The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder

by Sarah J. Harris

  I didn’t tell Bee Larkham I’d figured out the sparkly sweet wrappers contained condoms. I’d found one in Dad’s bedside drawer and made a water bomb while he was at work.

  As I pondered what to do next, I caught a flash of color, a muted cry from a parakeet across the road.

  One step towards her—that’s all it took.

  Hand trembling, I reached out and took the envelope—a tiny gesture that had life-changing consequences for both of us.

  Straightaway, we shifted back to our old routine as if nothing had ever happened. As if I’d fallen down Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole and never told anyone what I’d seen when I finally returned home.

  Our little secret.

  That’s how badly I wanted to paint the colorful sounds of the young parakeets.

  41

  FRIDAY (INDIGO BLUE)

  Evening

  Spin, spin, spin.

  That’s what I long to do, but I’m not in the kitchen at home. I’m in a strange house belonging to emergency foster carers. There’s only one chair in this bedroom, and it won’t turn around and around. It’s static.

  Definition: motionless, changeless.

  The curtains are creamish white with rainbows, which are all wrong. Real rainbows don’t have those hues. I should tell them, but I don’t want to go downstairs. They’re called Mary and Stuart. I put my hands over my ears when I first arrived because I didn’t want to see their colors.

  Dad was arrested for shouting at the police officers and pushing one. That’s assault. I wasn’t given much time to pack: ten minutes to throw some clothes and personal belongings like a comb, toothbrush, and underwear into the old black rucksack the policewoman found in my wardrobe.

  I don’t care about that stuff.

  What about all my paints and paintings and boxes of notebooks?

  You can’t take everything. Choose what’s most important to you.

  I hated doing it.

  But I had to defend the youngest parakeets, every single one.

  I told the policewoman that leaving a bird behind before it had fledged would be a terrible crime.

  • • •

  Mary’s voice is skin tone and Stuart’s slate gray. Eventually, I had to hear their words. I had to see their colors. They’re not bad shades.

  They say I can come and go as I please. I can get food from the fridge or the cupboard in the kitchen if I’m hungry. I can go to the toilet. I can watch TV in the sitting room. They’ll move to another room if that makes me feel more comfortable.

  I’m not comfortable in any room in this house.

  I have Mum’s cardigan. I rub the buttons, harder and harder.

  My new social worker, Maggie, with the shiny light apricot voice, won’t let me return home to dismantle my den. I didn’t have time to do it earlier. I wanted to construct it again here from scratch, but she said the foster care was probably only for one night, two at the most, until things calm down at home and the police sort out important stuff with Dad.

  This room isn’t as big as my bedroom at home. There isn’t enough space to arrange all my baby parakeet paintings on the stained, light green carpet.

  Down the side of the bed, some kid called Seb has carved his name into the paint. I don’t know him. I don’t want to meet him.

  I have a handful of paint tubes, the ones I grabbed before my ten minutes were up. I brought all the baby parakeet paintings but was forced to leave the rest behind. I’m worried about them. They’re all alone in my bedroom.

  They’ll wonder where I am. They could be scared.

  The boxes of notebooks won’t like me being AWOL either. They hate being out of order. I know they’re mixed up. I remember now—a pesky white rabbit’s hopped into one of the boxes. Rusty Chrome Orange discovered Bee’s steel blue notebook during my First Account at the police station. I don’t know how it got there or why it’s visiting.

  I do know my paintings and notebooks will miss me the way I miss Mum.

  Cobalt blue.

  The way I missed Bee Larkham when I didn’t see her even though I didn’t want to and never realized that was what I was doing. I wanted her back, whatever pictures she created.

  Because I loved her colors; she made me feel closer to Mum.

  I don’t want to paint here, because I don’t know the boy who slept in this bed before me.

  Seb.

  Maybe his dad tried to kill him too. Except Dad told the police he wasn’t doing that.

  It was a misunderstanding. My misunderstanding.

  Dad was trying to help me, not kill me.

