Only Colours

When Mikey was twelve he entered high school, and things got even more difficult. He still saw Dr Lucas once a week so he at least had someone to talk to who understood him, but day to day life at school threw all kinds of new challenges at him.

In high school Mikey had many teachers, not just one, and had to move between classes multiple times a day. All his teachers and all the students in his classes had been informed of his differences, but they hadn't been around him while he was growing up like most of his old teachers and classmates had. They didn't understand, and they were far less tolerant.

Some of them got angry at Mikey. It was probably because they felt like Mikey ignored them, so it was ironic that his solution was to ignore them more. They scared him and made him feel embarrassed, so he pretended they weren't people. They were just colours that he should keep an eye on in case they became dangerous.

Mikey liked to think that his father, who he'd never met, was like Dr Lucas, though he knew that wasn't true. Mikey's mum had only known Mikey's dad for a day, but she'd told Mikey that he and his dad had a lot in common. His dad, she'd told him, had been a playful, energetic, and warm man.
Dr Lucas definitely couldn't be described as playful or energetic, but he was warm. When Mikey was around Dr Lucas, he felt safe and grounded.

At first Dr Lucas had firmly enforced professional boundaries, but over time Mikey had worn him down. Mikey was an extremely tactile and affectionate person, and he didn't understand why physical contact wouldn't be allowed. Dr Lucas was Mikey's best friend, and the only person he knew besides his mum.

So eventually Dr Lucas stopped minding so much and he would sit on the couch and do his paperwork and Mikey would come and lean against him and draw or read or do his homework. It was nice.
His mum didn't think so, though, when one day she forgot her handbag and came back in to get it without knocking and found them like that. She was very angry.

Mikey knew what she thought, especially when she started asking questions about whether Dr Lucas had ever touched Mikey or asked Mikey to touch him. Mikey also knew she had entirely the wrong idea. He knew what lust looked like, its colour, and he'd never seen a trace of it in Dr Lucas. It wasn't like that, but his mum thought he was innocent and naive and that he just didn't understand.

Mikey's mum put in a complaint about Dr Lucas but with the circumstances and the lack of evidence of anything worse than what was witnessed going on, he was given a warning and the case was dismissed. Mikey's mum wouldn't let Mikey go back to see Dr Lucas, though, no matter how much he asked or begged or sulked.

They moved to a new city not long after that. Mikey's mum told him it was because she got a new job, but Mikey thought it was probably her attempt at a new start. He was unenthusiastic about the whole thing. Though he certainly hadn’t liked his old high school, he doubted a new one would be any better. At least he understood his old high school, knew the rules and how to get around. People had even started to leave him alone a bit more. Did she not understand how difficult it had been for him to settle in the first time? He dreaded going through the process again.

Being away from Dr Lucas wasn't easy, moving wasn't easy, and being angry at his mum, now the only person he had to talk to, wasn't easy either.

When they moved to their new house Mikey chose to paint his room a sad lilac, then immediately regretted it and repainted it a colour called eggshell. It was really boring, but it was a neutral, meaningless colour.

For Mikey's first day of school his mum tried to convince him to dress in a way that made him stand out less. Mikey's favourite shirt was aquamarine, an almost perfect colour match for happiness. Mikey's mum suggested a grey shirt instead, something she'd bought for him but he hadn't once worn. He refused to let his first day of school be an exception. Even if his mood was far from aquamarine, his favourite shirt still made him feel better. She didn't succeed in talking him out of the rainbow belt or the cheap, plastic rainbow jewellery, either. Mikey figured he was going to stand out anyway, so he may as well dress in ways that made him happy.

They arrived at school as soon as the doors were open, ahead of anyone else. There was someone there speaking to his mum, someone Mikey couldn't see, but he ignored them and focussed on his mum as he was led to each of his classrooms. Just before the start of class she wished him a good day at school, hugged him, and left him in his homeroom.

There wasn't much for Mikey to do in homeroom, so he ignored the ringing of the bell and the movement of colour and the clatter of the desks while he drew in his notebook. Mostly, drawing was what he used his notebooks for. Occasionally he would copy down things written on the board, but usually they were meaningless without the broader explanation he assumed went with them. He learnt perfectly fine from textbooks, anyway.

