Truthfully, That Day started out all right. There was no raging thunderstorm, with its wicked flickers of light bursting through the dark sky. There were no eerie sound effects—no creaks or squeaks or screeches, or even that cliché howling sound of the wind. There wasn’t any mist or fog draping over the city.

The sky was a clear, fluffy pink the morning of That Day. The air was breezy and humid at the same time. The grass smelled fresh and looked especially soft and peaceful, settled with dew in the moist soil. The sun’s rays were peeking out from behind snowy-white clouds, and at one point, the entire sky was illuminated with golden light. An unusual setting, compared to what you would think happened the morning of That Day.

I first awoke to the lulled humming of a child’s voice. Sure enough, my five-year-old brother was singing another new tune he learned at school, the lyrics muffled under the covers.

Now, depending on what you heard about That Day, you could think that I was a heartless monster to the child, that I did something terrible to him that morning, like beat him or tear off his skin or bite his flesh to the point of blood. But I am not a heartless monster. I never was. You have heard the story all wrong.

I sang along to my little brother’s song. I hummed, I belted, I roared out my rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” until my lungs were on fire. And then my brother looked up at me with his sleepy blue eyes, and he smiled. Did you hear that, folks? I made somebody smile. That’s right. Me, the sick, wretched being from That Day.

The entire morning consisted of our silly duets, my brother and I’s. We got out of bed. We sang. We made pancake batter. We sang. I poured the batter onto the butter-sizzling pan. We sang. My brother flipped over the vanilla-scented pancakes. We sang. We sat down to eat. We sang. We dropped our plates into the sink. We sang. We left with lemony dish soap scrubbed deep into our hands. We sang. We put on our ugly, bulky school shoes. We sang. My brother fetched our coats and schoolbags. We sang. I combed my curls and tamed my brother’s matted nest of soft, light-brown hair. We sang. We left. We sang.

And then the bus came, and we had to stop. We were no longer brothers once we stepped onto that bus. Friendship between siblings was seen as a distraction in our Academic Environment. As soon as our feet, in those ugly black shoes we had to wear, the ones that looked like burnt pancakes, passed the first step onto the bus, our duet was over.

Usually, my brother and I were used to this routine, but, suddenly, he was clutching my coat sleeve and standing at my side, whimpering, refusing to let go.

“Oliver, go sit with the other kindergarteners. I have to go to the back with the big kids. Remember?”

My little brother just shook his head and clung onto my arm. I felt his skinny body tremble at my side. I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Nobody could figure out what was wrong.

Everything was wrong on That Day.

The bus driver’s face started to boil when Oliver wouldn’t move. “Kid, get to your section, now!” he shrieked. I had never seen the driver go ballistic before. That Day, I did.

 He tried to pry Oliver off of me, and my brother started to cry. He started hitting my brother, swinging his fist into Oliver’s side, until I swear my brother could barely breathe. Oliver cried harder, and every time a sob racked his body, it would look like the little skeleton of a child was electrified.

Finally, Oliver’s tiny arms went limp and flailed back to his sides, and the bus driver dragged him to the eight other five-year-olds that were sitting and staring in total shock.

     “You,” the bus driver narrowed his deep, dark eyes at me, “back of the bus, now.”

     I reluctantly obeyed, glancing back at my brother once, whose face was sickeningly white except for the scarred-red hue that was growing in his cheeks, coated with little tears.
I just didn’t get it, why he was like this all of a sudden. I had no idea what That Day would turn into.

So I carefully made my way to the very back of the bus and found a seat. The other big kids were staring, scrutinizing me with their glares. I couldn’t figure it out, what was going on, until one kid said:

     “You really don’t belong here.”

     I nodded. I forgot. Oliver and I were different.

     I looked down at my pale hands. I scanned the front of the bus for my pale brother. I ran my hand through my golden-brown curls. I searched for my brother’s matted nest of soft, light-brown hair. I blinked away the water that glassed over my hazel-green eyes. My brother was doing the same with his sleepy blue ones.

