The Extraordinary Colors of Auden Dare

by Zillah Bethell

Something was definitely wrong.

  Somebody else had made this mess. Somebody had damaged the door somehow and got into the office and turned it all upside down.

  But why?

  What were they looking for?

  I walked into the room and around to the desk before sitting myself in the soft swivel chair behind it. So, this was where Uncle Jonah spent his working days, I thought. His thinking days. Sat in this chair, staring out the window across the Trinity quad. Directly ahead, on the wall alongside the door, was stuck an enormous poster. It was glossy and currently catching the light from the window on one side.

  It was a photograph of some clouds. Large, thick black ones rolling across the sky with—what I assumed to be—hints of blue beyond.

  I twisted around in the chair a few times before standing up and turning to the fireplace. Nobody had cleaned it out recently and it was bulging with ash. Lots of the ash had spilled out onto the grate and the floor in front of it, and I found myself unavoidably treading it into the carpet. The ash was light and thin and I realized that it had once been paper. Tiny slivers of paper that had managed to avoid the flames stuck out of the mass of black, and I reached for the poker and began prodding it into the mountain of ash.

  I scattered some of the ash left and right until, underneath, I found almost half a sheet that had escaped being burned. I knelt down and picked it out, dusting the dirty black bits from it. On it were typed the words “PROJECT RAINBOW.”

  “What are you doing?”

  I jumped and looked over to the door. A tall, broad, dark-haired woman was standing just inside the door, her arms crossed and her face scrunched into a scowl.

  “I said, what are you doing here?”

  “I … er…”

  Suddenly, her eyes spotted all the files and books that had been ripped from the shelves and thrown to the floor. She looked horrified.

  “Why … you little vandal…” Her arms unfolded and she started marching around the desk to where I was standing by the fireplace. “Disrespecting the dead. When I get hold of—”

  I didn’t wait around. I quickly jumped onto the desk and down the other side. The woman spun on her heels and watched me as I walked quickly to the door.

  “Come back! Don’t you just run away.…”

  I threw the door open and stepped out into the corridor.

  “STOP!” the woman shouted.

  I started running, my feet slapping hard on the stone flooring, and I jumped down a staircase and out into the daylight.

  Up above me, a window opened and the woman shouted from it.

  “STOP THAT BOY!”

  I raced across the quad, past the domed fountain thing toward the arch.

  “STOP HIM!” I could hear her voice coming from somewhere far behind me.

  To my left, one of the cloaked students on the grass seemed to be struggling up to his feet, his eyes on me.

  Realizing he was going to try to catch me before I reached the doorway, I sprinted even harder and faster, my eyes fixed on that archway.

  Thankfully the student was slowed down by his flapping cloak, and I bolted through the room with the pigeonholes and out the other side into the street with the quarter-of-a-mile-long vending machine. Without thinking, I turned right before quickly turning right again—shoppers and passersby all lurching out of my way—and then slipped left down a tiny alleyway.

  After a minute, I slowed down, and then—when I was certain that no one was following me—came to a complete stop. I wiped the sweat from my face and tried to catch my breath. My chest ached and I felt even more thirsty than usual.

  I also felt stupid and foolish. It was probably the noise of me kicking the door that attracted the attention of the woman in the first place. If I hadn’t been interrupted I would still be in Uncle Jonah’s office now. Who knows what I might have found. I swore to myself.

  It was then that I remembered I was holding something. I lifted it up and looked at it once again.

  The half-charred piece of paper.

  PROJECT RAINBOW.

  *   *   *

  Along the bank of the river, a large truck was being unloaded and a second was being filled with plastic crates. On the side of the trucks it read: BARLOW’S INDUSTRIAL WASHING SERVICE.

  It was the day after my little visit to Trinity and Mum had insisted we both take a trip into town. I wasn’t exactly delighted by the prospect, as I didn’t want to be recognized by anyone from the previous day. We stopped off in a small cake shop and Mum treated us both to a wholemeal scone. But later, as Mum steered me away from the shopping precinct toward the backs of the colleges, I’m sure my heart thudded even louder than it usually did.

