We were sitting in the room I'm not sure had a name where Shelley worked. "What do you think I am, a red or a blue?"

"You're definitely a red."

"Bullshit!" She slugged me on the arm, paused, and picked up the red one. Then, she drew big squiggly lines all over her hands and forearms. "So, what about you?" She smiled, and rolled the red marker over to me.

"Um." I stared holes in the red marker in front of me. "I think I'm yellow and green." I gingerly drew a small yellow line on my left palm and a slightly thicker green line on my right.

"Bullllshit! You can't be two colors!"

"Why not?"

"That's against the rules!"

"This has rules now?"

"Heh you're goddamned right it does!"

"I guess I'm green...greener anyway." I drew a green line on top of the yellow one. It turned blue. I showed her and she laughed.

"That's really gay, blue people suck!"

I didn't look up. I was looking at my hand and thinking. Shelley was red for sure. I never thought about it before, but Brian was black. I only thought about it after he was gone. But I knew in my heart that Shelley was blue. And I knew red Shelley wouldn't like blue Shelley, if she ever met her. I didn't want that to happen. Because deep down I was thinking about Shelley whenever I was with Shelley and I knew the opposite would happen if I ever saw her again. I wouldn't meet Brian for a few more years, so I wasn't thinking about all of that yet. Just the three of us. I looked up. Red Shelley wasn't smiling anymore. I wondered what she was thinking about. Lighting my dorm room on fire once we broke up. Running me over with her parents' old car. Burning a bra, and then an effigy of me. I liked her a lot. But she worried me.

"Would you ever wear a corset?"

"What?? A corset? Hell no!" I looked back down at my hand. "I mean, not all the time. Do you want to see me wearing a corset or something?" I looked back up. No hint of a smirk crossed her face. She was being sincere.

"No, not at all. What's your favorite jello flavor?"

"Raspberry. Are you afraid I'm a man hating nut case, or something?"

I kept staring at my hand. "Maybe a little."

"I only took a women's studies class to laugh at it. And I spelled it with an ‘e'. Is that what you're worried about?"

"No."

"Did some skank break your heart? Hey! I'm up here." I looked up from the lines on my palm. "Do you want me to go track her down and cut her?"

I smiled, as best as I could. "That won't be necessary." I looked back down.

"So she did? Does she work in the cafeteria?" She smiled and tossed the red marker at me. I missed it.

"No, she's from high school."

"Oh yeah, what's her name."

"Shelley."

"What?"

"Yeah."

"I said, what's her name."

"Who's on first, what's on second."

"...Oh? OH. Her name is Shelley. Oh, wow."

"Yeah." I looked back up. "And she was blue. Or maybe yellow. I don't know. This is dumb."

"Well you came up it, dumbass! So, we're really nothing alike?"

"Complete opposites. As much as possible."

"That's ... weird." She didn't seem to like that it was weird. But it was.

"It's weird ... that I like you both so much."

"Like, present tense? Are you serious?"

"Yeah. I wish I wasn't, but, yeah."

"So ... what are we doing here? How is this supposed to work?"

"Well, I think we live our lives and try as hard as possible to forget she ever existed."

"OK. ..Done."

It was an unseasonably warm, sunny day in November. It was evening, and we were walking away from the cafeteria. "I wonder what it's like on a banana farm."

"Shut up, they don't have those!"

Suddenly, something hit me in the forehead. "Son of a BITCH!" I was looking at one of the dorms. There was a green dot on the wall. Shelley looked at me, and the hand that I'd let go of her with, to grab my head.

"Oh my god, there's green paint on your forehead!"

Someone behind me was out to get me. I looked around, but there was no one. We were by a road. But it was a cul de sac. I looked up. No open windows. No one peeking out. It was a stairwell and those windows didn't open. No cars, no students. No ... angry brothers, or parents. Just me, Shelley, a green dot on my forehead, and a cloth ball, covered in wet green paint. We were having a fun time. I'd forgotten my problems. I always did when I was with her. And then some jackass, some asshole, some kids, some frat brothers, had to ruin my day. And it had to have taken a lot of effort to do it. And for what? A green dot. I wanted to pick it up and throw it as far as I could. I wanted to kick it, stomp on it, murder it, kill it kill it kill it.

