I don't think I went a single day in the next month after that without wearing something rainbow. My stores of brown, red, and yellow clothes and bracelets went untouched the whole time. So did my black and white clothes and bracelets, but those hadn't even been so much as looked at in at least three years, except for the time it took me to pack and unpack them. Most days I ended up just in rainbow and green.
Kelly didn't know about my colors at that time. She just took it as granted that I occasionally switched my bracelets about for no apparent reason. The weirdest thing was that she didn't just come out and ask why I did it for the longest time. She was curious and confused about it, but she never asked. And I wasn't about to explain it unless I was asked. I just didn't feel comfortable doing it on my own.
But Tyler and the psychiatrist knew about my colors, and they knew what my choices of clothing meant. They were both happy for me, and I knew that they would both report to Mom and Dad that I was getting better. I was adjusting to school well. I had to be, since I was actually happy. And for the most part, they were right.
Of course, they never managed to catch me when I was wearing the orange. It really only came out during one of my classes. It was a drawing class, the first one the school offered that taught the absolute basics of the art. I didn't need it, but it was required if I wanted to take any higher art classes, and they wouldn't just take a look at my work and realize that I'd been drawing for years. Drawing was the one thing that I'd been doing since before the Incident, and I'd learned the basics so long ago it wasn't even funny. But they still refused to let me skip the class.
It didn't help that every single person in that class was scared of me. There were some people on campus that hadn't heard the rumors, or had ignored them, but they were mostly people who wouldn't have anything to do with my anyway. Everyone in that basic drawing class had heard the rumors, though, and they all were more or less certain that I would turn wild at any moment and try to kill them all. Even if they never said it, I could see it in the looks they shot at me and feel it in the glares they directed at my back whenever I turned away.
The tension in that classroom was almost unbearable. If I didn't love art so much I would have just said screw it and dropped the class. But I wanted to be able to take the advanced classes, even if I didn't need them for my major. I wanted to be able to immerse myself in the creation, and to get into the advanced classes I needed to get through that one. So I bit my lip and went in the room each time, but I did so with orange on, bitter at more or less everyone in the room. My attitude toward the other students really didn't help their opinions of me, but I knew I couldn't change that even if I tried.
I was actually surprised that I made it a whole month without my mood getting dark enough to warrant red in that class. It was close. Every time I got near someone in that room I got a comment or chant from Happy. Growler even chimed in occasionally, and I was about two seconds from digging into my bag at one point when Duke decided to start commenting on the physical charms of the girl sitting next to me. I don't know why it bothered me that day, but it did.
Luckily, I managed to keep my frayed temper in check that day until I got away from that class and met up with Kelly. She got out of a class in the same building at the same time, so we had gotten into the habit of walking back to the dorm together. It was the last class of the day for both of us, something that we both were grateful for. She always had a calming effect on me, and unless things went really wrong on the walk back, I ended up without a single trace of orange on me by the time we got back to the dorm every time.
It was during one of those walks back to the dorm that she finally gave into her curiosity about my bracelet switching. I'm more or less sure that it was seeing me shuck orange bracelets left and right and replace them with green and rainbow that day that made her ask. It had been a particularly trying day, though not the one that almost had my red out, and I had ended up wearing every single piece of orange jewelry I had in my bag that day, and nothing else, except for the silver earrings that I almost never took out. That had been quite a bit of orange stuff to take off, and it had taken me almost half the walk to get it all off without dropping anything. Kelly watched curiously up until the point where I started threading my favorite rainbow choker through a green metal star decoration thing so I could put them both on at the same time.
"Just why are you always changing around your jewelry?" she asked me suddenly. "Is there a reason, or do you just do it because you want to?"
"Isn't that a reason too?" I asked as I fastened the choker around my neck and started digging through my bag for another bracelet.
"You know what I mean," she said, sounding slightly annoyed.
"Yeah, I do," I replied. "And there is a better reason than that."
"What?" she asked.
"The colors I wear match my mood," I said. "I try to be as accurate as I can, though I can't always get everything. Since I can just change clothes as often as I want to, I have to let my bracelets and necklaces do it for me."
"Why advertise like that?" she asked.
I shrugged. "It's mostly just because they kept pestering me to tell them how I felt so much when I was little," I said. "I got tired of telling them, so I decided to show them instead. That, and it gives me an excuse to have lots and lots of clothes, necklaces, and bracelets." I grinned, and she actually laughed at that statement.
"You're as bad as a girl," she commented.
"No I'm not!" I exclaimed, trying to make my voice as indignant as I possibly could. She stared at me in disbelief. "After all, girls match. I, on the other hand, am more than happy to wear horrid color combinations. Like the time Tyler almost screamed at me to go change out of the purple, red, and orange clothes I was wearing, with lots and lots of blue on my wrists. That was a pretty hectic day. You wouldn't see a girl walking around in something like that."
