Yellow (editing)

Green Paint is Okay

The following Saturday Orenda didn't come over at 1 PM.

I honestly don't know what I expected, but it seemed a bit surreal to me – you know, the whole staying home on Saturday afternoon feeling. It automatically forced me to try to beat the next stage in Outlast Corruption, even though I had already beaten it a whole bunch of times. It also forced me to sit in the middle of my room and paint, which I had been doing a little more than I would have expected. I had already finished about ten paintings of absolutely nothing, an entire tube of paint, and completely destroyed the tip of one paintbrush. It made me feel like a kindergartener, but that was basically the point, it made me feel pretty carefree and it was nice, to say the least.

Anyway, I needed all the stress relieving things I could get, since there were only two days left until I had to go to St. Hemling, and that kind of sucked majorly. The more it seemed real to me, the more I tried to talk myself into getting excited to socialize. Although, socializing is possibly the worst thing one can do in their lifetime; sitting at home, painting, reading, and playing video games beat school by a long run. The sole reason, though, was that I really can't remember much about St. Hemling, except for all the bad things that happened there. Dad constantly tried to convince me that maybe I was just being too sensitive about the whole 'going to a real school' deal, and that I just fished out all the negativity and disregarded the positive. It was possible that I had forgotten all the good and in reality everything was gumdrops and lollipops. I almost wished that I was right.

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I spent the rest of my day in a normal way; my parents came home from their meeting, we talked about Barry's situation (he was getting a whole lot better, but there were some complications that no one would tell me about), and my dad made some lame joke that my mom and I both protested against. Then dinner came, and I helped set the table as always, and my dad made yet again another lame joke – this time funnier, though. I realized that his best work came during the timespan from dinner to bed. But the entire time I ate the thing I kept wondering was if Orenda was ever going to show up or if she was waiting for me somewhere, and believed that I was smart enough to find out where.

"Finnegan, can you go get the spoons for the soup?" My mom's voice called out to me from nearby, and I regarded it quietly. My mom had an unhealthy obsession with silverware, which meant that in order to find a good spoon I had to sift through a pile of other utensils. I'm sure if all of our drawers were dumped out, we would be swimming in forks, knives, and spoons. Eventually I found what I needed.

Dinner was normal too, we had the usual conversations, and I said the usual things. My mom made her signature chicken soup and we had a light salad – "good for the newly blossoming buds of spring" as my dad said. Apparently it was supposed to help my cold get better, and to prevent me from dying. It did help soothe my throat, so there's that.

And then, when dinner was over, the phone rang.

Both of my parents had gone somewhere else in the house, so it was just me and the phone. I picked it up hesitantly, not really knowing what to say, despite the appropriate greeting being literally as simple as hello.

"Hey, Finn?" A small voice peeped out. It sounded a whole lot like Orenda. I was actually surprised to hear her voice, since she didn't show up at one.

"Hi," I mumbled, and took the phone away from my ear then placed it against my chest, listening for my parent's voices around me. It seemed utterly quiet. "Who is this?" I said, under my breath.

"Really? That many girls call you?"

I laughed quietly. "Hi Orenda."

"How's it going?"