     Then I looked at the other kids, with their dark hair and dark eyes and tan skin. I looked at the bus driver, an aged clone of everybody else. The girls, the boys. Everyone was the same.

     But not me and Oliver. We were a different species.
I glanced at my little brother again. I watched his face lose the little color it had left as the other children mocked him, cursed at him, bruised his arms, kicked his shins, laughed when he winced in pain.

Suddenly, I couldn’t take it. For those three days that we had off from school and from this bus, Oliver and I escaped the world in our own home and finally got to enjoy ourselves. Everyday, we made chocolate-chunk pancakes, cooked them to match the color of my curls. Everyday, we woke up and sang or danced or laughed or smiled, just for the heck of it. Everyday, we forgot we were different.

Why couldn’t we continue with that?

I guess that’s why Oliver was crying so hard. He was only five. He wasn’t so good with the transition from brief vacation to school and the bus, the transition from love to hate. He didn’t want the happiness to be over. He didn’t want to be different anymore.

I didn’t want our difference to matter anymore.

So I got mad. And I stood up. And I looked the other kids straight in the eye and said, “I’m done.” And I zoomed across the bus and grabbed my brother by the arms and busted the doors open with my back. I slammed into them as hard as I could, and Oliver and I flew into the soft grass with its morning dew. We tumbled over each other, and then the bus stopped and the driver stormed out. I ordered my sobbing brother to run as fast as he could into the forest that conveniently met the road. Then I screamed and wailed so that the bus driver would come to me and not my brother. And he did.

And then he jammed his fist into the side of my face, and he kicked me in the guts and hauled me over his shoulder and back onto the bus, where I was met yet again with the scrutinizing, black-eyed glares of the other children. I wrestled and I screeched and I shrieked as loud as I could, and then I felt something stab my back and I fell to the floor and couldn’t move until all the other children were dropped off, and I was driven to the Criminal Institute.

There, they stuck me inside a gray room without windows or light, just one poor excuse of a light bulb hanging from a thread in the middle of the ceiling. And I sat there, for hours and hours, and nothing happened.

So I waited. And waited. And waited. And, at last, I was released. But not for long. They let me out to force me to read the stories the real villains were writing about That Day, about how I clawed at the other children’s eyes, and beat the driver to a pulp, and leapt on the seats and growled and pounced on unsuspecting kids on that bus, and even how I sent my brother to the woods so that he would die.

And then they took my arm and signed a sheet of paper with a signature that didn’t match mine at all, but was written with my numb hand. I couldn’t control any part of myself. My blood was pumping with chemicals. My limbs could only be moved by the tan-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed strangers in the room.

But they can never numb my voice. And I am sending this message to you through my mind, to tell you the truth, to ask you to put our colors aside and find my brother, and feed him, and love him. They told me on That Day that I will not come out of this place alive. So I am telling you the real story about what happened on That Day, three years ago. They didn’t think that the chemicals they injected into my body had any side effects, any aspects they couldn’t control. They didn’t think that by spraying my skin tan, and by painting my hair dark, and by coating my hazel-green eyes with black gel, they would only enhance the difference between the others and I: our minds. They didn’t think that I would be able to send messages to the people of this town from my brain.

I didn’t think it was possible, either.

But it is. And so I tell you the truth now, and I ask of you to suck away our hues and find my brother, who I heard nobody has entered the forest to look for. He is probably waiting somewhere up in the trees, weeping his sleepy blue eyes out, wishing for chocolate-chunk pancakes, singing songs that once were duets. Songs that will never be sung by more than one again.

I want you to fix that, now that you know the real me. The me that loved my brother to pieces; the me that didn’t want difference to mean injustice. Not the me that went berserk and beat up a bus driver and screamed at the children that would judge me from the outside rather than in. I don’t like to hit, to scream, to motionlessly sit here in my gray cell, slumped against the wall and pinned back with heavy chains. I like to sing with my brother, to make pancakes, to love. And that was taken away from me.

So please, before it’s too late, if it isn’t too late, give that back to my brother.