  “What are we doing here, Mum?” I asked, my eyes flashing from side to side in the hope of not seeing that woman again.

  “You’ll see,” she replied cryptically. “We can’t live off your uncle’s money forever, you know.”

  As we neared the pitiful stream that trickled its way past the tree-lined gardens, I could make out row upon row of washing lines strung across the river from one bank to the other. In the middle of the stream stood—wearing Wellington boots—a whole crowd of women, many of them old, some of them young. Each of them was pulling clothing out of a large basket that sat on the mudbanks beside them and was dipping and squeezing it and rubbing it in the pathetic flow at their feet before reaching up and pegging it to the line. The lines were pulleyed at both ends, so that once something had been pegged, the washer simply had to give the line a gentle tug and the washing would move along, giving them a free stretch of line directly overhead.

  “A very good morning to you!”

  We turned to see a man with a little goatee beard and a walking stick approaching us.

  “Hello.”

  “Good morning. Are you looking to have some washing undertaken?” He spoke in a strange clipped way, like he could only really manage a syllable at a time. “Best service on this stretch of the Cam, we are. No second-rate, overcharged robot jobs here—all washing lovingly done by human hand. Like in the old days. Twice winners of the Cambridgeshire Utility Service Award (hygiene section). Clothes guaranteed clean and intact or your money back. Cheap rates. Availability today.”

  He looked at us like a living, breathing ad, deliberately showing off his perfectly white teeth.

  “Not at the moment, thank you.”

  “Oh.” The teeth disappeared.

  “But…” Mum was looking out at the long, busy row of women in the middle of the river. “But I was wondering … I’ve done some washing in my time—not on such an industrial scale, I’ll admit—but I was wondering if you were taking people on?”

  I looked at her and raised my eyebrows.

  “Taking people on?” The man stroked his goatee and looked like some sort of villain in one of those silent movies—you know, the ones who were always tying damsels in distress to railway lines. Big waxy mustaches. “I’m always looking for new people. How strong are your arms?”

  Mum put her sack down and rolled her sleeves up, holding them out to him.

  “Yes. Not bad. Not bad. Might be good for a few dozen kilos in the mornings. I don’t pay much, mind you. Twenty K for a half day’s work. That’s all I can offer.”

  “That’s all I need,” said Mum, covering her forearms again. “When can I start?”

  The man was stunned at how quickly this had all taken place. “Er … what about tomorrow?”

  “Perfect.”

  *   *   *

  “What are you thinking, Mum?” I asked as we made our way back toward the Bot Job. “You can’t go washing. You’ve no idea about washing.”

  “I can manage, don’t worry about me. Anyway, we’re going to need a bit of money coming in. We might not be paying any rent now, but Uncle Jonah’s cash won’t last that long. Besides—” She opened the boot to the car and lowered the sack into it. “I’m going to need something to do while you’re at school.”

  CH
APTER 6

  VIVI ROOKMINI

  The following morning found us both sitting in the headmaster’s office at Hill’s Road Primary. My mother kept glancing at her QWERTY, aware that she needed to arrive on time for her first day in her new job, and Mr. Belsey—who was a big, Father Christmassy sort of man with a big Father Christmassy sort of nose—eventually waved her away and led me down the corridor to my classroom.

  “Must be very difficult.” He seemed to have a stiff neck, and half swung his entire body around to talk to me as we walked. “Being unable to see color, I mean. Must make life very, very difficult. I can’t imagine it, myself. I just can’t imagine it.”

  And that’s the thing. It is impossible for someone who has always been able to see colors—who has always known of their qualities and their differences from day one—it is impossible to understand what it might be like to not see them. No amount of explanation can get that idea through. People can squint and squash their eyes together and try to cut out the color. They can detune their televisions so that everything is in black-and-white. But nothing can really make them see the world as I—and others, there must be others, I’m sure—see it.

