Alizarin Crimson

by Erica Millard

  “Did all that just come out of your brain?” Liam asked. “Awesome.”

  I laughed. Our friends were a block ahead now. I finished up the sketch and went to put the book back in my bag.

  “Do you mind if I look at the rest of your drawings?”

  I handed it to him. “This is the book I carry around with me, so it’s mostly street sketching.”

  He flipped through the pages: an old man working a newspaper stand, a girl busking with a violin, the lady who’d sat across from me in a coffee shop, and travelers getting on and off the subway flicked by on those pages.

  “These are amazing, I can’t believe you drew them.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Your spoon-flicked paint will definitely be better than anything I can do, and the professor will probably be able to tell it’s too good to be my work.” His fingers brushed mine as he handed me back my sketchbook.

  My breath caught in my chest. I needed to get away from this guy. I shoved my book back into my bag and looked for a way to slip away. “Oh, man, I just realized I forgot my wallet back at school.” I stepped back, putting distance between us.

  “I could lend you some money,” Liam said. “Or come with you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine. I’ll just grab something out of the vending machine. See you!” I didn’t wait for a response before I disappeared into the New York crowd.

  As I headed back, the clouds grew darker and threw shadows over the buildings and sidewalks, as if someone had painted over the world—even the bright yellow taxis and colorful shop displays—with a dull, steely gray. I usually thought about how I could paint the scenes in front of me, what I could use as a focal point or pop of color, but my mind kept wandering to Liam’s smile.

  Stupid boys with cute accents, pulling my focus away from what mattered.

  A throng of people queued up to cross the street at the light. Something brushed my leg, and I glanced down. A girl, no more than four years old with dark hair and a red coat, was swinging her doll back and forth. She smiled up at me and held her doll for me to see.

  “Kristin doesn’t like the rain,” she said. “She hates wet hair.”

  “So do I.” I smiled. “Hopefully, it won’t rain.”

  “Mommy has an umbrella if it does.”

  A drop hit my arm and then my face. “Uh, oh,” I said, still smiling at her.

  “Mommy!” An umbrella appeared over her head.

  The clouds opened and a million fat drops of cold water hit, saturating every surface. Umbrellas opened and people scattered for shelter under awnings and into doorways. The traffic light changed and the little girl’s mom tugged on her hand to cross the street. They were lost in a jostle of hurried steps and pounding rain.

  I walked at the end of the group, and a flash of red ran past me going back the way I’d come.

  “Sophie! What are you doing? Come back!” the little girl’s mother cried, fighting the crowd to where her daughter ran.

  “But I dropped Kristin,” Sophie said, “and she’s getting wet!

  I turned to see where the doll lay and gasped.

  A cherry-red sports car sped forward. The girl was oblivious to everything but her doll and the rain. The car had to stop, right? There was a red light.

  But the driver wasn’t paying attention and was having an animated conversation on his phone, neither hand on the wheel, the rain sliding in sheets over his car.

  Sophie was so small.

  I didn’t think.

  I sprinted back to where she bent to pick up her doll, away from the anguished cries of the mother separated from her daughter by the crowds. Maybe the driver would see me and stop.

  The car did not slow.

  Anger surged through me, hot and powerful. Who was this man whose call was more important than a life?

  I grabbed Sophie, but it was too late. I put out my hand, as if I could stop the thousand pounds of metal hurtling toward me.

  I braced for the inevitable: pain, blood, death.

  2

  There is peace even in a storm.

  —Vincent van Gogh

  But the car screeched to a halt under my fingers, the metal stopping dead, and the hood crumpling in tiny waves. The metallic shriek drowned out every other sound for those few seconds. The back of the car popped up from the impact, and for a horrible moment I thought it would flip over and land on top of us, but it slammed back down with a crash.

  How was I alive?

  Had he stopped in time? No, or the car wouldn’t be damaged. It should have sliced through me. I stared down at my hand, still on the shiny red paint of the hood.

  But it wasn’t red anymore.

  Where my hand touched, a colorless circle spread outward, growing like bleach eating through fabric. I gasped as tiny lines of red pigment, the same color as the car, flowed up my fingers.

  I jerked my hand away. The last of the red pooled on my palm, then faded away . . . into my skin.

  The panicked mother snatched up her daughter, and they disappeared into the rain.

  I stumbled back a few steps, and a headache—oh, the worst headache I’d ever had, pulsed as though it would crack my skull in two. Dizzy—what was I doing?

  The man climbed out of the car and yelled, but I couldn’t hear.

  The yellow, blue, and green in my vision faded away and was replaced by red.

  The color of the car and the little girl’s coat. Only shades of red surrounded me.

  The guy grabbed my arm, and my anger flared again. I jerked away. He flew back several feet and slammed into the hood of his car, as if I’d struck him.

  What the hell was going on?

  My red-saturated vision made discerning objects almost impossible. I ran. Shouts erupted behind me, but I didn’t look back. The usually crowded streets were eerily empty, the people having sought shelter from the rain. The sound of my harsh breathing reverberated and intensified until I couldn’t hear anything but my own gasps and the erratic beat of my heart.

