My moods seemed to be much like the desert weather of Phoenix: it was fine most of the time, but when it rained, it poured hard and fast. Similarly, when an "episode" ended, the tired dust that was my brain would dry out fairly quickly and leave few traces of the storm behind. I found this to be to my advantage, since I didn't want anyone to know what I was dealing with. The little white antidepressants introduced me to a new kind of mental weather, so to speak, one that I was entirely unprepared for:

Fog.

I took the two pills that evening and woke up on Friday feeling normal, if not oddly apprehensive about the effects. Two more on Friday night and Saturday morning saw no real change. I read another book over the weekend, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. I liked the first part, which was full of tales of victory and happiness, but things really did fall apart about halfway through the novel, and by the time I finished it on Sunday evening I was feeling sort of hollow but not entirely depressed. 

Two little white pills per day continued through yet another Thursday absent of Quinn, which really sucked, but she seemed like a distant memory for some reason, like a savory sample without the full meal. Frolland must have heard that I was taking my medication because he was content to leave me alone for the entire ninety minutes of Support Group, which seemed a small victory in the middle of a crappy week. I tried to start another book for Lit class on Friday (This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald), but I couldn't really get into it. It wasn't until the next morning that I woke up and noticed that, for some reason, I just didn't really care anymore.

Sean hadn't really talked to me since Monday, since he and Melissa were planning some big thing for Homecoming. 

That's fine, whatever.

I had gotten an A minus on my last essay, the first A I had ever received on an English project. 

Cool, doesn't matter.

I had called Quinn several times in the last week; she hadn't picked up once.

Oh well, probably busy.

They didn't seem to be anti-depressants; they probably should have been called anti-give-a-craps. The cloud of apathy settled low onto my shoulders and buzzed in my thoughts, making it impossible to concentrate on anything. I spent the day reading the same two paragraphs of This Side of Paradise over and over again between staring aimlessly at my computer screen and wandering down to the refrigerator to see if I wanted to eat something. I texted Sean late in the afternoon to see if he wanted to log on to our game and kill some goblins, but he sent back a picture of him in a three-piece suit (and Nike sneakers) to remind me that it was Homecoming and that people who weren't nobodies like me were going to be out having a good time (or so it felt like). The worst part about it was that I couldn't even muster up enough mental energy to be angry. I started streaming an action movie to pass the time but got bored halfway through and shut it off, deciding that maybe it was better to just turn in early and hope I'd wake up feeling more normal.

The first pebble hit my window after I'd been tossing and turning for almost an hour. I blinked, unable to register what the sound was, and looked at the clock. Nine forty-three. A few moments of silence went by and I started to think I had imagined the noise.

Plunk!

This time it was louder and more purposeful. I rolled out of bed and pulled up my blinds, squinting down into the dark. Seeing nothing, I opened my window and popped the screen out so I could lean out and see down over the edge of the fence.

Smack!

My vision exploded into stars and I grabbed my forehead where something flat and solid had just collided with my skull, leaving me reeling.

"Oh, shit! Sorry!"

I was even more surprised at hearing Quinn's voice than I was at being hit in the head with a rock. I stared down at her shadowy form for a few seconds, wondering if my pills were making me imagine things. "Quinn?"

"Yeah, it's me," she called back in a hushed voice. "You sound sleepy, did I wake you up?"

"Uh, yeah, sort of," I replied, rubbing a small but painful bump that was forming between my eyebrows. "Why are you here?" I asked finally, and then, as an afterthought: "How do you know where I live?"

"Can you come down here?" She ignored both of my questions. My eyes were adjusting to the darkness and I could just make out a pleading look on her face.

"Why?" In days past, I'm sure I wouldn't have given it a second thought. Now, I was still having trouble coming up with the energy to care even though I had spent much of the last two weeks worrying about her.

"Because I'm asking nicely," she said with half a smile. "Ple-eease?" She held her hands up, clasped together. I sighed and let my head fall against the window frame. I was tired. I wasn't feeling all that great. I was bitter.

"Fine," I said finally with a huge sigh. Part of me felt like I deserved answers for half a dozen missed calls and two whole Support Group meetings spent alone. I carefully replaced the window screen and put on some flip-flops. My parents were watching a rom-com in the family room and I slipped by unnoticed, letting myself out the front door as quietly as possible. Quinn was waiting at the end of the driveway.

