Shades of Gray

Tree sap dripped from the brown bark. The wind picked up into great magnitude and then died again. Leaves rustled and were blown about by invisible unpredictable forces that could change direction in a moment. The moon was full and it shone illuminating the dark trees. The atmosphere was unusually still. Not a single animal moved. Not a single bug chirped. Dark shadows were in great numbers. They twisted and turned in agony as the wind having power over them wavered in the air. In the great imagination one could imagine dark shapes darting between trees, keeping out of open areas desperate to not be seen.
The school bell ran. Everyone got out of their seats and bolted for the door. They were all pushing and shoving trying to be the first to get out of the cell which had kept them imprisoned for the last seven hours. Now that they were free they scrambled to regroup with the people they trusted. Just like soldiers after a bloody battle. This was how Whitney saw the world. She saw everything in black and white at first, but later she always saw the shades of gray that people kept hidden from others, sometimes even from themselves.
People slammed lockers while still chirping on about things of no great importance. She could feel one, it was coming towards her. A girl with red shoulder-length hair and dark eyes walked towards her. Her clothes were plain and simple. They spoke no great boldness. Oh they spoke a statement for sure, the statement was “Please don’t look at me. I’m invisible.”
“How’s it going?” Whitney could hear the sadness practically seeping from her words. To others though she would have seemed perfectly happy.
“What’s the matter Cassandra?” Whitney inquired. Her friend was trying very hard to seem like she was alright, but Whitney could see the misery that was expanding from her friends soul in immense tides.
“How is it that you always know when something is wrong Whitney?” Cassandra’s happy-go-lucky mask disappeared in an instant, to be replaced by sorrow. “Today in Math I got a forty percent on my Math test! Why am I so terrible at Math? My grade is going down the tube!”
Whitney turned her attention away from her friend she no longer had any interest in what Cassandra was saying. She looked around. A girl whose name she remembered was Amber caught her eye. The girl was in pain. She hid behind a mask as she smiled at all of her friends and nodded as each of them spoke. Whitney could see it though. Amber couldn’t hide it. Memories that were not Whitney’s flooded into her mind. A girl in a corner. A woman was crying. Whitney could see her pain. She could see all her worries and her stress. This girl obviously was hiding from a life she could not handle. Amber turned away from her friends as she prepared to go home.
Whitney left in the middle of Cassandras babbling. She walked over to Amber and casually fell into step beside her.
“Hi.”
“Hi, do I know you?”
“Nope you just looked a little down so I came over.”
“Oh.”
An awkward silence followed for Amber, but Whitney enjoyed the silence. It was how she liked things best. If no one was talking no one would get hurt.
Amber looked at Whitney wondering what she wanted. This girl had just walked up to her, even though she didn’t know her. So what did she want? Whitney looked at the girl she was walking next to. This girl was in pain, plain and simple. Her eyes were a piercing blue to anyone who looked at her, but Whitney could see more. Around the edge of her pupils was a rim of a dark gray. Around her left shoulder under her jacket there was a rim of gray also. Whitney wondered what was wrong with her left shoulder that she would hide it beneath a jacket.
“So what do you need?” Amber inquired.
“Oh I don’t need anything.” Whitney smiled. Amber gave Whitney a strange look.
“Well I have to catch the bus.” Amber walked off to the yellow bus that would take her home. When she had sat down she began to think about the strange girl who had mad her feel… Wanted? Strong? The girl had not said anything useful but just by being there, had made her feel calm. Amber thought about her life at home. Her parents were always fighting with each other. Her siblings were always crying too, because this upset them. She walked in on her mother sobbing uncontrollably. Her father started staying out later. He had hit her. It hurt her shoulder. She rubbed the spot that was sore on her left shoulder. What was the matter with her family? It was dead and broken.
Whitney walked back inside the school. She didn’t know what she could do for the girl except for be there. She got her stuff from her locker. Looking into the locker a memory made its way into her mind. This time it was her own.
