Annoying Author Hedging:
Spoiler:
Colors Outside of Orange
Her fingers darted nervously across the guitar’s strings, tentative butterfly-like movements that did not produce music so much as discord. With a sigh, the girl shifted the wooden instrument to what would hopefully be a more comfortable position on her lap, adjusted her seating, brushed a stray lock of golden hair out of her face, and then replayed the YouTube video.
The woman on the screen was doing her best to go slowly, explaining the chords she was playing as she idly stroked her instrument. It was her actions, not her words that Yellow was watching, hungry for the valuable information contained in those minute movements. At this point she had probably seen enough of this particular tutorial that she could recite all of the instructions from memory. Those lessons had been helpful, that much was true, but it was hard to express solely in words how much pressure you were supposed to apply to the strings and for how long. That had to be done by careful study and Yellow was nothing if not an astute observer.
That was how she had known that her feelings for Red would go unreciprocated.
The blonde-haired girl left the video playing, but her thoughts were elsewhere now. The guitar lay forgotten on her lap.
She had always been a part of his friend group it seemed, ever since Blue had brought her along to see the treehouse they were building. The older girl had been, and was still, an awe-inspiring role model and trusted confidante, but almost from the beginning she had latched onto Red. There was just something about his easy confidence and winning smile that had made her heart melt, even at six.
Two years was a huge age gap when two people are six and eight respectively, but as they grew older that difference seemed to make less of a difference. They were never in the same class, but once Yellow had started school, the three older kids stood with her at the bus stop and she was privy to all of their discussions.
When they took the traditional year off after completing elementary school to go on their Pokémon journeys, Yellow’s heart broke. It was only after they returned from their exploration of the Kanto region that a sense of normalcy returned, but then that was cruelly ripped away as soon as the first leaf of autumn turned from green to brilliant gold. They were at a different school now, and, while they still congregated at the same street corner each morning, she now had to ride her creaky old bus all by her lonesome.
Events seemed to transpire in a way that it was easy to feel as though there was a conspiracy to rip her away from these friends. The next disruption came when it was Yellow’s own turn to set out and explore the wider world. While Red, Green, and Blue had all had each other as infrequent company and competitors during their travel, their younger friend had not done much to form friendships among her own peers. As such, Yellow’s journey was largely bereft of rivals, although this was more than compensated by the close bonds that developed between the girl and her Pokémon. Some subconscious part of her had thought that spending time away from the object of her crush would nip those feelings in the bud. She had been wrong.
It was after her gap year had finished and she had become an officially licensed Pokémon trainer that Yellow’s feelings for Red began to crystalize into something more solid that mere affection. A year away from each other, with only occasional letters and one video call to keep in touch, had seen both of them change. She was, if still not even close to an extrovert, far more confident and willing to speak out, even if it meant drawing undue attention to herself. (After commanding Pokémon in battle, she could not imagine why she had ever thought of raising her hand in class as a terrifying prospect.) As for Red… Red had become very attractive to put it mildly.
Eleven and thirteen was still too large of a gap it seemed, so Yellow had held her tongue and remained a mostly silent observer of his talent on the baseball diamond and his even more charismatic way of just being himself. After she returned, Yellow would catch herself staring at him sometimes. She daydreamed about what it would be like to be held in his arms. And when he laughed at something she said, or for that manner paid even the slightest bit of attention to her, Yellow would feel her face flush bright red and she would have to stammer out a response. Despite all these obvious signs of what was blossoming into a full-blown crush, Red seemed to be oblivious to it, unaware of how much it hurt her when he offhandedly remarked that she still looked like a boy after a particularly bad haircut or of how much her heart had soared when he had given her a new set of high-quality colored pencils for her birthday. Green seemed to pick up on whatever weird aura she was giving off, but beyond a simple grunt or a strategically raised eyebrow underneath his spiky hair the boy was as unreadable as ever. If she had been in her right mind, Blue would have undoubtedly teased her relentlessly, but the older girl seemed to have caught the same disease as Yellow. Sometimes Yellow would see her making eyes behind Red’s back, and other times her attention would be directed towards Green.
Everything was getting very confusing by then. Yellow would spend what seemed like weeks thriving off of a single act of kindness from Red like when her Butterfree had sustained herself while waiting to emerge from her cocoon. Somedays she would want to tell Blue everything and ask for her advice, and somedays Yellow would shun her over some slight, real or imagined.
Like when the older girl had kissed Red.
Yellow stopped the video now and gingerly leaned the borrowed guitar against the wall so that she could lean back in her chair. Back then, the news had awoken such a white-hot anger in her that it seemed like it belonged to another person. Now, however, the memory just elicited melancholy regret for how naďve she had been back then.
