Colorblind (4 page)

As we sat outside on the front porch and he smoked a cigarette, he told me, “You’re lucky.”

“In the grand scheme of things, probably not,” I pointed out. “Neither of us is.”

“That’s true. But your dad will be around for a long time. And he seems like a cool guy.”

“Yeah.”

We sat in silence for a moment, and I coughed as the cigarette smoke invaded my lungs. Robbie apologized and scooted away from me. I could tell he was deep in thought, but didn’t know what was on his mind until he spoke again.

“So what’re you doing with this girl, Harper?”

I leaned forward and put my chin in my hands, sighing. “I don’t know.” I hesitated, and then added, “I think she might be interested in me.”

“So you’re using me as a buffer. I guessed as much. Why don’t you just tell her you’re not interested?”

“Because.” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe I am.” I paused, and then corrected, “No, I’m not. But only…”

“Because she’s going to die soon?” I squeezed my eyes shut, and my heart dropped as he turned to look at me. Hearing it said aloud made it so much more real than it seemed in my head. It ripped me right out of my own little world, where Chloe and I were on track to become best friends with a mutual crush, and dropped me right back into a reality that had declared her dead in who-knew-how-many months.

I bit my lip and nodded, but I still couldn’t help but doubt that reality. Chloe was so
alive
now. She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t depressed. She was a perfectly functioning human being who seemed to really enjoy living. It seemed so unlikely that she’d have less than twelve months left. “What if her number’s wrong, Robbie?” I asked him, even though I knew what his answer would be before he responded.

“The numbers are never wrong.”

“I know. But… maybe hers could be. Maybe I could change it this time.”

“That’s not how fate works, Harper. If she were to die at sixteen and had never met you, then that was always going to be the way her life went. But since she met you and her number’s sixteen, she was always
going
to meet you, and meeting you – as well as anything you do to her or with her – won’t stop her from dying at sixteen. You can’t make a decision that’s already been made.”

“For someone who claims to be an Atheist, you sure do sound religious when you talk about this stuff, you know,” I told him.

“I don’t base it on some religious predetermination by a God. I base it on my own personal time theory. This is the present for us, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a present in the future. And in that future present, this is the past. The past can’t change, so everything’s already set in stone. Fate knows the future, so Fate knows its past, which is our present.”

“That makes no sense, you pretentious idiot,” I groaned out. He put out his cigarette and shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s just a theory. But we haven’t seen a number change, so I’m automatically more right than you are.”

“Well, I hope that makes you feel better,” I bit out.             

“Not at all. It makes me feel like shit, actually.” He got to his feet. “Let’s go meet your friend, okay?”

“Okay,” I murmured, but I was dreading it now. When Robbie saw Chloe, her number would no longer be a message for my eyes only. It’d be a lot like how coming out had been. Sharing it with other people; saying it aloud… that made it exist in a world outside of my mind. That made it real.

We said goodbye to my dad before we left, and he seemed particularly interested in how long we’d be gone, which was unusual. But I was too worried about Robbie meeting Chloe to dwell on it. Having him confirm her number was bad enough, but what if he saw something more? Something I hadn’t noticed? A slight limp in her step, a twitch in a muscle. Something that could somehow indicate she wasn’t long for this world.

I hadn’t spent much time with her yet, but she was so lighthearted and just…
normal
, and it was impossible to imagine her life would be cut short by anything other than a terrible accident, especially after her adrenaline junkie confession. But terrible accidents were much easier to prevent than medical anomalies. That was a comfort, albeit an extremely miniscule one.

Chloe’s father answered the door with a knowing look in his eyes and spent a lot more time introducing himself to me than to Robbie. Robbie was an afterthought. Robbie wasn’t the person Chloe’d come home raving about, and the knowledge that came with Kent Stephens’s excited greeting and eager shake of my hand made my heart thud harder in my chest.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I managed to get out before Chloe appeared behind her father. She grinned at the sight of me and, instinctively, I smiled back.

