The Color Grey (an original story)

My pencil draws smooth lines back and forth over my paper. weaving intricate patterns around each other, and then finishing them with dark, heavy shading. Completing my art work, I step back from the easel and gaze fondly at my creation, the grey light coming into the room from the big window gives it an eerie look. Its been raining nonstop for the past three weeks I've lived in this town, but Washington is always like that this time of year. I stare at my picture for a long time, while the subject, -a teenage boy with knowing eyes and full lips- stares back. His eyes are so interesting, like he has a secret hiding inside of them and the only way he can tell me is through his mesmerizing grey stare. I've seen this boy countless times, but I have never even spoken to him. The only place I ever recall seeing him is in my dreams. Ever sense my father and I moved to this new house he's all I dream about, the boy. And those dreams are always the same, the boy's face appears to me, he whispers something but to quietly for me to hear, and I know something is wrong by the way he looks at me. I've seen him so many times that he's stuck in my mind all the time, and I can't help but wonder why he's there, its as if he wants something from me, but I can't give it to him. I look around my room at all the art work I've created. I love to draw and my walls are covered in my work. My room used to be the attic in this old house, so its really very big, -as big as the whole perimeter of the house-. So, I have a lot of room to spread out my art supplies. The wooden floors are covered in pencil shavings and crumpled papers, and the desk in the corner is piled with paint brushes, giant pads of paper, watercolors and colored pencils. My bed is in the opposite corner of the room and then there's a floor lamp next to the desk, and that's all my room has in it. I don't care much for anything except my art work so I have close to no personal possessions except my supplies that I need to create that work. There is, of course the closet, the window and my easel, but other than that, nothing. I walk to the window and look out into the grey sheets of rain falling past the fogged up glass. My window is on the front of the house, so I have a clear view of the drive way and the front yard. I look down at the dirty blue Chevy pickup truck parked in the driveway just in time to see my dad get in, start the engine up and drive out onto the muddy, vacant street. He must have gotten a call to come into work early and didn't want to wake me. He's the head supervisor at the lumber yard that he just recently started working at. Of course he is great at what he does or he wouldn't have that position already, after working there for less than a month. He lives for his work, and he's very passionate about it, he also builds furniture in his spare time. That's where the desk I have in the corner came from, he built it for my mom when they were first married. But ever sense she got sick, its been pasted down to me, I never had a decent art desk until that moment. My dad has changed in these past few weeks, my mom was diagnosed with cancer just after he got his new job, he was so excited to tell her that he finally had what he'd always wanted, and that we could finally move to a bigger, better house. But when he got home he found her crying in their bedroom, she had gone to the doctor for a small checkup, but they found a few things out... and that was all they would tell me. So my dad turned into something so different then his normal self, He turned away from me, and seemed to forget that I even exist anymore. He turned into a quite, shadow of a father, we never even talk anymore, he just goes to work, comes home and shuts himself up in his bedroom and doesn't come out for anything, not even to eat. Its been really hard on me as well, losing a mother to this horrible sickness. She has to live in a hospital room, and that hospital room isn't even in the same state that we live in, she was moved from the hospital here in Washington, to a hospital in California, where they have specialists for the type of cancer she has. But she isn't all alone there. No, my Grandmother -her mother- lives in California and visits her often. the doctors say that she might get to come home after a few months of treatment. But I still can't get over the shock and heartbreak that I got when my parents came into my room, sat down on my bed and "explained" what was wrong. They won't even tell me what type of cancer she has, "its better I don't know" they say, which might be true. I guess it could save me from a lot of pain, and I love them for caring so much for me, but I can't stand thinking that my mom might be much worse then they are telling me, and I won't know about it until its to late. I try to clear my mind of these events in my life that hurt so much, so I go look again at the picture of the boy. I try to imagine what his life might be like, and other things about him. Like I try to guess his age, I finally come up with the ages sixteen -like me- through eighteen, he looks around that age. and then I try to guess what color his hair and his eyes might be, because as weird as it may sound, the dreams I have with him, they are always a very dull grey color. so I look at him for a long while picturing what his hair might be colored, I come up with sandy blond. That's what he looks like to me. And then his eyes, they look like they might be... green, a bright colorful green with specks of blue. I spend the rest of the day coming up with things and people that might be in his life. its fun to dream sometimes.***


"Leena!! Leena?!" The boy calls to me, its the first time he has ever said my name, I don't see him but I know his voice. "Leena!" He says again, this time I see his face, scared and pleading, his eyes filled with the secret that I know he wishes he could tell me. I sit strait up in bed, breathing heavy and drenched in sweat. I look around my room, half expecting to see the boy standing there, but of course he isn't. The dream was just so real though, and his eyes- I gasp, jump out of bed and run quickly over to my easel. I rip off the top page to reveal a new, blank sheet of paper. I grab a pencil and start drawing frantically, I feel that if I don't let the image of the boy slip from my mind, down my right arm and through the pencil to come smoothly from the sharpened tip, that it will all be lost forever. I let the image flow at its own pace, which is quickly, I just have to think of the face that I saw in my dream and my hand moves by its self, painting the picture on the page just as clearly as I see it in my head. When I'm finished I step back, tilting my head to the left, and then to the right, studying my work. "Wow..." I say to myself. The drawing is very life-like, the boy's face locked in a scary looking trance, his eyes pleading for me to help him. "I don't know what you want." I say, tears coming to my eyes "I'm sorry." the boy makes me feel sad and lonely. I touch his face, running my finger down his jaw line and around his chin, then up to his lips that are slightly parted as if a small plea is escaping them. As I do this I get a very strange feeling, as if I am being watched. I look around making sure I am really alone in the room. With doing so I am convinced that I am just jumpy after my dream, I am completely alone in the large attic space. I sit down on the cold wood floor and sigh, I can hear the wind raging outside my window and hear the rain pounding against the glass. for the first time I realize that the sheet of paper that I so quickly ripped off of my easel and threw on the floor, had the other picture of the boy on it. I see it now, laying face down on the floor. I crawl over to it and turn it over slowly, and there he is, looking so different than in the scary drawing that I had just done. He even looks as if he might have a smile playing across his smooth lips. But his eyes still have that secret somewhere behind them, lurking menacingly in the shadows of his irises. "What's your story?" I ask the picture, my eyes staring blankly at it as I wonder why this is happening to me, and why this house brought on such a change in my dreams and my thoughts. I look down at the picture laying on my crossed legs, and as I look into his eyes I feel something different for the boy, something that I never knew before, something happy and sad at the same time. The closest way I could describe this is- Longing for something desperately, but not being able to retrieve it. A feeling that gnaws at you, until the thing that you are yearning for comes to you, and fills that yearning with something else. Love. I scream out loud, and then clamp both hands over my mouth in astonishment. I can't be in love with a picture I drew! I think, slapping myself on the side of the head. Are you crazy?! I yell in my mind, holding both my hands on the side of my head as if I have a terrible headache. Please, please, please!!! I think desperately to myself. Stop doing this!! I run to my bed and jump onto it, then pull the covers up over my head. I hug my pillow close to my body and bight down on one of the corners, trying to stop myself from screaming again. I am totally insane! I yell at myself in my mind. I must just be tired. I try to reassure myself. I'll sleep on it, and see what my feelings are in the morning. I agree with my own thoughts, hoping that I will have just imagined this whole, dumb, crazy, thing up.