  Art school penetrated the haze. I was headed there when all this happened. My heart beat against my temples as I ran. Hallucinating, I am hallucinating. But my red-saturated vision and splitting headache brought reality into sharp focus. There had to be a logical explanation, but I couldn’t think.

  I reached Turner Academy and fished from my bag the ID card that opened the front doors. Class—life oil painting after lunch—that’s where I was supposed to go.

  Somehow, with my brain pulsing and the red in my vision, I got the supplies out of my locker, but then sat on the ground a few minutes, wet and shivering, trying to get my breathing under control. I should be terrified, but instead, just beneath the red haze, the constant bubble of anger simmered at the man who almost killed the tiny girl—and me.

  I should be dead.

  I didn’t know how long I sat there, but after the calm a little of the scarlet in my vision cleared, and by the time I arrived at class and set up my easel I could see better. My clothes made puddles wherever I stood, and the dizziness made me trip on a desk and almost sent me sprawling.

  On the platform in the center of the room, Professor Oliphant situated the nude model on the lounge chair. She adjusted two pull-down lights to shine at forty-five-degree angles and created the perfect balance of light and shadow.

  “The last three weeks we have been drawing the nude figure.” She draped a bright crimson satin robe over the model’s shoulders. “Today, the model will be partially clothed, but I want you to draw the underlying form before you do anything with the fabric.”

  I couldn’t look away from the rich color. For a moment that stunning crimson was the only thing in the world, reaching out to me, calling me forward. My hand drifted toward it before I realized what I was doing and stepped back.

  “Aya?” Liam said from behind me, and I turned. “Oh, no! Did you get caught in the storm?” His smile lit up his face, and he came to set up his easel next to mine.

  The anger in me shifted,
to something else.

  An image of me and Liam kissing and entwined filled my mind and my senses, and I staggered back, afraid of what I would do. He was hot, but we’d just met.

  I grasped at a tall prop column to the side of me, so I wouldn’t fall over. Atop the column a glass vase stood three feet tall, tinted with stunning shades of deep ruby, coral pink, and cherry red all snaking up the sides. We’d painted it to explore color mixing, and now my fingers brushed against it.

  The vase exploded, the shattering glass ringing throughout the room. Tiny fragments of glass flew through the air. Students shrieked at the deafening sound and ducked behind their easels.

  I couldn’t move.

  The glass slivers should have fallen to the ground, but they instead flew straight at me. They clung to my arms and face and wormed through tiny holes in the weave of my clothes without stabbing or hurting me. But I could feel them there, the color against my skin. I wanted to wipe the glass away, but I was scared of pushing it into my body.

  The color left the glass and seeped into my skin, leaving tiny red dots that faded and disappeared into my palms and arms. After the color was gone, perfectly clear pieces of glass fell to the ground, no longer crimson and maroon, like delicate falling snow.

  “Is everyone okay?” said Professor Oliphant’s shaky voice from where she had dodged behind a student’s painting. “The vase must have fallen off the shelf.”

  They hadn’t seen.

  “That scared me to death!” the girl to my right said.

  “I think we’re all fine, Professor Oliphant,” someone across the room said.

  The foreign color spread through my veins and blood. The world turned solid red, pushing away the other colors that had filtered back into my vision.

  Everything, from the pale rose light hanging from the ceiling to the burgundy shadows cast from the model onto the floor, was red. Panic hit. I tried to take slow calming breaths, like I had before. It didn’t work.

  “I don’t . . . feel well, Professor Oliphant.” I bolted for the door.

  Professor Oliphant said, “Aya, are—” but I was already outside.

  I stumbled and hit my head hard on the wall.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Liam followed me out the door. “Aya?”

  The sight of his pale cerise face and velvety maroon hair stung my eyes.

  “No . . .” I managed to say. “My head is killing me.” I tried to push off the wall. My vision spun and threw me off balance. I crashed into Liam.

  “Why don’t I help you home?”

  “No, I can’t leave. It would waste an entire day. I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?” Liam said.

  I didn’t look at him, and just remembering the image of me fantasy-kissing him was enough to push me in the other direction. Dragging one foot in front of the other, I made it to the end of the hall. Just one peek down the stairs made me feel as though I was falling.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I took the first stair and swayed dangerously. “I should go home.”

  “Here, you can lean on me,” Liam said.

  “Thanks.”

  Liam put his arm around me.

  I tried to ignore his body so close to mine. I leaned against his side down the stairs and through the huge set of double doors that led outside.

  The light outside tore at my eyes. Red saturated everything, but the colors didn’t blend and left solid lines between light and shadow. It was painful and disorienting, but something about this monochromatic world was vaguely familiar.

  Liam hailed a cab and opened the door. I crawled into the back seat with him right behind me. The rain was gone and had left the smell of wet pavement and city decay in its wake.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  I gave him my Aunt Jessie’s address and leaned my head against the seat.

  “Are you all right?” Liam asked again.

  “Migraine,” I murmured.

  “You get those a lot?”

  “No.”

