Green Today

Like too many kids these days, my little brother Tommy blinks too much and doesn’t talk enough. He’s eight. I worry he won’t grow out of it.

When I pick him up from Watercrest Elementary on my walk home from Wavetop Middle, the playgrounds are empty and the kids sit five to a bench, waiting patiently to leave. He sees me and gets up, nodding goodbye to the little girl beside him. When I was his age, kids didn't sit on benches. We screamed. We fought, rubbed each others’ faces in the dirt.

That’s all changed.

"Hey kid," I say. Tommy nods.

“Hey Becky. Green today.”

Green is the new word for a certain illusion the screens display on Tuesday and Friday nights. A bright kind of gray you never see anywhere else. I’ve watched Green before, but too long and it gives me headaches, like the other Colors.

"Yeah? You wanna skip it and play catch?"

"Don’t want to skip it. It’s Green." I don’t expect him to say yes. Green is Tommy’s favorite Color, and I’m not great at throwing a ball around. Neither is he, for that matter.

Color is the word for these brighter grays. After I saw my first Color (Blue), I thought that was all there could be. I was wrong. Since then I’ve seen something called Yellow, one called Red, and Green. Glimpses of a few others I don’t know the names of. Blue is my favorite, though I couldn’t explain it. Nothing in the world is Blue. It’s why the screens are so exciting, and so scary.

The psychochemists, neurobiologists, and politicians say the Colors are a lie. That nobody sees Color on the screens, that it’s just a manipulation of our retinas by high frequency wave pulses. They’re certain we’re boiling our brains by looking at them. They mention crime, obesity, unpredictable behavior. They connect Blue, and Red, and Green, to every one of society’s ills. They don’t say anything about Tommy’s even-tempered personality, which is what concerns me the most.

Regular folk know Colors are real as anything. Any of us can see it any day we want. Walk past a theatre, talk to anyone walking out. They'll tell you. Now you can see Yellow, Red, Green, Blue—all on the same day if you want. And Colors are starting to show up other places—not just on screens.

Dad says politicians want to keep people from experiencing Colors but they can’t arrest everyone. For now, at least. His friend, Senator Knapp, is introducing a bill to make Colors exclusive by classifying them as commodities and turning the dial on supply and demand. The price of Colors would skyrocket, and access would dwindle. Colors would only be visible to those who had the means to pay. Ever since I told Tommy about the plan he talks about Dad’s friend Senator Knapp like he’s the devil wrapped in skin.

Tommy says he’ll die before he lets anything happen to Green.

Tommy says the Colors are the only thing keeping him from jumping in front of a bus.

We walk to the theater and a family stumbles past us, fresh out of a screening of Yellow. “The world since Colors came out is so much better,” the daughter says, and they nod, agreeing. But I wonder. Before Green came along, before Blue, before Red—we did fine. There were problems, but we solved them. Made life less brutish, more enjoyable, and slightly longer. Maybe Colors are a distraction. Maybe people will ignore collective peril so long as they can see Colors. Maybe they’ll change in other ways, too.

When Tommy tells me Green is all he wants on a warm Thursday afternoon, kids playing basketball and frisbee nearby, when he tells me he’d rather die than have no Green to watch, I worry.

I pay fifteen bucks for Tommy to see Green and wait outside in the warmth of the white sun, doing math problems on a picnic table. I square root every number I can imagine until that gets boring, then I squash ants on my paper with the point of my pencil. I try to imagine what they go through, how they no longer exist after I do what I do. I don’t like how that makes me feel, so I stop.

When my fifteen dollars of Green runs out, Tommy finds me and stands by the picnic table. He’s clutching the ticket stub in his hand, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger.

“I’m imagining it’s Green. It would look much nicer if it were Green.”

We take the bus home. Tommy stares out the window.

“What you thinking about, kiddo?” I ask.

He looks at me and smiles. “You know, boring stuff. What about you?”

“I was thinking, how about when we get home I make us ice cream?”

“What flavor?”

“Milk.”

