Colors

???

So I wrote this short story for my creative writing class. Don't read into it any more than the story, because its not about me, or about anyone. There's inspiration, but don't get upset if it seems one way or another. I hate that shit. Just read it like a story.



Colors
By Joe Hogue

For anyone who was watching five hundred and thirty five feet below, they might have caught one of the stray feathers that fell from above serenely in the silence like snow. No wind blew that day, no tears were cried. No one believed Lauren to be what she told us she was. They knew she was different, but we thought this was because of the way she acted. I for one will never forget Lauren. Not because of how she threw herself from the roof of the tallest building in our small community. Not because of how she left us, but because of how she lived.
My first day of college was not a good one. I had only come to this school because my brother went here before me. I had no idea what I wanted to do, no idea where I wanted to go. I only knew that I was in a failing relationship, I covered up my sadness by doing my work consistently, and I wanted to stop existing. A large portion of my life, I felt as if I had nothing to believe in. From my childhood onwards, I sheltered my own hurts from an abusive mother, and a father who left. Coming to college was a way to get away from them, but when I sat down in my box shaped room on my empty bed with nothing but a guitar, some pens, and some notebooks, I realized that I would never really escape the fallout of my own illness. I was sick with loneliness, and desolation. Somewhere along the line, I realized that my peers at the school may have been just like me. Filling the holes in their hearts with greed, sex, drugs, anger; whatever they could find. In my blank room, I put my clothes away into drawers. I organized my room so it was shaped to best keep me. I didn’t go out that day because I had already seen the entire campus during my visits with my brother. He was going to Japan this year, so I was sort of stepping into the small vacuum he’d leave in the tens of thousands of students who went to school here. In the big picture, no one would notice one person missing.
I had a strange urge to pray that evening, and I did. I had no idea what for. In my desolate room, shaped like my desolate heart, I prayed to God “Please help me.”

My first week of classes was dull. I quietly went in, did what was required, and left. One of my classes, an Introduction to Fiction class asked use to stand up, introduce ourselves, answer a few questions, and then sit down. This seemed pointless because it was a large lecture class, with nearly one hundred students. It may have been an excuse to waste time because nothing was on the syllabus for today.
“Next person, tell us about yourself,” the instructor asked me. I stood up at my seat. “My name is Lane Moyers,” I stated, and the class responded with “Hi Lane.”
“I’m a freshman here, I enjoyed playing guitar and my favorite cereal is lucky charms.” “Next person, tell us about yourself,” the instructor said. His tone made it seem like the exercise was actually pointless.
“My name is Sondra. Wait, no it isn’t. It’s Lauren Rowe. I like to talk to people, to make friends. I really like singing and running around and being playful. Oh, and I’m an angel.”
I turned around in my seat to look at her. No one said “Hi Lauren,” because no one believed she was serious. Someone asked “are you serious?” She responded with, “yes.” I watched her face as she said that one word and I realized how beautiful she was. She stood at about five foot four, with brown hair encircling her small angular face. She was thin, and her eyes were a glowing blue. She had no blemishes on her face, which was a very light color, making her eyes seem even brighter. Her small lips were curled into the smile of a seraph. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her face. When the class didn’t say anything, she looked straight at me, and I felt my heart skip a beat. She sat down, and I turned around.
“Uh, next person: Tell us something true about yourself,” the instructor said. The rest of the time in class until the end of the day was uneventful; meaningless.
I didn’t know why, but I felt as if something had drastically changed ever since that moment. After my classes, I went back to my dorm, and the white walls which once felt empty seemed bright in the light coming through the window. I lied down on my bed, at the time having no idea that praying changed my life. I wouldn’t realize this until much later.
The next week I sat down in the same seat of my Introduction to Fiction class, and Lauren sat behind me again. The class was a dull lecture, I had intended to skip and just do the readings and tests. For some reason, I felt the need to go, so I did. As our teacher was talking about character development, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned my head slightly to the right and saw that a note was being handed to me. Unquestioningly, I grabbed the carefully folded square and began to unfold it on top of my book. It was in very neat handwriting. An entire sheet of paper pulled out of a wire-bound notebook with the serrated edge neatly pulled off so that the edges were not frayed. There was one line on the note.