Back then she had had no idea about how complicated things were between her three older friends. She had taken it for granted that the start and end of the trio’s dynamic all occurred in front of her but seeing how much they had changed after her year away had opened Yellow’s eyes to the dizzying Spinarak web of memories and feelings between Red, Green, and Blue.
Blue claimed on a twilight evening later that summer that she had only kissed Red as a test, a prank, a jab at Green, and a thousand other excuses. Whatever the real reason was, and Yellow now suspected that the older girl herself did not know it, it didn’t matter. All that mattered then was the sight of the two of them obnoxiously close together and the feeling of total powerlessness. She was supposed to have become confident and strong after her journey, so why did such a simple stupid betrayal still have the power to break her heart?
The next blow came shortly before school started back up. Red and the others were going to start high school, leaving her in the junior high by herself for two years without even the small comforting ritual of waiting at the bus stop to salve their friendship. Yellow had tried to convince herself that she was still too angry at the lot of them and their stupid hormonal drama to miss them, but that feeling could not even be maintained through lunch of her first day back. She had no one to sit with, and it looked like she was in danger of turning back into the shrinking violet she had tried so hard to stop being.
Enter Silver and Gold.
The two of them were in her grade, and in fact had been in class with her back in primary school. While she had chosen Kanto for her journey, they had toured the Johto region instead, challenging the gyms and forging their friendship over the course of uncountable battles alongside or against one another. Most importantly, the two of them operated on the fringes of the student body, largely owing to their reputation as a pair of hoodlums and future criminals.
Rumors like that made Yellow loathe to accept their invitation to sit at their lunch table that first day, but when Gold, silently backed by his friend, extended the offer again on the second day, she decided to accept.
It was probably the best decision she made in her life up to now.
A large part of their infamy was well-deserved; Gold was a first-rate scam artist and gambler while Silver’s talents for outright filching was almost more impressive than it was concerning. The two of them got into fights with an alarming frequency, eschewing Pokémon as often as they used them, and even coming to blows with one another on several occasions. All of that was not easy to overlook, but Yellow did so because they were genuine. The two of them wore their hearts on their sleeves, whether it was Silver’s constant litany of cynical jokes whispered to her during lessons or Gold’s bold strategic decision to ask out every girl in their grade at some point or another, including her. When she had said no, Gold had simply grinned and said, “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Gold and Silver made her feel like part of a group, and not as a junior member either, but as a full partner. In return, she tried to keep them at least somewhat on the straight and narrow. Red and Green were skeptical about Yellow hanging out with two hooligans and Blue’s distaste for Gold was balanced only by her lingering affection for Silver (he was another kid that she had babysat for apparently). The disapproval of the older kids stung sometime, but they were in another world now and their paths crossed with Yellow’s less and less.
After a year, Yellow found out that she had not been the only one making friends outside of her year. Gold and Silver had a friend, Crystal, who was a year younger than them. Despite her primary role being a combination of tutor and answer bank, she also managed to hold her own with the two rowdy adolescents. Initially, Yellow was worried that the blue-haired girl’s return would presage some conflict that might see her pushed out of the group again, but such fears proved mercifully unwarranted. Crystal was a sweet girl and Yellow found her a valuable ally in trying to prevent the most egregious of the boys’ bad behavior.
That was not to say that she and Crystal were unblemished paragons of virtue. They had certainly helped out more than once, albeit begrudgingly, with some of Gold and Silver’s schemes. And those two were hardly the unrepentant thugs that they pretended to be. After all, the guitar that Yellow was trying to learn how to play on was Silver’s. He had leant it to her just this week after he had managed to pry the reason for her recent weirdness out of her. It seemed like he had been down where she was at some point because he had just listened and asked if she wanted to know what had helped him get through things. That still-fresh memory made Yellow smile softly. Though he would deny it to anyone, the red-haired boy was surprisingly sweet underneath his brusque exterior.
Maybe she should have seen it coming, but it was hard. She had carried a torch for Red for more than half of her life. Sure, fourteen was as far away from sixteen as eleven was from thirteen and as six was from eight, but only in absolute terms. More abstract factors mattered too, she had thought. She would be going to class in the same building as Red for the first time in two years. He and Blue had started driving to school (Green, in a turn of events that had baffled everyone most of all him, had failed his test and would have to wait months to try again for his license), and it would only be natural for Yellow to join their carpool. It also was important that high school was a different world socially than junior high. Dating would stop being the exception and start being the norm, and who better to date than an old friend. Especially, Yellow had noted with the small amount of relish that she had allowed herself, since there was no chance of her being mistaken for a boy now with her long flowing honey-colored hair and now-womanly figure.
