Chapter 1 : Stolen Hearts

Chapter 1 : Stolen Hearts

The sound of my alarm jerked me awake. Grumbling and muttering to myself, I slammed down the ‘shut up’ button on it. Careful not to trip on anything, I stumbled out of my room and into the adjoining bathroom.

Everything was black, pitch black, to be precise, so I switched on the lights. Not that it made any difference. It was brighter, but everything was still a dull black and white. It’s been like that since I was born. You see, I’m colorblind. I inherited it. From my dad, he’s colorblind too. I’m an Achromatopsia sufferer. Total colorblindness. I’m not the only one in my family who’s got it though. My cousins have it too. Save a few lucky ones. 50% of the males get it. They carry some X chromosome thing. Whatever.

I found out I suffered from this when I was at the young and tender age of five. My pre-school teacher was teaching us about colors, on the color wheel. The conversation kind of went like this :

Teacher : Paul, dear, can you tell me what color this is?
Me : Black.
Teacher : Not quite right, it’s green.
Me : No. It’s black.
Teacher : Paul, it’s called green, not black.

I learnt different names for the same color variations. Blue, green, yellow, orange, red. They were all black to me. When we sat for quizzes, whenever it came to colors, I’d fail miserably. That was when I got sent to the hospital for a checkup.

After the brilliant discovery about my misfortune, I got taunted and teased everyday. The things people enjoyed did not spark my interest. I watched TV in black and white so it wasn’t like color was such a brilliant invention anyway.

At first of course, I tried. Boy, did I try. I bought color pencils, crayons, paint sets and worked hard. The outcome was, apparently, atrocious. My parents ran the other way screaming, quite literally. There went my idea of being a young colorblind Picasso. It never would have worked anyway.

I did everything I could to add some color into my life but to no avail. I was doomed to black and white forever.

Eventually, I gave up trying. Everything looks boring, so of course, after awhile, I’ve become boring as well. I get frustrated really easily. I lose my temper fast. But for some strange reason, people enjoy flocking around me. I used to think they did that to piss me off. According to my best friend though, it’s coz I’m attractive. That thought is extremely unnerving, not to mention disgusting. Especially since said best friend is a guy.

I suppose you could say I hide behind a false facade. I try to hide the angsty, dark, bad boy side of me behind a carefree, egotistical, fun, occasionally mad and hysterical outlook. That’s just the way I deal. I hate disappointing and I feel that, when I reveal what I truly am (colorblind), nobody will like me. While that may seem like an obscure and self-centered reason, it’s true.

I stumbled out of the toilet and pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I stared at myself in the mirror. My hair was disheveled and sticking out in all directions. My eyes were dull. My lips were pulled into a disgusted frown, my shirt looked like it had just been in a war. All tattered and torn. I looked like Bozo the clown’s worst enemy. If only he could see me now.

Sighing, I made my way down the stairs and into the kitchen, pausing only to grab a granola bar. When I arrived at school, the halls were abuzz with whispering and mumbling. I rolled my eyes. Everyone’s such a gossip nowadays. “Did you hear about the new girl? I heard that she like, moved from New York. She’s probably like, those wild party girls.” a girl told her friend. Her friend just nodded enthusiastically and they continued rambling on about the new girl.

The first thing I saw when I reached my locker was hair. A lot of it. The hair separated and unveiled a petite girl dressed rather outrageously. She had on a gigantic sweatshirt that said ‘This is Summer and I approve of this message. It’s smokin’ hot.’ Her tights were striped and she paired it with chunky heels. I bet it looked weirder when it had color.

“Hey. What are you doing?” I asked the stranger. “Uh, I’m trying to open my locker. The code’s all wrong though,” she scrunched her nose up in annoyance. “I think you’ve got it wrong. You see, this is my locker.” I carefully explained to her. “No, you’ve got it wrong. The principal assigned me this locker so buzz off!” she snapped, glaring at me.

I shot an amused glare right back at her and grabbed the lock. I spun the wheel around and popped it open. Raising my eyebrows at her I grabbed my books. “How’d you do that?” she gasped. “I told you, this is my locker.” I smirked at her.

The girl let out a noise that sounded like a cross between a hacking cough and a strangled scream. “Are you okay?” She took a deep breath and let out a cackle. “Yep. Perfectly fine.”

How strange. I wandered off, leaving her in front of my locker. The rest of the morning was spent listening to teachers rambling on about their related subjects and daydreaming.

Then, lunch came. I rounded a corner and collided into, you guessed it. Hair. That’s what I’m calling the new girl. Hair. She has too much of it, seriously. It’s frizzy and big. Maybe it has a life of it’s own.

“Sorry,” I told her and took a step backward. She took a step forward and said,“It’s okay.” I took two quick steps back and she did the opposite. Okay, this was creepy. Very, very creepy. I was backed up on the wall of lockers and she just kept coming closer. I tried to maintain my composure, gotta live up to the status quo you know, resident bad boy and all that. A bad boy cannot be afraid of a tiny girl with huge hair.

She did the weirdest thing. She started grinning. She was grinning like a cheshire cat! “You’re afraid of me,” she mused. “No!” I squeaked. Realizing my slip up, I cleared my throat, “No, I’m not afraid of you. It’s your hair I’m afraid of.” Well, that wasn’t much better.

“Aw, this old thing?” She smirked and patted the uh, wild beast lovingly, “It’s nothing. I’m Sunday by the way.” She offered her hand. I glared at it. “Paul. My name is Paul.”

Author's Note

this is a new chapter 1. i actually have a new account on fictionpress and i've been updating there. i decided to pop back over here just to see how everything's going. gosh. i have too many accounts for my own good. heh. :)