The Only Exception

Light was slowly working its way through the frothy white curtains that shielded Sunday's bedroom from the outside sun. It would have permeated the curtains quite easily if not for the blinds that reinforced the shade. Sunday couldn't take her eyes off of the lucky strains of sun that managed to make their way through both blind and curtain; they were thin, golden streams that gleamed on the blue blankets of her bed and cast mesmerizing shadows upon the furniture in her room.

But a noise on the stairs outside of Sunday's room caught her attention, and she forced her eyes shut. She wasn't sure exactly what time it was, but if it was too early, her mother would be upset that the effects of the sleeping pills that she had slipped into Sunday's dinner had worn off. Sunday knew that she wasn't supposed to know about the medicine, but she did, although she never let on. They were nice, as long as they didn't let her dream.

The door of her bedroom opened. "Sunday. Sunday, it's time to wake up."

Mrs. Phillips's hand was soon on her shoulder, gently shaking her awake. Sunday rolled onto her back and gave a forced stretch before innocently greeting her mother, "Good morning."

Mrs. Phillips weakly returned Sunday's smile. "Come on, Sun, you need to wash your face and teeth before you come downstairs for breakfast." She pulled Sunday from her bed lightly and led her into the adjoining bathroom.

And thus started their morning ritual. Sunday wasn't quite sure why she needed to wash her face in the morning when she had taken a shower the night before, but her mother told her to do it so Sunday happily obeyed. Then, Mrs. Phillips would hand Sunday her tooth brush and Sunday would brush her white teeth until her mother told her that she could rinse her mouth out.

Then Sunday would be left to dress herself while Mrs. Phillips made sure that her breakfast was suitable. Sunday was a tiny thing. She was only 5'3" and weighed around 110 pounds on a good day. Sometimes, the only thing that distinguished Sunday from a child were her adult features and the few curves that had appeared over the years.

Because Sunday had no interest in snacking on junk food periodically throughout the day as women normally did and because she would not feed herself even if she was hungry, Mrs. Phillips had to make sure that each of the three meals that Sunday ate were extremely healthy. She also had vitamins to feed to Sunday, but she found that her daughter didn't like to swallow them, so they were to be crushed and hidden in her food.

Sunday skipped down the stairs in a pale peach dress that morning with spaghetti straps and a flowing skirt that fell to her knees. Dresses were Sunday's outfit of choice, though she would wear pants and shorts if she absolutely had to. "May I go outside?" she asked politely. It was a question that irritated her mother, for Mrs. Phillips felt that Sunday should have realized that she had to eat every morning before she left the house. Yet Sunday still asked every day.

"No, Sunday," she said in a voice that just barely remained cordial. "You have to eat breakfast." Of all the symptoms of Asperger's, leave it to Sunday to miss the "adheres to strict schedules" one, she inwardly grumbled. Not that she'd ever voice her vexations to Sunday.

There was only a moment of disappointment in Sunday's features before she inquired, "What's for breakfast?"

"Eggs, bacon, potatoes, toast, orange juice, and a banana," Mrs. Phililps announced as she began arranging everything on Sunday's plate. "Enjoy, sweetheart."

She placed the plate in front of Sunday and then grabbed her purse. "Now, your dad's just upstairs getting ready. Don't go outside until he gets down here, or unless Amber comes over," Mrs. Phillips warned Sunday.

But it didn't seem like Sunday was listening. She was too concerned with the plate that was now in front of her and rearranging the items on it. She hated it when her food touched the other items on her dish. "Sunday," her mother repeated loudly. "Do you hear me?"

"Yes," Sunday nodded, "Don't go outside without daddy or Amber."

"Good girl. I'll see you when I get home tonight," Mrs. Phillips said before leaving Sunday in the kitchen.

She sat at the table alone, not yet eating. It took her a few minutes, but soon, her food was arranged in a way that made the colors go together better and made it all look much more appealing. However, even then, Sunday only lightly picked at her breakfast. The main problem that she was facing was the eggs that her mother had scrambled for her.

