The world is not only black and white, she said.

There are shades of grey, Lian went on.

Sure, but shades of grey are a mixture of the colours black and white, Janie disagreed.

Lian huffed, and remarked coolly about black and white not being colours but shades, and when Janie did not respond right away, she went on to make an even cooler remark against Janie’s intelligence.

The other girls snickered and smirked, preferentially supporting Lian, especially glad the remarks weren’t aimed at them. To them, Lian has won due to her…coolness.

That was so funny; I hear one girl whisper to her neighbour. Obviously, the neighbour agreed. Jamie has nothing to say to that, she hissed into her neighbour’s ear.

I disagreed, but I still thought it a waste if Janie should try.

Though, as my thoughts were usually private and so, more and not less ignored, she did.

So I tried to pay attention, just in case someone should say something important, or funny or sensible. But the half cracked windows carried a promising aroma of warmed-up lunch leftovers just opposite our abandoned classroom, with its cracked walls, greasy floor tiles, a broken clock missing both hands and wobbly desks.

My desk was dangerously wobbly. It rocked about, tilting forward and backward; the more I tried to control it, the more it would jolt about -so I ignored the skittish desk which did not in any way hinder the wonderful scent of burgers and ham sandwiches from clinging to the air around my nostrils.

Black and white is the underpinning of all other colours, and shades, Janie retorted. Without black and white there would be no grey. And that is essentially the point. She insisted.

Right then, I knew Janie could not win; she makes too much sense to win against someone that makes no sense at all.

 With all that sense you would think she would know that, but she didn’t and when she finally figured it out, it was a bit too late.

The girls anticipated Lian’s remark, while I tried to discern faint chalk marks on the old chip-chopped black-board in order to push the wheezing and dripping of the wall mounted AC machine to the back of my mind, the tension within the small room was evident, even to me in my oblivion.

Lian’s rebuttal came full on, she spoke about freedom of opinion, and that as far as opinions go, we all have them—whether they be wrong or right. Janie’s were wrong… in her opinion.

Lian spoke about black coffee, two sugars and cream and said nothing about the colours/shades, black and white.

Not to my surprise, but to everyone else’s, Janie continued to point this out to the thin crowd of girls who clung to each word from the mouth of the arguing girls, with more reverence than they had ever cared to lend any professor or preacher.

Lian is straying from the point, she enforced. We weren’t talking about cream and coffee, opinions, philosophy and whatever, but about black and white, and Lian was straying from the point, Janie repeated. She also couldn’t help but notice how very pragmatic Lian was being and thought she should stop…as it made her look rather asinine.

After staring dumbly at Janie for a second or two, the girls guessed Lian could not reply to that, because they had no clue what Janie had said, so neither would Lian. They stared shame faced away from Lian, avoiding each other’s eyes. Just then I took note of the tattered hem of my uniform skirt, as it was far more interesting at that time. In fact, our uniforms were black and white, and wouldn’t everyone laugh out loud at the irony if I had mentioned that at the time, wouldn’t they forget that Lian had lost in the pair’s mock attempt at grown up chit chat; we would get up just then, after having a laugh, and everyone would follow me, trailing across the grassy lawns to the cafeteria, to have our lunches, because we were all starving.

But I said nothing, because I didn’t think they knew the meaning of irony. And I couldn’t be bothered to explain.

Lian spoke up finally and unfortunately, playing the part of baffled, bratty little know-it-all pubescent well.

She demanded to know, what prag-ma-what-icks were and then addressed us with well informed knowledge on the topic of Janie and her homework. In fact, Janie did it with the thesaurus open and read the dictionary for fun. Which was why she used words she thought no one else knew. Lian then kindly informed Janie, for her benefit, that using big words she thought no one else understood in order to seem smart wasn’t cute, actually, Lian concluded, it made her look like quite an ass and nine.

It was a stupid remark. But the girls enjoyed it, jumping onto the Lian bandwagon of freedom and opinion as they giggled and agreed with her all at once, at the very top of their voices, making it very unclear to hear what each girl said, which was very practical, because they had nothing to say, anyway.

 I tried to think of something witty to say then, and came up with a few good remarks.

But I didn’t have the gut to say any of it. So I looked to Janie instead, offering silent support for team Janie, then our eyes met and I tried my best to give a warm, encouraging smile, to clarify the message.

Janie’s face only soured as if she caught sight of something inferior. It’s half what I expected, luckily, I always half expect the worse.

She scowled with scorn, giving me a cold shoulder and a visible back.

I felt to burst. Not into tears, but into pieces.

 My heart wheezed like the cold, broken machine. I wanted to yell a hoard of dirty and profound things to all the girls there, I wanted them to recognize how immature Lian really was, and not follow her like sheep.

But as my rage grew my heart slowed with disappointment, refusing blood and oxygen to my brain, and so, I began to grow.

The girls didn’t notice, they just laughed and smiled, shifting closer to and facing Lian. Soon the backs of their hairy heads were all I could see, with Lian before them in plain view of everyone, including me.

Janie was just smart, is all. I thought, if anything, she should have been smart sooner, and spare me the rubbish.

Lian bathed in their attention. Her mouth grew wide and canine and her eyes became like saucers. At first I thought, what a pompous little girl, gloating with the power she commanded over these poor girls that didn’t have any upbringing and didn’t know any better.

But I knew better, and as I swelled in proportion, I began to see them all for what they truly were from my great height and advantage.

Instead of trying to block out the racket of the broken machine, I focused on it.

I focused on the dank, inky paper laid to absorb the drippy droppings beneath it. I continued to grow that way, becoming as tall and wide as the room. Bigger than Lian and her snooty talk and stuffed bra, bigger than the silly girls, who I started to see, was nothing but fat, bald, grimy nestlings. It was easy to observe as their vulgar, loud mouths opened up with guffaws, exclamations and unnecessary hysterics.

I fancied them chirping feverishly, instead of giggling girlishly, their dirty tongues writhing and licking eagerly, waiting to be fed Lian’s phlegm with half a chewed up worm in the midst; when white froth started to erupt from Lian’s mouth, I knew then that I had gotten it right.

Right before my all seeing eyes, she began transforming. Now everyone will see her true nature.

Her eyes rolled round in their sockets, fluttering upward revealing their fleshy whites. Her body convulsed, thrashing monstrously. The nestlings became girls again as their horror became clear to me.

Without any control, I started to recede, returning steadily to my original size amidst unexpected chaos as girls flew here and there, yelling and creating general havoc.

Did the fact that their leader flailed helplessly at their feet make them sad or scared?

I couldn’t tell. The grating machine made it impossible to hear their cries and shouts in any certain clarity. It was too loud, and I had become too small and insignificant to see anything clearly anymore.

A couple days later, when Lian finally returned to school, no one would entertain my thoughts about her transformation. No one seemed inclined to talk about it; it was almost as if it didn’t happen.

Her illness is a delicate subject, and after an episode, epileptics don’t remember a thing. So try not to mention it. Our guidance counsellor reprimanded me alone in the desolate hall, just outside homeroom.

“I know all about epileptics,” I told her.

“So do I. So you understand what happened to Lian?”

I understood perfectly.

“Good” she said, then left me there. I felt badly for her, I felt badly for everyone.

They knew everything about epileptics, and nothing about Lian.

Two years later, I was became one of her closest friends and it then became clear to me, that though Lian may or may not have been right about the world—there was no rational way to see it but in black and white alone…

…Paper or plastic; partial or impartial; One or another; friend or enemy.

Today, I am not her friend.

On this day, five years later, I am nobody’s friend, and the world is still black and white.