MEL·A·NIN.
NOUN
A dark brown to black pigment occurring in the hair, skin, and iris of the eye in people and animals.
When we're little we don't realize the difference in each others skin color. White, black, light skinned and dark skinned. We just play tag and hide-and-seek without a worry in the world. It's not until we grow older that self hatred is influenced into our brains. Mary Jane is a girl with a big heart and a bright mind. She's one of the most loved girls in her neighborhood, but the love she has for herself slowly diminishes as she see's how her skin color has a big impact on her life. Follow her as she tries to invoke love into peoples hearts and learns more about who she is as a Dark Skinned woman.
"I'm distracted from the boy I've bumped into when the world around me begins to change. The grey and white I've seen ever since I was born into this world slowly begin to bleed away, like rain drops sliding down a car window, being replaced with bright, bright pigments. They cover everything, bring to life the world around me. The gravel underneath my feet is no longer a dull grey, the sky is no longer white, the bricks of the buildings no longer black. They're different, beautiful, bright, extraordinary, breathtaking.
Colors, I realize. These are colors."
x
Natalie Grayson has lived her whole life in black and white. She's been waiting to meet her other half- her soulmate- who will make both of their worlds burst in color. It's what she's been dreaming of ever since she was little. She wants to know what color is, how it feels, what it looks like, if it's really as amazing as everyone claims it to be.
On her seventeenth birthday, while walking back home through a sketchy part of town, she bumps into a stranger. Before she can even apologize, the last thing she expected happens: the black and white of her world begins to bleed away and is replaced with something else. Colors. When she looks up, Natalie isn't expecting to lock eyes with a rebel. But she does.
She also doesn't expect him to run away.
But he does.