Hey Lane. This lecture is really boring, huh? Do you want to talk?
By the end of the class, the note read as follows.

Hey Lane. This lecture is really boring, huh? Do you want to talk?
Sure thing. It is kind of boring, but there’s not much we can do. You could skip if it is too bad you know, the instructor is mostly just reading the book to us.
Why would I do that? I wouldn’t have the chance to talk to you.
Oh. I guess. So what do you want to talk about?
I wanted to know if you wanted to get lunch today. After class?
Yeah. Maybe we should pay attention.
Okay. Where do you want to go?
We’ll decide after class.
Oh. Sorry. Okay.

As the class wrapped up, the hall became busy with students walking and shuffling past each other, getting their things together and walking out into the hall. Lauren and I stood up, and I observed her as she put her stuff into her bag, and shouldered it. She looked at me, and smiled her gorgeous smile, tilting her head a little, and taking me off guard. As we walked out side by side I realized that I must have been seven to eight inches taller than she was. She walked somewhat closer to me than I had expected.
“I’m glad to have the chance to hang out. Not many people in that class want to talk to me.” She informed me matter-of-factly.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Well I asked one girl, and she said it’s because I was a liar,” She said, letting the smile on her face fade just a little. I didn’t want to see it go away.
“Are you a liar?” I asked.
“No.”
“Well I believe you.” She smiled again. We walked somewhat quietly together until we came to the school’s eating hall. I got some pizza, and a glass of water. When she came back, she had two hamburgers, French fries, two drinks, a plate of potatoes and corn, waffles, and ice cream. I smirked a little bit.
“How are you so small?” I asked her.
“God made me that way.” She smiled, and at the word God, I felt a sensation in my stomach similar to being on a roller coaster.
“So why did you come to school here?” I asked, ignoring the feeling in my gut.
“I guess I felt like it was the right place. I mean, I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life, I just felt that if I’m going to go to college just anywhere, it would be somewhere that felt right. And this is what did.”
Something about the way she talked made me want to laugh. She was very down to earth, very sweet and funny. As we ate, we talked. I didn’t say much, and Lauren always had something to talk about. As the conversation was winding down, we took our empty trays to the dishwashing unit. I turned to her as we walked out.
“Where are you headed?” I inquired.
“Anywhere.”
“Huh?”
“Wherever I’m meant to be I guess. That’s how things seem to work for me. After you’re done with your classes today, do you want to talk some more? I really enjoyed spending time with you.”
I nodded. “What’s your number? I can call you.”
“I don’t have one. Just meet me outside of the library?”
I nodded again. As I turned to leave, she hugged me, her head only coming to the center of my chest. For one moment, I felt a sense of happiness and hope. As we went in separate directions, I wondered to myself why she had this effect on me. As I walked to my dorm, I also wondered if she was aware that the library was across the street from my dorm, or if it was just a coincidence.
The rest of my classes that day seemed to drag on. The professors and instructors seemed to all be in slow motion. It was excruciating. I got out of class as the sun had started its slow decent towards the horizon, threatening darkness. I frowned a little, not normally having realized that my classes let out so close to dark. When I went back to my room, the walls were yellow in the evening sun. I put all my things away, and opened my journal. There was a page that I couldn’t remember writing that I had opened to. It had one line, and was dated the first day of my life at college:
This is all we have, when we die.
I looked around my room, it was still empty.

Dinner with Lauren was similar to lunch with Lauren. I had no idea where she put all the food, but she managed to finish her meal. We talked about a lot of things, some school stuff. She asked about my family, and I told her I didn’t want to talk about it.

