Page 134 of The Sound of Him

Free, like someone like me, someone dead, someone not real, can never be.

On the feelings chart, there isn’tfree- but there’sliberated.

Liberated is a shade of yellow. That’s probably fitting. I bet the feeling of liberation is like sunshine on your skin. I bet it’s warm.

I don’t feel yellow at all.

I pick up a pencil and begin to color the paper. I’m careful, using the same pressure for every smooth stroke across the page. When I’ve finished it, there are no darker and lighter areas, no shades. It’s just an empty space of a static gray.

This is what I feel like. I live here. I am caught in the in-between. The gray area. Not black, but not white either. Not dead, but not alive. It’s a tightrope with a blindfold on. One wrong step could make me slip, the half-ghost becoming a full one.

But I will slip, eventually. No one can walk a tightrope blindfolded. Not for long, at least. There’s no scenario where Iescape to something lighter. I am in the in-between, but there’s only one direction for me to go.

I will just be gray, until I’m swallowed up by the black instead.

Something wet lands on the paper, darkening the grey. I have a surreal moment where I think that it heard my thoughts somehow. Like it’s agreed that there is no hope and is ready to drag me further into the dark.

Then I realize I’m just crying.

I quickly wipe my cheeks and look up at him. He’s looking at the crossword, but he’s not doing it anymore. He’s entirely focused on me.

Knowing he won’t ask, I sit up straight and turn the paper toward him. I was right. His attention was definitely on me because he’s looking at it before I’ve even finished turning it. He tilts his head, eyes scanning the drawing -if just a paper full of color can be called a drawing?

“Gray,” he says, not like a question, but like he understands. He nods, too. Then his eyes find mine. “Are you gray all of the time?”

Since Carter and Casey?Yes.

Since coming here?No.

I flip over the paper and write on the back, glad the gray is a dark-ish shade so he’ll be able to read it.

He sits and waits with his chin on his fisted hand, looking nice and calm and peaceful. He keeps looking that way when I show him my words.GRAY ALWAYS NOW THEY ARE GONE. GRAY ONLY SOMETIMES BEFORE.

“How much do you mean bysometimes? Could you give it a scale for me? On a scale of 1 to 10, how often have you been gray while you’ve been here? Or you can give me a percentage. What percentage of time have you spent being gray?”

I frown down at the words.

That’s too hard.

That’s… that’s too hard.

I’m shaking my head before I realize it.

He says, “Okay. How about this - when does the gray stop? Or whendidit, before?”

I think about that.

It doesn’t take much thinking at all.

I draw a moon beneath the letters I had written.

“Nights?” I waver my hand, then tap the word,SOMETIMES. “Some nights?”

I nod.

“Good. Can you draw me what those nights feel like?”

Not what I do at night, but what theyfeellike.