Tertiary colors

My pops was the kind of man who duct-taped the toe cap of his boots to get them to last an extra month or two. He's been in the dirt for years now. I envy those who know who they are and aren't searching to prove it. I live in that in-between, like a piece of gum wedged between your lip pocket and the front of your teeth. I don’t know if I’m about to get chomped on, swallowed up, or spit out.

My pops liked to tell a story about a turtle born without a shell that spent most of its life looking for a suitable slot. It tried an empty Kleenex box, but it couldn't move around in a Kleenex box. It tried a plastic bottle that had been cut in half. That worked ok for a while because it could wear it like a backpack, but it wasn't ideal because it was clear, and this turtle liked its privacy. It goes on like this for a bit. My pops always came up with different objects that the turtle would live in for a short while and then discard, but he always ended the story the same way. The turtle makes a broken flower pot home. It worked the best because it could be worn like a backpack, and the turtle could hide in it when it pleased, but the pot had a flaw. The problem was its weight. The damn thing was so heavy that carrying it around took years of the turtle's lifespan. It died young.

I have been looking for my shell. Along the way, I’ve met people who have been ok and others who have caught me in their web, making for some sticky situations. Tom was a slimy bastard with beady eyes, fusilli pasta locks, a pimply face, and fists like dump trucks. He didn't have hair on his legs because he'd put his Bic lighter to his shins and burn it all off when bored. I met him in the tenth grade. He was a transfer student from one of those schools dipshit kids who've been smoking Marlboro’s since the fifth grade usually end up. He was a strange fella just like me, and I took a liking to him from the start because I didn't mind the smell of burnt hair, and he didn't care that I had no friends. When we met the first day at school, he told me I looked queer—helluva way to introduce yourself to a fella, but I didn't mind it much. Words have always been more like colors to me. You could try to fit them inside the lines or just say fuck it and let them wash all over. Either way doesn't matter much; it’s all up for interpretation.

Mom told me pops died at work and that it was instantaneous. I was wearing overalls. She said he got run over by a Caterpillar tractor. She advised me never to go into construction or drink while I was at work. I hadn't even known that my pops was a drinking man, but the way he yelled, smelled, and failed made sense after I heard that. I wondered if I'd be a drinking man one day and what it might feel like to dedicate myself to something. I didn't have time to cry about his death, and I never saw my mom shed a tear either, but a strange thing happened; I wore those same overalls daily. They became a part of me; the only thing that would change was what I wore with them. When Tom met me, I’d been wearing them for seven hundred and fourteen days, and I had grown quite a bit in that time; the inseam was so short that my legs poked out of overalls like a half-peeled banana. I reckon that's what made me queer.

Tom and I became friends (whatever that word means), and I stopped wearing those overalls once the crotch blew out. I switched to a pair of my pop’s blue work pants that were too big for me. My mom said my father never gave us anything except trouble and those work pants. It was her kind of joke. I don't remember the trouble much. Tom met my mom early on once and told me he'd have sex with her someday. It was his kind of joke. I didn't joke. Sunflowers were wilting in my mind most of the time, and corn stalks too, and I've never been in a tornado, but I liked to think you wouldn't know it by looking into my eyes because there's fury in there, and it came from something. Maybe it was all the lousy jokes coming at me.

I figured out Tom was a bastard quickly, a thorny villain to all our peers, but I hung around him regardless because I saw things out until the wheels fell off. I'm still like that. If people are houses, I'm more like the side yard. Maybe that's too bold of a claim. I'm more like a misplaced pebble from the pea gravel in a sideyard or one of those cracks in the asphalt on some empty street that won't ever get fixed. Despite it all, Tom smiled at me sometimes—more than anyone else who ever looked at me, including my mom. Smiles go a long way when you're young and old, but it meant a lot to me back then. It gave me hope I might be a house too.

I'm not a bad kid by nature, but anyone can be persuaded into shenanigans when lonely. I wanted to be somebody to somebody because I never felt that I was enough for myself. Tom got his hands on a credit card and told me that all he needed to do to make it work was type in a zip code.

Really?

Sure as shit.

Prove it.

He bought a pack of cigarettes, a blue Gatorade, and a Kit-Kat bar. We smoked cigarettes and shared the Kit-Kat bar, but when I asked for a sip of the drink, he told me I was queer.

