Blue, Red Black

Breathtaking.

Somehow I find myself in a trance, looking at the sunset, thinking of the ways how to make him mine.

It takes my breath away, just like the feeling when I first saw this young man way back three years under a bridge, by a river in sunset red.

Maybe this isn’t the best setting that a girl could imagine having her fantasy. If I were to go back in time, it was the most mysterious thing I’ve ever felt.

I was there, sitting in the grasses, critically thinking what difference exists between particles in the morning and in the dusk that makes the color of the sky red at sunset. That was the only item that I answered wrong in the aptitude exam. I was asking the river why it reflects the sky but not reveal what’s beneath the earth. It was getting late, so I took a breath and stood, to go home. As I turn back, that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone; someone two meters away from me stared at the half-sunk sun.

If in case he saw me talking to the river, it would be the most embarrassing moment I had ever had.

I’ve never seen him in town before; he’s probably a new one. Though sociable, I hesitated to approach because of that “talking to the river and the red sky wonder” incident. So, I quietly walked up to the bridge and started walking home.

As I woke up the next morning, the image of him flashes back in my mind. He stood outside the front gate to greet me a “Hi” when I left for school.

We talked as we walked to school. It’s pretty nice that he did not mention what happened yesterday; probably he had already forgotten. But the most enigmatic, I never told him my name, but he kept on calling me Ann.

My name is Tiffany. There is only one person who has called me Ann. “He” was a childhood friend, Terrence. We met at the same place. When I had turned back because of my mom calling me, I saw him. He was also running because his mom was calling him. So it was the same Terrence. That’s when I felt I wanted to dig the road and hide under the earth.

He did not become my classmate, he was a year ahead. He would wait up on me at the gate every afternoon so we can walk home together. His house was two blocks away from my house. He’d talk about Physics and trivias with numbers. Nothing much about himself. I would only listen to what he was discussing until we stop at my front gate to bid each other goodbye.

He makes my blue or any other color day red.

There was this afternoon, which was after the second periodic exam, when I had the courage to start up the conversation. I cut his discussion of velocity off.

“Terrence,” I said. He looked at me, shocked. “I had been longing to hear that.” That was the first time I spoke the name “Terrence”, the first time in my life.

That night, how I wondered why I have always felt longing for him. Maybe it’s because we had a past friendship, long lost, and maybe the talking while walking home “rekindled” the spark.

I have always looked at the sunset from my balcony to wonder how on earth blue turns to red. For the remaining months, we have done the usual. But after the Yuletide vacation, everything has changed.

During the vacation, he and I have made cranberry lanyards for the Christmas trees. At the Christmas eve, I experienced something that a fifteen-year-old girl would be drowning at. When we accidentally sat below the window, hiding from our teenage hide-and-seek playmates, I realized we were underneath a mistletoe wall-hang. I cracked a joke, and he kissed me.

He did. So I spent the next 249 hours thinking what meaning could be underlying that kiss.

I want him.

I love him.

I could die wanting him.

I hadn’t seen him the next days after Christmas. His house was empty and dark, even in New Year celebration.

The school opened again in January. The first day, I was thinking how to open up that topic when we walk home. The problem is, he wasn’t there at the front gate.

I have to walk home alone.

Until March there was no Terrence at the gate to walk home with me. I hadn’t visited his home, too. I thought it would be embarrassing if I went and ask his mom where he is, then telling that I just want to see him for no reason. I was not brave enough to even explore and know who his classmates were. So, I was clueless.

There was a dog in my way and it barked at me hardly. I held my backpack and started to walk briskly, ready to run anytime. The dog went after me, so I panicked, and I ran. I fell to the ground, my knee bled, and the dog was still running after. There’s no one to help me, so I just closed my eyes in pain and thought of the future that I’d be hydrophobic and zombie.

It was already ten seconds, but no dog bit me. When I opened my eyes, there was Terrence. I smiled, and I wanted to shout and hug him, until words came out of his mouth, “Miss, are you alright?”

“Terrence?”

“Yes, but call me Gilbert. And you are?”

I broke into tears.

He walked me home since I cannot bear to walk because of my bleeding knee. I cried the whole night in my room. My mom thought that I was crying because of the nonstop bleeding, for I am hemophilic.

I attended the graduation ceremony, for my father was a member of the Board of Trustees of the school. Terrence, or Gilbert, was not there.

So, like the old time, it was a déjà vu. My friend, and my long lost love, did not appear in the graduation ceremony, and I assumed that like what happened eight years ago, he left the town; he left me.

I spent the next eight years living normally, just like before. The only difference is that, I spend every night writing in a notebook about Terrence. I have filled more or less fifty notebooks about him.

I went back to the place when I first met him, the same place when I met him the second time; and for the third time, I was there again, hoping that he’d come around to my surprise.

He did not.

I was loveless for eight years; the sky still turns to red from blue. But why am I still blue?

I waited until the sun was half-sunk. It took a deep breath. Although I was mature enough to realize that it “was” love at my side but it was already over, and I should be over the boy who left me twice in my life, I remained as I was for eight years. The fifty notebooks were the proofs of my stupidity for eight years. Though I have already bought a car of my own, I cannot drive my life in a straight track. My heart lives in the past, yet I am not childish to think that I want him, I want him.

There was no Terrence Gilbert to appear. My phone rang. My secretary was calling. I answered.

“Ma’am, I request for a leave. My brother died last night. Please grant me this.”

Very straight to the point.

One afternoon, I had the chance to go to the house of my secretary to console her at her brother’s funeral. As I was driving, I thought why people have to go out of people’s lives. Terrence left me with no goodbyes, twice. There are so many people mourning all around the world.

There were many people at the funeral, even it was the third day. I found my secretary beside the coffin. I hugged her for she seemed to be crying nonstop.

And I found myself crying, too.

Her brother was Terrence.

He had a stupid disease called Alzheimer’s Disease. He started to fail remembering when he was in the fourth year in high school. He went to Beijing for cure. He did not finish high school. He died at the age of 24.

Now, I was the only voice in the room.

I drove to the same place and shouted to the sun, hoping he would hear me and retreat in his sinking to the horizon. My voice was loud enough to catch the traffic enforcers’ attention to comfort me. They couldn’t help. I was left for the third time, and for this time, there’s no returning back. They could only go back to their work at the road.

So, the sun went sinking down. Terrence would never be there anymore. I wanted to drown myself in the river; no one to stop notice and stop me. But something pulled me back. A little more time, I fell to the ground.

My heart bled. No doctor could cure a hemophilic heart.

Why does the sky turn red when the sun sets? When light parts for the earth, the bright blue would turn to ravishing red. I have always thought of that. Love can make loneliness disappear. But my fantasies burst out when the stars shone in the black vivid sky. It was blue, then red, and now black, with little stars spelling out his name.

It’s the irony of life. People go into your life, and leave.

Somehow I find myself in a trance, looking at the sunset, thinking of the times I wished he was mine, and how I regret I met him anyway.