prove me wrong

• 16 •

"You wrote another song," my mother stated. "And?", I replied, looking disinterested from my toast. "Well," she explained, "you have not done that for a long time." I shrugged my shoulders. "Now again." My mother hesitated for a moment before continuing. "To Josh, right?" I paused. I had not thought about it while I wrote it, but as I entered, I realized I had been thinking about Josh well, even though I had not noticed. Because I did not know what to answer, I was silent. My mother gave that as an answer. "So yes," she sighed. "I heard you sing, I heard what you are singing." For a moment she visibly wrestled with herself before continuing. "It's sad, Tyler, desperate, like someone who does not want to live anymore and thinks he's going to die soon, Josh- are you sure he's doing you good?" I laughed, not realizing how absurd and meaningless her thoughts were? "Do me well?" I repeated dangerously calm. "Of course he does. Do not you dare say anything against it." She said nothing more. Then she took a deep breath, and I knew she was going to make another mistake. "Stop it, Mum," I said, before she had the opportunity to speak. "I will continue to meet with Josh and you can not help it, I need him."

On the way to the park I heard music, so loud that I feared I could tear my eardrums. After all, this was just a desperate, pathetic attempt to shut out the world. I let my eyes wander over the trees, the streets and the buildings and the people. I've always wondered how the world could be so gray when there were so many colors. Of course, I also saw blue, green, red and so on, and yet everything seemed to be obscured by a gray veil. But maybe, I thought, some people saw the world as yellow, or green. That had to be nice, right? I decided to ask Josh about it when he was in the woods.

I already saw Josh's red hair through the thickets, and my heart began to hammer in my chest. There was again this warm feeling, this tingling, which I could not explain myself. "Josh!" I called and stumbled into the clearing. Josh tore his head up from his manga. "Hey," he answered and a bright grin spread across his face, and the knot in my stomach tightened even tighter. What was that feeling? It was not necessarily bad, but it annoyed me. "Are you all right?" Josh asked, and I nodded. "With you too?" Josh nodded. It was a warm day, considering we just had April. A pleasantly warm wind blew through the forest, and over our little clearing stood the sun. "... Josh," I said sometime as we lay head to head on our backs, the sun on our faces and the warmth on our bodies. "What color is the world?"