A few days after I visited Orenda's art room, where we had a long and overly deep talk about wanting to be Stevie Wonder, and after we walked back to 'chez moi' – as Orenda would put it – in which a number of things happened, including:

1. Belting out 'Isn't She Lovely' while sliding through crowds down Main Street.

2. Dropping my white cane into a puddle (and three more after that).

3. Realizing that I kind of still wanted to stay at Orenda's ordinary house once we arrived at the window of my damp and cold room.

Anyway, a few days after all that, Egan came over again after a terribly long streak of I'm-too-busy days. And like usual, we went downstairs and sat on the slightly uncomfortable couch in front of the TV and Egan fixed up the console/wires/etcetera and I sat there. I sat there quite uncomfortably, but it was mostly because I didn't know how to tell him about seeing Orenda and talking about metaphorical topics, i.e. how she was wind and I was a book that was stuck or whatever because apparently it's not cool.

Honestly, it was obvious that I was slightly cut off from all things social. Actually, over the past couple of months, I slowly realized that I, Finn Annson, was extremely socially deprived. And by socially deprived, I mean completely isolated from anything social at all. Sure, Egan would come over every other day or week and his mom would have tea with my parents, but that wasn't socializing. That was being stuck in a house with adults and a teenager – who was coincidentally my friend. It sucked, in many ways.

But being with Orenda was different because she was a breath of new life and basically a flower that grew on the sidewalk; you know, the one that makes everybody amazed and start wondering how a little teeny flower could be strong enough to withstand concrete. I wondered that sometimes too.

"How's your Orenda obsession?" Egan asked me, cutting off my thoughts and making me scratch the top of my non-brushed hair. The video game console whirred on and I sighed.

"It's okay. Do I really talk about her that much?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Egan ran back and leaped onto the couch, sending me flying up a few centimetres.

"Well, whatever. I just-"

"So, dude, I met this girl and we totally hit it off," he interrupted, and Outlast Corruption's dystopian theme music drummed on again. "I got invited to my first party. It was okay, worse than I thought it would be."

"A party?" I questioned, not really noticing how stupid and innocent that sounded. It was like, 'oh no! A party?! What's that? Are there toys? Do you get free cookies and when should my mom pick me up if I ever got invited?'

"I don't know. No one really talked to me, no big surprise there, but... that's mostly it, yeah." It didn't surprise me that Egan didn't expect people to invite him to a highschool party, but it seemed semi-impossible to him that he got invited. I could imagine all his friends and all his swooning girls he tells me about getting all up in his face and asking questions just to hear his 'amazing' husky voice reply "no" or something stupid like that. And then there I was, daydreaming about winning a motorbike race and having my Stevie Wonder CD (not to mention, given by a man going on 60) on repeat.

"Cool," I replied.

Tori casually started directing me around the town centre, where there was an infinite amount of zombies and the occasional possessed demon (which, as Egan states, are terrifying as hell). I opened my mouth to maybe strike up a new conversation that didn't involve (a) girls or (b) girls that Egan was hitting up or (c) a girl named Orenda May Castellano. But no words really left my mouth.

"I'll tell you what's cool, Fish. I kissed her. Like, I kissed her." Egan suddenly piped up. I had an itching feeling to say that I also kissed Orenda, but in the end it would make me sound like a pussy because that was not how the events played out. I had a hormonal outburst in which I felt bad about myself and she explained to me that pink was love and then she kissed me and we laughed in the snow. It was good in my brain but I knew for sure that it was a chick flick scene in Egan's so I just laughed awkwardly.

            "Good move!" I exclaimed, maybe a little bit too happily.

            "Wow, you're really excited about that. Anyway, it was just temporary. I don't think I like her; for many reasons, including the fact that she probably doesn't like me either."

            "Then why the heck did you kiss her?"

            "I... felt like it. I don't know. She was pretty. She was hot."

            "That's it?"

            "Uh..."

            "Well, because it doesn't work like that. You don't just pull a random stranger on the street and make-out just 'cause she's 'hot'," I said matter-of-factly.

            "Wow, calm down. It's a party, it's expected."

            "There should be more to it though."

"Does there have to be more?" He grunted and I heard the familiar 'splatting' noise that meant a demon's head was cut off.

            "Usually. I just think that's a bit shallow of you." My voice got all tremulous, and I gulped.