Fine.

I got lightheaded back then when I smoked. So lightheaded I wondered if I'd ever not be lightheaded. That was fun for me. Probably because I had pops’ fondness for being buzzed, and my brain was not too good at thinking about what was next. Tom's brain was always scheming, itching to do something new. As our peers returned to campus, we stood across the street from the school in a dirt parking lot. I never got looked at, but with a buzz next to Tom's smiling face, I fooled myself into believing our peers thought something of me. Instead of returning to school, Tom suggested we skip and go to a hookah bar.

What's that?

You go in there, sit down, and smoke a water pipe.

What's it feel like?

A million bucks.

That sounded good to me. It was a few miles' walk from school, which I learned is damn near nothing when you're floating on nicotine. We smoked cigarettes all along the way, and my body was light as an empty bottle of Pert Plus. People like to compare people to animals. You might say so-and-so is like a wolf, or this person is like a cat or a dog. I never saw animals in people, but I saw other things in people. For example, houses. On that walk, I came to a new vision for what people took after. Tom was a tugboat, and a damn powerful one too, who pulled me from the harbor of our school and out to sea.

The hookah bar was dark and smoky, only lit by the burn of the coals reflection atop the crinkled aluminum. My first thought was my pops would have liked a place like this. It must be just like a real bar. That made me feel mature like something new was happening, and I liked that because I thought I was forming into something specific. Maybe Tom's world was leading me to my new shell. We sat on a pleather couch in the back. Two guys were working - brown fellas - and only a couple of other people besides that, though you couldn't make out much of what they looked like beyond their shadows.

The couches were peeling at places to reveal the foam inside. It's nice to see the inside of things so quickly. Tom ordered cherry-flavored tobacco, and we puffed on it until thick clouds formed around us, making me feel like a pilot flying into a storm. Tom could do tricks with the smoke. I tried, but I couldn't do anything except cough, but I didn't get embarrassed about it because I was lightheaded and because Tom smiled, which set me at ease. I lost whatever wits I had about me and melted into the couch the way Play-Doh can mold around your hand if you press hard enough. The conversation then wasn't words to me, only sounds and colors, primarily red, but not violent. Instead, it was the kind of red you could lose yourself in, like when you stare long enough at a flame.

The next round of hookah was blueberry flavor, and Tom ordered brown sugar chicken wings that were sticky and good but didn't sit right with me. I got sick. The sick where you get dizzy first, then stop feeling dizzy and start feeling queasy, and your mouth waters, then the first dizziness comes back and plops itself on top of your queasiness, and the only thing left to do is to lie down. I sprawled out on the couch, which caught the attention of one of the brown fellas, who told me I couldn't act like that. Tom called me queer for being loopy. I mumbled some yellow and blue and stumbled to the bathroom, locking myself in a stall. I wanted to vomit but could only stare at the shitter. Soon enough, I was lost in the dingy water, alternating between seeing my reflection and the ring of mildew underneath it. Once again, I was caught in the in-between. I unrolled some toilet paper and put it in my mouth, thinking, unreasonably, that swallowing paper would soak up my sickness. It made me want to vomit more, but I could only heave, my hands alternating from my knees to my hips and back again. My head was heavy, hanging low like a kettle ball was strapped to it. Ten minutes went by like this before Tom's shouting voice slapped me out of my stupor.

He kicked the stall door open, and it whacked me on the ass hard enough to make me stumble forward and hit the flusher. I yelled at him and said what the fuck.

The credit card's declining.

What?

You got any cash?

No.

Fuck.

What the fuck.

We got to get out of here.

What do you mean?

They're looking for us.

Do you have money, Tom?

Shit, no.

How are we doing to pay for this?

We ain't.

What are we going to do?

We're going to run. Come on.

