Jake loved Monday mornings because he got to make his own breakfast and eat Special K.   Mom scampered about the house, getting ready for work, and had no time to eat herself, so he always ate alone.  He hated the weekends with Dad.   He never felt comfortable in his house, especially since that new lady who called herself his “stepmom” had moved in.   (“She’s no mother of yours,” Mom warned him.)  So Jake never asked for food and hardly ate anything at Dad’s.  On Monday, with no one watching, he could sneak in two bowls.               

He sat alone at the tiny kitchen table, still in his Star Wars pajamas, loudly munching on his cereal and staring at the newly opened milk carton.   Jake never tired of looking at it.   The carton became a tall house with no windows, freshly painted in red and white, the tiny beads of water slowly trickling down its sides like the end of a rainstorm.  He carefully wiped the water with his index finger, tracing the strange figure on the side that looked like a collection of hearts.  He read the letters over and over, though he couldn’t understand many of them.  “2%” was his favorite because it looked cool and appeared in so many places.  He always forgot to ask Mom what “r-i-b-o-f-l-a-v-i-n” meant.

The pictures of the boys decorated the side of the house.  Jake imagined that he and the boys became friends and lived together.  David and Regan and Ethan and Paul.  Most of them smiled like you did in a school picture, except David, who needed a haircut and kept his lips puckered, like he was ashamed of his teeth.  Maybe he had cavities.  That might explain why he didn’t look happy like the others.

“How had they all come to live in the same house?”  Jake wondered.  The red and white house occupied a secret place.  That’s why the boys were MISSING.  A phone number bordered the pictures of the boys.  What if he called it?  Maybe someone would tell him where the boys were.  Still scared to talk on the phone with strangers, Jake never made the call.  But each weekday morning, eating his cereal and listening to his mother curse over something else she couldn’t find, Jake talked to his friends.

THE LETTER A

Kim stared at the acceptance letter she’d taped to the window shade in her bedroom.  The stream of daylight seeped through the crisp white paper as if the letter were an expensive lampshade.

Kim had navigated the clunky online application form until 11:53 pm on December 1, the official deadline, rechecking every part of the form, making sure it looked perfect.  Her friend Octavia had turned her lip just a bit when Kim told her she had applied to Darnell.  The stiffness of her smile exposed her opinion that Kim shouldn’t have wasted her time.  Weeks later, touching the pile of rejection letters from other schools, filed in a red folder at the corner of Kim’s desk, Kim remembered that smile.

“It’s a thick one,” Madeline had said when the letter had arrived.  Kim could hear the relief in her stepmother’s voice.

Only when Kim started rummaging through the tedious paperwork that she noticed the letter A.  Kimberly A. Ward.  It must be a typo, she thought, because her middle name was Nancy.  She found the same initial printed on two other forms. Maybe it was just some clerical error.  But the unexpected acceptance still felt fragile, like a delicate vase in someone else’s home.

It took five tries to reach the Admissions Office.  A woman named Mrs. Marshall said she would be happy to help her.

“Ward,” Kim said.  “Kimberly Ward.”

“Are you Kimberly A. Ward, or Kimberly N. Ward?”

“N,” she said. Her palms were so damp that the receiver slipped out of her hand

“I’m very sorry,” the woman said. 

Kim stared at the stack of forms that belonged to Kimberly A., who had probably filed her rejection letter in her own red folder at the corner of her desk.  Perhaps she had already been accepted to Harvard or Yale and didn’t give Darnell a second thought.  Or perhaps Darnell had been Kimberly A.’s dream.  Now she’d have to settle for second best. 

Unless.

Kim picked up the yellow matriculation card and ran her finger over the letter A.  She picked up her blue pen and started to fill out the form.  Suddenly a breeze pushed through the open window, and the shade snapped up.  The acceptance letter glided to the floor behind her. 

Kim looked over her shoulder.  As she would every day for the next four years.

Revolutions of All Colors: A Story that Communities Do Not Forget