Colors Among Shadows

Wes wants to coordinate a date to see Joni again.

“How about coffee soon? Coffee is the one constant everyone can agree we all still need.” Wes says. “Imagine all the crazies we’d have running around without our daily supply of caffeine!”

Joni cringes while Wes chuckles, which he notices and inquires about. “Joni? Is coffee a no?”

“Oh!” Joni starts. She was thinking that coffee doesn’t determine her crazy. I just am. She hadn’t expected Wes to see her, though. She shakes her head and plasters a smile, forces a chuckle. “It’s nothing. You’re right. Ha-ha!”

Wes echoes her laugh, but his eyes linger on her face for some time. The pair falls into silence and Joni can’t keep her gaze fixed on one particular point to save her life. She’s busy bugging the hell out inside her mind, crying, He thinks I’m crazy, he thinks I’m crazy, he knows I’m crazy.

“I know…” Wes begins, and Joni’s head snaps upward with such force that she’s propelled backwards two steps. Her wild eyes meet his as he looks down at her, the pain having returned in them. He continues, “I know now how you must have felt back then. It never goes away, does it? The pain, the fear… I want it to, but…” He trails off, keeps his eyes on her a few seconds before looking away.

Joni wants to touch him. She wants to run her fingers from his fingertips up to his biceps and give them a strong, comforting squeeze. She wants to lead with her hands as she wraps her arms around his torso and bury her face in his chest.

She wants him to forgive her before he even knows what she’s done.

“I… I’ll get coffee with you, Wes.” Joni finds herself saying. Her heart is beating fast like she’s saying something wrong.

I am wrong. She thinks, I shouldn’t see him again. I should run away again, like before. That was easier. Safer. Lonely. But who cares? I’ve been lonely. I’m always lonely!

Joni thinks again, correcting herself, No, I’m not lonely anymore. I have my family back. The people I love. I brought them back! Wes? He’s just… I don’t need—

“—sure? Joni?”

“Oh? Uh, I’m sure! Yeah. Yeah, let’s meet tomorrow? How does nine-thirty sound? Or ten? Maybe nine-thirty’s too early—”

“Nine-thirty’s fine.” Wes cuts in, “But wait! Where—?” His whole body moves forward with the question, his arm reaching toward Joni as she blindly backpedals into the street, shuffling along the crosswalk and getting farther away.

“Um!” Joni yells, eyes darting with numerous places in mind. “Somewhere nearby! Maybe—”

“How about that coffee shop near Novia’s house? Remember that one?”

The name causes Joni to stop in her tracks. She’s at the edge of the crosswalk on the other side of the street staring back at Wes because he, a ghost from the past, just brought up another. What a day.

Novia. Wow, Joni thinks, I haven’t heard that name in forever.

“Yes,” she says, though Wes certainly can’t hear her. “I remember.”

Novia was once her best friend, starting from back in middle school. After the incident that left her alone in the world, Joni came back to her teachers and friends half the person she had been before. She was unruly and unlikable, unhappy and failing all her classes. She lost every friend she’d ever made and the patience of many adults in her life. Joni had been a colorless walking shell.

It was Novia who, at least on the outside, painted Joni up all pretty again. Thanks to her and her family’s support, Joni completed middle school and thrived in high school. Novia restarted Joni like a machine with all the right parts but just needed some oiling.

Thanks to Novia, she met Wes in freshman year of high school and it changed her world. He became as important to her as Novia was, but in a different way, tugging at heart strings she never knew were connected. She wanted to protect those connections no matter what it took. Thus, she met Fin thanks to her friends.

And lost her friends again when Fin lost himself to drugs at the start of senior year.

That year, Joni checked out mentally and ran after graduation, so Novia couldn’t paint her back up again, all nice and new. Since then, Joni has never stopped running from connections to her past. That is, until now.

From across the street, Wes yells, “Let’s go there, okay? See you tomorrow morning, nine-thirty?”

Nodding almost imperceptibly, Joni says, “Okay,” on a long, slow breath and walks away.

She wishes she could say no.

It's the bright sun and tall buildings casting creeping shadows along the sidewalks and roads that keeps Joni's attention as she makes the long walk back to her apartment. Everything looks different in shadow—more decrepit and dangerous. More interesting. After her reunion with Wes and in the face of her upcoming reunion with Novia, even the trash littering the block seems ominous enough, helping to suggest that the end days have arrived in the once-clean streets.

Joni sighs and kicks a stray rock. Cast a shadow on me and nothing will change. I’ll still be the same, morning or night, light or dark, alone or beloved.

I’m not okay. My family… they’re not okay, either.

She’s able to admit it now after her talk with Wes. What’s gone should be gone, not manipulated like what she’s done. Claiming that ‘strange’ things are going on with her family is a blatant understatement. Her reborn family's situation is downright disturbing and she’s known that in the back of her mind for days now. But admitting it? That was hard to do.

It was this past Wednesday afternoon. That’s when she recognized that they were, and at once refused to see them as, victims caged in her small, dank cubicle of an apartment. Admitting it would mean that her deepest desire—the one she dishonored her mother’s memory for—was not fulfilled.

But her reality stands as is. Her family physically cannot leave the apartment, and that’s not the only thing hard to swallow.

They can’t sleep, use the restroom, shower, or even order food to the door. They can’t learn anything new or retain information from conversations with Joni beyond a period of twenty-four hours. Without Joni, they have no meaning. Without Joni, they are only half-done replicas of their former selves at best—and even with Joni, they’re nothing but reprogrammed dolls after midnight.

In essence, Joni’s loved ones are prisoners to the exact memories she had of them at the time of drawing—during her period of instability—and cannot perform outside of those incomplete memories. They were her comfort when she sketched them up, and merely their bodies are left for her comfort now. They did not satisfy her hopes: Unable to go outside and experience the world with her. Unable to experience life with her. Unable to experience the end with her.

Or save her from it.

Her walk complete, Joni finally stands outside the entrance to her apartment building, her chin tipped way up to see her living room window up on the fifth floor. The curtains are drawn open.

That’ll be Dad, she knows, and then she stands there looking up, hurting. It hurts so bad that she no longer wants to see her way in, to meet her family at the door and get all those warm hugs and family smells she’s been needing for years and years. She can’t stop thinking about those damned always-alive autopilot bodies that she gave them. Unable to rest. Unable to rest in peace!

Frustration builds up in her like a heavy stone and she forces herself inside her apartment building before she can drop any tears. Joni refuses to allow neighbors to see her cry. It’s none of their business.

Her loneliness is none of anyone’s business.