  I rub the buttons on Mum’s cardigan over and over again.

  Rub, rub, rub.

  I want to crawl into my den and never come out.

  Skin Tone knocks on the door. “Please can I come in, Jasper?”

  “No! I can’t do this! I’m too young!”

  “Please, Jasper. Can we talk? I’d like to get to know you better.”

  I tear the books off the shelf and drag the furniture to the door, jamming it under the handle. A barricade.

  Ignoring her pleading skin-tone shades, I pull the duvet over my head. The bookshelf is all out of order and hurts my eyes.

  I felt just as bad after finishing my three most recent paintings. The shades had stabbed my eyes and made them water after I finished the last strokes. I left them behind in my wardrobe, but I try to remember what happened next.

  Nothing was right about the afternoon of Tuesday, April 5.

  This was the bottle green day the schedule became disjointed because Lucas Drury and Bee Larkham wouldn’t stick to it. Why didn’t they realize a schedule only works if everyone does the right thing at the allotted time? If they don’t, it causes chaos.

  The parakeets sensed this shift before me. The shades of their cries became deeper.

  Everything started to implode.

  Implode: a bright yellowish green, unripe banana word.

  Meaning: to collapse inwards in a sudden and violent way.

  I hug Mum’s cardigan closer.

  Rub, rub, rub.

  42

  April 5, 1:32 P.M.

  Blue Teal Mist Paints over Sky Blue on paper

  Bee Larkham’s letter was still in the science lab drawer where I’d left it on Monday afternoon. It was now a day later and Lucas Drury hadn’t collected it even though Bee said it contained a twenty-pound note and three cigarettes.

  She’d quizzed me after school last night. “Are you sure you delivered it?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Maybe he’s ill.”

  “Did Lucas seem ill when you gave him the letter?”

  Tricky: a cucumber-green-colored word.

  “Erm. No.” That was 75 percent of the truth because I hadn’t seen him, so he didn’t seem ill to me. Neither of us had told her how we exchanged letters at school and now wasn’t a good time to confess about the science lab system.

  “Can you take another letter tomorrow?” she’d asked. “It’s urgent.”

  “That’s not how our schedule works. I deliver on Mondays, not Tuesdays. The days are scarlet, not bottle green.”

  “I know, but this is important. I’m worried about Lucas. I’m scared about what’s happening with his dad. Remember, I said he’s violent?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  I knew things must be bad at home if Lucas Drury couldn’t come to the usual place and collect his letters. That’s why she wanted to talk to him. It wasn’t about the other thing, the thing in her bedroom with the sparkly wrappers, because she was sorry about that. It was a horrible mistake, which she regretted. That’s why we never talked about it. She wanted to forget the colors, the way I did.

  “Can I watch the young parakeets from your window when I get home?” I’d asked. “I want to find out if the colors of their sounds have changed.”

  “Take this last letter and you won’t have to earn your time watching the babies from my window. You can visit for forty-five minutes three times a week, I
promise, without any strings attached. Actually, make it four times.”

  I’d ignored her comment about strings attaching themselves to me because that was downright silly. Ditto the parakeets. Technically, they were no longer babies. In just under two weeks, some would fledge.

  Anyway, that’s how I found myself in the deserted science lab during a Bottle Green Tuesday lunchtime, placing another letter on top of the one that Lucas Drury was unable to collect on Scarlet Monday because things had gotten so bad at home.

  “Stop it!” a bluish green voice shouted.

  I almost wet myself. I hadn’t heard anyone come into the lab. I spun around. A boy in school uniform walked towards me.

  “I’m stopping. I’m leaving.”

  “No, I meant stop with the letters, Jasper. I knew she wouldn’t get the message—I knew she’d send you back here again. I don’t want you to deliver Bee’s letters anymore. You both have to stop.” Blue teal.

  “Lucas Drury.”

  “Yes, Jasper?”

  “But that’s the agreed schedule. I deliver Bee Larkham’s letters to you and I always check to see if there’s anything to take back. She hasn’t told me the schedule’s changing again.”

