The Color of Last Period

Chapter 1: Colors

Everyone loves the first day of school.

That is what adults say, anyway. They talk about clean notebooks, new teachers, and the chance to become a better version of yourself. They never mention the smell of floor wax or the nervous silence before the bell.

They certainly never mention how hope can look different when you already know who will live long enough to enjoy it.

I had been seeing colors around people since I was seven.

My mother was green. Deep green, like pine trees after rain. My father was green too, though a thin yellow thread had appeared near his left shoulder after he bought a motorcycle. I cried until he sold it.

The yellow vanished a week later.

That was how I learned the colors were not fixed.

Green meant years. Yellow meant danger—an accident, an illness, or one foolish decision made at the wrong moment. Orange meant the danger was close.

Red meant death was coming soon, usually through violence.

Sometimes the color was only a narrow rim. Sometimes it burned so brightly that I could barely see the person inside it.