"Actually, I have," she commented, and I grimaced.
"It's times like those that I avoid mirrors," I said. She nodded in understanding.
"I don't suppose you'll tell me which colors mean what, will you?" she asked.
I grinned. "I think I'll let you guess," I said lightly. She frowned. "Come on! It's more fun like that. Anyway, some of them shouldn't be too hard, and I'll tell you when you're wrong!"
She thought for a while. "Red is angry," she said almost immediately.
"Yep!" I exclaimed. "But that's probably the only one that will be really obvious. I chose my colors based on the way they make me feel, not the things that people normally associate with them."
"Is green happy?" she asked. I shook my head vigorously. "Then rainbow. Rainbow is happy."
"Yeah," I said. "Tyler's always glad to see me with the rainbow out."
Right about then was when we finally reached the dorm. Kelly mentioned that she had some things she needed to take care of, on her own, and then told me that she'd think about my colors some more on her own. She wasn't going to give up on figuring out all of my colors, so she would guess some more later. But then she had to go.
That didn't bother me, because I had things I needed to do myself that day. Specifically, I had a meeting with the good doctor later that afternoon. It wasn't my usual day for a meeting, but the doctor was going to be out of town for the rest of the week. The school didn't feel safe if I didn't see the doctor at least once a week, so I got to go see him early that week.
But before that, I needed to go out and buy the things I needed to dye my hair. It had finally grown out enough for me to dye the roots with a new band of color. It looked weird at that point, since the colored part closest to my scalp was yellow. My naturally blonde hair made it look like the yellow band was even bigger, and it was starting to get on my nerves. So it was time to dye that part purple and cut off the whole purple band at the end.
I wondered if they were making Kelly meet with the doctor early too, or if she just got a week off. I'd never mentioned to her that I knew she met with the psychiatrist every week. I didn't think she'd like me knowing that, even though we were friends. I didn't think they'd make her go in early, though. From what I could tell, she didn't have any real problems, certainly not anything that would make the school insist that she rearrange her schedule just because the doctor would be going out of town. Of course, I could have been utterly wrong. It's not like I was a psychiatrist myself.
It was during my meeting with the doctor that I had to dig out my pink bracelets for the first time in a very long time. I was telling him about a history exam I had just the day before. Happy had decided that I needed help with the answers, not that Happy knew much about US history. It made for a rather difficult test, and I had been more or less mentally dead afterward, from trying to separate Happy's comments from the answers that I knew were right.
Kelly had noticed it when I met up with her after that class. She had decided that I needed to be taken out for ice cream after that, to settle my nerves. Of course, she just thought I had had a hard time with the test. She didn't know about Happy, Growler, Duchess, and Duke. And because it was part of what had happened that day, I mentioned it to the doctor before I even thought about it. It was after I mentioned it that I remembered that I wasn't going to tell the doctor I knew Kelly.
"Kelly?" he asked. His voice was full of interest, but I was never sure if it was real, or just an act to get me to talk more so he could do his job and find out if I was too crazy to be out in public or not. "Who is this Kelly? Do you have a girlfriend?"
"Just a friend," I said. "He's my next door neighbor. Kelly Larson."
"Oh, that Kelly," he commented.
I don't know what it was about that comment that bothered me so much. It wasn't like he said anything about Kelly, besides indicating that he knew her. But for some reason that I still haven't been able to figure out, his words sent a flash of rage through me. For about two seconds I wanted nothing in the world more than I wanted to throttle him for just knowing Kelly. It was intense, but it didn't last anywhere near long enough for me to consider digging out the red bracelets.
What bothered me about it was that that flash of rage was accompanied by all four voices in my head. Duke and Growler didn't seem to think they needed to use words, just a pair of low, angry growls. Duchess, with a comment about how I shouldn't let him hurt Kelly, was the least angry of them, but it was still weird, since it was the first time I'd ever heard her even slightly angry. But it was Happy that scared me.
"Don't let him near Kelly!" Happy had exclaimed. "Kill!"
Happy was mad. There was none of Happy's normal laughing, almost giddy, tone in those two statements. There was just a cold rage. And when Happy stopped being happy, things and people got hurt and/or destroyed. The last time I'd heard that kind of coldness from Happy, two nurses had been hospitalized because of me, and I'd ended up hiding under my bed, shivering with a blanket wrapped around me for almost a month.