All of those hopes had risen up in her like a massive tidal wave, only to be dashed against the rocks of reality. Two years had passed, and things had changed. Not everything, of course. In the most basic facts of his striking good looks and contagious self-assurance, Red was still the boy she had been pining for since before she knew what the feeling was. But it was impossible for him to keep his light hidden from the world. That wasn’t the kind of person he was, and that wasn’t the kind of world that high school was. So when Yellow went over to his house for the first time in an eternity to ask him about the carpool, she had been met with a truly unpleasant shock.
Red had a girlfriend.
Her name was Misty. Yellow had discovered the identity of her unwitting competitor when Red opened the door and made introductions. In an instant, all of the changes that Yellow had gone through were revealed for the hollow lies that they were, and she was back to being a terrified little girl faced with a reality too big and brutal for her. All while she sat on Red’s couch and heard the couple’s stories, the young teenager’s head was swimming and it took everything she had to stop herself from screaming, or crying, or anything else that might give away how her heart was breaking. Misty was a good-looking girl, even Yellow in her black state of mind had to concede that. Where the blonde was petite and delicate, the red-head was leggy and athletic. Misty was at least a foot taller than the other girl with skin kissed just right by the still bountiful summer sun, but that wasn’t the worst thing about her. The worst thing was that Yellow couldn’t hate her. She seemed like such a nice person and the way that she and Red interacted seemed so comfortable and easy. It was a far cry from the awkwardness that characterized the few wonderful and terrible times when Yellow had been alone with the object of her affection.
Their relationship was easy, that was all there was to it. And so Yellow had gotten the information for the carpool (which Misty was not a part of, thank God) and politely excused herself to go home. She had cried, yes, and that did not make her feel any better. All that did was add a feeling of guilt for being so petty and self-pitying to her already foul mood.
As the last few days of summer passed away into eternity, the prospect of starting her freshman year, with all of the potential for increased contact between Red and his girlfriend that that entailed, loomed larger and larger. When her sketchbook lost its escapist wonder and her school supplies had all been painstakingly assembled and exhaustively evaluated, Yellow had finally left her self-imposed isolation to see Gold, Silver, and Crystal.
As soon as she met them at the school to figure out what they were going to spend a gorgeous August day doing, Yellow found herself if not exactly happy at least more open to the concept. Her fugue did not dissipate entirely, but it was largely forgotten in the excitement of the simple teenage pastime of hanging out with her friends. If Yellow had been a little slower to laugh at jokes and prone to furrowing her brow at the sight of couples walking hand in hand, none of her friends said anything or gave any indication that they noticed.
At least this was the case until Crystal pulled her friend aside under the pretense of needing Yellow’s advice on getting a new outfit or two. Once the two girls were safely ensconced in the protective bubble of women’s apparel into which Gold and Silver were understandably afraid to probe, the blue-haired girl looked at Yellow, smiled softly, and asked, “Are you okay?”
Coming from Blue, Yellow would have interpreted these actions as a ploy, a cynical maneuver to assemble some gossip or material for teasing. Crystal’s sincerity seemed self-evident though, and the combination of the look of concern in the younger girl’s eyes and the realization of how diverged her feelings about her two groups of friends had become broke through the surface appearance of gaiety.
Yellow spilled out as much as she could, trying her best to lay things out in a logical chain of events but knowing that she was backtracking and repeating herself in spite of those efforts. It was an effort that was made even harder by Yellow completely expunging her feelings for Red from her story. Crystal, to her friend’s eternal gratitude, listened intently and seemed to follow things well enough, tracing out the threads of friendship, affection, and isolation that had led up to Yellow’s current mindset. Like any great friend, she offered just the right number of platitudes. If she knew that Yellow was not telling her the full story, Crystal let it go without comment.
The two of them rejoined the other half of their ensemble just in time to prevent Gold from setting off some firecrackers that he had snuck into the shopping mall after saving them for over a month just for this purpose. The rest of the day passed in the halcyon fashion that is recalled decades after the fact without much detail other than the quiet assurance that it was a good day.
That Yellow could not bring herself to share her feelings regarding Red with Crystal troubled her, but not enough to spoil the time spent with her friends.
It was not entirely intentional, but Yellow ended up completely shunning her older neighborhood friends in favor of her new group. Days were spent in a happy haze of talk, play, and mischief. The only threat to the young teen’s bliss was the calendar on her fridge at home which steadily was counting down the days until the first day of school.
Yellow’s recollections were interrupted by the gentle buzz of her cellphone in her pocket. She fished it out and read the message that Silver had sent her: “how goes the rock n roll?”
She smiled and her thumbs flew across the touchscreen, typing out, “Not good. Don’t know what I’m doing :)”
For a few seconds, the phone showed that Silver was typing, but the reply was paradoxically short: “Can I help?”
Yellow hesitated, but after her brown eyes darted from the guitar to the video that she had watched over a dozen times and then back to the borrowed instrument there was only one sensible answer. “Yes! Hurry!”