  “That’s because she can’t accept it’s over.” Lucas snatched the letters from the drawer and dropped them in the bin. “She must be made to understand.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” I said. “She didn’t get the message. Neither did I.”

  “Jasper, Jasper, Jasper.” Lucas pummeled his temple with his fists. “You’re doing my head in.”

  I apologized.

  “I don’t know what to do. Bee Larkham hasn’t told me what to do.”

  “Can’t you think for yourself for once?” Lucas yelled. “You don’t need Bee Larkham.”

  He grabbed my neck and squeezed tight, pinning me against the wall. My head slammed, dull brown, into a poster of the periodic table. Cerise stars buzzed furiously inside my ears as I struggled for breath. Lucas was wrong. I did need her, the parakeets too. She fed and protected them from David Gilbert.

  “C-c-can’t breathe.” My hands scrabbled with his. “Sorry.”

  He let go. “Sorry! I’m sorry, Jasper. I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just . . . You have to get on with your own life because she’ll only drag you down with her. I see that now. I thought this was about me, but it’s not. It’s all about Bee and her problems.”

  “I can’t see anything,” I said hoarsely. “I don’t know what to do about the letters. She didn’t tell me what to do.”

  Lucas sighed wispy blue teal mist as he stepped backwards. “OK. If it helps get you off my back, tell Bee one last message from me. Tell her I meant what I said before. It’s over. I can’t do this. I’m too young.”

  “You’ll need to write the message down and I can deliver it to her,” I said, coughing. “That’s the deal. I give her the envelope and I’m allowed to watch the parakeets for forty-five minutes after school. It’s fifteen minutes less than before but still worthwhile.”

  “No, Jasper. I’m done with these stupid notes. I’m done with all of this. I want out. It’s too much. Give her this.”

  He shoved an object into my hand.

  “It’s your lost mobile phone,” I said. “You found it.”

  “Give it her back. I don’t want her presents. I don’t want her money. I don’t want anything from her. I want to be left alone.”

  “You don’t want to be saved,” I clarified.

  “Yes, that’s right. There’s a girl I like in my year and I don’t want Bee to ruin things for me with her. She’s my age, Jasper. It feels right. It feels normal. Bee needs to find someone her own age.”

  “What age should I tell her is correct?” My forehead crinkled.

  Lucas ran a hand through his hair, checking it was in place.

  “Repeat this message after me, Jasper: I can’t do this. I’m too young.”

  I close my eyes and obey.

  “I can’t do this. I’m too young.”

  “That’s right. Now again and again until you remember it. Until it won’t leave your head and it’s all you can think about.”

  “I can’t do this. I’m too young. I can’t do this. I’m too young. I can’t do this. I’m too young. I can’t do this. I’m too young.”

  • • •

  I repeated the message to Bee Larkham, word for word after school. Tears streaked down her face.

  “Why can’t I have what everyone else has, Jasper? Why shouldn’t I finally find happiness, wherever it might be? Why? Tell me that, Jasper? What is it that makes me so unlovable?”

  I crept away home. I couldn’t watch her cry.

  I was too ashamed to admit I didn’t know the answers to her questions. I never got to see the parakeets from her bedroom window. It wasn’t a good day to ask.

  I was afraid, terribly afraid, she might say: “No, Jasper. Never again.”

  43

  April 6, 5:13 P.M.

  Sky Blue Paints over Cool Blue on paper

  You must come over this evening. I’m sorry I didn’t let you stay longer yesterday.

  Bee Larkham had knocked on my front door at 7:51 A.M. and invited me back after school. She said she felt guilty for diverting from our agreed schedule and would let me have additional time tonight.

  “Bee! Look at that one!”

  Now we stood at the bedroom window, watching the young parakeets fluttering and chirping among the safety of the branches. Cornflower blue with spots of violet and light pink.

