Sixty-Two ☼ Phan

Eighteen

The stone house was becomming more and more of a haven to the both of us.

Well, I suppose it already was to Phil. But once I'd gotten used to it, the broken walls and dusty ceilings, it felt like his comfort zone was expanding outward and taking me inside. We were in the same bubble, enraptured and lost and hiding from the world together.

But I guess that's why I was so desperate to tell Phil everything as soon as possible. Because, with every secret, every token of my past I had, created another needle. Another thorn and another possibility to pop our bubble.

When we walked through the door my mind immediately went back to the last time I was here. The red chalk, my slight meltdown.

Phil didn't notice at first, but once we moved to sit down, near the wall, he did. His reaction was hard to describe as he walked over to it and looked at the half-covered pictures. Red scribbles, scratched out in terrified motions.

"Why red?" he asked.

No anger. No care for the lost drawings. Just wonder.

I stepped up beside him. "I hate the color red."

"Because it's such an angry color?"

"Not angry," I told him quietly, "just sad. A sad color."

Phil glanced down at me, but I avoided meeting his gaze.

"What's a happy color for you, then?"

My eyes involuntarily turned up and caught his. "Blue."

Phil smiled, then reached down to the chalk bucket. I watched his fingertips graze overtop the previous prints, the previous smudges. He pulled out two sticks of blue and handed one to me.

"Enough sadness," he said. "Let's be happy."

I rolled the chalk in my hand and sat down with him. Both of us began to color.

It was quiet again. Not the reason we came. I still had things I wanted to tell him, things I wanted us to talk about.

I was having trouble finding the right words to start with. Every time I opened my mouth, I shut it back, sure that what I was about to say was not a good way to begin.

Thankfully, I didn't need to. Phil was more than okay with starting for me.

"Tell me about your fires," he coaxed. "About why. About when and where."

"It's a long story," I advised him quietly.

He paused, chalk pressed into the wall, grinning softly. "I have time."

I felt my hand falter as I went to color. How was I supposed to look at so much blue when all I felt was red? Behind the new blue layer we were creating, red peered out. Like the ceiling of the main hall, broken looking.

"My dad died," I told him. "And I was sad."

Phil hesitated and glanced at me again.

"So you set a fire?"

I bit my lip, fighting back the memory even as I told him about it.