In which Gage ventures to the white side

The door opened. Her blue eyes were not the same. There was a greyness that I had never seen before but maybe, I foolishly wondered, this was the the byproduct of mixing white with her once slate coloured gaze. At first she didn't register me. And then she did. And then she looked as if she wish she hadn't.

"Yes because this make sense." Was her greeting.

"Hey." The returned gesture was so obviously lacking.

"Nix goes to black and you make it to white." Her glare was not like something I had seen before and to make it worse it no longer suited her soft features.

"It's not like that exactly." It's not at that at all, I should have said. In fact I should have told them when we first met. Or maybe I just shouldn't have gotten involved with the affairs of the black and white classes like my father had warned me.

"Then do explain how you are here."

"Shea sweetie," a voice like a blanket on a cold day wafted from the interior of the house. "Who is it? Do invite them in won't you?"

"It's okay. He is leaving."

"Not without a hot drink a bit of bread of course," I had expected a grandmotherly figure to be attacked to that voice but a girl only a few years older than us came to stand next to Shea. I recognized her the way a smell brings back only a fragment of a memory. Whoever she was, she was filled out in ways that Shea was trim and had dull grey blue eyes and thick brown hair like well Shea.

"Seriously, he is leaving."

"Shea," her voice full of of honey, had  to pause to spread it on the bread. "We are to invite any traveler in no matter what our reservations of which we should have none. Now please- what is your name?"

"Gage."

"Please Gage, welcome to our home." She smiled at me. Shea glared. I grinned and allowed myself to be led into the kitchen where I was given a mug of milky coffee and a plate of cookies. If it had been a choice, white was looking pretty good right now.

"Sue. Please if I may request a moment alone with Gage I would be grateful," Shea smiled at the older girl who gave her a look in response.

"You are young," Sue replied. "I'll give you now, but in the future we must never be selfish in requesting ones presence all for ourself." Then she smiled at us and winked and hurried off.

"Is this really where you belong!?" Smiling Shea was gone.

"No."

"Because he has more of a right than you do you lazy, self-absorbed, selfish, ignorant, arrogant-"

"Would you like a thesaurus?"

Her fist dropped clenched to her sides and she shook her head though didn't say another word for a long time and looked as if she would explode. I knew she meant all those things, it was impossible to ignore that truth, but I also knew she was just hurt and I could take it.

"Nix is okay."

"I don't care anymore."

She did.

"He's well... fitting in..." I knew instantly after saying it, that it was not what she wanted to hear.

"Look Gage, maybe you mean well," was she trying to regain the white side of her? "but I want to forget about him."

She didn't. But I could hear that she knew she would never see him again and that for all her efforts she was white and he was black and it was impossible. The whole romantic irony of it made me sick, it was too cliche to be real.

"And here," I looked guilty into my coffee, "I can go between both compounds when you can't even leave this one."

"You what?" I tried to taste the emotion from her truths but failed. It was not one I knew a name for. But she didn't need to add, "I didn't think you belonged here."

"Because I don't."

"So you escaped the black compound." It wasn't a question and she was assuming that I'd dragged Nix into it and he was somewhere in trouble when he was probably off stealing supplies somewhere to make ends meet.

"No."

"So you don't belong here and you didn't escape but then that would." Her eyes flickered around the room the way they always did when she was anxious or on to something. "Gage. Gage. Gage Masters."

I nodded.

I don't remember when they discovered I'd had a last name but we had all abandoned that truth because it was too hard to face when we were ten and inseparable.

"Silver."

For the first time since I got there I was able to say, "yes."