  I could taste my relief as the cab pulled up next to my Aunt’s apartment building.

  Liam jumped out and pulled me to my feet. I think he paid the cab driver as I staggered to the front door.

  “Aya, wait.” Liam jogged up to me.

  My hands shook so badly, I couldn’t put the key in the lock. Liam took it from me and turned the doorknob. The red door in front of me pulsed. He put his arm around my waist to help me, and by then I was too weak and high-strung to worry about it.

  I usually took the stairs, but today we slumped into the elevator, and I mashed the button to the fifth floor. Liam used my key to open the apartment. I made it to my bed, and I lay there, not able to move. Liam pulled off my shoes and drew the blanket over me.

  He turned to go.

  “Liam?” I asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Aya. Any time.”

  “Aya,” Aunt Jessie knocked on my door, and I fought to regain consciousness. “School called and said you went home sick. What happened?”

  I sat up, my head still swimming, but not as bad as before.

  “Just a headache,” I said.

  I peered through one squinted eye and sighed in relief. The world was no longer red, well, not all the way red, in my darkened room. A rose haze still clung to everything, but mostly it was back to normal.

  “What time is it?” I asked as my aunt poked her head in.

  “Eight-thirty. What time did you come home?”

  “Oh, man! That means I slept six hours and missed the rest of my class.”

  “Wow, funny to hear a teenager say that.”

  “It’s not like actual school.” I rubbed my eyes. “I want to be there.”

  “All the stress of school and coming to the city probably caught up with you. I brought dinner home from the restaurant. You want some?”

  “I always want your cooking. I’ll be there in a few.”

  I lay back down in bed wishing the last of the headache would slip away. What an insane day. I’d heard of people who had such intense migraines they became delusional. That had to be what happened. There could be no other explanation, because if a car had plowed into me, I would be dead—very dead.

  I turned on my dim lamp. On the stack of my art books next to my bed were my keys and a white sheet of paper.

  Feel better—Liam.

  His phone number was listed under his name. Despite my initial intention of staying away from him and how ridiculous I’d no doubt looked when he—had he tucked me in?—the note made me smile, and I picked it up.

  And froze.

  Underneath was a book of paintings from my favorite artist—Vincent van Gogh. Staring back at me was a world of blue olive trees. My red vision was so familiar because I’d seen it before, here in Van Gogh scenes of yellow and blue with no blending between light and shadow. A harsh, solid brushstroke separated every color with an unerring boldness. I ran my finger over the flat image, imagining what his paintings looked like in real life and yearning to paint with the thick colors Van Gogh was famous for.

  Maybe I needed to stay away from art books tonight

  My door opened again.

  “I thought you might like some cocoa,” Aunt Jessie said, but the cup halted a few feet away from my outstretched hand. “What is THAT?”

  “What is what?” What was she looking at?

  Aunt Jessie grabbed my arm in a tight grip, spilling some of the hot chocolate.

  “Ouch!” I said yanking it back.

  “Your skin! Did you get a tattoo?”

  “What?!”

  There, on my skin, the color red swirled in thin ribbons as if painted there with watercolors. It twisted in overlapping curls. Some of the edges were harsh lines, as abrupt as a high-rise next to the sky. Others trickled and faded gradually into my skin, as if reluctant to disappear.

  My mouth fell open. “Is that real?”

  “Answer me! Did you get a tattoo?�
�

  I’d never heard her yell before. “Of course not! My mom would kill me.” I jumped out of bed and looked in the mirror. Both my arms were covered, and I jerked up my shirt.

  “What happened at school today?” Jessie’s quiet voice was way worse than her yelling.

  Crimson patterns swirled and covered my torso like delicate ribbons stirred by a breeze.

  “What is going on?” My voice cracked as panic hit. No, this wasn’t happening.

  “What happened at school?”

  “I—I had a migraine,” I stammered. Wasn’t it all a hallucination? “It was so bad, I imagined a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t happen.”

  “What stuff?” Her face was expressionless, but something hitched in her voice.

  “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “No, tell me.”

  I did—everything from the car and the vase, to color seeping into me, to the world turning red. “Why . . . why can I feel red inside my body?” I couldn’t breathe. “Is this real? But you can see it there . . . . What is wrong with me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The color along my skin continued to dance slowly, moving and growing.

  “Did anything else happen?” Aunt Jessie asked.

  “That’s it, but I swear it’s just a migraine or something.”

  “I wish it were.” She brushed my cheek with her fingers and frowned. “I hope I have an explanation. Why don’t you go get dinner, and I’ll be right back?”

  I sat on a barstool at the kitchen counter and poked at the salmon and risotto in the take-out box instead of eating it.

  She was back in ten minutes with a large envelope that she put on the granite counter in front of me.

  “What’s this?” I asked. The sealed envelope was pale blue and thick, with a hard lump in the center. The word Aya was printed on it in neat, handwritten ink. Not my full name that teachers and acquaintances used but the name that meant whoever wrote this knew me.

  “Days before he died your father brought that to me. He told me when the strangeness happened to you, I should give you that.”