Open My Eyes

{Ch.8} Faulty Camera ✓

          Under the sunlight of a hot June day, Ignatius William Koehl put me under a spell. The mess of a birds-nest on his head, the slope of his nose, the angle of his mouth, the set of his jaw, the curve of his neck that fell into sharp collarbones and shoulders—I tried to erase it all. I blotted out the yellows, the golds, the peaches, the browns, the beiges and pinks. I replaced his details with generics: a mass of broad declines and sudden inclines. Ultimately Minecraft Steve sauntered into my mind's eye, and I burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" Iggy asked, an arched eyebrow indicating the previous silence.

I waved my hand. "Nothing. It's just – what you said. It has a sort of – of – Minecraft effect."

"Minecraft. I've heard of that. The game with all the squares where you build all those different buildings?"

"Yeah. My brother is so OCD about that game. Everything has to be absolutely symmetrical. Even the landscape." I chuckled, remembering Kae's insistence on making the sand around his property into a perfect rectangle—he'd probably spent an hour poking at the squares of sand.

"Do you have a younger brother?"

"Oh, no, he's older. He's a junior in college."

"Oh, so my age."

I just about choked on my spit. "What? You're a junior? I could've sworn you were my age."

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen. I'll be eighteen next month."

Iggy shrugged. "Close enough. I'm twenty."

"Wow." I studied him, tilting my head. "You look so young though."

He chuckled, turning to face me. "And twenty-year-olds are supposed to look old?"

I pouted and crossed my arms. "If you're older than me, you're old."

His chuckle erupted into a laugh. He let his head fall back toward the sky, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

I had to laugh with him, the sound contagious.

Around us, the number of children had dwindled to five. They dawdled, poking at the ground or chasing squirrels or picking blades of grass. Some screamed and some talked, but most of the noise was the honking of nearby traffic, birdsong, and rustling leaves.

Once sobered, Iggy threw his arm over the back of the bench and looked to me. He leaned his head into his hand as he said, "I have a question for you. It's something I ask everyone."

I hopped in anticipated and lifted my legs to sit crisscross applesauce. "Hit me."

"Can you explain the color blue to me?"

His face filled with hard lines, and my skin crawled with the sensation of his eyes boring directly into mine. The corners of his mouth dipped down.

Images of oceans and skies and delphinium petals and crayons flashed through my mind. Blue was wet and cold and the shade of his eyes.

"Can you explain what the color blue looks like without comparing it to something you see?" His Adam's apple bobbed.

"It's wet," I told him.

His mouth stuck open. He forced it shut, opened it, closed it again. Finally he murmured, "You're the first. The first who's ever had an answer."