"So, should probably apologize for just disappearing on you like that," She said as I approached. 

I shrugged. 

"Sorry I missed your calls, too. I would have answered if I had my phone on me." I noticed she was wearing a navy sweatshirt and jeans even though it was about seventy-five degrees out.

I shrugged again.

"Are you okay, Samuel?" She asked finally, looking concerned. 

I almost shrugged a third time, but it seemed unnecessarily moody. "I'm... fine, I guess," I said finally. I didn't want to say anything about the antidepressants.

"You shouldn't have to guess how you feel," she said, giving me a look. "I know I haven't known you all that long, but you seem off."

"Duh, I'm off," I repeated sourly. "I'm depressed!" The word hung like a stench in the air for a moment and Quinn and I looked at each other, unsure of what to say. It was the first time in my life that I had said the words out loud, let alone to another person. I rubbed my temples slowly, trying to clear the haze from my brain. "Sorry, I just hate feeling like this," I sighed. "I shouldn't even be feeling like this, I even took the pills..." I trailed off.

"What pills?" Quinn asked, holding one arm at the elbow and looking alarmed.

"Just my..." My mouth felt suddenly dry. "My anti-depressants."

"Oh. Thank God." She let out a sigh of relief. "I thought maybe, you know..."

"No, no, I don't do stuff like that," I said, holding my hands up. Another pause. "I, uh, I only took them because Frolland threatened to put me in a mental institution if I didn't shape up quick."

"You mean a psychiatric hospital?" Quinn asked. The corners of my mouth twitched in annoyance. "Sorry. Same thing, I know, they just don't call it that anymore. Yeah, you probably don't want to have to deal with that." 

I shook my head and looked at the ground, wondering what I was doing out here when I could be in bed tossing and turning.

"So... how do you feel?" She inquired finally. I could feel her eyes on me, searching for something, some emotion that I didn't have the energy to offer.

"Dull," I said finally, choosing the word carefully. "I don't know if it's actually helping."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Quinn replied, touching my arm briefly. "I know how it is... welcome to the 'incurable case of apathy,' Samuel."

I looked up at her. "They have you on these things too?" I asked, somewhat surprised. 

"Did. I just recently finished that portion of my treatment." She put the word treatment in air quotes, which made me smile for some reason.

"Oh. I never would have guessed that, you're so..." I struggled to find the word.

"So what?" She asked grinning at me. It was that same smile that lured me in after the first Support Group meeting, the one that seemed to hide a secret that I was dying to know. The best part about the smile, though, was that it sparked something. I wasn't sure what it was, I only knew that it seemed to have been missing recently.

"I don't know. Happy."

"Happy? Happiness, Samuel, is one thing that I desperately lack," she said with a short laugh, which seemed out of place. "I can't believe I snuck out of my house to see the kid who called a Dickinson poem appropriate and called me happy!" We shared a quiet laugh and I found myself nervous all of the sudden, for some reason, and not because my parents thought I was in bed. It didn't matter though, because I was feeling something and it was far better than fog.

What's wrong with us?" I breathed out loud, almost more to myself than to her. "Why can't people like us just be happy?" 

Quinn considered my question for only a moment before turning to me, hands shoved deep in her sweatshirt pocket. "When I was a kid, I learned that everyone sees the world differently," she began, voice steady and even. Only Quinn could possibly pick apart the nuances of the universe as if she were explaining a simple math problem. "Some people see the world in vibrant colors, as if there's always some happy new surprise waiting over the next hilltop. These people are the eternal optimists, the ones that can somehow find a silver lining in even the darkest of rainclouds. They can be infuriating sometimes, but it isn't their fault. I don't think they can control being just as rosy as we are messed up.

"Most people see the world like a washed-out oil painting, where some patches are bright, like birthdays, and family, and small animals, but dark patches exist too, like war and famine and disease. These people are probably just normal, and can see that there's plenty of good mixed in with plenty of bad.

"A few people, people like us, just can't seem to see the colors. The world is an overcast day which occasionally passes through light, but the drizzle wins out eventually. At least when everything is grey, you don't have distractions keeping you from seeing things as they really are. The problem is that you never get to know what it's like to feel the warmth on your face, or to see those splashes of red and yellow and blue that everyone else sees. The problem with people like us, Samuel, is that we were born colorblind to happiness."