The prospect of help reduced the urgency of learning the instrument considerably and Yellow felt perfectly justified to stand up and go to the bathroom to make sure that she was looking presentable. While she was brushing her hair, Yellow’s mind wandered again to the past week.
Despite repeated offers from her parents, Yellow ended up being driven to school by Blue. Green was riding shotgun and Yellow was sitting in the back next to Misty, with Red on the other side. Before getting into the car, she was worried about reverting back to the timid and silent girl that she had worked so hard to shed. Indeed, for a few minutes, it appeared as though things were trending in that direction. Stilted conversation accompanied Yellow’s reintroduction to the group as the other passengers worked to adjust the dynamic to accommodate this new factor. By the time that they arrived at the high school’s parking lot, however, Yellow had miraculously been able to hold her own, getting a crash course in the teachers and cliques of this new environment and even fending off a few of Blue’s barbs. As for Red, he seemed content to listen, aside from adding in a few affirmations of what others said, and Yellow was fine with not engaging him any further. In fact, during the ride she said fewer words to the dark-haired boy than to his girlfriend.
They all went their separate ways after that. Yellow met up with Gold and Silver to wait out the last few minutes of relative freedom before school officially started. For most of her day, Gold, Silver, or both were in the same classes, but there were also opportunities to meet new people. Despite any new acquaintances that she made, when the bell rang for lunch, there were only two real options for seating. Despite their waving invitation, Yellow shunned Red and his group for Gold and Silver. That choice had been surprisingly easy to make, but she still feared the fallout that might come. Despite that, there was none. The ride back to her house after school was just as cordial as it had been that morning. That was the clearest sign that Yellow had of the break. She would be with the older teenagers, yes, but she was no longer of them.
That revelation hurt, but it was a low throbbing kind of heartache rather than the violent tearing that Yellow had endured not long before. She knew that she could get through it, maybe not right away, but eventually, and it was this confidence that let her confide in Gold, Silver, and Crystal the entire story.
They listened and all offered help in various ways. Crystal baked a loaf of “feel better soon” banana bread. Gold managed to go for three whole days without landing in detention, although by then his reputation as a disciplinary nightmare had already been fairly cemented so this quiet period aroused more fear and suspicion in Gold’s teachers than anything else.
As for Silver, he waited a day and then biked over to the park near Yellow’s house between the end of classes and supper. The two of them talked a bit and he explained about how lovelorn he had been over Blue. What helped most of all in his case was music, not just listening to it but trying to put his own feelings into melodies. Not for anyone else, he insisted, but just for his own peace of mind. Then he offered Yellow the guitar he had peddled over with. It was not the prettiest instrument, covered in scratches and scuffed in several places, but for Yellow the sweetness of the act from such an unexpected source gave the guitar a beauty all its own. While she was much more of a drawer and painter by trade, she was willing to give Silver’s remedy a shot. And so it was that same guitar that he had given her that she was fumbling over all day today.
When the doorbell rang, Yellow was just retying her ponytail and she rushed to the main room to let her guest in. Silver was welcomed inside with all of the usual pleasantries, but conversation quickly turned to how Yellow’s attempts at learning how to play the borrowed guitar were going.
“Not too well,” she had to admit. “I think that my fingertips are going to fall off if I keep trying much longer.”
“Oh, well, maybe I could show you how to…” The red-haired boy trailed off.
Yellow smiled and dismissed it with a wave of her hand as she finished for him, “Actually play the guitar.”
Despite the suggestion and the whole rationale behind Silver’s visit, neither of them made a motion to pick up the sedentary instrument leaning against the wall. Before the silence could stretch on for too long and therefore truly enter the realm of awkwardness, Yellow piped up, “How about we do something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, we could go see a movie?” the blonde-haired girl pressed. “You and Gold couldn’t shut up about that new Spinarakid movie.”
One of Silver’s eyebrows rose. “You still haven’t seen Homecoming? Then we really don’t have any time to waste. Call up the others and I’ll order the tickets.”
“Well,” Yellow began, suddenly very interested in her home’s hardwood floor, “I was thinking maybe it could just be the two of us.”
“Just the two of us,” the boy repeated back dumbly.
“Yeah, kind of like a-“
“Yeah.”
They stood there for a few seconds, neither one daring to make eye contact with the other. Yellow was about to call the whole thing off when Silver said, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
Yellow smiled wide and practically skipped her way to her room to get her purse. After she returned and got her shoes on, Silver asked, “Ready?” and she nodded and took his hand. As the pair stepped outside into the midday sunlight, Yellow marveled at it all. Whatever the future might hold was still a mystery, but in this moment at least the present completely overshadowed the past in Yellow’s mind.
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