“Nice to meet you too, Harper. You guys will be back before dinner, right?”

“Yes sir. I’m driving,” I told him.

“She won’t run me over this time, I swear.” As if to remind me further of that particular mishap, Baxter started barking in the background while Chloe slipped past her father and out through the front door. Kent looked like he wanted to talk more, but with Baxter fighting to get outside to be with Chloe, he thought better of it and bid us a quick goodbye.

“You told him about that?” I asked her when he was gone.

“More in the context of Baxter’s latest antic,” she reassured me, and then turned to smile at Robbie. “Hi. You’re Robbie?”

“Yes.” Robbie’s eyes were fixed to her forehead, and I shifted uncomfortably, willing him to just be normal. I could see the fleeting worry in his eyes and knew instinctively that he was thinking of his sister, and of how young she’d been when she’d died.

Chloe, I was beginning to notice, liked to take control of awkward situations. She bailed Robbie out with a quipped, “So how long have you two been dating?”

I scowled at her, and Robbie shot me a confused look.

“She’s kidding,” I explained.

“Not entirely! No way are you single. C’mon, you can tell me. If we’re gonna be friends, you’ll have to start being honest with me eventually.” She raised an eyebrow at me, straight-faced, and I tried in vain to keep my scowl on and resist blushing yet again in her presence.

Robbie bumped my shoulder, abruptly startling me out of Chloe and I’s staring contest. “If we get there before three o’clock, there’s a discount. Laser tag’s half price from noon to three.”

“Sounds great,” Chloe cut in before I could speak. “Let’s go.”

She left without waiting for a response, walking straight to the car with her purse swinging off of her shoulder. Robbie nudged me and, sounding far too empathetic, murmured, “She’s not even trying to hide that she likes you.”

I felt my heart twist in my chest and tried my best to forget what he’d said as I moved to climb back into my car.

* * *

The entrance to laser tag was off in the corner of the arcade and had small wisps of smoke leaking out of it. I’d done this a few times before. The room was large, maze-like, filled with smoke, and square-shaped, with several winding hallways connecting scattered open areas. The walls that enclosed the hallways were tall and impossible to see over, but the ones in the open areas were waist-high and could serve as barricades or hiding places. The entrance was in one corner of the room, and in each of the other three, there rested a slightly raised, base-like structure where players could hide out and scope for “enemies”.

It was a slow day at the arcade, and so Robbie, Chloe, and I were suited up for a three-way free-for-all match.

“Go easy on me, guys,” Chloe laughed as her vest was activated by a male employee. “I have no clue what I’m doing.”

“We’ll team up against Robbie,” I joked.

“Fine with me,” he said and then darted into the smoky room without further warning, leaving Chloe and I behind.

“You’ll know you’ve been hit when your vest lights up and starts beeping,” the man who’d been helping Chloe explained once she’d been strapped into her vest and handed a gun. “For that time, your gun won’t work and you can’t be shot again. But after fifteen seconds, the lights will turn off and you’ll be back in play. We keep score out here. You guys have twenty minutes starting from when your friend ran inside. Have fun!”

“Sounds easy enough.” She adjusted her vest and then smiled over at me. “See you inside!”

And then she was gone. I waited a moment, turning my laser gun over in my hands, and then, when I was certain I’d given her enough time, rushed into the room.

It was hard to see anything, but I could already hear the sounds of rapid laser-fire. That had to be Robbie. A distant “Dammit!” from Chloe a moment later confirmed it, and I laughed loudly as I ducked around a corner and saw her standing in one of the open areas, her vest flashing and beeping wildly. She spun around, free hand on her hip and poised to chastise me for laughing at her, but I ducked behind the wall again as Robbie fired at me from somewhere in the open space.

“Run, Chloe!” I reminded her.

“Oh. Yeah. Thanks!”

