27. Chapter Twenty-seven #2
I quickly wipe my cheeks and look up at him. He’s looking at the crossword, but he’s not doing it anymore. He’s entirely focused on me.
Knowing he won’t ask, I sit up straight and turn the paper toward him. I was right. His attention was definitely on me because he’s looking at it before I’ve even finished turning it. He tilts his head, eyes scanning the drawing - if just a paper full of color can be called a drawing?
“Gray,” he says, not like a question, but like he understands. He nods, too. Then his eyes find mine. “Are you gray all of the time?”
Since Carter and Casey? Yes.
Since coming here? No.
I flip over the paper and write on the back, glad the gray is a dark-ish shade so he’ll be able to read it.
He sits and waits with his chin on his fisted hand, looking nice and calm and peaceful. He keeps looking that way when I show him my words. GRAY ALWAYS NOW THEY ARE GONE. GRAY ONLY SOMETIMES BEFORE.
“How much do you mean by sometimes? Could you give it a scale for me? On a scale of 1 to 10, how often have you been gray while you’ve been here? Or you can give me a percentage. What percentage of time have you spent being gray?”
I frown down at the words.
That’s too hard.
That’s… that’s too hard.
I’m shaking my head before I realize it.
He says, “Okay. How about this - when does the gray stop? Or when did it, before?”
I think about that.
It doesn’t take much thinking at all.
I draw a moon beneath the letters I had written.
“Nights?” I waver my hand, then tap the word, SOMETIMES. “Some nights?”
I nod.
“Good. Can you draw me what those nights feel like?”
Not what I do at night, but what they feel like.
If the days are an endless stretch of gray, then the nights - the good nights - are…
Not gray, they aren’t gray.
They aren’t yellow, either. They aren’t bright enough to be yellow. They’re warm, sometimes, but not that kind of warm.
Ace is warm. Ace is sunshine. The brightest yellow of a clear-sky day. The deep oranges and reds of a sunrise. The deep pinks and purples of a sunset.
He doesn’t want me to draw what Ace feels like, though.
He wants me to draw how the good nights feel.
Ace is there, on the good nights, but it’s not just him.
It’s my hiding spot and my bunny. A worry stone and a notebook.
It’s song requests and goofy singing and the kind of music that soothes the soul.
Snacks that feel right in my mouth. Smiles I can feel in my chest. Sunshine warmth without blinding light.
I look at the contents of the pencil box again, thinking of all of those good things, the feeling of those nights sinking into me as I do.
Nights are blue, it turns out.
I don’t realize it until my fingers find the colored pencil, stalling as the thumb and pointer finger cradle it. The blue is soft - not light, not like the sky or the ocean, just… soft. Deep, rich, saturated with the color, but not so much so that it’s caving into darkness.
Indigo blue, according to the words on the colored pencil.
I start to fill in the area around the moon from before. I cover the gray words up, just like how the night eats away at the gray inside me, not stopping until all there is, all I feel, is blue.
It fits so well, the feeling of rightness sinking deep into me the more the color blooms on the page. It’s sad, blue usually is, but it’s a quiet sadness. It’s muted. More of a melancholy than a devastation. Something you can just sit in without the fear of being swallowed up by it.
Soft.
Safe.
Nights are full of music.
Nights are blue.
Nights are soft and safe and Ace.
Nights are the only thing keeping all that gray at bay.
“That’s a beautiful color,” Dr. Singh tells me when I show him.
I nod in agreement. Beautiful isn’t a good enough word, but my brain is starting to feel a little watery inside and I kind of can’t believe I was able to find the words melancholy and devastation without the feelings chart, so I decide that beautiful is good enough.
“Blue is sad for a lot of people, but it can also be peaceful.” He does the one finger, then the two, as he talks. “What is that blue for you, Matt?”
I put my hand out for the so-so sign.
“Both?” I nod. “Is it nice? The blue?”
I nod again, harder this time. I add the sign, Good, making it big to emphasize it. His careful smile gets fuller.
“That’s good, Matt. I’m very glad you’ve found that.” He smiles some more. “I wonder, would you be willing to tell me - or draw me - what it is about the nights that makes them feel blue?”
That watery feeling gets worse, but I look down at the paper and focus on the color until things calm. It’s such a nice color, this blue. So soft and safe.
Some nights are bluer than others, though.
It’s not a surprise, what makes one night bluer than the other.
I know it deep in my bones. Instinct, almost. Like those injured animals on the nature rescue shows Bryce sometimes watches.