With an invisible noose tied around my neck, the tugboat dragged me out of the restroom. It was like a Jason Bourne movie. The first brown fella, the shorter of the two, spun around near our table, holding the check in one hand and a plate of chicken bones in the other. As Tom speed-walked at him, he squared toward us like Tom was driving toward a basketball hoop. Tom's hand, from thumb to pinky, reached across the enemy's whole chest, and with a swift extension of his arm, the guy flew backward, slamming into the table and knocking over the hookah. Bones hung like snowflakes in the air, and we rolled past him. The shadows of the others receded further into their seatbacks, staying out of harm's way. At the door, the other fella waited. He was bigger and held his arms out like that was enough to get Tom to stop. The fella shouted in his native tongue; a shock of yellow splattered wide, and a piercing line of orange drove into my ear canal. Tom lowered his shoulder and picked up his pace as he charged toward him like an elephant on a stampede. I was at Tom's tail like a calf near its mother. The man sidestepped away from the ram at the last minute, and Tom swung the door open with such force that it folded back at the hinges until its steel handle slammed against the thick glass outside the establishment. The building rattled and shook, and the light from the outside poured in, setting us free. The men, still in the dark behind us, cursed and shouted.

You're on camera!

Outside, Tom accelerated into a full sprint in the shabby parking lot. I followed him like a greyhound in dead last chasing a rabbit. We were stopped at the edge of the parking lot by a seven-foot concrete barrier separating it from the apartment complex on the other side. Tom's neck snapped to the right, where there was an open dumpster. He seemed to teleport to it and just as quickly was shutting its warped black plastic top, hopping on it and hurling himself over the barrier to the other side. It was a jailbreak. My lungs burned from the smoking I'd been doing, and I gasped in the rotten smell of the dumpster as I crawled on top of it. Maneuvering myself over the barrier, I scraped my chest and hands, and my knees buckled from my weight when I landed on the side of the apartment complex.

Tom was crouching down behind a dark green SUV. I glared at him.

What the fuck just happened.

He chuckled.

The guy said there were cameras. What if we're on camera?

Who gives a shit.

What if they find us?

How would they?

Tom lit a cigarette and took a strong inhale. On exhale, he lifted his chin to the heavens. The sun hit his face; he basked in it. I knew then that I'd dipped a toe into somewhere I didn't belong. I yearned to transport back to the meagerness of the in-between. The only way to get back was to make the wheels fall off. I pushed off from the ground and yelled at Tom.

I told you I'm not a fighter, and stand by that. I'm not a writer either, but these are my words. Tom and I fought. He got me twice in the face- enough to shatter my eye socket. He punched me in the nose, and blood squirted out like a horse's hooves stepping on a tube of acrylic paint. I met the ground for the second time, and he stomped on my chest until my white T-shirt turned black with outlines of his sneakers’ soles. As I lay there nursing my wounds, he turned his back on me and picked up the cigarette he'd dropped during the melee. It was the opening I needed. With what I had left, I snapped and charged at him, tackling him into the SUV. The alarm sounded as the truck settled back into place. I swung, he ducked, and I broke my hand on the glass of the driver's side window. He slugged me so good that my jaw cranked out of place. I slammed to the ground and blacked out.

When I awoke, Tom had been replaced by the brown fellas. They had their hands rummaging through my pockets for money I didn't have. My face was an over-inflated beach ball. As the fellas debated their next move, I wheezed like a car sputtering out of gas. I heard yellows and reds, but that familiar sharp orange was the clearest. One of the guys stepped back like he was prepping for a penalty kick, and that's the last thing I remember until I reawoke, and it was the evening.

I hid in my room the next day, ignored by my mom. It was too painful to move. I stared at the stucco ceiling and hallucinated about animals, houses, boats, friendship, money, and colors. Everything rolled on my mind's highway, speeding into tunnels of anxiety that no traffic signage could combat. The day after that, my mom knocked on my door.

Are you in there? How long have you been in there? Are you hungry?

I was.

When I stepped into the living room, I foolishly expected to see breakfast on the table or her in the kitchen preparing a meal. Instead, she was gathering her belongings to meet up with a friend. She looked at me before opening the apartment door.

What happened to you?

Got into a fight.

Are you ok?

I think so.

Her mouth moved; gray, indigo, and black. Then she left.

At school, I told people I'd been in a car accident. Halfway through the day, Tom approached me like nothing happened. Sometimes, I wonder how much control I have over what I experience. I'm like seaweed getting pushed by the tides. I stared blankly through Tom and never responded to what colors he splashed on me. I was hollow, stuck back in the in-between.

There are good people who do good things, bad people who do bad things, good people who do bad things, and bad people who do good things. There's also me, not on any side, tucked away in a purgatory pocket. Pops, are some turtles better off with no shell? I know I'm a strange fella.