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— The sky is pinkening, — Glyde said. — Burdened by the canopy of twilight, the colour is barely visible at the very bottom. I look out the window and think: "Oh, in about ten or maybe fifteen minutes, the whole sky will turn into this colour, this girly colour". But the sunrise might take twenty minutes to come, and pink isn't a girly colour. My hair is pink.
"The Science Of Business" is carved onto the jade cover in golden letters. I drum my fingers, trace the letter "B", and drop the volume — it falls to the wenge parquet like a dead weight, opening with a muffled thud to the pages I have already highlighted and read. I look at all those motley lines and notes, at the terms and problems — or so it seems, as I can't see anything clearly due to the tiny font — and think: "My hair is pink". But not only mine — Glista's, too.
And again, a thought, a very genuine one: "Pink is Glista's colour, a girly colour". And then comes a belated one, barely carving a path into my still-unformed mind (although every week I think: "Oh, I can feel my mind growing a little stronger. It won't be long before I'm considered fully mature"), unnatural and born from my father's teachings of skepticism: "This is foolish, thinking about this is foolish, I need to continue reading".
A saturated yellow, warm yellow falls upon the desk and slightly onto my fingers, coating them in May honey. I look at them, look, and seem to feel its suffocating scent, sliding into pink insides of my lungs. Sliding with ringing clarity, intrusively. I see, I feel — how it bursts against tender flesh. Crumbling inside me into stars, leaving me as stars. I see, I feel — dear blue eyes, almost my blue eyes, and stars, stars inside them...
"Thinking about foolish things again," — I say, shifting my gaze to a sleekly design desk lamp. "&tradition," — I say and imagine the Tiffany lamp in the room across from mine, in the room of my sister. It glows with the same saturated, warm yellow and dyes Glista's fingers in honey. She is probably leafing through a picture book, glancing at each illustration for a split second before turning to the next — waiting and hoping to find one that will catch her eye, one that will be special.
She will never find one. Glista is accustomed to extravagances — they do not move her. Glista is accustomed to pretty pictures — none will hold her attention. She needs only me; I need only her.
The book lies in humble silence, yellow colouring one of its pages in droplets. She needs me. I lift it and suddenly notice that the whole sky has turned pink, that my entire room is swimming in natural light.
— Glyde, — her husky voice sounded like a gentle stroke on the head. It slid under my collar, traced my spine, and settled in my stomach — so weak, so powerful. I turned around belatedly. — Let's play?
I lick my lips — she doesn't need to know about my nervousness. I swallow audibly — though, she already knows everything anyway.
My hair is pink, and Glista's is too. My eyes are blue; stars burst inside them, then crumble and gather once more. Her eyes are blue too, but they are empty, completely empty, and look straight into mine.