The wind howled. She could hear it. There was a fire. It was controlled inside a ring of gray stones. Whitney could feel the aftertaste of s’mores in her mouth. A woman was holding her on her lap, as her mother held her in her loving embrace. There was also her father, both were singing campfire songs. They were singing to her, teaching her these songs. The child Whitney tried to follow along with these words. She could not. She was too young. She was old enough to walk though. She spotted something in the grass. It was moving, and as with all children she was fascinated by this thing. She stood up on her tiny, chubby legs. She headed for the wonder in front of her. It was chirping it’s song, and it’s warning.
Her baby eyes missed a tree root lying on the ground, ready to ensnare. Her foot caught on the root, and she fell down, down, down, hitting her head right on the gray rock. Gray it was gray.
She was pulled out of her memories by her sister Melissa.
“It’s time to go!” Melissa cried. Melissa was always happy when she got to go to “the big kid’s school.” Whitney followed her out to the car.
They arrived at the doctor’s office the right on time. Whitney was put under the machine as they took x-rays of her skull. Whitney remembered her parents telling her why she had to go to the doctors so often. She had damage on her brain. Her frontal lobe was inflated, and her cognition was different. Her cognition made her perceive and understand things differently. She realized now she was nothing special. Just a victim of an accident.
Whitney was helped of the table by some doctors. Her mother checked out with the receptionist.
“So anything wrong with me today?” Whitney asked with just a hint of sarcasm.
“Same as ever.” Whitney guessed her mother missed the sarcasm. Nothing was ever wrong, so why did they keep coming? Whitney pondered this but said nothing. So they went home.
At home Cassandra called Whitney. They talked for a while about stuff, as can be stereotyped for girls. They hung up later and went to bed. Whitney’s dad was working late tonight so she wouldn’t see him. He was a doctor and he had to work a lot. Whitney loved her dad. He had always been there for her when she needed him. She loved to be with him so much because he was indifferent about unimportant things and was very calm under stress. He hardly ever was gray, and he comforted her because of this.
The next day at school was one in which held many surprises for the Whitney
Math was definitely the most boring subject. Every one in the class was thinking the exact same thing. Whitney was stuck working on some algebra. Her mind was in a haze. What did this mean? She had no clue what was going on as the teacher lectured on and on. She began thinking up excuses to get out of class. Bathroom? Drink? Bloody nose? She began to raise her hand to try out some of her fabulous excuses but at that moment the phone on the teacher’s desk rang.
The teacher picked up the phone and he picked it up. He nodded at the things the person was saying. Then he put down the phone again.
“Whitney please go to the office.” He said in his boring voice.
“Why,” she asked, “do I need to bring my stuff?”
“Yes, the secretary said so.”
Whitney left the room with the stares of her classmates behind her. She walked down the halls to the office. She could see her mother talking to the principle. Whitney could only see the back of her head, but she could see the gray in her mother’s aura that surrounded her person. Whitney knew something was terribly wrong. She dashed into the office and looked at her mother. She was crying, tears were falling down her cheeks droplets that reminded Whitney of rain fall.
“Sweetie I’m sorry.” Her mother tried to speak to her, but Whitney interrupted.
“What happened?” Whitney’s mother could not meet her eyes, so she looked at the ground instead.
“What happened?” Whitney asked again, this time with just the tiniest bit of panic.
“Honey I’m sorry but it’s your father.” Her mother seemed not able to finish her sentence.
“What happened to dad, what happened to dad?” She practically screamed. Something had happened she could see the memories. Her mother flashed through her mind. A policeman told her that her husband had been killed in a car crash. She saw her mother fall and start weeping. She saw her mother get ready to come to her school. The look in her eyes frightened Whitney. Her eyes were almost completely consumed by gray.
