The Color War

by Jodi Picoult

  James looked up. "You ever shot a gun?"

  Once, Monroe's older brother DeShawn had let him hold his P380. Raymond could remember scratching his nail against the grooved metal where the serial number had been filed off. At the time he'd felt like he was holding lightning in his hands, like if he let out the breath he was holding the trigger would go off. Now, when he thought about that gun, he just wanted to throw up.

  Raymond shook his head. Beside him, Winslow pulled a penknife out of his sock and began to pare his fingernails. Matthew blinked once, then turned to the other boys. "We've got a camp meeting in ten minutes," he said. "Who needs to use the latrine?"

  Raymond was the last boy out the door. He was wondering if and when he would be seeing Melody again, and he was concentrating so hard on remembering what her skin had felt like that he almost didn't notice Matthew slipping a hand into Winslow's duffel and confiscating the knife, with no one the worse for wear.

  *

  He saw her once, walking across the empty archery field behind Reverend Helm during the opening address to campers. He couldn't be sure it was her, not with the half-dozen life jackets looped around her neck and the kickboards stacked in her arms, but his body started doing crazy things--his pulse hammering and his palms sweating--and before he knew it he was standing on his feet when everyone else was sitting, and the reverend was asking if he had a question.

  "No, sir," he muttered, and he sat down, all the heat in the world flooding his cheeks.

  The counselors played pranks on one another. Someone put toothpaste on the toilet seat. One of the girls turned on a blow dryer and baby powder exploded in her face. Matthew went to put on his socks one morning only to find the toes cut off, so that they pulled up over his knees like leg warmers. Raymond didn't understand why, if you were lucky enough to have a friend, you would try to make him look like an idiot in front of everyone else.

  He asked James as they were getting ready for bed that night. "Why do they think that stuff is funny?"

  James answered a question with a question. "Why do they think we want to go to this stupid camp?"

  Raymond considered this. "I guess it's supposed to be like a vacation."

  "The problem with vacations," James said, "is that you still got to go back home."

  One night, Lamar got homesick and cried when they were toasting marshmallows. Matthew told them he was going to a place called Trinity College in the fall and showed them a picture of his girlfriend, Susannah, who led the younger girl campers and who looked a little like Melody. At nine o'clock--lights out--Matthew coached them in their prayers. They lay in the darkness for several minutes, keeping time with Lamar's sniffling, and then Matthew asked if they wanted to hear a ghost story. Raymond curled up under the covers, scared by the image of Matthew's pale face in the reflected glow of a flashlight. He listened to Matthew spin a story about a man named Ichabod Crane and a Headless Horseman who wouldn't stay dead. In the silence that followed, Raymond waited for someone else to take the first breath.

  James's voice broke the spell. "That the scariest story you ever heard?"

  "Just about," Matthew said.

  Raymond could hear James roll over in his bunk. His words were muffled by his pillow. "You should try hanging on Blue Hill Avenue with me," he said. "We got stories to last you a lifetime."

  The next morning, when the boys went to the latrines to shower, the water streamed purple, orange, red--a tacky, sweet mess that splattered Raymond from head to toe. "Damn," Winslow said as some of the spray hit his mouth. "It's raining Kool-Aid."

  Raymond looked over at Matthew, who had been the target of the prank. His skin was painted like a rainbow, the perfect canvas. Raymond looked down at his own chest and belly. The colors were harder to see against Raymond's skin, but he could feel the stickiness and taste the sweetness in his mouth.

  Matthew turned off the faucet and unscrewed the showerhead, which had been jammed up with the powdered mix used to make juices in the mess hall. "Not cool," he yelled out the window to the girl counselors who were outside waiting to hear the reaction to their night's work. But Raymond noticed he was grinning while he said it.

  *

  At Camp Konoke, Melody taught swimming to beginners. Raymond figured this out from the locker room, watching her through a cobwebbed window as she demonstrated how to make bubbles through your nose. So when Matthew asked them to raise their hands if they knew how to swim, Raymond didn't move a muscle, even though he knew the front crawl and the breaststroke.