  “There’s another!” I cried, as a small parakeet fluttered from the eaves and crash-landed into the oak tree with a haze of lilac blue. “He doesn’t want to be left behind!”

  “No one ever does, Jasper. But you can help stop that from happening.” Sky blue ribbons.

  Bee Larkham walked over to the bed and sat down. I stared at the chest of drawers, trying to figure out what she meant.

  Only one ornament remained, the final Dancing China Lady. I felt sorry for her; she looked lonely without her fragile companions. They’d all deserted her. They couldn’t have been true friends.

  Suddenly, I realized that was me—Jasper Wishart—a china ornament in human form, dressed in jeans and a green sweatshirt.

  Fragile.

  Waiting to be smashed into tiny pieces that couldn’t be put back together again. No one would try to mend me.

  I’d be on my own when the fledged parakeets had left the nests. Their parents would leave them soon and they’d move on to join a communal roost.

  Could Bee see that too? Was she trying to warn me?

  “I am your friend, aren’t I, Jasper?” Bee said, before I could ask for clarification. “Please just do this one last favor for me. Take one last letter to Lucas. Tell him it’s an emergency and I have to see him. I have to talk to him.”

  Bee was getting mixed up again when she should have been concentrating on how we were going to make sure the birds kept coming back to the tree once they’d left the nests.

  I’d already delivered her one last letter to the science lab at school yesterday. There couldn’t be another one. That was the agreement. The schedule had been torn up. Null and void.

  “I don’t want to do it again,” I replied. “And neither does Lucas. He said it’s over. He doesn’t want to be saved by you. He doesn’t want to hear from you again or have any more presents. There’s a girl he likes in his year. He doesn’t want you to ruin things with her. It feels right. It feels normal.”

  “Yes, you told me that at length, which was really, really helpful, but I know if I can get through to him, I can make him change his mind. He’ll understand what I’m going through. Please, Jasper. I have to see him this evening. Or tomorrow night. I wouldn’t ask you if this wasn’t urgent.”

  “No, thank you. I’ve delivered your one last letter yesterday as per the agreement and Lucas put it in the bin, with the other one. We are still friends, thank you.”

&n
bsp; Bee stood up. “I think you should go home, Jasper. Straightaway.” The sky blue had hardened into dark steel.

  I checked my watch. “I’ve only been here for twenty-three minutes. We agreed forty-five minutes.”

  “Everything’s changed,” Bee said. “I don’t think we can have an agreement after the way you’ve behaved today.”

  “What do you mean? You said we were still friends. We are, aren’t we? I did as I was told. I delivered your one last letter. You said if I did that I could visit three times a week for forty-five minutes. Actually, make that four.”

  “I hate what I’ve become.” She covered her face with her hands. “What he’s turned me into.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She looked up. “This is simple, Jasper. Do this for me tonight or I won’t let you watch the parakeets from my bedroom window ever again. I’ll stop feeding them unless you do exactly as I say.”

  April 6, 6:02 P.M.

  Reddish Orange Triangular Shapes on paper

  I loathed these colors and shapes even more than I hated the yellow French fries of David Gilbert’s dog.

  I saw other colors and shapes too: the amethyst and jade pointed sounds of the electric guitar. Familiar golden lightning bolts. They came from the address Bee Larkham gave me.

  17 Glynbourne Road.

  Lucas Drury’s house.

  I walked down the path and stood outside the front door, hand raised to knock. The letter couldn’t wait until school. I had to deliver it that night; otherwise the parakeets wouldn’t get any seed for tea, breakfast tomorrow, or lunch.

  We’d studied Google Maps together and I’d practiced the journey in my head without making a mistake; it wasn’t far to walk and I’d be back long before Dad returned from work.

  Twenty minutes at the most.

  Because Bee Larkham was my friend, we’d run through all the possible things that could happen to help make me feel better about visiting a stranger’s house on my own.

  If his dad opened the door:

  Pretend you’re a friend and ask if Lucas is around to hang out.

  If Lucas wasn’t in: