Who Names The Colors

Prologue-The Creation of Adam

late summer-2012

"What in the bloody fuck?" Jo asked herself whilst stress eating a chocolate bar in her pantry. It had been a shit show of a day.

She'd woken up in the morning with a giant grin on her face. Her boy, her Ethan, was coming home today and she hadn't seen him in three months. Their school schedules should have lined up perfectly, the theoretical perk of having a child at university when you yourself were a professor. But her upstanding young man had taken it upon himself to get a work study job straight off in his first semester.

"Mum, I know you will help me, but I want to help you as much as I can, too. Plus, you have the baby, so there are lots of extra expenses right now," he'd told her on his first actual phone call home. Ethan was right about some things. There were new expenses. Those had more to do with the divorce lawyers than the baby, though. Truth was, other than diapers, the first couple of years were as expensive as you chose to make them. With Ethan, she had been completely on her own. Jo's parents had been livid that she was even considering keeping the baby, especially without a man. She had tried to explain that the man who had got Ethan on her was better off gone, but her mum just couldn't see how she was going to make it on her own. The lack of confidence hurt, but she'd done it. Still was doing it.

She had taken her certification tests and found a school near a housing estate. Those were always turning over teachers. And she loved it, and the students. They had shitty choices to make, but they made rational choices, whether the government saw that or not. Every couple of years, she was able to spot an artistic spirit like her own - someone with an eye. She'd take those ones under her wing and together they would find their medium and Jo would enter them in as many art competitions as she could find. She even got a few to uni that way. It also let her flex her artistic muscles, which were atrophying while she taught general courses

When Ethan got a little older, and they could afford it, she moved out a little farther, to a nice little village. Jo still worked in the city, where she could do the most good, but the apartment she could afford there wasn't a place where she could send Ethan out to play. He needed a garden and space to grow.

He'd brought Harry home when he was 12 years old. They had both been gangly boys, their feet growing faster than they were able to manage. Ethan seemed to use his size well, though. He excelled at soccer, where he had met Harry. And Ethan continued to play long after Harry quit and joined her on the sidelines instead.

Harry was a lovely, fluffy boy. He was all curly hair and teeth and dimples. His pants seemed two sizes too big and his jumpers perhaps a size too small. But he was so well-mannered, helped with the dishes and nudged Ethan when he was giving her a hard time. And he had that spark.

Harry would come 'round sometimes and find his schoolmate was not about the house. Jo would still invite him in lots of times and serve him tea and biscuits while she subtly fished for information on what her son was like at school. Harry was sweet and polite, but astute - she never got anything out of him.

One day, he came in the middle of a painting frenzy. Jo had spoken to her mother and left the conversation simultaneously riddled with guilt and full of resentment. Her mother was a pleasant person, but a dreadful mum. She seemed to like Ethan, but still loathed the idea of him. Jo was angsty and angry, and taking it out on the canvas.

"Oh, hi Harry," she answered the door breathlessly with green and blue fingertips and a speckled tee shirt. "Ethan isn't here. Think I saw him dribbling a ball towards the fields." She gestured with her head.

Harry looked her up and down. Jo hated when Ethan's friends did that, but this wasn't the same obvious ogle she had shut down so many times. His was a look of avid interest for what was on her clothes, not under them.