If it weren't for her, I would have. But she picked it up. "Come on let's go wash that shit off. You look like a Catholic on Alien Wednesday." I couldn't help but laugh. I was still pissed off. But I laughed. She grabbed my hand with one hand, and carried the green ball all the way back to her apartment with the other.

But a couple of blocks later, something happened.

A green toy truck seemed to fall in front of us, from nowhere. Actually, it was a blue truck, covered in green paint.

I was in the warehouse, waiting on some files to restore. Someone had accidentally deleted some spreadsheets. And try as she might, she couldn't find another copy. I was staying late to try to get a copy back for her. This time, it was Thursday.

Shelley had invited me over that weekend. She was having a party, of some weird kind. A few of our coworkers were going. I didn't know if I wanted to go. I did, but I didn't. Especially with other people around. In the meantime, I was digging through some boxes, looking for anything useful. That's when I found it.

I found a box of irregular toys – balls, with beans in them. They were striped, some orange with black stripes, some neon green with pink stripes. I smirked, I steamed, thinking back to that night when something really similar had almost pushed me over the brink. I didn't know if it had made a difference that night. But I knew it still bothered me. I still couldn't figure out where it had come from. Sometimes, when I was alone and couldn't sleep, I would think about it. I tried to be rational about it. Someone had thrown it, and they were hiding. We just didn't see them. Someone had shot it out of a potato cannon. Why would they have those in the city? And covered in paint? I couldn't make sense of it. It was just there, glaring at me, defying explanation. Laughing at me from the past. We had washed it off. It was just a ball. Four quadrants. Red, yellow, blue, green. Unremarkable. But unique. It was ugly, it was pointless, but it was all I had left.

Rule #26: I'm saving this rule for something special. At some point in my life, there'll be a rule that I wish I'd always had, and I'm saving this number for it.

Shelley and I had a weird tradition. Before we went to any sort of party, gathering, family event, we would sit in the car and talk about it. She knew I hated going to them, and so would try to convince me why going was a good thing. "You'll meet people!" "You'll have fun!" "Maybe you'll find a girlfriend!" She always said that one with a huge smile. I never thought it was too funny.

We were sitting in her car, her trying to convince me to go to Thanksgiving at her parents' house. "My brother won't even be there this year!" That was good. I always felt like one day he would try to kill me. "They're deep frying the turkey!" That was good. Really, she didn't have to convince me to go that time. I kind of wanted to go. For whatever reason. Sometimes, I wanted to go. Sometimes I didn't. Even when I wanted to go I would let her try to convince me. She liked it, so I pretended to like it. We were parked in the street, in her car, outside her apartment. She was talking about the mashed potatoes, and hot rolls, and we were parked in the street.

Rule #52: Don't park in the street.

They say I fought the nurses, and almost punched an orderly. They say I was blabbering random nonsense. They would never tell me what kind of nonsense. Colors? Names? It was a blue truck, a man named Walter. A drunk driver, celebrating all the things he had to be thankful for, destroying all of mine. He came to the intersection, and kept going. Broke his neck. Never tried to slow down. They think I should remember how it all happened. Her parents blamed me. Even my friends from high school said it was my fault because we were there. They say I should remember; they think I do. All I remember is the mashed potatoes.

I kept digging. I kept digging. And there I saw, a ball, full of beans, irregular and ominous like a vulture in a thunderstorm. Four colored quadrants, red, yellow, blue, green, and I grabbed it in terror, and threw it across the warehouse. Where it hit the newly painted wall the warehouse shared with the locker rooms, the newly, freshly, splendidly mint green wall, and swiftly disappeared.