  He stepped into the lake, letting it lap at his ankles. He felt a little sick to his stomach, and he knew it was because he had lied, but then again, hadn't his mother told him to make friends at camp, and wasn't that what he was doing? "Raymond!" Melody said, remembering him, and he smiled. "How many of you can hold your breath for a count of three?" she asked, and when they all said they could, she dared them to do it. Raymond held his breath for five counts, just to show off.

  He was careful not to look like a good swimmer, because he didn't want to get bumped into the higher-level group, which was taught by a boy with a birthmark on his shoulder that looked like a sunburst. So Raymond sank a little during his dead man's float, and he swallowed water several times on purpose. Then Melody waded toward him, picking him out of the group of six to be her guinea pig. She stood behind him, modeling the windmill of the freestyle stroke, her hands each covering one of his and her breath falling on his ear. "See?" she said. "Over, then through. Over, then through."

  Raymond followed her gaze as she watched the next group of campers arrive for their swimming lesson. "That's it for today, guys," Melody said. "See you, Raymond."

  "See you," he replied, realizing for the first time how cold the water in the lake really was.

  *

  Without knowing how it happened, Raymond became accustomed to the sound of starlings waking him up, instead of cars and sirens. He learned how to saddle a horse and how to tie square knots for rigging. The backs of his hands and his cheeks became sunburned. He relearned the front crawl, and with Melody's help he swam longer and faster than he ever had before.

  Raymond looked forward to the three days of the week when he had swimming with Melody. On those days, he was the first one out of his bunk; he walked a little more purposefully from activity to activity. He spent the time he wasn't with her dreaming of the moments he would be.

  The other kids in his cabin noticed. Matthew gave Raymond the nickname Phelps, after the legendary swimmer. Mrs. Knott, who treated him for his swimmer's ear, said she was pretty sure he was growing a fin. Only James seemed to notice that this was about more than just swimming. One day, as they sat in a steamy tent, weaving bright yarn around popsicle sticks to make god's-eyes during Arts & Crafts, James grabbed Raymond's out of his hand and held it up to his chest, along with his own--a makeshift bikini top. "Looky here," he sang. "I'm Melody the mermaid."

  Raymond yanked his ornament away from James. "Cut it out," he said fiercely.

  "You defending your girlfriend, Raymond?" James laughed. "Like some kind of white knight? Oh, wait, that's right. You black."

  "Shut up," Raymond gritted out. He looked to the edge of the tent, where the counselors were gossiping over a magazine. He could go to them for help, but that would make this an even bigger deal than it already was, and Raymond just wanted it to stop.

  "You ain't nothing special to her," James said. "You just the charity flavor of the month. Next week, she might rescue a kitten from the SPCA instead of you."

  "She's helping me with my swimming."

  "Yeah," James said. "Is that your ticket out? You gonna swim yourself right off the streets?"

  Raymond lifted his chin. "Maybe I will. There are tons of brothers who are famous athletes."

  "Name one swimmer," James said.

  Raymond couldn't. "Just 'cause I don't know one doesn't mean it don't exist."

  James looped some red yard around the crossed sticks. "You believe that," he said, "and you
an even dumber nigga than I thought."

  *

  On Wednesday, when his cabin had swimming as their final afternoon activity, Raymond helped Melody stack the kickboards and water wings in the supply shed. Usually the other lifeguards left, in a hurry to shower or to make it to the cafeteria before the red Jell-O was gone. But if he started talking, Raymond could get Melody to stay a little longer.

  "You're quite a swimmer, Raymond," she said one day. "You're going to be the number-one pick for the Color War swimming relay next week. Either you were lying to us or I'm a better teacher than I thought."

  Raymond, who was unlacing buoys, hesitated. "Are there people who get famous because they're swimmers?"

  "Sure. I mean, everyone knows Michael Phelps. And there's a woman, Diana Nyad, who swam all the way from Cuba to Florida."

  Raymond had no idea if that was a long distance. "I mean people," he said, "like me."

  She blinked. "I ... I don't know." Her face looked funny--pinched tight--and she grabbed a string of buoys and carried them toward the shed. Raymond did the same, following her, and before she could offer to help, he hung the string on a hook high over his head. By the time she turned to him again, she looked normal--bright and open. Raymond thought that if Melody had to be a time of day, it would have to be morning.

