Yellow (editing)

The Beginning of the Beginning

The day I reunited with Orenda started out as the worst possible day of my life. I had accidentally lost my braille homework underneath my clothes, and I even resorted to asking my mom to help me find it. My glasses kept slipping off of my nose, until I figured that one of the nosepads had broken off, and I had to wear the glasses I had from sixth grade - which was already too small and even a bit crooked because Egan threw a basketball at my face.  

        "Don't worry, Barry won't even check for your homework today." My dad tried to reassure me, but I knew Barry (my braille tutor) was going to check my homework and his fingers would slide along the hard, bumpy paper with the utmost grace, finding all the mistakes I made. I usually made a lot of mistakes.

        "Yes, he will, dad. He always does, you know. And it's not even the braille I'm worried about, it's my glasses!"

        "So? What's wrong with your glasses?"

        "For one, they're so tight it feels like my brain is being compressed and I can already hear my own thoughts. And two, last time I wore them, Egan said they looked weird."

        "They're fine, and frankly, if you can feel your brain compressing, it usually means you have one!" My dad laughed his deep laugh and patted me on the back with his big hands, and I laughed along. My dad was the kind of person to see the good in everything; ever since his boss got fired and he got promoted to boss people around. I liked him that way, happy and excited about getting to work everyday - even if it was just to file papers - because I believed that the whole point of doing anything was to like it. What was the point of doing things if they made you glum?

        "But dad, I don't want to wear them."

        "Fine! If you won't wear them, I will!" He grabbed them off of my face and I flailed around, trying to feel them.

        "CHILD ABUSE, CHILD ABUSE!" I screeched, and he returned my glasses to me.

        "Now, glasses or no glasses, Finn?"

        "Glasses. You win."

So, after that, Barry came over and kinda sorta screamed at me for not finishing my braille homework. Even though I had explained to him so many times that I just couldn't find it, he kept saying, "excuses won't make you a successful human being, Finnegan." I knew well enough that I wasn't going to be successful anyway, so I didn't see the point in avoiding excuses. Really, they were the only things that kept me alive.

        After my class, my mom decided it would be a good idea to go somewhere in honour of me pissing Barry off. "Want to go to the mall?" She asked me.

        "No," I replied, sighing as I felt around for my braille machine. Dad handed it to me, eventually.

        "What about the aquarium?'

        "No, and what's the point if I can't even see the fish? They only smell like algae and sh-"

        "Finn. What about the park?"

        "I hate the cold."

        "That's it. I'm deciding. We're going to the zoo." She ruffled my hair and walked away, her slippers dragging across the ground annoyingly.

        "Fine, if we're going to the zoo, can Egan come to help me remain sane?"

-----/////-----

Going to the zoo that day was both satisfying and absolutely horrendous. Egan was a bit upset that I invited him, but like the good friend he was, he agreed to come and try to keep me from freaking out. The thing is, it wasn't because he was desperate for physical exercise. By that time, Egan told me that his weekly visits to the community gym had paid off. Whenever he told me stories about his adventures in regular school, they were always filled with conversations like:

        "Wow, Egan, you're so hot! You're almost hotter than this Tabasco sauce the cafeteria lady put on my mac and cheese!"

        "Egan! So, my friend's a bit shy, and I was wondering, can you..."

        "Egan Gray, will you marry me please and we can live in a penthouse in New York and eat street hotdogs that are molding, and then we can have ten children who will all be named Egan because Egan wow, Egan's a great name and Egan, oh my God I love you so much."

The problem was that, no matter how many people told him that they loved him or that they had some sort of fetish for him, it always ended up with him coming to me and saying, "why does everyone hate me?" I wasn't going to blow up at the guy because he was just naturally like this. He looked at other people and wished, wished, wished that he could be them, when in reality everyone looked at him wanted to be him. Sometimes I wanted to be him too, so then I could hear people say nice things about me. Instead, all the praise I ever got was from him and my relatives. 

        "It smells bad." Egan whispered to me in his low voice, and he coughed.

        "It smells bad indeed," I echoed, scrunching up my nose to keep the disgusting smells at a minimum. I shivered because of the cold. 

I could tell we were passing by the elephants at that time because the smell of poo was drifting effortlessly into my nostrils and I could hear a few trumpets to my left. I liked to relate myself to elephants because, (a) they had poor eyesight, (b) their hearing was marvelous, and (c) they had good memory. Nevertheless, I plugged my nose with one hand and vigorously swept my white cane along the ground as Egan and I sprinted forward.

        "So," Egan said, when we were pretty far from my parents, "what's with the old glasses?"

        "My new ones broke."

        "Dude, you can't possibly wear those glasses anymore, okay? Trust me on this."

        "What's wrong with them? Besides the fact that I can't feel my brain anymore."

        "Well, for starters, they're a light blue and the sides have tiny racecars and they really make you look like you're eleven." He explained profoundly.

        "I've chose to not care, because I don't know what light blue is and what racecars look like and I have no idea what eleven year olds look like so whatever."        

I didn't like being who I was. People always told me to "look" at things and then I would sigh, and they would say, "sorry", and I would lose yet another friend. Egan was the only one that chose to stay with me and guide me down stairs. But, it would never end, and I knew it. I cared, but I didn't at the exact same time. The idea of vision was just unfathomable to me.

        We passed by the birds soon after, a chorus of squawks and screeches and caws blasted through my ears and the clamouring of little kids mixed in with it eventually. Those sounds made my head pound, and I dragged Egan away from the birds but he insisted on staying.

        "Come on, Finn. If we're going to go to the zoo, might as well watch the - I mean, hear - the trainer feed his eagle! Come on, man."

        "Why not." I started to step forward but then I felt my white cane being whipped out of my hand. "EGAN!" I shouted, convinced that it was him.

It wasn't him, because I could hear a devilish child snickering as he ran away, my cane tap, tap, tapping on the ground.

        "Come back!" I yelled, my voice dimming around the end, since I knew there was no hope.

That was the moment. I remember it so clearly, clearer than I've remembered anything else. Her smell floated towards me as her footsteps neared, a soft pattering. I recognized her right away, but I was too scared to turn around, mostly because I didn't want her to see my glasses that were supposedly very weird. So, I stayed tense, my hands by my side, clenched together. I heard her laugh, and she was so close to me that her breath was on my neck, tickling me. It was a full laugh, almost like she was mocking my nervousness. But I didn't mind, I started to turn around, and I stopped when I felt her delicate finger on my shoulder. I smiled.

        "You're it."