I wasn’t supposed to meet him.
My best friend, Harper, had been told she could no longer babysit for Wednesday Night Prayer Meetings because she’d been stupid enough to put a three year old on a window sill – (“It was CLOSED!”) – The poor toddler leaned against the screen until it popped out, sending him tilting out the window and almost to his death.
This is quite unacceptable anywhere, but God help you if it happens in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Luckily, he was okay, but our pastor got involved and suggested maybe she wasn’t the best fit for the job. That’s how I got asked to take her place. I’d shown up at the Neely house, and while my mom dropped off a crockpot of meatballs, I was pointed towards a bonus room holding exactly one other occupant: a boy.
It was the first time I met Colton Neely. Nine years old. Dark brown bowl cut hair and eyes that strayed everywhere but on me. The room was filled to the brim with coloring books, art pads, and paints. And trains. Oh my God, don’t get me started on the trains . . . bins of them in every corner.
He wanted to color for the two hours I was with him. At the time, I barely thought anything of being paid to sit with a boy so close to my age while our parents were in the next room – I was getting paid, after all. Halfway through the first picture in his coloring book, that he refused to share with me by the way, I looked over and gently grabbed hold of his hand to stop him from what he was doing.
“You need to color inside the lines. That’s what they’re for.” I admonished him with the brazen bitchiness only a ten year old girl with a superiority complex could muster.
See, I believed you could tell a lot about a person by the way they color.
I used to think there were two kinds of Crayola artists: Ones who color inside the lines and ones who don’t stay within the rigid boundaries set by thick black perimeters that make up a cuddly koala.
But it seems that inside and outside the lines is just the main basis for comparison. You also have those who color lightly inside and fill each space according to the chosen and appropriate shade.
Then you have those who scribble and slap any color anywhere. And sometimes these people have purple turkeys and shit that drives me absofreakinglutely crazy because, seriously . . . who has purple turkeys?
Then you have people who take the time to outline each portion of the picture with color before filling it in, so it not only looks cohesive, but it seems like they actually give a damn about the big-eyed My Little Pony they’re giving definition to.
Or, you have those who make little polka dots in the middle of a bear’s face and then cry excitedly that the bear has chicken pox.
See where I’m going with this? Society has pretty much taught us that it’s inside the lines, or outside. But there’s so much more in between.
I wanted to correct Colton so he’d be like everyone else.
He didn’t even look up from the paper, but flinched and quickly pulled his hand away from mine. “You’re mean,” he whispered and continued to make sweeping motions across the paper, coloring in wide strokes of every vibrant hue he could get his little fingers on. It was the first words he’d spoken to me, and they would reverberate through my brain for years to come.
Was I mean?
I don’t like people being mad at me, or not liking me, so I tried to make up for it.
“Wanna go outside?” I’d asked, afraid he’d tell my mom I’d hurt his feelings.
“It’s raining.” He’d said it so matter-of-fact, like he was the adult and I was some stupid little kid.
Colton was not going to get the best of me, you see. I was going to make $15 that day. And I was going to get this kid to give a good report to his mother.
“It’s not raining that bad.”
“My mom says I’m not allowed.”
“No one will notice. Come on. Let’s go outside.”
It was the first time I’d get him to do something he wasn’t too sure of. We’d gone out into the rain on that balmy summer day. He’d looked into the sky with wide, pale blue eyes that appeared much too mature for his age, and he’d simply muttered something about the chances of getting hit by lightning.
I didn’t really pay attention, though. He had a badass swing set with a sandbox in his back yard and I was too busy trying to get up the slide from the front, instead of taking the ladder, because I wanted to be one of those chicks on television who kicked ass. And my first step would be to get up a slide. In the rain.
It’s called ‘preparation’.
Colton had run over to me, his hands waving up and down at his sides frantically as I huffed and puffed my way up the slick metal. “You’ll get hurt!”
I’d rolled my eyes and shushed him. “I’m fine.”
That’s when the first lightning bolt hit the tree a few feet away from the slide I was struggling to get up.
Poor little Colton covered his ears and jumped about a foot into the air.
I had watched in awestruck wonder as he’d turned around ridiculously fast and sprinted across the backyard, screaming as his legs propelled him forward while he leaped over puddles of water two feet wide to get back to the house.
