jenlisa one shots & short stories

In black and white, then red, and blue and green

Lisa saw the world in black and white. Everything was just somewhere along a greyscale parameter for her, devoid of all colour.

It took years for her family to realise; years and years of pointing out colours to her only for her to shrug and make a non-committed noise. She had no idea what they were talking about. Only her family seemed to care because, after all, Lisa had never seen the world in any other way. You can't miss what you've never had.

They didn't diagnose her with anything until she was twelve, at which point the doctors had flashed her mother knowing smiles, announcing "It's a soulmate charm."

At the time Lisa - who didn't care for romance or for any soulmate-talk, scowled. She stuck her bottom lip out, barely hiding the irritation on her face.

About one in five people were born with a soulmate charm. It could be anything; Lisa's mother had the first thing her husband said to her written across her arm from birth. She knew people from school who had timers on their wrists, counting down to the time they would meet their soulmate. They were a tricky thing, soulmates. For some people, they would know as soon as they met the other person. For others, they could know a person for years before their soulmate charm revealed itself.

There was something so sweet about that; the way a pair could look at each other after several years and say "Oh. It's you, after all," along with the realisation that they never wanted it to be anyone else.

"She'll start seeing in colour as soon as she meets her soulmate," one of the doctors said with an all too sweet smile.

Lisa's arms folded on her chest, her feet swinging and banging against the hospital bed. "Can I go now?" she said, jumping down off the bed and flipping her hair out of her face.

Lisa hadn't wanted to go to this silly hospital trip. She was happy to keep on with her little monochrome world, where everything was calm and grey and the same.

That was until she met Jennie

When she meets Jennie a year later, they are both thirteen and she's in a seriously pissed off mood.

Her bag had split on the way to school, her workbooks falling out into the mud, wrecking her homework for her first period class. Her teacher for that class had told her that it was no excuse and gave her detention, which was only made worse by the jeering of her classmates, laughing at the fact that the 'good girl' had just got a detention.
And now, there's a brunette in her chair.

Lisa slams her book down on the table. "That's my chair, new kid. Now move." Her teeth were gritted.

The girl blinks up at her, gaping for a moment, frozen in place.

"Did I stutter?"

The brunette mumbles an apology and picked up her books, shifting along to the next chair. When Lisa sits down she notices that she's watching her out of the corner of her eye, somewhat fearfully. She groans inwardly, realizing all at once how rude she had been, even for her.

"Sorry," Lisa says, rubbing her hands across her eyes. "Bad day."

The girl shrugs, still kind of pale. "S'okay."

She attempts a smile, offering out her hand to shake. "I'm Lisa."

She watches the way the girls stares at her hand, and she wonders if she had overstepped the line, if she'd gone too far to begin with and the damage had already been done.

But then she smiles, her face transforming as she takes her hand. "Jennie. Nice to meet you."

Lisa was fifteen when she first asks Jennie the question that she had never asked anyone.