So when I heard that cold rage that day, I was more than terrified. I didn't really like the doctor, but I definitely didn't hate him. I didn't want to end up hurting him. Luckily for my nerves, that flash of rage went away just as suddenly as it had come. It left me shaking, and just moments after it faded I went digging in my bag for the pink bracelets. The doctor had been taught my color code, and he knew what those bracelets meant, though he didn't know what had caused me to bring them out.
"Are you all right, Tristan?" he asked me.
I shivered, and wrapped my arms tightly around myself to try to warm the place inside of me where Happy's voice had chilled me. "I'm not really sure," I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling.
"Did something just happen?" he asked. "You were fine just a moment ago."
"It's better now," I said. "I just had a chilling thought, that's all." I smiled at him weakly and started thinking up something to try and fool him into thinking that everything really was all right.
When he asked me to tell him what had shaken me so, I told him a complete and utter lie about a math test I had coming up in two days. I actually convinced him that I was scared about failing the test. Of course, I wasn't even slightly worried about the test. But I managed to talk the doctor out of deciding that I was a little too unstable to stay in school. It could have been a mistake, but I desperately wanted to stay.
I was still wearing the pink bracelets when I got back to the dorm for dinner that day. As I usually did, I ate with Kelly. She was in the best mood I'd seen her in since I met her, which had the wonderful effect of erasing more or less all of the fear that Happy's rage had put in me. Halfway through dinner I was feeling calm enough to switch the pink bracelets out for a mix of blue and green.
"What does pink mean?" she asked me as I buried the pink bracelets as deep in my bag as I could possibly put them. "I've never seen it on you before."
"Scared," I said. "I wear pink when I'm scared. But only when I'm so scared that I really don't feel anything else. You know, really, truly scared."
She stayed silent for a while. I think something in my voice had dulled her mood slightly, because she looked less happy. Then, finally, after about a minute of silent eating, she asked a question that was pretty awkward in a soft voice. "If you don't mind telling me, what scares you so much that you need the pink?" she asked.
I almost didn't answer her. I didn't want to tell her what scared me. I was worried that she might be scared of me if I told her. I didn't want to talk about it either, since it reminded me too much of things like Happy's cold, angry voice, and the last time before that day that I had needed to drag out the pink. But I ended up telling her, because I heard the curiosity in her voice, and I knew exactly how she would feel if I didn't tell her. I hated being curious.
"Myself," I said. My voice was almost so quiet that I couldn't hear myself, but I could tell that she heard and understood me.
Then I grabbed my tray and left the cafeteria. I wasn't done with my dinner yet, but I had ruined my appetite. Instead, I went up to my room and got out the purple dye I had bought that afternoon and the plastic and rubber bands that I used to make sure the rest of my hair stayed covered while I dyed the inches of hair closest to my head.
Kelly found me again while I was sitting in the bathroom tying plastic around my wet hair. That wasn't too long after I left the cafeteria, but it wasn't right after either. Something had deterred her, though not for too long. Of course, she knew where to find me because I had noted on my marker board, which was on my door, that I would be in the bathroom.
"What in the world are you doing?" she asked when she saw me securing the sheet of plastic about three inches away from my scalp.
"Getting ready to dye my hair," I said as I got the rubber band as tight as I wanted it. I waved the wet purple ends of my hair at her briefly before tucking it into the plastic and wrapping another rubber band around that. "It's purple this time."
She just stared at me for a few moments, during which time I started the actual dying process. It wasn't until I was groping for a towel to wipe away the water that was starting to drip into my eyes that she finally did anything else and pressed the towel into my hand. I flashed her a look of thanks and then wiped the water away. Then I went back to applying the dye.
"Did you really kill someone?" she asked me after another long pause. She sounded almost hesitant, but when I looked up at her she didn't look the least bit scared. That was weird, since every other person, with the exception of my family and some of the doctors over the years, had been frightened after they found out. Instead she just stared back at me.
"So you finally heard the rumors?" I asked. "Took you long enough. Everyone else heard them within a day or two of school starting."
"A girl in my English class came up to me after you left the cafeteria," she said. "She wanted to warn me about you, and she said that you're crazy, that you're a killer. She said I seemed too nice to let me be hurt by you."
"She doesn't even know me, you know," I said, a little more angrily than I wanted to. I knew that my favorite pendant was shining bright orange. "None of them do. How would they know if I'm dangerous?"
"Is it true?" she asked quietly.
I fixed my stare on the floor. I could feel her eye on me, waiting for me to respond. I didn't want to answer, though. I knew that as soon as I answered I would lose my only friend at school. I was going to answer, but I wanted to enjoy a few more moments when she wouldn't hate and fear me. I was already planning on leaving the school and going somewhere else, somewhere where my brother hadn't told stories about me. Of course, I was going to have to convince Mom and Dad to let me go somewhere else, somewhere where Tyler couldn't keep an eye on me.
