Chapter 4

If he's a hallucination then why did I make him so annoying? And why is he so pretty? I can't even see his whole face and he's pretty. I thought to myself, as I pulled Wish to a willow tree, there was a hollow in the tree where we could escape the rain.

"Earth to George?" Wish asked, tapping my shoulder. He seemed to have found some branches that we could use as a barricade. I must have zoned out for a while. "Oh yeah. Umm sorry, I'm here." I say, awkwardly. Why is he so cute?

"Is this good?" He asks, putting the branches against the hollow. "It looks natural enough, right?" He asks, like a small child asking for approval. I nod. "Yeah, yeah it's good. Sorry, I must have zoned out for some reason." He looks at me strangely then nods.

We put our stuff in the hollow, and then we finally realize how small it is. It's about the size of the inside of a wardrobe. We're basically on top of each other. Good thing neither of us are claustrophobic. I curl up in a ball, the barricade and our supplies already take up most of the alcove, so there's no hope of laying down. Wish does the same rather uncomfortably. For once I'm glad to be short. My vision blurs, almost alarming me as I push myself to the alcove wall and try to sleep.

Wish looks worried, quite anxious, he holds his mask tightly. "Are you claustrophobic?" I ask, hoping his answer is no. He shakes his head, accidentally hitting it against the wall. "Are you worried I'll take your mask off while you're asleep?" I ask. He nods. "Let's make a deal, you won't murder me in my sleep, if I don't take your mask off in yours." I propose.

He nods, reaching out his hand to shake mine. "Also, don't come near me." I say. He laughs, "as if I'd want to." I roll my eyes at him. I might roll my eyes at home often, but his humor really helps, it's fun being able to laugh and make jokes even in dark times. I don't know how he does it.

We sit in silence for about a half hour, trying to fall asleep with no avail. Wish huffs "I don't fall asleep at this time, I can't fall asleep." He complains. "You're going to have to learn to adapt." I say simply, then go back to staring at the barricade, hoping nobody comes.

He kicks me. "It's not that easy to change your sleep schedule idiot." He says to me. I ignore him. He takes out flowers, and lays them out in some strange order in the little space we have between us.

"What are you doing?" I ask. "This is the rainbow!" He says, "I'm going to teach you colors!" He says happily. I'm guessing I can't skip this, though I wish I could.

He pulls out another flower, identical to another one in front of us. Judging by its shape, it's a peony, it's a dark shade of yellow for me, but probably different for him. "Oops, I got one to many." He says, fumbling nervously with the flower, making petals fall all over the ground.

Slowly he leans forward. Since I can't move backwards I just sit there and let it happen. Wish slowly parts my hair and pushes the flower into it. "I know you can't see it, but red really suits you, it looks nice." He says, smiling, and blushing a bit as he moves away from me. I'm not sure how to feel about it so I just ignore it.

"So what are we doing with all the flowers around you?" I ask, picking up one of the flowers. He takes it from my hand and places it back where I took it from in the line. "So you can probably tell that these flowers are all different colors. And I'm trying to see how your color blindness works. So just put the darkest color at one end, and the lightest at the other. Maybe red is the lightest and violet is the darkest." He says.

Carefully I try my hardest to arrange them in what I think may be color order. I put the lightest yellows at one end, the darker at the other. I know blue is after yellow, so I place three blue colors after some yellow ones. I'm doing fairly well until I get stuck on two murky shades of yellow that to me look identical. How do other people tell the difference between them! Why is it so hard to arrange something in rainbow order!

"Wish I can't do this!" I whine, squinting my eyes at the two flowers as if it'll help me distinguish them better. He looks between my face and the two flowers. "Red and green." He says. "Alright, my hoodie is green." He says looking down at his hoodie, noticing that it's completely covered in blood, which I know is red. "Oh… well. That flower I gave you earlier is red, does that help?" He asks. I take down the flower from my hair and examine it carefully.

I also take the other peony and since it's a different shade than the red peony I know that it isn't red. I look at the two yellows I was having trouble with and I see the small difference between them. "Alright, so this one Is green, this one is red." I say, and I notice that the red ones were placed near the middle so I move them to the front. Green is after yellow and I can tell yellow apart more easily. And I know what blue looks like so I put it after green.

"So that's my order." I say, looking at Wish looking sadly at the colors. "Well it seems that you can tell yellow and blue apart a lot better." He says. "Actually blue and yellow are the only colors I can see." I tell him, looking at the flowers. To me it's shades of yellow and shades of blue. To him, it's the colors of the rainbow. It's all about perception, what looks like something to one person may look different than everyone else.

I watch as Wish switches some colors, he switches most of the colors, all except the blue. "Well that makes a little more sense." He says. He takes a deep breath, then let's it out. "Okay, use the comparisons to your advantage." He says, looking around. "You have blood all over your clothes, and you know that's red. So try to find a shade of flower that matches it." He says. "And also, if you're bleeding, maybe check that out." He says. I laugh, I'm not a dry humor person, but any joke is welcome.

"Okay," he says, gesturing to the newly sorted list. "So this is the actual order." He says. "Notice anything?" He asks. I look at the order. Surprisingly I got the three colors I see as blue correct. They darken in order. The lightest being just blue and the darkest being violet. The yellow is where I messed up. Instead of it going lightest to darkest, the darkest shade of yellow was first 'red', after that was the lightest shade 'yellow' , then the middle shade of yellow 'green'.

"What the hell is that?" I mutter, picking up some of the flowers and comparing their shades. It doesn't matter if I ruin the list, Wish can rearrange them in a matter of seconds. He's probably been able to since before preschool.

I look up at Wish to see if he's playing a prank on me. He just smiles sadly, and looks at me. He's not playing around. "So you can't distinguish yellows." He says, "and you're completely blind from red to green, yellow and blue are the only colors you can see." He notes to himself. "Ok, so you have Protanopia." He tells me. "What?" I ask him. "Red green colorblindness. It's also the only colorblindness I know the name of."

"Okay…" at least if Wish knows what kind of colorblindness I have, he knows more about what's going on, and he can help me.

Maybe my colorblindness won't pose too much of a problem after all.