“That’s okay, Becky. I’ll have toast.”

“More for me, I guess.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“How was it? Green?”

“Good.”

“Anything special happen?”

He rubs his neck. “Aw, Becky. You’ve seen it. You know that’s not how it is. It's just like, you stare at it and you feel okay, okay?”

“You normally don’t feel okay?”

“Not as okay as I do when I see Green.”

“I guess I can’t convince myself I like it,” I say.

“You’re fourteen. You don’t like anything.” He’s looking daggers into me.

“Hey, hey. Maybe I’m wrong. And maybe you’re being defensive because you like the Color. I don’t have to like everything you like. It gives me headaches, why would I like it?”

“Okay.” Tommy says. “I do. I worry about what if I can’t have it. I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“About what?” I'm hoping I said something good.

“About Dad’s friend trying to pass a law to make Colors off limits for poor people.”

“Oh yeah, Senator Knapp.”

He looks down and mumbles something I can’t hear, so I make him say it again.

“I’ve been meeting with him,” Tommy says.

“You’ve been meeting with him? The Senator?”

He nods.

“That’s not safe! You’re eight years old, Tommy, what the hell!”

The passengers are looking at me now, but my face is getting hot. I don’t care.

“I have to get him to stop what he’s doing,” Tommy says, spreading his hands in front of him. “I have to figure it out.”

“You can’t get involved in that, I can’t believe you’re out meeting people! You’re going to get me in a lot of trouble.”

“How would you get in trouble?”

“They’ll think an eight-year-old was messing with the Color pipeline and I let him do it!”

The other people on the public trans car are staring at us. When we get off at our stop, three of them lean out to watch where we go.

“Promise not to tell Dad? Until I get the Senator to come to some kind of agreement about Colors?”

“Fine. But next time you meet him, tell me and I’ll go with you. I don’t like Colors like you do, but I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

“You could watch or wait outside, then when you eventually tell Dad you won’t get in trouble too.”

“True. Thanks.” Little guy’s trying to keep me out of trouble while getting into the biggest trouble of his life. But maybe that’s how things go when you care so much about something. I’m proud of him, but I’m even more thirsty. We pass the corner market. “I want to stop for a soda,” I say.

“Okay.”

The shopkeeper looks up as we come in, lifts a hand, then goes back to circling things in a catalog. I browse the candy bars.

“Becky, look.” Tommy’s at the back of the store, standing by a sealed vacuum cooler. Inside, about halfway up and unmistakable, is a Green drink. It doesn’t just say Green in the title, but is literally the Color Green. I have a hard time looking at it, it’s so bright and different from everything else.

“Just got that in,” the shopkeeper crows, “it’s the first soda of any Color anywhere in the neighborhood. You guys want to try?”

“That can’t be safe to drink, can it?” I say.

“Oh it’s safe, at least in the short-term. Can’t know about long-term results yet but I drank a bottle and didn't die.”

“I don’t know,” I say, but Tommy’s already jumping up and down.

“Please Becky, I need to try.”

“How much?” I ask the shopkeeper, hoping he’ll say it costs more than what I have in my pocket.

“Free, since it’s new. I want to watch the looks on your faces when you drink some.”

“Oh please, Becky, can we?”

I consider. What if it gives me worse than a headache? What if I wake up and my skin is a lighter shade of the same Green? Or Tommy? What if it does more to him since he’s smaller than me? I’m leaning against doing it, don’t think I need Green soda in my life, and my face is scrunched up so Tommy can tell what I’m about to say, because he looks at me like if I don’t do this for him now he’ll never forgive me.

“Okay,” I say.

We both drink the Green from paper cups while the shopkeeper sits back, grinning.

It tastes fine. I don’t know if I start feeling different immediately or if it takes a few minutes, but I’m noticing things. I can feel my heart beating. I can hear the blood inside my ears rushing around. I can feel my muscles creaking and stretching when I walk. Mostly I feel like a living thing, when before I knew I was a living thing but only as an abstract concept, like if I opened a book and saw this: “You are a living, breathing, human animal.” Like, of course I am, but I’ve never felt it before.