  "How did I get so lucky to have a helper like you?" Melody asked, locking up the shed and stringing the key around her neck. She walked to the edge of the wooden dock and sat down, her legs stretched in front of her, staring at the horizon. When she saw Raymond hesitating, she patted the spot beside her.

  Raymond sat down and gathered up his courage. "Can I ask you another question?"

  Melody smiled. "You bet."

  "Where are the white kids?"

  She stared at him. "What do you mean?"

  "All of us campers, we're not like you."

  "Skin color doesn't make you different," Melody said. "We're all the same on the inside."

  "The only people who ever say that," Raymond replied, "are white."

  "Don't you like being here?" Melody asked. "Isn't this better than what you normally would--" Her voice broke off, like a branch snapped during a storm. Her cheeks flushed pink and she looked into her lap.

  Raymond didn't know what to do. He hadn't meant to say anything wrong. He thought of the way, during swimming today, they had worked on opening their eyes underwater. You'd think that with all that wet around you, you wouldn't be able to see, but it wasn't like that at all. The light came in sideways, and you could see everything floating and in slow motion. Melody's hair had become a pool of silk, and her eyes were alive when she held up a few fingers to quiz him. Three, he had gasped, bursting through the surface, and for a moment everything had been blurry and loud and he'd wanted nothing more than to sink below the water again and have Melody send him another secret sign.

  Now Melody's mouth was set in a straight line. "Sometimes I say stupid things," she said. "Don't pay attention to me, Raymond."

  "How come you're here?"

  She hugged her knees to her chest. "Matthew's been a counselor for a couple of years, and he likes it a lot. I guess I wanted to do more with my summer vacation than what my friends do--you know, like hang out at the pool or the mall. The Bible says it's better to give than receive."

  Raymond's grandmother told him that, too, sometimes. He thought of his grandmother, and of his mother, who had just wanted him to talk about what happened in April, as if that would make it better. But to say it out loud only made it more true, which was why he could almost not believe what he said the instant he said it. "Do you want to know," he asked Melody, "how come I'm here?"

  *

  It was April, the first really warm day of the spring. Monroe and Raymond were walking home from school, dodging the soupy patches of melting snow and dog poop. Raymond had his coat off, tied around his waist, even though he knew his mother would kill him if she saw him and would tell him he was asking for a cold.

  They had just reached the playground, where a concrete wall had an inspirational mural painted on it: REACH FOR THE STARS! But the word STARS was cramped, the second S hardly readable, as if the impossibility had crippled the painter and the message he was sending.

  Raymond and Monroe were talking about who would kick ass in a fight--Batman or Daredevil. "Daredevil is so badass," Monroe said. "He's got supersenses, and Batman's just a guy in a cool suit."

  "Batman's got all that special stuff in his belt," Raymond argued. "He'd whip out the batarang."

  "Yeah, and Daredevil would hear it whizzing through the air and would get the hell out of the way."

  "Daredevil's blind," Raymond said.

  "And Batman's dumb." Monroe started laughing, and then so did Raymond, and then Monroe's brother DeShawn came up behind them with one of his teenage friends and yanked Monroe's lunchbox out of his hand. "Hey!" he cried. "Give it back!"

  "Make me," DeShawn said. He was smiling. Raymond noticed this, because DeShawn was never smiling. Something must have happened to put him in a very good mood, and maybe Monroe would tell him what that was later.

  DeShawn tossed the lunchbox to his friend. Raymond tried to intercept it, monkey in the middle, but Monroe had a better plan. He hurtled toward DeShawn and tackled him at the knees.

  They were wrestling on the ground, Monroe landing punches that DeShawn probably didn't even feel. "Okay already," he laughed. "Quit it."

  DeShawn stood up, pulling Monroe in front of him.

  If only DeShawn hadn't grabbed the lunchbox.

  If only he hadn't tossed it to his friend.

  If only Monroe hadn't been rolling around on the pavement with him.

  If, if, if.

  When the rusted Chevy screamed around the corner and the gun came out the window, they were aiming for DeShawn, but instead the bullet blew off the back of Monroe's head.