Sunday was not an overly empathetic or sympathetic person. She had a difficult stand getting a grasp on what people were feeling and an even more difficult time understanding why they were feeling these things. But loss was something that Sunday found was easy to relate to, because she had lost Henry, her beloved brother. And now she was struggling with eating the eggs because she was sad for the chickens that had to give up the eggs. Maybe one of the baby chickens that she was about to eat had a sister who he was leaving all alone, just like Henry had left her.

She certainly couldn't leave it sitting there. Her mother and father wouldn't allow her to. They always said, "If you want to be able to spend the day outside, you need to eat all of the food we make for you, Sunday." So the least she could do was try. It was an extremely daunting task though. She forked down some of the potatoes, a sliver of bacon, and the banana, but could not touch the eggs.

Then, an idea.

"Pepe!" she called to her golden retriever, quietly so that her father couldn't hear her even if he was walking down the stairs.

Darling Pepe heard her though, and he eagerly came running into the kitchen, his nails making noises on the hard wooden floor. Sunday set the plate in front of him, and the dog wasted no time in eating the things that Sunday had found sad and unappetizing. "Good boy, Pepe," Sunday grinned as she patted his head.

She barely managed to remove the barren plate from the floor before her father walked into the kitchen. "Were you about to take that to the sink?" asked Mr. Phillips, looking proud.

"Uh, yes," Sunday nodded, even though the thought hadn't crossed her mind.

"Just don't forget to drink your juice," he added as he pulled a box of cereal from one of the cupboards.

Repressing a sigh, Sunday swallowed the orange juice before grabbing Pepe's leash and a basket that almost always sat by the door. "Wait, wait, wait," Gregory said as he sat his bowl down on the table. "Are you going outside alone?"

Sunday shrugged. "Amber has classes today," she said. "But I have Pepe with me. I'll be okay." Then, she pushed open the sliding glass door and ran outside onto the sand. She didn't notice that she had forgotten shoes until the sand felt a little uncomfortably hot on the bottoms of her feet. After ordering Pepe to sit, Sunday pulled a blanket out of the basket and laid down, pulling out one of her sticks of charcoal and trying to find something to draw.

The basket was something that Mrs. Phillips had concocted for Sunday. She realized that there was no way Sunday would remember to bring herself sunglasses, a towel, something to lay on, sunscreen, and a bottle of water everyday, so every evening when Sunday came inside her mother shook the sand out of the blanket, got her a fresh towel, and made sure that there was very strong sunscreen in the bottle.

If it was a weekday and Amber was taking her classes at UCLA, Mrs. Phillips would put a bag of dog treats in the basket for Pepe; she wouldn't leave anything for Sunday because she was aware that whatever it was would go uneaten. If it were a weekend, then she would leave an abundance of snacks because Amber had a way of convincing Sunday to snack on things periodically.

Pepe lay down on the blanket next to Sunday and nudged the bottle of sunscreen she had discarded. "Oh, fine," she sighed. She opened the bottle and rubbed the foul smelling lotion over her arms, legs, and chest. Then she gave Pepe a treat for reminding her; her parents got very upset if Sunday came into the house sunburnt. She layed down on her stomach and let her eyes scan the beach.

The first thing that she saw was a green bottle. She probably wouldn't have noticed it if not for the red star on it. Stars were one of Sunday's favorite things: she loved talking about them, she could draw them again and again, and very easily could she expend hours staring at them. "Heineken," she read. The bottle was laying on it's side in the sand, as though someone had cast it aside. The water kept rushing up to the bottle, stopping just short of the pretty green bottle, and then running away from it.

The most interesting thing, in Sunday's eyes, was the way that the sun was glinting off of the bottle, making some parts light green, some parts dark, some even an intriguing blue color. This was not something that she could capture with charcoal. She dropped the stick back into the basket and raced inside, pausing at the door to yell, "Stay, Pepe!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you looking for, Sun?" her father asked as he set down the paper and watched Sunday open a drawer in the kitchen.

"Paint," she said.

"It's upstairs in the computer room, Sunny," he said. "Don't forget to put things back where you find them."

Sunday trotted up the stairs and into the room where her mother and father handled most of their business from. Sometimes, when Amber wasn't there, her dad would take his computer and go out onto the balcony that overlooked their backyard so that he could keep an eye on Sunday.