Feeling it is weird. I don’t want to go home, partly because how I feel makes the rest of the day seem more possible, but also because Dad will know something is different about me. About both of us, really, but I think he’s used to Tommy already.

But I have homework to do, so we go home.

Dad’s there, reading a book. He looks up from it when we walk past the den.

“Guys have a good day?”

Tommy nods and keeps walking to his room. “I took him to the Colors like he wanted,” I say.

“Okay.”

“Did you know there’s a new Green soda drink down at Bolio’s?”

Dad puts down the book. “I didn’t know that. Did you have any?”

“No.” I don’t know why I’m lying.

“Did Tommy?”

I don’t answer.

“Tommy drank Green?” Dad’s eyes drill holes in me.

“I couldn’t stop him,” I manage. “The shopkeeper gave it away for free.”

Dad gets out of his chair, cheeks reddening. He motions for me to follow him into the hallway and downstairs. There he speaks to me in a low voice.

“Becky, I don’t want to lose any more of my son than I already have. I let you to take him to the Colors up till now, because it's passive and regulates his mood…but letting him drink a Color? I’m so disappointed.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I shouldn’t have said anything, I think.

“Help me with him. Don’t let him drink any more Green. Promise?”

“Okay, I won’t let him.”

“I need you to understand how serious I take this. Green is bad. I know it.”

I feel I have Green coursing through my veins, like if he looks at me long enough he’ll see little flecks of it, know I’m lying. At the same time I find myself laughing at his idea that Green is bad. How would he know?

“I’ll keep an eye on Tommy and make sure he doesn’t drink more stuff. But it’s going to be everywhere soon. I don’t know what we can do at that point.”

“I’ve got people working on that.”

“Your Senator friend?”

Dad crosses his arms. “Leave that part of it to me, is what I mean.”

He stays downstairs and I go back to my room to do homework. As I pass the den again I see the book he’s been reading lying pages-down on his chair.

“The World We’re Losing.”

I pick it up. On the inside dust jacket is an explanation of how Colors distract us from “the enemy.”

I want to know who the enemy is, and I have my own suspicions about the Colors. This is my chance to find out. I take the book to my room and sit down to read.

”The world we live in is sadly limited. We're distracted by something entirely beyond our existence. I'm not saying that Color-watchers—I’ve done it myself—I don't mean to say these people are unclean, or gathering within themselves any deeper malfeasance than the rest of us, but Colors and what they represent are completely beyond what we’re prepared to deal with.

”So in that way, having Colors at the theater and talking about Color and making laws about Color and doing this or that about Color--detracts from what could be the good in society. Basically something outside of society is trying to make a home inside of it. We cannot allow it a toehold simply because it is interesting.”

I flip back to the inside cover where it might say this book was compiled from a series of lectures at a university, but there’s nothing like that. The author has written a book the way someone would speak, down to the changing the subject in the middle of a sentence.

I read on.

”The whole world out there, of math, science, all the interesting natural things that happen. Geology, how could I leave it out? We look at the natural world and discover things, then are free to use what we've learned to enrich teachers, students, and the general public. This pursuit also helps our scientists perform experiments with higher rates of reproducibility. Color distracts from these goals. Chasing Colors cannot be allowed to become a legitimate pursuit.”

I think back to when Tommy first expressed interest in Green, when he'd first demanded to see it. Once a loyal companion during my quizzes and dress up days, now he only ever wants to see more of it. Green. I'd altered my own routines he needed it so bad. It changed him. He wasn't annoying, he didn't say stupid things, he was...he was more of an adult.

I think about my own relationship with Blue. It isn’t like Tommy’s with Green, but it’s there. I want to give Blue, and every Color, the benefit of the doubt. I don’t want to reject it because I’m uncomfortable or because of a book.

I read more.