Leaving me on the metal slide.
Alone.
Where I did get hit by lightning.
Well, not me. The slide. The slide got hit by lightning and I was holding on to it so I sort of just spazzed out and my arm hair was standing on end by the time I shook hard enough to get my fingers to let go of the side of the slide. Then I fell back into the mud and blacked out.
When I woke up in the hospital, my mom informed me Colton had been freaking out and his mom finally got enough information out of him so that my mom could pull me across the lawn and into the house. Both of them were hysterical. And I was lucky to be alive.
He had essentially saved my life.
Then he showed up at the hospital with his mom, Sheila, looking at me like I was the most fascinating thing in the world because I wouldn’t die.
I did get this amazing scar from the experience, though. My doctor said it was called a Lichtenberg Figure, this crazy raised skin that was darker than the rest of my complexion. It looked like tree roots running from the top of my shoulder to the middle of my arm. I was enamored with it at the time.
Apparently Colton was, too.
Now it’s just a thing on my body. Part of who I am. Sometimes I forget it’s there.
Back to the story.
He stayed for a good thirty minutes, not speaking and not doing anything other than staring at me – at my new battle wound that I hoped portrayed I actually was a badass. Right before he left, he pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it over, offering me a small wave before walking out behind his mother.
That piece of paper held the most intricately colored artwork I’d ever seen in my life.
Instead of making me feel better, it made me feel bad.
Because just the day before, I had apparently told The Artist of our Generation to color inside the effing lines.
* * *
I met Colton under the guise that I was getting paid to sit for some kids from church. But every time I showed up to the house, it was just us two.
I had to wonder why I was getting paid to hang out with him in the first place. I mean, really?
You would think after I almost died I wouldn’t be asked to come over anymore. But you’d be wrong because apparently his mom didn’t learn a lesson once. I’m sure it was because she felt like her son was good enough that we wouldn’t get into trouble, but she didn’t take into account that I wasn’t.
Colton’s pretty much perfect. He’s quiet and aloof, always minds his manners and whatnot. As a child, he was continuously focused on coloring or drawing or even painting in the room his dad had cleaned out above the garage.
I didn’t want to paint or make boy-trains. I got tired of coloring.
I just wanted to play, ya know?
Needless to say, he probably stopped trusting me a whole lot the day I almost choked on a marble. And the time I accidentally got gum stuck in my hair and asked him to help me cut it out. Which resulted in a huge chunk of hair missing on the left side of my head.
His trust of me must have taken a nosedive the day I tried to teach him how to mattress surf down the stairs, but since he was being so adamant about not participating, I decided to show him exactly how much fun it could be. I got onto the mattress backward, staring him in the face as I pushed off the top stair and started to head backward down the stairwell. Except . . . the mattress didn’t come with me.
Not at first, anyway.
I rolled onto my back and went head first into the corner next to the front door and hit my head so hard it gave me a concussion. Colton had to push the mattress off me because it was only five seconds delayed behind my limp body. And then he started screaming for our moms and they called another ambulance while they freaked out. I threw up green hot dogs or something crazy on the way to the hospital. Once I was coherent enough to speak to her behind the flimsy blue curtain in the ER, I assured my mom it was my fault.
Funny enough, she believed me.
That time, when Colton and his mother came to see me in the hospital, it was to announce I was no longer going to be invited over on Wednesday nights. And they were changing churches.
It took all of that for her to realize I was incapable of keeping myself out of harm’s way. Amazing.
Anyway, Colton had stayed even more quiet than usual, and he’d barely looked at me the entire time he was there. But before he left, he’d given me another picture. And let me tell you, this one was even more beautiful than the one before because it was a page full of nothing but color.
He’d scratched at his hair hidden beneath his favorite baseball cap and whispered, “Bye, Lilly.” I’d given him a final wave, knowing deep in my heart it was probably going to be the last time I would see him for a very long time.
I was pretty much right. Mrs. Neely had been talking to my mother out of what she assumed was earshot, but I could still hear what was going on. At the time, her words didn’t make much sense. Although, they do now.
Because it took me another five years to figure out exactly what was so different about Colton Neely and why his mother was so upset that she couldn’t find a playmate for him.