They screamed for her attention while simultaneously making little noise. The noise echoed throughout the room and Sarah feared it would echo throughout the house. She rushed over to the window and threw it open.

"What the hell?" she yelled down into the darkness. There weren't any lights; Sarah couldn't see the pebble thrower.

"Are you not excited to see me?" the pebble thrower called back. 

"Agu? 

"The one and only." The moonlight found an opening in the clouds and shined on Agu, standing beneath her window, juggling a pebble.

"What are you doing here? Agu, what if my dad sees you?" Sarah legitimately feared for the life of her friend. 

"Wow, you really don't sound like you're excited to see me." The clouds dissipated perfectly, allowing moonlight to shine perfectly on the pebble thrower. Sarah had forgotten Agu's voice in the years he had been out of her life. The moments they spent together seemed to be transient lights slowly dying out. She was too overwhelmed by seeing him again earlier that day to pay attention to the quirks within his voice, but tonight, all of the memories came rushing back. "I wanted to talk to you, Sarah."

"And I wanted to talk to you too! I'm really sorry for the way my father treated you earlier. I promise he's a good man, he just gets caught up in the emotion and what his father taught him. He doesn't hate you, he just hates--"

"My skin color. I know, Sarah. I know. It's not easy living in the south and being a person of color. People like you are rare, Sarah. People that don't care about race. Those are the good kind of people. Those are the people the world needs more of." That made Sarah smile.

"It's a shame that the world has more of my father than it does of me. What did you want to talk about?" 

"I wanted to tell you something that I've thought ever since I was a kid. You're such a beautiful girl, Sarah. Ever since you've known me, you've been so loving and kind to me. You don't see a nigger like your father does. You see me. Agu. And I love you for that, Sarah, but not only that. I love your voice. The reflection of sunlight in your eyes earlier today made my heart contemplate jumping through my chest to get closer to yours. Sarah, I love you." 

Those three words resonated in Sarah's mind. Seconds went by at the speed of hours. Love. Sarah didn't fully understand what that word meant. She'd never really grown up in a community of love. A father that used physical punishment to enforce his ideology. A distant mother. A racist country. Love. What is love? 

"You love me?" she asked back, stuttering and choking on her own words. On the oxygen she so desperately needed in that moment. 

"Yes. I have no doubt in my mind." His voice was a knife cutting through the veil of the night. The calm silence of the night was replaced by an earth-moving voice proclaiming his love for his childhood best friend.

"Agu, you know I can't love you right?" 

"Why not?" He fidgeted with a pebble in his hand anxiously. "Is it that you can't love me or your father can't?" Sarah couldn't answer that last question. Her silence was interpreted by Agu as the latter part of his question. "I see," he said in his silky voice, "Well, I'm sorry to bother you. You can go back to sleep. Goodnight, Sarah." He dropped the pebbles in his hands and started to walk back to his house, head hung over in defeat. 

"Wait, Agu, please!" Sarah called out. She stuck her arm out of her window to try and reach him. Her optimism always has been her defining feature. She even exuded that optimism when trying to reach a body many arms away. "Please, come back. Please talk to me." 

"Why do you want me to talk, Sarah? You know, you've always been so kind to me no matter what. You always defended me from everybody no matter what it was that I had or hadn't done. And now, this is what's causing you to give in? You're quitting on loving me here? Even if you have never loved me romantically, I know you love me. I know it, Sarah. I just expected you'd be brave enough to explore that love." 

Sarah was speechless as Agu walked off. Her blood boiled and froze at the same time and her heart came to a screeching halt. She clutched her chest as she walked him walk into the road and towards his house. Tears fell. Inside her mind, she heard screams that no one else could hear as Agu walked into his house. Lights on. Seconds pass. Lights off. Darkness.

Sarah wanted to jump out of the second-story window. She wanted her body to break in every way possible so she could find Agu and he could build it up again and fix her like she wanted to fix her world. She grabbed the drawing that she had made earlier and stared at it. Look at them, she thought, They're so happy. How is it possible for human beings to be happy? How can human beings be so happy? How can they be happy? She ripped the paper in half and threw it out of the open window. The wind swept it away as the clouds covered the moonlight once again. Darkness. It was all around her, the darkness. She threw her colored pencils out the window and then crawled into her bed and pulled the covers up over her head. Maybe I'd bake to death under all of these blankets, she thought. That thought brought relief to Sarah as she started to drown in a pool of tears and sweat. 

Death seems to be the only release from the confines of life. It is the one universal constant that is unavoidable no matter where you run. It hides under your bed, waiting for you to fall asleep. And when you want the relief it brings the most, it is nowhere to be found, unless you're willing to grab it by the horns and drag it to you. It sees everything and knows everything. It knows when you lie about wanting to die and won't come for you if it doesn't have total control over your heart. 

Sarah wished it had complete control of her heart, but it was nowhere close.

It was on the other side of the street.