”In the coming years, public opinion will shift in favor of the newly reported Colors. Therefore it's important to keep the stuff out of children’s hands and heads. Take them to a hospital on a visit. Show them people who've lost everything because of Colors. Instill in them some context of fear, some sense of the balance they'll need to keep in order to remain members of society.”

I have to read that paragraph again to understand. Colors ruin lives? I don’t know that. I haven’t seen that.

"Once it's taken hold, it may be too late to preserve our way of life. Especially if Colors are available to all in the light of day, and not in the privacy of homes at night. The eventuality that follows the wide adoption of colors goes beyond what we have ever considered, and will enable more to positions and powers, having corrosive effects in the long run."

I wrinkle my face and stop reading. The book is a fear book, a worry thesis concerned about the potential good Colors might bring. Colors aren’t inherently good or bad, but tools to influence our thoughts and moods beyond our wildest dreams. To people like Dad, that’s the problem.

I feel I’ve been offered the secret to everything—if Colors can change so much, I have to put aside my concerns about Tommy and ensure they can be seen everywhere, by everyone. I have to.

I put Dad's book back and creep to my room, close the door and stuff a shirt into the crack beneath. Now I can read without him seeing I’m awake.

I get out a notebook and flip past my world history notes. When I get to the first blank page, I write "First Coloring,” at the top.

My thought is to try to spread awareness, get everyone a taste of their first Color. Whether it gives them headaches or calms them, they can make their own informed decisions about its existence, instead of Dad and Senator Knapp and writers of books like “The World We’re Losing,” deciding for everyone.

Adults don't like change, but children? Children see how much change can fix. How far the effects ripple. Maybe we can't see every possible outcome. Kids might help pull the curtain back.

The next week after school I pay for more kids who haven’t seen it before to watch Green. I buy tickets to other Colors, too. Blue, Red, Yellow.

If I can get enough kids to experience their First Coloring, they won't grow up targets for uninformed political groups.

The employees at the theater see what I’m doing and seem interested but not scandalized. I have a feeling the workers at the theater see more Colors than anyone else, so are less likely to snitch. Besides, I’m funding the place.

“I’ve got enough for eight kids watching a half-hour. Line up! Green here. Blue here. Red here. Yellow here."

I go into the theater for Red, a Color I haven’t seen in a while. It doesn’t give me a headache but it does make me feel something I have a hard time detailing.

A half-hour later the kids come out, mouths hanging open. I think they’ll ask to go again, but they’re dumbfounded by the experience and they don’t.

I want to interview them, ask them what’s going on in their heads. But then Dad bursts through the door.

"Becky! Is Tommy here?"

"No, he's...isn't he at home?"

Wait, has Dad just come out of the Blue theater?

"Come with me, we're going home."

*****  At home, we wait for Tommy. I tell Dad enough that he feels like he has to call his friend, Senator Knapp. The guy doesn’t answer.

Every moment that passes Dad looks increasingly like he’s about to shrivel up and die. I feel real bad because I’m the one who got Tommy mixed up in Colors to begin with. If anything happens to him, it’ll be my fault forever. I don’t think I can handle that.

An hour of sending texts to the Senator and debating getting the police involved later, Dad decides to put on a jacket and take a walk around the block. He tells me to wait. I think he’s probably going to the bar.

While Dad’s “out looking,” Tommy comes back. He’s shivering, and has no coat. I can’t tell if he’s walked back from somewhere or was dropped off, but he’s clutching a book to his chest. Before I can scold him, or call him an ass for making me worry, he pushes the book into my arms and tells me to hide it.

So I do. I hide the book under my mattress, without even really looking at it. Then I get my brother into the bathroom and give him a towel to warm him up. Turn on the faucet in the tub and run him a warm bath.

When Dad comes back a few minutes later, he smells like liquor.

“Tommy’s back, Dad.”

“Your brother—what? Tommy’s back? Let me talk to him, this is unacceptable. It’s almost midnight! Let me have a little chat with him.”

I stand in front of Dad, blocking him. “He’s in the bath, he’s cold and he’s had a weird day. You can talk to him when he gets out of the bath.”

