Silver

Chapter 7 - then

My test results were fine. I wasn't suffering from an undetected disease.

My sister phoned my mother and relayed the results from Dr Olnivac in a very low, serious voice.

'I wasn't going to tell you this before, but mother was beside herself with worry,' Marion said as the car was driving us home along the Guardian Highway.

Somehow, I felt that mothers who are beside themselves with worry should be there with their daughter when she is receiving her test results.

'I thought she was losing the plot last night when she called,' Marion said.

'She needs to contain herself,' was all I could say.

'She went home from the hospital ... well ... because ... she was rattled ... and she didn't want the doctors ... you know ...'

'What? To see?'

'Yeah. It's too risky.'

I'd seen it once before. A girl at school. Yvonne. Her name was a vibrant red, although she had mousy blonde hair. She used to say that she knew about things before they happened. Once I saw that she'd cut the name 'Clint' onto her thigh with a knife. One day she disappeared. The rumour was she'd been 'institutionalised'. That's why I never told anyone I saw colours for things.

I worked out when I was young that people didn't see the world the way I saw it. I was six when I said to my mother, 'my eight is yellow, what colour is your eight?'. She said, 'don't ever tell anyone that. Eight is eight. There is no colour for eight.' That's how I learnt to act normal.

People who lose the plot get taken away. Microchips are for health defects, not mind defects. Mental lapses pose too much risk to society. People with mental lapses disappear.