A bit of silence.

            "Dude, just 'cause you can't see doesn't mean you're all wise and powerful, okay?"

Well, that kind of shook me up. I wouldn't like to admit it, but I choked inside a little bit because he was my friend. So, I paused the game and set my controller down and started walking in the direction that was hopefully away.

            "You're doing it again!" He shouted behind me and the TV shut down. "What's wrong with you?"

            "I-"

"Come back and help me slay this demon, it's not a big deal. Stop acting like that Fish, what a wimp."

"Well, I don't know. While you're off getting influenced by people that you don't even like, I'm here all alone, and oh! News flash! I'm not like you!"

            "Why don't you go and get some friends to get 'influenced' by then?"

            "I thought you were my friend, Egan!"

            "Huh, and I thought you weren't a little mush pile that gets offended by everything I say, but apparently I was wrong," he plopped his controller down and I could smell the sea breeze cologne nearing me as he walked past, bumping my shoulder harshly into the wall as he left. I clenched my fist to hit him back, but loosened it; the idea left as quickly as it had come.

            "You know what?" I called over to him, "you're not even Egan anymore."

            "Whatever, man. You're not Finn, so why the hell should I be Egan at all?"

His footsteps left in an intense hurry and I was left there alone, and lonely as well that time. So, obviously I decided to run to the living room (while bumping into almost everything – partially out of clumsiness, partially out of anger), throw on my light jacket and slip into my shoes, and just as I was about to leave, my dad shrieked, "WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

            Strangely, I didn't know how to answer. "Rebellious idiotic teenager stuff," I mumbled, and grabbed my white cane as swiftly as I could.

            "Don't go on the street, Finn." His voice was dangerously serious, and I sighed, pushing my hair back in frustration.

            "Egan and I had a... quarrel."

            "A fight?"

            "Sure, it sounds stupid if you put it that way, though."

            "Sounds even more stupid if you say quarrel, bud. Anyway, I saw him stomp out the door as if there was gum on his shoe a few seconds ago."

"I don't care."

"See you later, don't go out for too long, okay?"

I didn't answer him and just left.

I maneuvered my way out the door and started out down the street: the one that Egan, Appy and I would always play on. When I thought about where I should go, the only thing that really popped into my head was Willow. I was under the impression that maybe a tree that was hardly even impressive would make me feel better, and maybe it did.

            I walked down the sidewalks, metaphorically dotting them with my boiling anger. I wished that Orenda was with me. And I wished that Orenda never existed for a small moment, too. She messed me up, she made me start to think differently and think that I, a blind person, could see colour. She was a ball of hope that could get destroyed so easily if she didn't stay in the hands of whoever needed hope the most.

            That's when the horrible realization hit me; I was becoming the boy in Barry's glum book. That nameless boy – that one that tried to push everyone and everything away as if they were the waves and he was the sand.

Soon I reached Willow, my (surprisingly) non-frozen hand brushing the bark. I threw my white cane on the ground, a bit too harshly, and slammed myself against the trunk, sliding down slowly. It occurred to me that at one point in a guy's life, or a girl's, or really anyone's, one of your friends are going to be a huge butt and that's sort of okay and completely natural. The only problem in my case was that I had no one else – except for Orenda – but I didn't know how the heck I would even be able to contact her.

            "Finn?" I heard a voice drift over to me.

            "Hello?" I called out into the void.

            "Mr. Finnegan Annson... what are you doing here?"

            I broke out into a smile and stood up immediately once I recognized who it was. "Orenda? What are you doing here?"

            "I come here almost everyday, actually. So I'm here because I always am. Now, why are you here?"

            "Hunting worms," I slurred.

            "I'm quite sure that you're just being sarcastic again, so I won't lecture you about 'protecting nature' and that crap. Correction, it's not crap. It's pretty important."

            "I wouldn't mind if you lectured me," I chuckled.

            "Why are you here?" Her voice sunk immediately, and my heart dropped. I put my hand against my cheek and felt that it was wet with tears. Strangely, I was too caught up in my thoughts to notice.

            "My friend's a butt."

            "Understandable. Sorry about whatever happened," she hugged me and I gingerly wrapped my arms around her small body. It was the first time she had really hugged me, other than that time she cried on my shoulder. But yeah, overall, it was the first time she hugged me, therefore it was the first time I noticed she was the same height as me; her head rested on my shoulder just perfectly.