Dad, seeming not to hear, pushes past. “Gonna tell him what I think,” he says.

“Or you can talk to him tomorrow when you’re not drunk,” I say.

Dad stops. “Rebecca, go to your room.”

“No.”

His muscles clench with tension. I get scared. What’s he going to do? But the moment passes. Dad doesn’t continue to the bathroom door, but instead to his own room, and closes the door. I stand there, waiting, in the living room for him return, but he doesn’t. After twenty or so minutes the light goes out.

I visit the bathroom and knock quietly. Tommy opens the door and walks out, wearing the towel I gave him, and I escort him to his room.

“You can talk to me about anything, you know that?” I tell him.

He nods. Then he closes the door to his room and I don’t see him until the next morning at breakfast. He seems okay by then, and Dad doesn’t hound him. Doesn’t seem to remember Tommy hadn’t come home last night until very late.

The next few days aren’t interesting. We go to school. We go to the theater. We come home. Then, Friday morning, Dad’s reading the newspaper at breakfast.

“Senator Knapp’s bill was killed. He never showed up to the hearing to defend it. He hasn’t shown up to a hearing or a vote since Monday, and his office isn’t saying why.”

“Good,” I say.

“What if something happened to him?” Dad says.

“Would he be worried if something had happened to one of us? Or you?” I ask.

He ignores me.

Before I leave the house, I take a hundred dollars in twenties from his wallet. After school, Tommy and I visit the movie theater, and I buy tickets for four times as many kids as usual. I don’t watch any Colors, but station myself at the exit of one of the screening rooms, waiting.

Eventually, like I knew would happen, Dad comes out.

“You want all this to end but you keep going to see Blue?”

“Becky, not here.”

“Yeah, here. Now. You’re ruining our lives by keeping us from being who we are, stopping us from living the choices we’ve made for ourselves.”

“You’re confusing ‘being who you are’ with ‘doing what you want.’”

“That’s your argument? Considering what you’ve been up to?”

I couldn’t believe how shamelessly Dad pretended to back up his blatantly hypocritical stance.

“It is. Listen, Blue is what I do to relax. I have a tough day at work almost every day. You think I like the job I have? The horrible people I have to talk to every day? But it’s necessary, it lets me keep a roof over you kids’ heads. It’s different when I do it. I know what it’s like to suffer alone. You kids aren’t ready. You’ve never had a moment of boredom or hard work in your lives. So I watch a little Blue to take the edge off, big deal. You don’t see me dropping in on different showings of Green, or Red or whatever kids these days are watching.”

My arguments seem flimsy in the face of the deluge. “That’s so dumb,” I said. “You think any of that matters?”

“It does to me. Don’t call your Dad dumb.”

“Don’t be dumb. And don’t leave without Tommy. He’ll be out of Green soon.” I thought of the Red I’d seen. It matched how I felt. I turn and leave Dad standing there, and exit the theater alone.

I’m the first one home. All I want is to lock myself in my room and escape from the perpetual argument that could never be won. Those who so fervently oppose Colors active seek them out and partake in them. It’s like saying I hate Brussels sprouts when you like them, just to bother people who don’t mind admitting they like Brussels sprouts.

In bed, I revisit the events of the day. Where was the Senator? The law hadn’t passed, which was good. School, where I learned of wars my ancestors had fought over lines in dirt, lingers in my memory. Finally I think of the theater, where I found I could summon Red in my mind’s eye.

I feel the hard corner of something in the small of my back. The book.

I lift the mattress, pulling the book from beneath it. Once I have it in my hands, I shuffle back to bed and reach over my head to flick on the reading lamp attached to the bed frame.

The book is illuminated, and the cover makes me gasp. It’s a Colorful loop of script that hurts my eyes. Some variant of lighter Red. Printed on the jacket of the book.

Filtered Earth is the title. Above the title, a tagline. The change happens after midnight.

Meaning to read just a page or two, a quick peek to see what the book’s about, I open it.