No one tells them they should drag themselves to a dark, safe cave while they heal, they just do it.
It feels wrong to share this with him, though. Like the little piece of happiness will stop belonging to me the moment he knows.
I trust him, though. Or I’m starting to. He’s given me so many ways to communicate. He’s been so kind and patient. He hasn’t asked about the packet. I think if I admitted to him that I haven’t even been able to get myself to look at it again, he wouldn’t even be upset.
If I want to get even a little better, I have to open up to him.
It’s not like I have to tell him everything anyway, right? I can keep some pieces to myself.
Like how the sound of Ace can range from low and soft, to bright and loud, but somehow, it’s always exactly what I need.
Like how he’s usually silly and energetic and nervous and tired, words spilling out of him in waves of chaos, but sometimes something happens, something shifts.
The brightness fades, not because of exhaustion or sadness, but because we’ve settled.
He calms and I calm and the world goes quiet.
Even when the music is playing, and his keys are clacking, and bags of snacks are crinkling.
Even when he speaks. Even the usual noise inside my mind. It’s all quiet.
Nights with Ace are always blue, but those moments, those quiet moments when everything is so soft, stuffed-bunny-soft, and everything is safe - those moments are when the blue tints indigo.
Dr. Singh doesn’t have to know about all of that. I get to keep those moments safe. I get to keep them just for me.
But… he could know about Ace.
I take a new sheet of paper.
I draw another crescent moon with a soft yellow. Then a box for a desk and some angles that are supposed to be a chair. I add a bunch of squares for the computer screens and color them light blue like they’re glowing. I’m not sure he’ll understand, though, as I look down at it.
I add an arrow to the side and carefully draw a keyboard. I give up after a few of the letters, not sure they’re even in the right spots. I draw the mouse next. That’s easier. I follow it up with music notes floating through the air, coming out of the computer.
I look at all of it again.
Then I carefully write, ACE.
I turn the paper, showing it to him. He leans forward to get a better look before a soft smile curls along his lips. “Is that… Ace’s office?”
I nod.
I don’t know why, but I can’t meet his eyes anymore.
Was this a bad idea?
“And the music - is that what you do together in there? Listen to music at night?”
I nod again before adding the words HIDE and WORKS.
He’s quiet, so I make myself look up at him.
There’s something strange on his face, but it disappears when our eyes meet. His smile doesn’t seem fake. Just… careful, maybe?
“You listen to music while you hide and he works?”
I lean back against the couch, drawing my knees up, wishing I had brought my bunny down with me. He feels so far away up on the cushion.
God, that’s so stupid, isn’t it? It’s right there. I just have to twist around.
I’m so tired.
“Matt? Do I have that right? The two of you spend nights in his office and listen to music?” I nod. “And you hide while he works?”
I rest my arms on my knees and my cheek on my arms. I lift a hand to show him one finger. Yes.
“You know?” Dr. Singh begins. He waits, but I can’t look at him. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. “That sounds really nice.”
Oh.
Wait.
Really?
I carefully look at him.
Now he has that beaming smile. It just gets bigger when he sees me looking at him, but then he seems to force it to soften and asks, “Is it safe? Are you safe there, Matt?”
That’s the easiest question. I don’t even have to think. I’m nodding and putting up one finger at the same time.
Nights are blue. Nights are music and weird snacks and silly rambling and quiet moments and Ace. Nights are safe.
Nights are the safest.
I know the sign for it, for ‘safe’, but it’s sticky in my mind, not letting me remember. I want to tell him, though. It’s important. So, I lift my head and move my knees and lean over to write it instead.
I write the letters, finishing the word off with a big E, but then I… can’t stop. It gets stuck in my head, looping. Over and over.
SAFE. SAFE. SAFE. SAFE. SAFE.
I finally manage to stop, gripping the pencil tight. The last group of letters are jagged, deep.
I’m crying again, but there’s a smile in my chest.
He’s still smiling when I look up at him again.
“That’s very safe. I am so glad you’ve found that, Matt. I think your blue nights with Ace are beautiful.”
I bite down on my bottom lip as it starts to wobble.
“Ace has interesting taste in music, depending on who you ask.” I almost laugh. The breath that leaves me shakes like a laugh, at least, coming out in little puffs. He chuckles. “Do you get to pick the songs sometimes?”
I shrug before grabbing another piece of paper. I write, SONG on it, then ball it up and pretend to throw it. His eyebrows dart up, his smile growing. “You write song requests down and then throw them at him?”
He doesn’t sound upset. He looks like he might laugh again, actually.