            "Nothing really happened. He was just acting like one of those guys that try to get with every girl. And I remembered that you said I wasn't that kind of guy and I tried to transform him and he called me a wimp or whatever and I stomped out and" – I took a deep breath – "now I'm here."

            "You did the right thing." Orenda's honeyed voice lingered on my skin for a while until it floated away.

            "I guess. I did the right thing on the wrong person. Aren't you supposed to be at school?"

            "Oh, sorry officer. I left early; I had a doctor's appointment. Uh, I meant dentist. And I decided I wasn't going to go back, there's only an hour or so left anyway."

I sat down against Willow again, the damp grass against my pants making it slightly irritating. I leaned my head back and imagined myself looking up at the baby blue sky. Orenda sat down beside me while adjusting my glasses on my nose more comfortably, her sharp nail nicked my cheek briskly. "I was just thinking," she started, "Willow seems to our smultronstalle."

            I laughed, "German? I'm just guessing."

            "Incorrect, it's Swedish," she sighed, "it means 'a place of wild strawberries.' That's in a literal sense, anyway. But what it really means is a place so beautiful and precious that it just can't be expressed with any other word. It's an idyllic place free of stress and sadness and the suckiness that is life. By the way, if you didn't know already – life sucks. Moving on... that's a wild strawberry place, but I think it's also Willow. Here I don't feel all that sad anymore."

I cleared my throat and felt the soft blades of spring grass underneath my fingers. I felt the same way.

            "Tell me what it looks like here," I somewhat ordered. "I want to see our 'strawberry place'. It should be as awesome to me as it is to you." I actually meant that. Willow's little nook had always been a part of me, almost more than my parents or Barry and even Egan had been. Maybe it was because Willow never talked or told me to put on a thicker jacket or whatever. And even though I knew that in the summer there were umpteen amounts of birds and little chickadees, that in the winter the snow underneath her leaves was noticeably softer, that the sun was less hot there, and that the rain was less thunderous underneath there too... that was really all I knew.

            "Oh, okay," she giggled and started full-out laughing after a short period of her giggles. "Um, it's just a tree in the middle of nowhere, really," she laughed again. I smiled and pulled out a tuft of grass from beside me. "But if I really do keep looking... I guess I can kind of see the beauty in something so simple. Willow's the only tree here, and I guess I'll start with that. You probably know that Willow trees are pretty dang floppy and their leaves practically touch the ground and when it's windy they blow around in perfect harmony. And when the sun is out – quite like right now – the light cracks through the branches and it looks like slits of heaven."

I reached my hand out hesitantly and brushed my hands against Willow's blossoming leaf buds, pushing them this way and that.

            "And," Orenda continued, "it's really empty around here except for Willow and sometimes us, but it feels like there's enough around here. No houses, no lamps, no screaming children, great. It's far away from civilization, and people and such. Do you want to climb up?" She changed the subject suddenly, "The grass is wet and that's gross."

And so we did. Orenda told me where grab onto and when to kick my legs up, although it didn't really work. It was easier than last time, though, and I found myself sitting on a branch before I could even register what was happening. I adjusted myself and brushed a few leaves off my face, but it was better in the sense that the branches weren't quite as freezing and foreign as they had been before. Soon her knees were touching mine and everything was quiet once again, except for her panting, the cawing of crows and the occasional rustle of leaves.

            "What about yourself?" I asked her, completely confused as to why she never talked about what she looked like. I had never even felt her face (which is what I do to creepily figure out features), all I've ever really known about her is that she smelled like a garden and her hair was short and always batted my face.

            "What about me?"

            "What do you look like?" I started kicking my legs around and so did she.

            After a few seconds she replied, "I'm a human – much like you."

            "No, I mean, what do you really look like, apart from other humans?"

            "Finn, I'm not beautiful." I stopped kicking but she continued, her pants making a soft swishing sound against the bark.

            "You are to me."

            "Stop." The sternness in her voice made me shudder. The swishing paused and started up again as she sighed.

            "Um, Sorry. I mean – yeah, sorry. I didn't know, I thought it would make you happy, I'm sorry." I stuttered, and slid off the tree carefully, but still ended up landing extremely awkwardly on my foot. She jumped down beside me.

            "It's okay, don't apologize. Sorry I snapped. Just... don't call me beautiful, alright?"