"Tristan," she said, her voice stern with warning. I could almost feel my pendant turning a darker orange, just as I knew I would be wearing my black jeans and one of my white t-shirts the next day, unless something really drastic happened to cheer me up.
I finally took a deep breath and raised my head to look her straight in the eyes. "Yes," I said. "It was a long time ago. I was little, and I didn't mean to do it, but I did do it."
Another few minutes passed. She didn't leave, but she didn't say anything either. I almost fled the bathroom for my room until I had to come back and wash out the excess dye, because having her stare at me like that just felt awkward. In fact, just as I was about to get up, she spoke again. "Why? What happened?"
I swallowed difficultly around the lump that had just started to form in my throat. The memories scared me. Thinking about it at all scared me. Putting it into words would just make her think less of me, and I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to explain what had happened, because I didn't think she would believe me, and that thought almost scared me more than the memories.
"I don't want to talk about it," I said. She didn't protest. She didn't even look angry. She just nodded, an understanding look on her face.
And then she sat my by side the whole time I was in the bathroom letting the dye work its "magic" on my hair. She watched as I bent over the sink and washed most of the excess dye out of my hair. She took the plastic after I snapped the rubber bands, since that was easier than trying to pull them off, and as far as I knew, she stayed in the bathroom while I went into the shower and rinsed the last of the dye out.
Then, after I got out of the shower and had re-donned my clothing, I went over to the scissors I had brought with me to trim the purple ends off. But before I could grab them, Kelly picked them up and spun me around to sit in the chair I had dragged into the bathroom. "What do you want cut off?" she asked me.
"I can do it myself," I protested.
"I can see it better," she said, and she wouldn't give me my scissors.
After about a minute of waiting, I finally gave in. "All of the purple," I said, and she started cutting. Five minutes later my hair was three inches shorter, and the ends were green instead of purple. Then she handed my scissors back to me and started picking the purple hairs off of the floor as best she could.
"Why are you still here?" I asked her. I couldn't understand it. She didn't seem scared, and that wasn't like anyone I'd ever told. She didn't even look a little nervous. I was confused, and I didn't really like the feeling.
"I live here too, you know," she said with a shrug.
"That's not what I mean, and you know it," I grumbled. "Aren't you scared? Everyone else is scared. Everyone else runs away whenever I get near them? Aren't you afraid that I might do the same thing to you that I did to the little kid who would be our age now if he was still alive?"
"Why would I think you'd do that?" she asked, her voice all coolness and calm.
"Because I don't know if I'll do that!" I exclaimed, and I realized at that point that it was true. I liked Kelly. She was my friend. But I just wasn't confident that she would never hit Happy or Growler, or even Duke now, the wrong way, and I wouldn't be able to control them. I couldn't be sure that she was safe around me, and she didn't seem to care.
"You won't do anything to me," she said softly.
"How do you know?" I asked. "I'm not sane. I'm not stable. For all you know I might gut you like a pig some day for just looking at me funny."
"You wouldn't gut me."
"You're right, I wouldn't," I said, feeling a bought of hysterical laughter creeping up into my throat. She flashed a relieved smile at me, which Happy decided to accompany with a very detailed image of what she would probably look like after having her top layer of skin and all her hair burned off. It was definitely within the top five most disturbing images I'd ever seen, and the other four had been my fault.
I shuddered, which earned me a confused look from Kelly. I ignored it, even after she asked me gently if I was all right. Instead, I grabbed my scissors, towel, and plastic and started back toward my room. She followed me, which just upset me. I didn't want her following me around, because I had realized that I really wasn't in control. I was fooling myself if I thought I could stop myself if Happy or Growler really got angry, and I didn't want her to get hurt. So after we reached my room, I threw my things inside and stood in the doorway.
"I would burn you," I said thickly. A look of surprise crossed her face, but after a few moments she realized what I was talking about. She started to protest, but I interrupted her. "That's what I do. I burn things, and people. He was one of my best friends. He was just teasing me, but I got angry, and he burned. Until he was dead. And I might do it again."
She didn't get a chance to say anything, just take on an even more surprised expression. But more than that, she looked hurt. Before she could say anything, though, I slammed the door in her face and locked it. Then I stripped, dug the only pair of just black and white pajamas I had out of the bottom of my wardrobe where they were buried underneath everything else, and put them on. I cried myself to sleep that night, swearing that I would see about getting transferred to a different school in the morning. I was freezing when I finally fell asleep, because I couldn't bear to wrap myself up in my rainbow sheets, which were usually fine, except when I dug out the colorless monochrome.