A pretty girl with her socks lined in lace was infatuated with pretty skies filled with clouds made of vapor. She liked to look. Simply and wonderfully. She would look around her, making sure to see it all but she never saw the chemistry between them. She loved chemistry, she loved the colors and she loved the vapors. She saw chemistry in the lab but only there, until she started to look. Simply and wonderfully. The world became more than numbers and colors and shapes and statistics. She noticed people talking and she noticed the seasons changing and it was beautiful. Simply and wonderfully; not as wonderful as the chemistry between the orange sky and the yellow clouds because his favorite color was orange and hers was yellow, but she didn't see chemistry. But it was there, because when he was orange and she was yellow, how could they not collide? but they didn't. Because chemistry doesn't collide with love so love doesn't collide with young girls with frilly socks and young boys with fragile hearts. But how could they not collide? She was yellow and he was orange. They flow together perfectly in the sky. How were they were never meant to collide? There was mere vapor between her two favorite colors but the chemistry wasn't there, and she knew it, and he knew it, and he kissed her. With their lips pressed together there wasn't chemistry. There were no numbers or statistics or shapes or any colors other than orange or yellow and it was simply and wonderfully beautiful. Her hair was tangled but not as knotted as her stomach or her buzzing thoughts. There wasn't a spark, there wasn't chemistry. There couldn't be. He was too happy and too amazing to feel something so beautiful with someone so disastrous. But there were sparks and he couldn't deny his love any longer.
"What was that?" Words fell from bare lips, bare and empty without the warmth from her own.
"It's called a kiss." Foreheads rested against one another and his lips twitched into a small smile.
"Oh, I wasn't sure. Can you show me again?" And with that there was no denying the chemistry. It was a reaction that went from her chest to her head where heat radiated from her cheeks. The vapor was nowhere to be seen with her chest pressed against his. and with that she looked down and walked away. she walked away from subtle loving and warm nights with him.
"Ingrid!" He chased her. Always unsteady and always sad, she kept walking. Unsteady. There with her off balance core she tripped over a branch and rolled down the hill and that's the last she saw a sunset with orange and yellow and that's the last she saw Elliot.
Blood, too much to handle. Blood was pouring from her head and she lies there with a lifeless grip onto the dead leaves that he knew were more alive than her. But with the thought in his mind that he couldn't live without her, he called an ambulance.
Two hours of panic and anxiety. Two hours of effortless sleep. She sat on the hospital bed with a pale complexion and a bandage that wrapped around the side of her face.
"She's so beautiful." The nurse left with a soft whisper to elliot.
"Beautiful? No. You are a work of art but right now i don't see anything beautiful because you are not a poem when you lie there lifeless and dull. It's not beautifully tragic that I might never kiss you again. You aren't beautiful. Don't listen to her. This isn't pretty or poetic just please come back..." He sobbed onto her shoulder.
Chemistry. Bottles of orange and yellow sat upon each table and goggles were prepared. Ingrid ran into the full class and took the only seat she saw empty. A seat next to a boy with blonde hair and green eyes and a smile. Ingrid kept her head low and sat down. The professor began to lecture on colors and vapors and this was the first time Ingrid couldn't pay attention. She stared into the glasses and her mind wandered. Elliot sat behind the yellow glass and she sat behind an orange one.
"Orange." Elliot was orange.
"Yellow." Ingrid was yellow. And this is the first time she was ever all that interested in color and vapor. Stating the names of colors never seemed to ignite her mind but then she remembered a night with unlimited wishing and loud music.
Frat party. Two weeks after Ingrid cut ties with the world around her and restarts who she is going to be. Boys throwing couches out of the top window and girls dancing on walls and chairs. A smoke musk filling the air around them. There was a window on the higher part of the room that stood open, leading to a starry night. Ingrid walked over to the window and climbed up.
"What's your favorite band?" She wasn't startled by a sudden voice but she knew she should have been, but something about it seemed for familiar so she was comfortable and he was comfortably waiting for an answer.
"I don't have one." She nodded towards the edge of the roof and looked up at the sky.
"Do you have a favorite color?" He asked with an innocent tone.
"Yes." She looked at him for the first time and he wasn't what she expected. Shaggy blonde hair framed a set of green bloodshot eyes and lips with a olive tint. He looked to be a freshman but at a frat party why wouldn't he be partying.
"What is it?"
"Why are you out here?" He started to laugh and she was even more confused.
"Bunch of creeps," He tilted his head to look back inside.
"What's your favorite color?" She asked, but in a blink he was gone. Thinking of a time where he wouldn't disappear.
Black carpets and coffee tables lined in porcelain mugs. Porcelain like the pale skin of Ingrid's fingers interlaced with his own.
"I'm not going to disappear, babe, Don't worry." And something was sincere and something wasn't but as long as he was there, she would be okay. She was okay. And so they sat at the table with a book in Ingrid's free hand and a phone in his. A constantly buzzing phone that shouldn't distract her but it did and when she glanced away from her book, she wished she didn't. Because the sight of hearts and piles of 'I love you's' were too much. And so she walked. Just like she always does when she needs to get away.
After three hours, there she sat on the rusty swing looking into the void of the setting sun. There was no orange or yellow, all she saw was pretty lilac skies and abrupt goodbyes. And she just wished she could be dead.
A flat orange line brought silence and he was sorry for everything. And everything went back to being just orange and just yellow. No shades in between.