            I was about to argue right back at her and ask her why, but instead I just kicked my foot into the grass and bit the bottom of my lip in nervousness. I guess maybe that was normal. You know, how everyone has some sort of flaw in them. Egan was too self-conscious and also too eager to fit in, Barry was a bad tutor and too much of a neat freak, and Orenda thought everything was beautiful except for herself. I couldn't fathom their problems and I think that was okay.

She handed my white cane causally and we started walking away from Willow slowly. It thwacked the grass harshly as I swung it around, until Orenda supposedly got tired of it and grabbed my hand for my white cane to retire. A few tall pieces of grass tickled my ankles and I rubbed the back of my foot against my calf. Like usual, I had no idea where we were going, but I just knew that it wasn't the way home; that was the best place I could go at that moment, really.  

            "Where are we going?" I muttered, lifting my legs up higher as the grass started making me mentally unstable.

            "I found a place a little while ago, and I thought you'd like it," we walked for a little while longer, "We're here!" She pulled me forward with a jerk and we sprinted for an extremely short period of time until I could smell a smell that smelled like a lake. We were at a lake, actually, she explained to me. Then she proceeded to informing me that the lake was her second smultronstalle, if those even existed. She said it was calm and quiet there as well, but I wasn't too fond of it – for a couple of reasons, the biggest con being that it smelled absolutely disgusting and my entire body itched from the tall grass and weeds.

The smell of the lake kind of reminded me of the forest Marybeth and I would so often 'escape' to, so we could get away from that one teacher. Even though, afterwards she (her name was professionally Mrs. Brig, but we called her Mrs. Brussel, since we both had something against brussel sprouts and obviously her) would always find us and put us in the corner of shame. So that was also a huge con, but Orenda liked it there so I tried to make my voice peppy and not scrunch my nose up in pain.    

            "Do you like it here?" She asked me quietly. We sat down in the weeds and all that crap and I laughed.

            "Love it!"

            "Are you allergic to grass or something?"

            "N-no. Not grass. Not something. I'm completely immune."

            "Oh, alright. I don't want you to um..."

            "Die?"

            "Yes, Finn. Stay alive," she sounded a little bit serious and I cleared my throat for the millionth time to ease off the tension.

A few small splashes rang out in front of me and soon I realized it was Orenda throwing pebbles into the lake. I felt the area around me slowly and with intense concentration to find a pebble to throw in as well, but I couldn't, which resulted in Orenda handing me a few of hers.

            "Well," my voice cracked and I coughed to cover up, "what do I look like?"

            "What? You?"

            "No one has ever told me, Orenda," I whispered.

            "Why does it matter?"

            "Just like the rest of the world – sorry, the universe – I am insanely curious about the things I don't know."

            "It's hard to explain what people look like, you know."

            "I know."

            "So, therefore, well, I can't explain what you look like!" She scoffed and I heard another splash.

            "You can't or you won't?"

            "I... I can't."

            "No, you can. You just don't like to," I retorted.

            "Finn, don't put words in my mouth, please."

            "Sorry, but it's the truth."

            "It's not important. What people look like... it's not important. Once you realize what beauty is, everything is ugly."

            "It's only ugly if you make it ugly."

            "And it's only beautiful if someone else thinks it's beautiful. Kind of contradictory, if you think about it."

            "Are you afraid that I'll think I'm ugly?"

            "You're not ugly! Really."

            "Okay, I'm not. And even if I was, I really couldn't care less about what people think about me."

            "You care what I think about you," her words hit like sharp rocks.

            "Because you're important to me!" The last part of 'me' faded away slowly as I realized what I had said. I buried my face in my dusty hands and sighed, exasperated. 

            "You're important to me too, Finnegan," she hurled another pebble into the lake, "but I won't tell you what you look like."

            "That's alright." I started to stand up but she dragged me down again, making my butt hit the hard ground like a spank.

            "You can't just walk away from your problems like that, okay? Sorry if I sound like an old mom or your teacher or a fat priest, or whatever." She smacked her lips repeatedly as she flopped onto the grass, dragging me along with her. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized my sweater wasn't letting the dew on the grass sink into my skin, and that was good, other than the fact that the entire insect species were probably crawling all over me. "It's a nice day today, huh?" She asked randomly, as if the question was hurled into a dark abyss or whatever.

