Yellow (editing)

Almost the Beginning

The first actual moment I realized that Orenda may or may not have been my wonderwall was in sixth grade, on a damp bench in a toddler park. I had forgotten about her quite a bit already, only her smell and the way she screamed, "I'm waving at you!" still remained etched in my memory, so who better to spill all my confused feelings to than my best friend.

        Egan Gray was one of the greatest friends any boy could ever ask for. The only problem about him was that he had the worlds' smallest ego, which, admittedly, was not too bad. I just had to spent a lot of time telling him that he was good, he was loved and he was helpful; which is a hard thing for a preteen boy to do without it being awkward. 

        He was also the reason I first started calling myself 'Finn' instead of 'Finnegan', since Egan's name was exactly how my name ended. Apparently I couldn't just go around and say, "hi, I'm Finnegan and this is Egan. It may sound like I just repeated the last bit of my name but I assure you, that is not how it goes."

       At least that's how Egan wanted it, so, being the good friend I was, I gave up the freedom and called myself 'Finn Annson', even though it sounded like 'financing', which was something I wasn't too keen about.

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Egan and I were playing video games down in my basement after I had finished my oh-so-hard sixth grade braille essay when I remembered Orenda yet again, and I immediately stopped playing because I felt like I missed her so much. Considering the fact that I had only ever met her one time, and at six years old, it was scary and not at all normal. I hadn't thought about her until that very moment, when the monitor (I called her Tory) said, "the zombie is nearing you. It is passing through the flowers. Press the upper left button to throw a smoke bomb to confuse the zombie and dash ,or press the button on your right to kill it with your shotgun, in 5, 4, 3..." 

If I was to describe what it felt like, it would be: my heart was aching and I wanted to play tag with her again and eat her mom's lasagna and I wanted her to 'wave' to me. It was a weird feeling.

       "Stop the game." I mumbled, fumbling around with my controller to find the pause button.

        "What are you doing?" Egan asked me, his high pitched voice drowning out the sound of the guns shooting.

        "I just remembered something." I pressed the pause button and the familiar robotic voice of my monitor sounded, "game paused."

        "Finn, I was just about to blast that zombie's head! And you could've thrown the smoke bomb!"

        "Sorry. I just remembered something, that's all."

        "What was it?" Egan's voice altered from the I-was-about-to-behead-that-zombie voice to the soft voice that he would use whenever I had a problem or if I accidentally tripped on a ledge. 

So, being the kind of person to trust anyone and anything, I told him everything about Orenda May Castellano. At least, everything that I could remember about her. Even though my memory was probably more advanced than an elephant's, it was hard to remember every single detail. But, I remembered enough to be able to tell Egan that I was slightly obsessed with a then 5-year old girl, which was strange. It was also strange that Egan didn't blurt out that Orenda would've been a sassy 10-year old at that time and most likely covered in cooties.

        The main reason he didn't say anything was probably because he was actually listening. I could tell that he was listening because I could hear Egan's leg thumping quietly and rhythmically on the floor, and that always meant he was listening or he needed to take piss. In that case, I was pretty sure he was listening because I talked for a heck of a long time, and I don't think he would've been able to hold it in for that long.

        "...and I miss her. Is that weird?" I finished, and realized that I had asked a rhetorical question. Of course it was weird to remember some girl you had a playdate with a long time ago. It just was. Egan's leg stopped thumping and he sighed. In such cases, I would laugh and call him 'thumper'. Well, until we realized later on in life that it sounded a whole lot like 'humper', but that's not the important part.

        "That's weird, but not as weird as me."

        "You're not weird, Egan. You're cool." Getting called 'cool' by someone back then was like the best achievement ever, but Egan didn't buy it.

        "I think she's your wonderwall." He changed the subject.

        "What's that?"

        "It's like a person you really like and you're a little obsessed with and stuff." He answered, and then shouted, "let's keep playing! I'm gonna blast his brains everywhere, just watch."

        "Watch?" I laughed, and he did too.

        "Sorry. I forgot."

        "It's alright. I'll watch you fail, you big butt." We laughed again, because that was what eleven year olds laughed about, wasn't it?

I unpaused the game and Tory said, "game unpaused," and we kept playing until Egan recommended us to go outside and play in the park. He was always the kind of person to promote physical exercise, considering that fact that he was - and these were his words - slightly on the severely obese side. 

        "Going down the stairs now." Egan told me, deadpan. Every single time we walked down those stairs he would tell me that we were. It's cheesy to say this but, I loved Egan like a brother, and he was caring and he was awkward (just like I was) and he slowly began to be as obsessed with Orenda as I was, which was good and bad.

        "The thing is, I don't like her. You know that, right?" I clarified, and continued swinging my white cane around.

        "Dude, you're soooooooooooooo in love. So in loooooooove." Sometimes Egan could get a bit irritating.

        "How do you know?"

        "I just know! You're in love!" He said in a sing-song voice, snickering.

        "Ew! Stop! I don't like her! AT. ALL." I retorted, my face burning up.

        "You like her. Just admit it." He giggled, "Finn and Orenda, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" Egan yelled at the top of his lungs, and I had to shove him to shut him up.

        "Just like you and Lauren!" I yelled back. "You guys are going to get married and have kids and all that gross stuff. Not me and Orenda." I spat out, getting more and more annoyed by the second. Naturally, I used Egan's neighbour as a defense mechanism.

        "Lauren is so gross. Yesterday she picked her nose and then guess what she did?"

        "What?"

        "She ATE it. In front of my face. Then, she said, 'mmhmm. That's a good booger, the best one yet.'"

        "Gross!" I shouted, and we laughed, then sat down on the damp bench that was right next to the slide that was still wet from the rain the other day.

        "Girls are gross, Finn. I hope you don't like Orenda."

        "I hope so too."  

But hoping didn't work, not that time. That was it. All of a sudden, I felt like I needed her to be with me, and I thought about how she smelt like flowers and how she talked in a bubbly way and I just smiled.

        She was my wonderwall, and there was no resisting it, no matter how hard I tried.