The seats were arranged in rows and Mikey had chosen to sit at the end of one, so he had only one person sitting next to him. Actually, as seats weren't assigned and there were multiple empty ones, whoever was sitting next to Mikey had specifically chosen to.

That thought made Mikey uneasy to the point that he decided he should assess what kind of person was sitting next to him and if they meant him any harm. If they did, what Mikey was about to do probably wouldn't make their feelings towards him any kinder.

Mikey turned in his chair and examined the colours of the person next to him. To the other person, Mikey knew, this would look like Mikey was staring intently at their torso. He supposed he could understand why that might unnerve some people.

The sudden twist in the colours let Mikey know he had been noticed, but the new colour hadn't been what Mikey had expected. Embarrassment. Had the person sitting next to him been doing something they thought Mikey had caught them at?

Mikey didn't know precisely what most of the colours that represented a person's static personality meant. They were a lot harder to figure out. He knew enough to recognise introversion, but not much else. He liked the look of the colours anyway, though. They were pretty together, and Mikey was convinced the person sitting next to him was a good person.

Mikey turned his focus back to the shifting emotions, and caught sight of something he hadn't expected. Attraction. A thrill went through Mikey's stomach. Were they still looking at him? He had no way of knowing. Mikey thought for a moment, and then slowly raised his eyes.

He had to estimate where the person's head was. The colours reached only as far as a person's torso, centring around their chests, so it was always difficult to figure out where their various body parts were. Mikey was fairly sure his estimates were close enough, though, when the person's colours suddenly shifted into a swirl of attraction, embarrassment, and happiness. Mikey quickly turned back to his notebook.

Okay, so there was someone — someone Mikey couldn't see — and they found Mikey attractive. Nobody had ever been attracted to Mikey before, at least not that he'd noticed. He kind of liked it.

A glance at the front of the person's notebook revealed their name to be 'Finn'. That sounded like a male name to Mikey, but it could probably be a female name as well. Mikey wasn't sure whether he cared either way, or if he did care, which his preference would be.

A crushing feeling of hopelessness weighed down on Mikey as he realised it didn't matter. The person sitting next to Mikey was just colours to him, would only ever be colours. Truthfully, Mikey didn't even intend to acknowledge their existence. It went against his rules, and his rules kept him safe.

The next bell rang and chairs scraped around Mikey so, after waiting for everyone else to leave first, Mikey left the classroom and headed towards his first class. He couldn't help but notice when Finn waited outside the classroom and then walked with Mikey to his next class. Mikey had memorised Finn's colours. They both had English next, and Finn sat next to Mikey again. Mikey didn't mind.

There wasn't much for Mikey to do in English. There was no textbook for the class, only handouts and assigned reading. The rest, as far as Mikey could tell, was in class discussion. Somehow Mikey always managed to do quite well, so it couldn't have been terribly important.

Mikey spent the time sketching out Finn's colours, occasionally glancing in Finn's direction to refresh his memory. Finn's shifting emotions were very interesting, but it was Finn's core personality, Finn's static colours, that Mikey wanted a record of.

The pens and pencils in Mikey's pencil case, of course, provided a completely inadequate range of colours to accurately portray Finn's colours. Instead, Mikey used each colour of pen or pencil to represent the correct colour. He made a key and wrote down the hex codes for the correct colours. He had the hex codes of many, many colours memorised. When Mikey got home, he would use his sketch to draw Finn's colours on the computer. It was the most accurate way Mikey had found to display the colours.

Mikey wasn't looking forward to lunch. At his old school, that had always been when he had been most vulnerable. He noticed Finn following him towards the cafeteria, though, which made him feel a little safer.

Mikey could see so few people that when someone was visible to him it was both immediately obvious and quite startling. The entire cafeteria was a cacophony of clattering sounds and shifting colours, but in their midst sat a bored looking blond boy.

From where Mikey was standing a couple of long cafeteria tables away, he could see the boy side on. Mikey gripped the strap of his backpack firmly and slowly, cautiously approached.

The boy looked a bit older than Mikey and as Mikey approached he assessed the boy's colours. In terms of mood, the boy was grumpy and mildly annoyed. He was hungry, which was probably why he was stealing chips from the person sitting next to him. Their colours suggested they didn't mind.