            "I guess, I'm surprisingly not cold or frozen or anything, really. I don't even feel alive." And that was not because of how mentally exhausted I was just by thinking how I would talk to Egan on his birthday, which was coming up in a few days.

            "You're an abstract concept?"

            "I am."

"You are the creation of Picasso."

            "I am," I replied, even though I had no idea what that meant. I'd heard about Picasso, he was either a rapper or a painter.

"You're a deformed square." She chuckled.

            "I'm a deformed trapezoid." That made her laugh harder, and it echoed a little bit before I started laughing too.

            "Hey, look!" She breathed, and I turned my head towards her (I didn't look, duh.)

            "What?"

            "A lilac flower. God, it's so pretty! They don't usually grow here, it's weird."

            I reached out and she guided my hand towards it, and the little delicate petals slipped through the cracks of my fingers so gracefully I almost (stupidly) felt like a man-fairy. Even though that was the last thing a teen boy wanted to feel like; unfortunately I was a particularly unfortunate teen boy that did in fact feel like a man-fairy. "What does it look like?" I finally said.

            "The colour of the flower is lilac," she explained. "Have you heard about it?"

            "I think. I can't keep track of all those colours, there's so many. Of course I can memorize them all, since I'm so smart and such."

            She laughed mockingly. "You're smart, but I don't believe you. And I happen to love the colour lilac. You can also call it lavender or light purple if you wish, but lilac sounds cooler. Colours have a cool meter, if you haven't noticed already."

            "I already like lilac, actually," I flipped over and propped myself up on my elbows and spat a few bits of dirt out of my mouth. 

            "It's kind of real calm, just like our smultronstalle. It's kind of time-stopping too, if that makes sense, it's like when you look at this flower time is non-existant and yeah. Did you know that lilacs represent young love? Like Romeo and Juliet, even though they were extremely scandalous for their age. Anyway, you don't feel happy nor do you feel sad, you just feel neutral. It makes you want to grab a billion sheets that smell like a garden and lay them down in a field and sing folk songs until your little heart flies out with the birds in the sky. It makes you feel like you're enclosed – but not like you're trapped in a room – more like you're getting hugged by everyone you care about. There's a big difference between hugging and enclosing, because hugging will let you know that soon it will stop, but enclosing will only make you feel like nothing will end. That's good and bad, but that's okay. I don't care. I like the colour because it makes me feel safe. I like the colour because it makes me feel more human, and not really like a deformed trapezoid on Picasso's canvas at all."

After that, we talked a bit more about why the heck colours could make someone feel a feeling that I have never even felt before, but she just shrugged it off quickly, like it was too hard to answer. Orenda left to go back home before I could win an argument about whether or not the lake housed a variation of the Lochness monster, and despite knowing she was right about me being an idiot, I stayed strong on my point.

            But before she left, she elaborated on how lilacs express emotion of young love too, instead of just representing it. Then she gruesomely pulled the flower out of the moist dirt and handed it to me quickly, before sprinting off. Maybe it was a peace offering of some kind, because eccentric girls like Orenda May gave peace offerings instead of a goodbye hug. Or maybe this was her version of a hug. I don't know. I could never figure out this girl, honestly.

Orenda was a good human overall, though, and I wanted to be a good human too. So, when I creeped back into my bungalow, then explained to my dad about all the 'rebellious idiotic teenager stuff' I had done the past hour, I ran to my room as fast as my legs could carry me. I set Orenda's lilac in an old flower pot my mom used before all her treasured flowers died and put it right on the window sill for the world to see. Hell, I didn't care if it seemed like a chick-flick wimpy thing to do. I put the flower there for everyone, so that we (the world and I) both knew, as long as that flower was alive, someone was always there for me. And perhaps even them as well.

——-/////Author's Note/////——-

Hey!

I just wanted to thank all of my AMAZING readers for getting 'Yellow' to 1K reads! :)

Also, a very very appreciative shout-out to:

@_hayley

@mtndewforlife01

@fluffypancakes12

Thanks for reading this and leaving all those votes and encouraging comments OKAY YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!

Also, if any of you guys like fantasy/action/overall amazing stories, make sure to checkout my BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD'S STORY! She's @ky0524, and leave her some votes and comment please! (she's better than me, actually).

I LOVE YOU ALL SO SO MUCH, THANK YOU!

-Jen <3