It was easy to locate her paint, and soon she was running back outside. When she slid the glass door shut though, she noticed something odd. Someone was sitting on her blanket, petting Pepe. Hesitating slightly, she walked back towards Pepe and the stranger. If it was someone who would be a danger to Sunday, Pepe would instantly react. She paused a few feet away from Pepe and the stranger. "Who are you?" she demanded in an almost soft voice.

He stopped petting Pepe and looked up. "I'm sorry," he said, standing up. Sunday sat down next to Pepe and looked up at him. "I'm Alex. My friend Zack is your neighbor."

"Oh." She set down her paints and picked up her sketch book. Ignoring Alex, she started painting the outline of the green bottle.

His eyebrows furrowed. "What are you doing?" he asked.

Sunday dipped her paint brush into the water bottle her mom had put in the basket for her. She was supposed to drink the water, but surely she could remind herself to go in and get a different bottle later. Maybe. "Painting," she answered simply.

"Can I see what you're painting?" Alex asked. Sunday shrugged and kept her eyes on the bottle as her paintbrush slid over the paper.

He laughed a little, and Sunday shifted away from him and closer to Pepe. "What's so funny?" she asked.

"You're painting a piece of trash," he told her.

"No," Sunday insisted. She laid down on her stomach and pulled Alex down with her. "Look at all the kaleidoscopic prisms. The different light variations. And the way the foam from the water settles around it?"

This was very strange, Alex thought, and he was reminded of how Zack had called this girl "not right". Sunday propped herself up on her elbows and kept painting. All Alex could do was lay there with her and watch. After a while, it was only through her painting that he saw the colors and "kaleidoscopic" illusions. It was exaggerated in the picture, but after studying the bottle a little longer, Alex thought he could see the reflections she was talking about.

When he looked up, he noticed that the girl was staring at him. "I'm Sunday," she said, finally introducing herself. "Sunday Alice Phillips. This is Pepe." Her hand rested on the dog's shoulder.

Alex offered her his hand to shake. "It's nice to meet you, Sunday Alice Phillips," he said.

Reluctantly, she set her small hand in Alex's, and together they slowly moved up and down. "It's nice to meet you too... Alex." She smiled before looking down at her picture of the bottle. "Do you really think it's trash?"

There was something different about Sunday, something that Alex couldn't quite put his finger on. "It is just a bottle," he told her. "Your picture improves it."

"People look at it and only see that it's trash," Sunday said as she sat up. "They just think that it's a piece of garbage and incapable of being beautiful."

A silence settled around them before Sunday asked, "Why are you here?"

It was an odd question until Alex realized that she meant why was he there on her blanket with her. "Uh, I'm not sure really," Alex admitted.

Sunday glanced over her shoulder at her pretty house and noticed her father's outline moving in the window by the stairs. He was probably on his way downstairs to tell her to come inside for lunch. "Will you come back?" she asked Alex.

He had just met the girl, but there was something that seemed to almost draw Alex to her. "Yeah," he nodded, "I'll come back."

She smiled and stood up, collecting Pepe's bag of dog treats, her blanket, and her basket. "Bye, Alex!" she called over her shoulder as she skipped through the sand and onto her back porch. One more smile cast at Alex, and she disappeared through the back door.

Alex sat on the sand for a moment until he noticed that she had left her sketchbook behind. He picked it up, and feeling slightly guilty, flipped through it.

There were only a few pages that were covered. The first was a sand dollar, twinkling in the sand. The second was a picture of Pepe lying in the surf, about to hit a crab with his paw. The third was a striking profile of a beautiful blonde girl (who looked vaguely familiar) staring off into the sky. Then there was the picture of the beer bottle. Alex smiled as he picked up the sketchbook and started walking home.

Sunday certainly wasn't like any other girl that he knew.

"Alex!" He looked up and saw Jack standing on Zack's balcony. "Come on! Some girls invited us to come to dinner with them at STK tonight! And they're hot!"

Alex chuckled at Jack but sped up a little bit. There would be time to talk to Sunday tomorrow; right now, he had to get back to the house so that he could call dibbs on the hottest girl before Jack could.