  Then again, you can flip that argument. You could, of course, say that there was no way on earth that I could understand how they see the world. No clever device or tool to help me understand the—apparently—beautiful world of color.

  We are in two distinct camps. Two separate Venn diagrams.

  Definitely no overlap.

  Mr. Belsey stopped outside a room, tapped on the glass window in the door, and let himself in.

  Inside, the teacher—an older woman with curly hair—turned back from the whiteboard as Mr. Belsey entered.

  “Ah,” the headmaster started. “Miss Holbrook, this is our new pupil, Auden Dare.” He tipped her the wink. “The one we talked about earlier.”

  “Hello, Auden.” She came around the front of her desk, narrowly missing the large potted cactus that sat on the edge of it, and beckoned me to her. “Class!” The children sitting around the square tables stopped whatever it was they were doing and looked up at their teacher. “We have a new student joining us today. His name is Auden Dare. Please join me in wishing him a good morning.”

  “Good morn-ing, Au-den,” the entire class said as one in a bored, singsong way. I gave an awkward little wave and as I did so the magnifying glass that I keep on a chain around my neck peeped out from under my jacket. I noticed one or two of the children look at it, so I lifted it and tucked it inside my shirt.

  “Excellent!” Mr. Belsey pulled his far-too-tight jacket even tighter around his large frame. “I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Miss Holbrook, then, Auden.” Without a further look at me, he yanked open the door and left.

  “Vivi?” The teacher caught the attention of a girl sitting on her own at the back of the class. “Perhaps Auden can sit with you? Perhaps you can be his New School Buddy for the next few days? Hmm?”

  “Yes, Miss Holbrook.”

  I made my way through the classroom to the table and sat alongside the girl.

  “Hello,” she said, her questioning eyes almost burning into my face as she shifted her chair a couple of inches away from me. “I’m Vivi.”

  “Hi, Vivi.” A notebook and a pen suddenly slapped onto the table in front of me and I nodded a sort of thank-you to the teacher.

  “So…” She seemed slightly nervous. “You’re new.”

  “Yes. Tell me”—I kept my voice down to a whisper, as the teacher had found her way back to the whiteboard and was continuing where she had left off with the frightening-looking fraction question—“what’s a ‘New School Buddy’?”

  Her long black hair was pulled back into a wavy ponytail. Sparkly umbrella earrings shone in her ears, and her eyes were big and round and bright with cleverness. “A ‘New School Buddy’ is someone who helps a new person at the school settle in. So, for example, I will show you where your classes are, where the bathrooms are, where the dining hall is, and so on and so forth. I will tell you the running order of the day, the start times, the end times. I will tell you who the pupils are and who the staff are. I will tell you what days to bring in your PE kit and also which days you will require a specially prepared packed lunch.” She gave an enormously wide grin. “Basically, I’m your best friend until you find a new one.”

  “Vivi. Shh.” Miss Holbrook glared at the girl before turning back to the problem on adding two improper fractions.

  Vivi went into a whisper just like me. “I’m also the person who’ll get told off for trying to answer your questions.”

  *   *   *

  We both sat on the edge of a small wall and watched some Year Fives kicking a ball about. None of the other kids had introduced themselves to me yet, so I stuck to Vivi like a snail on a stone.

  “Have you always been at this school?” I asked as one of the bigger boys fouled one of the smaller ones.

  “Yes. Always,” she answered. “I’ve never been anywhere else. What about you? I mean, you’re new, but what school did you go to before coming here?”

  I scraped my nail against some earth that was wedged between a couple of the bricks.

  “I went to a school in London. Nothing much more to tell, really. The other children weren’t very nice.” I tried to deflect the questioning away from me. “So, what sort of jobs do your parents do?”

  “My mother is the seamstress for the colleges,” she said. “She fixes all of the fellows’ robes. Makes them, too. She also adjusts some of the students’ ballgowns—the bot-made ones are really very inferior, you see. They go to her to have them altered.” She looked proud. “She’s well known all across the university as the best sewer and stitcher there is.”