Mikey was eternally frustrated by his limited ability to interpret peoples' static colours, but none of the boy's looked too awful to Mikey. He often had a general sense of what was good, what was bad, and especially what was dangerous. This boy was hardly all good, but he didn't have any colours which looked threatening either.

Mikey heard an annoyed, "What?" and looked up to meet the boy's eyes. Mikey had stopped just a few metres away, and it seemed the boy had noticed his staring.

"I'm Mikey," Mikey said with a smile filled with far more joy and confidence than he felt. Well, more confidence, anyway. He could actually see someone, and that was an occasion for at very least cautious joy. "Can I sit here?"

The boy looked at Mikey like Mikey was the strangest thing he'd ever seen for a few seconds. "No," he said as he turned away.

"But... please?" Mikey stepped closer, and the boy's irritated colours churned and spiked.

"What do you even want?"

"To sit," Mikey said, and poked the empty spot on the bench next to the boy, "here. What's your name?"

Mikey was fairly sure the boy was about to tell him to fuck off, but just as the boy opened his mouth to speak something distracted him and he shut it again.

Someone had come up on the boy's other side and had drawn his attention away from Mikey. Having just spent an hour recording Finn's colours, he recognised them immediately.

"What do you mean, 'he doesn't see people'?" the boy asked after a moment. A pause. "That's stupid. I don't even think that makes scientific sense.”

While the boy was distracted by Finn, Mikey sat down in the empty spot next to him.

"Oh, what the—" the boy started to say when he turned around and found Mikey sitting next to him. He stopped, sighed, and shook his head. "Whatever. I don't even care."

Mikey smiled and opened his bag to get out his lunch box. "What's your name?"

The boy eyed the contents of Mikey's lunch box. "I'll tell you my name if you give me one of your cookies."

Mikey had two cookies and would have happily given one to the boy anyway, so it was an easy decision. He even gave the boy the larger one.

"Jude," the boy said matter of factly before biting into the chocolate chip cookie.

"Hi Jude!" Mikey said brightly. "I'm Mikey."

"So you said," Jude muttered, his posture stiff and his eyes on the table in front of him. Everything about his body language said he wanted to be left alone. Mikey couldn't do that, though, so he would just have to change Jude's mind instead.

"It's my first day," Mikey said. "I'm in grade eight. What grade are you in?"

Jude gave Mikey a look of pure irritation but he answered anyway, presumably due to feelings of obligation brought on by the half eaten cookie in his hand. "Ten."

Some of the irritation had cleared from Jude's colours, but Mikey suspected the cookie had done more than his conversational skills.

"I don't have any friends here yet," Mikey said. "I didn't have any friends at my old school, either."

"You should go make some," Jude said as he licked the last of the cookie crumbs off of his fingers.

"There's nobody else who I can be friends with."

There was maybe the slightest, slightest tinge of sympathy seeping into Jude's colours. "I'm sure that sucks, but I would make a truly awful friend. I think the dude who was lecturing me before wants to be your friend. Or... well, he wants to be your something, anyway."

He, then. Finn was a he. It sounded like Jude had noticed the same thing Mikey had, too. Mikey had to focus, though. Finn fascinated him but could ultimately be no more than something fun to think about.
"You're the only person there is who I could be friends with."

"Hmm," Jude said, but surprisingly, that was all he said. He didn't try to tell Mikey he was wrong.

Mikey wondered if Jude was special too, and if so in what way. Mikey's theory was that anyone he saw was special, and it had been a theory Dr Lucas had agreed with. If Jude was special, did he know?

"He's still watching you," Jude said, drawing Mikey's attention. "Your boyfriend. I think he's jealous."

"I don't know who you're talking about," Mikey lied.

Jude glanced at him and scoffed. "Yeah you do, but whatever. I don't actually care about your love life."

Mikey poked through the contents of his lunch box. "Do you want some apple?"

Jude grunted and held out his hand, barely glancing in Mikey's direction. When Mikey handed him one of the pieces of apple, Jude stared at it sceptically. "You actually cut it up into quarters and cut the core out? Why not just eat an apple?"

"My mum did it," Mikey said. "I like it that way."

"Your mum makes your lunches for you?"

Mikey tilted his head to the side. "Is that weird?"

Jude paused, considering. "Fuck if I know."

Jude ate his piece of apple and Mikey handed him another one as he started on his sandwich. Jude seemed to have settled down a bit since Mikey had started sharing his food with him, and his colours were now more steadily grumpy than erratically irritated.

"At least she didn't cut the crusts off your sandwiches," Jude commented. Mikey handed him one of the sandwich triangles.

"No, I don't mind crusts," Mikey said. "My mum says eating crusts makes your hair curly, but I don't think it's working."

Mikey's hair was dark brown, didn't quite reach his shoulders, and was dead straight. He hadn't honestly believed crusts made peoples' hair curly for years, but he must have gotten the tone wrong because Jude just looked at him like he was an idiot and focussed his attention on eating the sandwich.

By the end of the lunch break all Mikey really knew about Jude was his name, what grade he was in, and that he was somewhat surly. For all his grumpiness, though, he wasn't particularly unkind. He'd made it clear he didn't want to be friends with Mikey, but he hadn't been overly mean about it. Jude was a nice guy, Mikey decided, just one who was sad.

After lunch Mikey had maths, a class that was particularly easy to follow along with entirely from the textbook. The textbook contained all the instructions, examples, and exercises required, so Mikey didn't understand why they even needed a teacher. He knew sometimes the teacher went through them on the blackboard, but that had always seemed unnecessary.

Having little to distract himself with and being quite good at learning from textbooks, Mikey always worked his way through his maths problems very quickly. At his old school, Mikey had worked his way through all the the problems in the chapters they were studying even though they'd only been assigned some of them to do.

They had a different maths textbook at this school, but the content was essentially the same as the maths textbook at his old school and they'd already done this stuff before. Mikey dutifully did the assigned problems, then drew patterns in the margins of his notebook when he was done.

At one point someone who Mikey assumed was the teacher came to his desk and Mikey stayed very still and kept his eyes on his desk. When the person took his notebook he quickly leant back out of the way, doing his best to avoid physical contact of any kind. The person flipped through the pages of his notebook, presumably to check the work had been done, then returned it to Mikey's desk.

Mikey pursed his lips. He didn't like people touching his things. Not people he couldn't see, anyway. Though... well, perhaps he wouldn't have minded if Finn touched his things. Not him, of course, but... well, if Finn wanted to see his book Mikey wouldn't have minded. He wouldn't have acknowledged it, but he wouldn't have minded. Finn wasn't in Mikey's maths class, though, and probably wouldn't have been particularly interested in his maths problems anyway.

Jude wasn't in the cafeteria at lunch break, which made Mikey feel sad. Sad and lonely. Finn was there, though, and he sat next to Mikey while Mikey ate. It would have been better if he had sat across from Mikey so that Mikey could watch his colours, but he didn't think he could communicate that wish without breaking his rules.

Mikey couldn't see people, but he also couldn't see the clothes they wore or most things they held, so Mikey didn't see the piece of candy until it was already in front of him and Finn had released it. Perhaps that normally would have disturbed him, but something about candy magically appearing in front of him, gifted to him by a boy who had a crush on him, simply made Mikey let out a little surprised laugh and smile.

He wanted to say thank you but it was against his rules, so he sucked on the candy on the way back to class instead and hoped his thanks was implied.

Disappointingly, Finn wasn't in his science class either. As far as Mikey could tell they were supposed to be doing some kind of experiment. It made Mikey feel awkward not to be able to take part. He sat in the corner away from everyone else and read his textbook instead.

All things considered, by the end of the day Mikey was feeling far better than he had starting it. There was a boy who liked him, even if nothing could ever come of it, and he'd met Jude. Jude didn't exactly seem enthused about the idea of becoming Mikey's friend, but he didn't actively hate Mikey either. There was potential there, Mikey felt.

He didn't do much more than shrug and tell his mum his day had been okay when she came to pick him up. He wanted to actually secure Jude as a proper friend before he said anything to her. It would just make both of them feel worse if it didn't work out. He didn't tell her about Finn, either, but that was just part of his rules. On this particular occasion he wished it wasn't for multiple reasons, but the rules were pointless if exceptions were made.

If Mikey had homework nobody had succeeded in communicating it to him, so when he got home he got to work on recreating Finn's colours. He'd need a better art program or perhaps just better art skills to ever portray them properly, but for just then he was happy simply to be able to translate the individual colours so accurately. Some he was still working on pinning down, but he had a table with the hex codes for many and their meanings recorded for the ones he knew.