Whitney turned her attention back to the room she was in. Everything was deadly quite waiting for her to react. She realized her mother had already told her while she was tuned out. She looked around the room, and took one step forward. Another and another. She reached her mother. Both her mother and she collapsed on to each other crying with wild abandon, completely oblivious to the people around them that were giving her looks of deepest sympathy. Her mother reached out and patted her back lovingly, remembering in some part of her mind that she was supposed to be there to comfort her daughter.
The ride home was quite. They had taken Whitney out of school to start planning the funeral, and just because they assumed she would not want to stay.
At home Whitney left her mother in the kitchen. She walked into her room, and through herself on her bed. Her tears rolled out of her eyes. She could not keep them back. She sobbed and sobbed until she was out of stamina, and she rolled on to her back and tried to take the breaths that did not seem to be coming. She sat up for a moment and tried to fix her hair that had been scattered. It was more habit than the fact she really wanted to look pretty. It didn’t matter anymore. She looked into the mirror. Her aura was completely gray. She looked at herself with pity. Once again she threw herself on to her bed.
Whitney knew just one way to rid herself of pain, and when pain came she would always go back to her one strategy. She could help someone else, someone else who needed more help than she did. Helping someone else would help to sooth the wild rage, and hate, and sorrow that was building up inside her soul. She searched inside her head, begging someone to need what she could offer. Images flashed through her mind. A girl in Oxville, just two towns’ over, was screaming in agony as she was beaten by an angry gang. A child in Idaho whimpered as his mother slapped him. A boy was begging for food. A woman was bawling. A man was getting shot. A baby was locked in a hot car, yelling to be let out. There was another woman, no a man! He changed to a young girl.
“No!” Whitney screamed. Her head was cracking, splitting sown the middle. Images came and went, forcing themselves into her brain. She didn’t want to see them anymore. Fresh tears she thought she didn’t have poured down her face. Whitney screamed again. Her mother ran into the room as Whitney collapsed on the floor. Her sister, who looked like she had just been told, ran in too. Her mother yelled at Melissa to call 911, and her sister ran from the room. Whitney could no longer see them. All she could see was the people, the people dieing and being hurt. She Saw destruction as the suffering of the world was put on her shoulders. The people were all a dark gray. It was the dark gray that symbolized hopelessness so deep that it was all she could do not to be consumed by it. All she could see was gray. Until the gray turned to black.
Whitney’s mother stood outside of the hospital room, speaking to the doctors. She way crying as the doctors explained to her what was wrong with her daughter. Coma vigil, the words did not register. “What was that anyway?” The doctors explained to her it was a state caused by her inflated frontal lobe. Coma vigil, a state where a person is able to move, but not interact with their environment. “What does this mean?” The doctors said she could walk and move, but she cannot understand anything anymore. It was over. She was inside herself, hiding, and she was not coming out. Whitney’s mother looked through the window at her daughter. She was sitting on the bed staring at her hands. Her eyes were motionless and blank, like a blind man’s eyes. “Why does this happen?” How can she never come back? She looked down sobbing.
The nurse looked down at her patient. The girl had black hair and green eyes. They were beautiful even though they did not show any sign of emotion. The nurse had heard about this patient. The patient, Whitney she remembered now, had come in two months earlier. She had gone into a coma vigil with no explanation at all. She had an inflated frontal lobe, but she had had that for years, and nothing had happened. The doctors had been working on her since she came. They had performed surgery on her head. They had hoped for results while her mother hoped for a miracle. The nurse enjoyed the smell of the flowers that sat sat on the table by the bed. They were roses and their sent was intoxicating The nurse watched Whitney stare at a ball. The ball had a picture of a yellow and gray flower. The nurse had noticed this ball before, it seemed to contradict itself. It was very strange. She looked at Whitney again. What she saw amazed her. Whitney, for the very first time, moved by herself. She reached out and clumsily hit the ball to the side. She watched it roll across the floor. Whitney looked up at the astounded nurse.
“You’re not gray,” was what Whitney said.