A Sky Full of Blue

Chapter 1: Slate is the Color of the Sky

"If you want to see the sunshine, you have to weather the storm."
~Frank Lane

Slate.

That's the color of the sky today. Moving day. Where I'm uprooted from my home, where I have to say goodbye to all that I've known for the past sixteen years.

The sky is full of slate -colored clouds, dripping with rainwater just waiting to pour itself from the sky; ready to quench the thirst of the land. Droplets tickle my nose, and the damp smell of earth calms my fragile nerves.

My mother appears. She reminds me of the color lemon. Yellow hair, which is so bright that it makes me squint. Sometimes it seems brighter than the sun and irritates my eyes, and I have to look away so that my eyesight is normal again. Pretty blue eyes, half the color of what I have. Curvy and petite, with horn-rimmed glasses that hide the wrinkles curving in the corners of her eyes.

She's almost always cheerful, and she reminds me every day that I need to smile. She says that it makes me look happy, and always adds that it accentuates my best traits.

I feel an emotion that I cannot place. I know the basics: happy, sad, angry, etcetera, etcetera, but I've never been good at distinguishing them when on an actual face.

I usually have this mindset when looking at emotions: picture post-it notes in my hands, each one owning its own emotion. Me putting each one on different people, trying to make it stick, trying to make sense ff what I'm seeing at any given time. It's like a game that I need to play, just to do something that people can already do with ease.

I decide that I'm feeling sad and angry at the same time. I don't want to consider the possibility that Mom, Dad, and my brother, Toby, are going to be uprooted from our suburban lifestyle to go out and live on the countryside, away from all my comforts.

I don't voice these aloud for fear that my family would consider staying. After all, I am the one with the problem, the one with the disability. I decide that being outside will only make my day worse, that the slate in the sky will dampen my already indescribable mood.

I go up the stairs to my room, counting each individual step, one at a time. I ignore step number five, remembering that step number five has a creak that I do not need to hear. The noise hurts my ears.

The brown steps, the pathway to my room, seem to close in around me. I enjoy that closeness, the feel of the walls all around me. Being packed so close that I have no choice but to tuck my legs underneath me. My chin rests on my knees and I wait for this closeness to end.

I count my fingers and wiggle my bare toes. I chip away at the sky-blue nail polish that coats the nails, deciding that I've had the same color for too long.

Toby comes up the stairs, frowning up at my figure huddled at step number fourteen. He knows that fourteen is my favorite step because fourteen is my favorite number, and it's an even number as well.

Toby is almost two years older than me, a senior at our new school. He plays soccer, and I always watch because I see that he smiles when he's on the field. He tells me that playing soccer makes him feel happy. He tells me that I make him happy too. That one makes me smile with him.

My brother reminds me of the color marigold. He's warm and inviting, and he always tells things the way they are. In simpler terms, my brother doesn't sugar coat like my parents do. He will tell me the emotions that he's feeling when I'm confused, even if they aren't pleasant ones.

He smiles at me softly before coming up the steps, and he remembers to skip number five just for me. He sits next to me, long legs almost dangling down the next few steps because he can't squeeze into small spaces like I can.