“They still love you, you know.” She told me. I didn’t respond to it.
There was something strange about her. Every week, we went to lunch and dinner together. And every week she told me about the people she met, about how she wished our generation was more caring, and less absorbed in things that are unimportant. I learned that she had high moral standards; that she wanted to live in a world where everyone was interested in what was important. Which were each other: people. Not in drugs and alcohol and sex. Lauren and I became close friends. In fact, she was my only friend, and for the entire first year of my college life, she was the only person I was close to.
Weekly, as we spoke to each other, I noticed that she was gradually losing her glow. That she seemed to get more and more tired, and less happy. When it finally struck me, I became worried. Lauren was the only good thing worth smiling about. It seemed like as her hope for humanity on earth seemed to fade, so did her health. As her health seemed to fade, my blank room began to feel blank again. A month before the end of the spring semester my life changed once more.
We were at dinner together, and Lauren came back with only one plate of food.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her. She looked at me funny.
“Oh, I guess it is odd if I don’t eat a lot huh.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you really believe me?” she seemed sad, and her blue eyes were downcast. “What?”
“A long time ago I said that I don’t lie, and you said you believed me.”
“I meant it.”
“I’m an angel, but I lied. My real name is Sondra. It’s not Lauren Rowe. And I came here because God sent me here. He asked that I take care of you, and I’ve been hurting so badly because I’m so sad for your generation. They are all so sad, so lonely. They don’t have anything to look up to anymore.” As she talked, I wasn’t sure if I could believe her.
“Are you serious?” I asked in doubt. She frowned, and whispered almost inaudibly. “Well, you prayed, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Look lets finish eating.”
I felt like I had done something terribly wrong by doubting her. She stopped showing up to class, and I didn’t know how to reach her. I felt as if something bad may have happened to her. I sat in my room one day, so worried that I skipped class so I could worry alone. My room was completely solitary, empty. Void of feeling. I never spent time here. I lay in my bed, and after a while, I began to pray.
“God. Please take care of Lauren, or Sondra. Whoever she is, I don’t want her to be sad anymore,” I told my ceiling.
I dozed off, and woke up right as the sun was coming down at the brim of the horizon. The walls in my room were gradually fading from yellow to the pale white of white walls in the darkness. I opened my journal to write, and a message in familiar handwriting was written for today.

I’m floating towards the sun, the sun of nothing.
There was also a perfectly pure-white feather in the page.

My chest hurt a little. The campus seemed quiet, so I went out for a walk. A lot of people were gathered outside of the school’s cathedral, the tallest building on campus. They were silent. I walked over to the crowd; they all were looking up at the roof. I strained my eyes to see what they all were watching. When I realized that someone was up there, I was floored. Today, Lauren Rowe, or Sondra, stood five hundred and thirty five feet taller than the rest of us. Many of the people in the crowd were silent, a few sobbing. Many were crying. I realized that all of these people were people who Lauren had befriended, people who Lauren had probably helped out in some way. Like me; she had been there for other hopeless people. She looked at us, and I felt like she was smiling at us. As the light faded, it seemed as if she was glowing again. Suddenly, to the dismay of thousands of people, She leapt.
That evening a light fell from the cathedral, and as I watched it fall, as we all watched Sondra fall, we saw something more. I remember to this day the feeling that she had wings, and as the sun cleared the horizon completely, there was a flash, and Sondra was gone. No one can explain where she went, why she didn’t hit the ground. Feathers fell from the roof, and everyone who believed enough to catch one, was forever changed. We lived our lives trying to fix our injured world, all because of a fallen angel. We all tried to live happily, to find hope and faith in each other, to do all the things Lauren Rowe did for us. We all realized that we weren’t alone. We put down our cell phones, we spoke face to face, we laughed and cried and we were sick and we were healthy together.
I don’t trust myself to use it for anything other than a bookmark, so as I close this memoir, I leave a symbol of my faith. A feather.