The ensuing silence was heavy but somehow refreshing. "Wow," was all I could manage. "That... that makes perfect sense, actually."

"I've had quite a few years to think about it," she responded with a wink. Speaking of colorblind, wanna go for a little drive?"

"Um, I'm not sure," I said, looking back at the house. I was pretty sure my parents wouldn't check on me or anything like that, but you never know.

"Come on, kid!" she said, pulling a set of keys out of her hoodie pocket and dangling them in front of my face. "It's not very far away, I'll have you back in, like, an hour. Hour and a half, tops."

"Uhhh...." I was still really worried about the absolute crap-show that would be awaiting me if my parents discovered I was missing.

"Ple-eeease?" She made those eyes at me once again and held her hands up. That sealed the deal.

"Oh, alright," I said, unable to hide my smile. "Where's your car?"

"Right here," she said, stepping back to the curb and patting the hood if a really nice BMW. I mean, like, really, really nice. She saw the look on my face and her smile faltered a little. "It's my dad's," she explained. "Let's just say he would not be very happy to find out I took it for a joyride, bu-uuuut, carpe diem, right?" I chuckled and very carefully slid into the passenger seat, enjoying a brief glimpse at what it must feel like to be a millionaire.

"So, where are we going?" I asked as she pressed a button and the engine purred to life. Seriously, Sean would have peed himself if he could have seen and heard this car.

"That's for me to know, and you to wonder about for the rest of your life," she said with that killer grin, and we shot off into the night. Quinn was not exactly a careful driver and I found myself gripping the sides of the leather seat from dear life as she wound us through the suburbs and back out toward Superstition Freeway, sort of in the direction of the clinic where Group was held. Quinn rolled the windows down and soon her hair was blowing in the warm late-summer air, a huge smile plastered on her face. I felt something swell up inside my chest, something big and indescribable. Excitement, of course. A little thrill of getting caught sneaking out. Riding down the freeway going fifteen over in a who-knows-how-many-thousand dollar BMW. The mysterious and alluring combination of hormones that were a product of accompanying an attractive girl to an unknown destination. This, I realized with a sudden jolt, must be what happiness feels like. It's not that I'd never been happy before, it just seemed that the feeling had evolved into something I no longer recognized as I grew older. I smiled, desperate to bask in that warmth before the next inevitable storm stole it from me.

Quinn exited the freeway and headed south, past the In-n-Out that Sean and I had eaten at almost a month ago. In fact, we were headed down the exact same road that the two of us had followed her down. I felt my stomach tighten and I wondered if, somehow, she knew. That didn't make any sense, though, because she undoubtedly would have confronted me far earlier. I felt guilty all of the sudden, remembering how I had suggested she was a drug dealer to Sean. The whole thing felt so... wrong, for some reason.

"Where are we going?" I asked finally as Quinn turned down a familiar side street and started making her way into the neighborhood. I tried not to look too condemned, but she didn't really seem to notice.

"A place," was all she answered, and we rode in silence for a little while longer. Eventually we came to the gates of "Harmony Estates," as I knew we eventually would. Quinn Pulled over to the curb and put the car in park, shutting it off with a push off a button. She turned to me and we looked at each other for a few seconds. "You can stay in the car," she said finally, but it didn't seem like a suggestion. 

"Um, okay," I said, nodding once. "Where, uh, are you going?"

"Don't worry about it right now," she said, smiling thinly. Suddenly she was leaning in to me and my heart jumped straight into my throat. I don't know what I was expecting, but instead of kissing me she reached over to the glove box and retrieved a flat white envelope, which she abruptly tucked into her hoodie pocket. "I won't be long." 

With that, she stepped out of the car and jogged across the road; I could see immediately why she had chosen to wear her outfit in such warm weather as she was almost instantly swallowed by the darkness. She crossed to the gate and skillfully climbed over, just as she had the day that Sean and I had spied on her. 

I'm going to apologize for that some day, I said to myself as I yawned and rested my head against the window. After the talk we had earlier, I found myself unable to think about anything but the envelope that she had pulled out of the glove box. That, perhaps, was more intriguing than Quinn sneaking into a gated community to deliver it. It didn't look bulky enough to be holding anything other than paper, but it was actually the words I had glimpsed on the front that had me wondering. In that looping, skillful script that I was now so familiar with, read: 

From: Colorblind

To: Happiness