  There was a four-minute segment on the nightly news where Raymond's name was mentioned. Thirteen gangbangers from the other side of Dorchester were arrested. The mayor came to Monroe's funeral. After the service, DeShawn tried to talk to Raymond, but Raymond ran into the men's room of the church and hid. Later, at home, Raymond's grandmother promised him that Monroe was with the Lord, that he was watching over Raymond even now, as he was surely an angel by now. It had been two months, but Raymond still had questions: Could Monroe find him, now that he was in the middle of nowhere at camp? Could you shoot hoops in heaven? Had Monroe met God, and did He look like them? Did Monroe have a new, dead, best friend?

  *

  Raymond told Melody about how he'd met Monroe on the first day of kindergarten, and how Monroe had told him that he knew a good spot near a sewer drain to catch toads. He told her about how they kept a dictionary of all the cuss words they learned, hidden under Monroe's mattress, so now Raymond didn't know what had happened to it. He told her about First Night in Boston, and the angel. "I didn't have nobody to hang with anymore," Raymond said finally. "My mother thought if I came here, I'd feel better about myself."

  He could feel Melody's eyes on him. She looked as if she'd taken a bite of something she wished she hadn't. He remembered his grandmother telling him the story of Eve and the apple and the Garden of Eden, and he had always wondered if it was worth it, that apple, and whether knowledge tasted sweet, or sad, or bitter. "I guess," she murmured, "that's why we all come here, too."

  She reached out and squeezed Raymond's hand.

  Her palm was cool and dry, and her nails had tiny ridges in them, like record grooves. Melody flexed her fingers, and he could feel his own fingers move in response. It reminded him of being very small and crossing the street with his mother. For a long time, he'd believed that as long as he held on to her hand, that lifeline, he had nothing to fear.

  He knew now that the world didn't work that way, with talismans and magic. Bad shit happened--all the time. People lost their jobs, and dads went missing, and guns went off, and people got in the way.

  Raymond had pictu
red sitting with Melody on this dock, with the sun caught in the web of a cloud, a thousand times. He had run the conversations they would have over and over in his head, until they were as real to him as any truth he'd ever told. But they had not gone like this. And she had not stared at him like that.

  "Stop it," he said.

  "Stop what?"

  "Stop ... looking at me that way."

  Raymond did not have the words for it, but he thought of what James had said, about Melody and the homeless kitten. She was a lifeguard. She rescued things that were drowning.

  But what did that say about him?

  "Raymond--"

  He stood up, his hands fisted at his sides. "I don't need saving," he said, and he ran.

  *

  He lied again the next day and told Matthew he had stomach cramps and couldn't go to swimming. This way, Raymond wouldn't have to see Melody. He lay on his bunk while the rest of his cabinmates went to their own swimming classes and returned. There was an hour of downtime before dinner, called Reflection, which Raymond usually missed, because he usually stayed late and helped Melody pack up for the evening. During that period, the campers were supposed to wash up and think about God and things like that, while the counselors had an hour to themselves. But tonight, when James saw Raymond in the cabin, he jerked his chin. "You coming with us?"

  "Where?"

  "It's a surprise," James said. "But you ain't seen nothing like this."

  He led Raymond and the two other boys through the forest where they had all gone camping a few nights earlier, past the stone-pile trail markings and the hollow oak that was home to a family of rabbits. "Okay," he said, turning suddenly to Raymond. "You gotta be real quiet here." Getting down on his knees, James motioned for the others to do the same. Raymond did, feeling wet moss grind against his skin. They wriggled through vines and brambles, and finally James held up a hand and pointed through a thicket of branches. Raymond hunched behind Winslow, peeking through the tangle of foliage to see a patch of grass covered by a blue flannel blanket, and Matthew lying naked on top of his girlfriend, Susannah.

  Stunned into silence by Susannah's moans, by the pale globes of Matthew's bottom, the four boys held their breath. Then James snaked an arm through the bushes to grab a pink bra and panties, a halter top, tiny shorts. "Come on," he whispered, and they bolted, dropping pieces of Susannah's clothing here and there, like a fairy-tale trail back home.