Sonata of a Fight — Chapter 3 — The Grey World
What it feels like when everything loses color — and why Ryan takes it in silence.
Ryan has everything. Except a morning that doesn't hurt.
Let me tell you how it works, from here on.
My life is grey. Every day I try harder to hide, to slip past unnoticed, to take up less space. And even so I can't drop it — because to my father our caste has to pass through the best institutions and be recognized by them. So I go back. Every day I go back to the grey hell.
It was in that grey that I saw the two of them.
Two strange guys who walk through this colorless world and are the only thing with color inside it. One has a green mohawk. The other, a blue cap. They cross the hallways like the place belongs to them.
And it's strange: if you look, almost everyone is turned toward them. Looks of contempt, of hatred, of envy. Nobody understands why those two insist on coming here, why they keep stepping into our world. They're not known for being peaceful. They won their space by force.
Arnold has no strength. He has the muscle — guys and girls, students, all of them orbiting him to suck up and do what he says. Those two are different. The strength is their own. They've faced a lot of people in this school, and you can see the frustration and the hunger for payback in whoever looks at them.
The most incredible thing is that they don't seem to care.
I see this grey world. I imagine that if they saw what I see, the world around them would be black — darkness, pure hatred. And they walk around laughing. Having fun. They can do that for one reason only: they have strength. And this is the world we live in. The law of the strongest. The one thing I'm never going to have.
So yes, I look at the two of them too. And I feel hatred. Hatred of how people who should be beneath me manage to smile in here. Them, with nothing, and they look happy. And me, with everything, just forcing my head to hold on for one more day.
Otherwise I'd have jumped off this building already. Or stepped in front of a car. Just to end it.
The Day It Ends
This is the day it ends.
I'm on my knees on the hallway floor (the main line comes back to this hallway, ch. 15). Arnold has his foot on my neck and I have to bark every time he says so. His little group talks about something else, in no hurry. Someone kicks my ass in passing.