  “What about your father? Is he away fighting?”

  She shook her head and her ponytail gave a tiny wobble. “No. He’s dead.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry. He died before I was born. I never knew him. It’s only me and my mum now. And Migishoo.”

  “Migishoo?” I asked.

  “My parrot. He’s a Senegal parrot, actually. He lives with us. Do you have any pets?”

  I told her about Sandwich and the way she likes to stretch herself across the bottom of my bed when I’m sleeping in it, and the way she licks all the juice off her food but leaves the meat itself.

  “She sounds sweet.” Her eyes dipped to my neck for a second. “Er … I couldn’t help noticing … you’ve got a magnifying glass around your neck.”

  “Yeah.” I dug it out and waggled it about before tucking it back into my shirt.

  “Why?”

  I stared down at my feet. “I don’t have very good eyesight.”

  “You don’t? Really? You would never know. You look at me okay. You’ve been watching the football okay. It can’t be very bad, can it?”

  “Well … I can’t see color.”

  “What do you mean? You have red-green deficiency? Lots of people have that.”

  “Red-green … what?”

  “They confuse the colors red and green. It’s quite common.”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s worse than that. I can’t see any color at all.”

  “What, nothing?”

  “No.”

  She stared away into the distance, her eyes not focusing at all on the football match. “So everything’s black and white?”

  I nodded.

  “What’s the name of your condition? What’s it called? I love words. What’s the word for it?”

  “I never remember. It’s a long word. Too many letters.”

  She stood up and pushed her hand deep into her trouser pocket before pulling out a tiny notebook with an even tinier pen stuck into the spirally wire spine. She took the pen, flipped the book open, and scribbled something in it.

  “There! Made a note to look it up.” She put the pad back into her pocket and sat down again. “Doesn’t really explain why you have a magnifying glass around your
neck, though, does it?”

  “No.”

  “So?”

  “So, what?”

  “Why do you have a magnifying glass? Are you keen on ants or spiders? Do you collect stamps?”

  “No, I’m not. I don’t.” I fished the glass out from under my shirt again and held it in front of my right eye, scrunching up the left one. “Sometimes, in certain lights, I find it difficult to make out small details. When it’s really sunny or when it’s really cloudy. Tiny print looks blurred. So I have to use this.” I wriggled it around on the end of the chain before tucking it back inside my shirt.

  Suddenly, a loud, fluttering buzz filled the air. The football game stopped, and everybody looked upward. Two Ariel drones eased themselves over the playground and landed on the electricity cable that passed overhead, connecting to the supply to recharge themselves. Their activity sensors looked like the curved beaks of a hawk, their two inactive light sources like a hawk’s dilated eyes.

  “I quite like the Ariels. They remind me of Migishoo,” Vivi said, shading her eyes from the dull sun. “What’s your favorite sort of drone?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it. Er … I suppose I quite like the Scoots. They’re cool. They fly really high.”

  “The Dodos are just stupid, I think.”

  “Yeah. The way they bounce along the pavement. And they bump into lampposts all the time.”

  “I know.” She laughed, a high-pitched rat-a-tat of a laugh. “They fall over, too. Have you ever seen one fall over?”

  I remembered seeing one topple over just outside our block of flats and snorted at the memory. “Yeah. I have.”

  “Believe it or not,” Vivi said, grinning, “Cambridge is full of Dodos.”

  “Hey!”

  I jumped. Suddenly standing next to me was one of the footballers—the big one who’d just fouled the little one. He was tall and slim with black, spiky hair that stuck up above his sulky face.

  “Hey!” he shouted again—slightly louder than before—despite only standing a few feet from me. “What’s that around your neck?”

  “What?”

  He seemed to go all flushed in the face. “I said, what’s that around your neck? You deaf or something?” Two slightly shorter boys came alongside, their faces fixed with uncertain smirks.