Robbie chuckled as her footsteps faded. He sounded close. I peered around the wall again, keeping my torso and vest behind the wall, and squinted through the smoke. A shadow caught my eye near a short wall less than twenty feet away, and I mashed the trigger of my gun several times until Robbie’s vest lit up. He murmured a curse and hurried away.

We continued like that for a while. Our laser tag match essentially became a competitive hunt for Chloe, who basically ran around like a chicken with her head cut off, vest flashing wildly during her fifteen-second cool downs. Occasionally Robbie and I would shoot at each other once Chloe had been hit and had wandered away from us, but that was rare.

I was sure our time would be up soon after my tenth hit on Chloe and third on Robbie, and I was also relatively sure I was in the lead by exactly two shots. The winner got a fifty percent refund on their entry fee, so I was somewhat invested in beating Robbie.

He got a hit on Chloe while I was hiding in one of the corner bases, and I watched her come barreling in my direction, red lights flashing everywhere. I kept an eye out for Robbie behind her, gun poised, but he played it smart, probably guessing that I’d be looking for him to follow Chloe’s beacon of red lights. I tried to mentally count up hits in my head, double-checking the scores. He was one down now, so as long as I kept a low profile and he didn’t hunt down Chloe again, I was pretty sure I had the win.

I was kind of proud of the stunt I pulled next.

Chloe’s lights stopped flashing at last, and I listened to the sound of her footsteps as she came closer, hiding safely in my little base again. And then I heard a second set of footsteps, quieter and smoother, coming from the opposite direction. Robbie’d doubled back around, and she was going to run straight into him any second now.

A voice came over the intercom in the room to announce, “One minute left, guys,” and I used the opportunity to dart out, snatch Chloe by the arm just before she hurried by, and yank her into the corner with me. She stumbled into me, crushing me against the wall, and I winced as I heard her start firing wildly. The feedback from the intercom covered up her first few shots, but I wasn’t totally confident we’d escaped Robbie’s detection.

“Stop it!” I hissed, grabbing her arm and yanking it up into the air. She twisted around so that we were facing each other and, thankfully, listened to me. “Don’t shoot me and I won’t shoot you,” I explained.

She looked mildly frustrated with me as she lowered her arm, gun hanging from her hand at her side now. “You choose now of all times to team up? How many times have you shot me?”

“More than Robbie,” I explained proudly. “I think I’m up by one. I’m gonna win.”

She scoffed, and I looked down at our bodies, suddenly aware of how close we were. Her face was so close to mine that I could feel her breath, and I could tell by the hitch in it that she’d just noticed our proximity too. I tried to readjust our positions, but she stopped me.

“Shh. He’ll hear.” She was right, and her smirk told me she knew it. My heart rate picked up as she leaned in close to my ear. Her breath tickled my cheek as she whispered, “I suck at laser tag, but this is a lot of fun. Next time we should lose the boy.”

My heart hammered harder. If Robbie couldn’t hear our whispers, I was sure he’d find us just by listening for the sound of my pulse.

Chloe leaned away and reached up to tug lightly at a strand of my hair, grinning at me. She bit her bottom lip in a way that looked practiced, drawing my eyes to the motion, and then grinned wider as she dropped the strand of my hair and moved to trace her index finger up along my jawline instead. Her touch was softer now. Her thumb skimmed across my cheek and my pulse quickened to a rate I was sure it’d never reached before. My back was pressed against the wall and she was pressed against me, so I wasn’t sure I could leave her, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. My gaze hooded, I glanced back down at her lips again. She moved closer, and our noses brushed. She was going to kiss me. I closed my eyes…

And then I was twelve. I was twelve, and I was at a hospital, watching through a large glass window as the nurse on the other side quickly moved to pull a curtain across. Behind her, a team of doctors and surgeons surrounded a table my mother rested on. She disappeared from view, shielded by the curtain, but I could hear the heart monitor beeping so quickly, at a pace I was sure my own pulse could never reach. I pressed my right hand against the glass and let out a sob as my dad gripped my left…