The night was empty except for us. A car crawled low. A headlight gently painted the coral of a sneaker out of the gray, black, and white, then slid away, past our position. It wasn’t that late yet. You got the feeling, though, that behind every closed blind there were parents sleeping—or at least watching TV in bed. The streets were black and floodlit and ours. We averaged five foot something, but the street lamps stretched our shadows long. Kids in skinny jeans and baggy jeans—boys, girls, whatever, you can’t tell with our hoods up. We felt taller than we were. We dared anyone to tell us it was against the rules to be out. We had all the comebacks, and tonight we had magic eggs.
The carton extended itself from a hand in the red sleeve of a hoodie and opened to reveal nine moonlight white eggs remaining out of twelve. We snatched four more.
We could hear the purr of slow-moving car engines on these sleeping avenues a block away. Enough warning to slink real casual off the sidewalk onto the lawns and find a good spot to huddle. In the alley between two slumbering houses, we hid our faces in shadow. Scouted out an escape route.
The unmistakable body language of stepping up told us who was going to throw. We huddled, some of us crouched, some pivoted to take flight, some upright and ready to let fly.
Three of us tiptoed a step or two, drawn after the car, waiting for the last possible moment before the windup and release. One of us trailed behind. The boldest first took a step to launch the pitch, a follow-through step the same second the egg flashed four million colors with a flash spatter crunch. More magic eggs launched later to no less effect of light and spray paint rainbow and bright crunching fireless spark simmer. The rest of us sprinted blind full-tilt down the alley leading we didn’t know where.
Shouts rang out. Ours. “Run, run!” One of us laughed. Loud. Spongey padding and rubber of six brands of running shoe — New Balance, Saucony, Reebok, Keds, Sketchers, Nike Air Pegasus Zoom 3s — plus our shock absorption spells lifted our heels. The magic in our sneaker soles returned the energy of the impact of foot with ground back into our strides; we flew like basketball players across the court of this person’s backyard and launched ourselves with stored kinetic energy released at the perfect time up over the backyard fence. No one knew if the car stopped, if the driver got out, if we were being chased. We flew away anyway.
Flew through another grayscale yard past a blackened kids’ playset; we panted, loud; safe on this side of the fence, one of us shrieked as if startled, most of us let out relieved puffs and sighs. We took off up an identical residential sidewalk. Chasing the next target.
We passed a schoolyard, eyes on swings and slides for a shadow hint of movement. We’ve thrown at schools before. The colors fade. The teachers gripe in the morning, but since the eggs clean themselves up, no one can complain. Now that they’ve learned that, the fun is gone. There’s no one to hear the crunch, to shake their fists and yell. Other students make the best targets. They swear, they scream, they always give chase, they may start a fight. Adults are kind of funny. We’re too afraid to hit them — they might call the cops. Better to smash magic eggs in Technicolor pools around their feet like water balloons.
We were running low, a third of a carton left. On the main street, the corners lit up open doors of open stores at which to pick up desperate cartons of cigarettes, emergency cartons of milk. A no man’s land of patrol cars, of drivers getting out of cars to pummel us, of other kids who will buy chicken eggs from the store and crack us back. Of street lamps and witnesses and red traffic lights when we need to scamper safely across a crosswalk. We could enter a store and pop the guy behind the counter with a loud faceful of harmless chromata. We could start a war with some other gang from our school. There’s an alley next to a closed optometrist with a fire escape ladder that would take us to the roof. We could drop magic eggs on passersby. Provoke fury even though the temporary substance will alleviate our guilt, and we’ll know we’re in the right when it fades. No harm done.
We walk fast, long strides the shorter of us have to patter to keep up with. One of us gets impatient; one of the leaders takes off ahead on long legs, egg out, ready to throw. Cars roll past in both directions, a shady pedestrian strolls toward us up the sidewalk, and we’re not alone or unseen when the impatient one swivels on a heel in an about-face and smacks one of the eggs into the glass of a bookstore window.
Three more eggs follow, firework spatter crunch. Run.
#
School’s pretty monochrome on an overcast day. We were magnetically attracted to each other; we gathered at the lockers farthest from the homeroom door. Sly gray fox smiles. No coral Keds today, no fluorescent blue Adidas, no floral. We’re in black uniform, Oxfords and charcoal slacks, corrugated iron ties. We leaned our slate jackets against the steel locker wall, some of us; we hugged paper photocopies and cobalt binders. Black and white checked socks, sand-colored socks, faded magenta, heather oatmeal, overcast sky socks. Magic school is private school. Kids at public schools dye their hair red; Mary Janes and Rihannas and Ariels comb their halls. Our hair fades. If we dyed it black our rebellion would fit right in with Ms. Lammott’s inky air-dried strands, glasses frames and spidery vestments, not to mention Principal Hammond’s midnight Nissan Rogue.
Homeroom first, then applied magic lab. We avoided the classroom door, afraid of attracting Ms. Lammott — and it startled us when her voice came frown down the hall behind us. We jumped.
“You, you, you,” she pointed, “and you. The rest of you will wait.”
We were being separated. Four of us swept after Ms. Lammott, past homeroom, through prison-grade steel doors with concertina wire in the glass. Down the stairwell to the first-floor hallway toward The Office, a compound of cells and corridors referred to always in the capitalized singular, though no one knows exactly which among the offices is The Office.
She led us into a waiting room, the one with the wood-framed couches. The couch cushions were 3D squares like terra cotta tiles or Cheez-it crackers. Here there were colors: algae, drooping rose, dried out lilac, polluted lake. Not to mention the Cheez-it orange throw pillows, dusted with realistic white sea salt flakes of lint, for the time the principal’s guest was not a delinquent but a bullying victim in need of a pillow to cry on. We were imprisoned in the room, curtains open to a gray sky, letting in enough light to brighten the fern dying in the corner, art on the wall the equivalent of blah wallpaper framed in glass, and a glass jar full of balls of yarn (faded puce, faded cream, faded olive, faded brick). We waited.
When the bell rang the door opened, increasing the volume of the clang in our ears. Mr. Hammond came in with his khaki suit sans pocket square accent, striped tie in granite and cooling magma, his ash hair and mud irises. He said that the police have left after aiding a Mr. Jeffreys of Different Sky Books in identifying, from school pictures, the students responsible for the vandalism of his shop last night.
We try to explain. It’s not vandalism, it’s not paint, it’s just pure color. Like Plato’s Ideals. It appears in a dazzle of sound and radiance — the firework spatter crunch is a byproduct of the reaction necessary to create Ideal color. The unused energy results in a bang and flare.
But as all things fade, nothing lasts forever, particularly not anything perfect — the colors fade. Check the bookstore now. It’s probably gone already. Hasn’t Mr. Jeffreys heard? We’ve been painting the town red and grape and toad and tangerine and ubé and uranus for weeks, and the colors fade. If anything, the interest in his store, the outraged customers who haven’t bought a physical book in a decade now storming through the shelves, self-righteous at the disrespect to the world of letters, brought in a windfall this morning. Bet he never sold so many books.
Mr. Hammond said, “The police and Mr. Jeffreys,” we leaned back in our seats until our backs came against hard lilac, “a neighborhood business owner,” our heads craned to meet his scorching dark irises, “have identified the four of you as members of the gang who committed an act of vandalism to his store.”
What’s the harm? The so-called vandalism will be gone by now.
We don’t say that, because we realize that maybe we terrified old Mr. Jeffreys. And the drivers of the cars we threw at could have an accident. And we can see that it might have been slightly annoying for our fellow students to be covered in Rainbow Brite splashes from toes to noses for hours and hours. But we feel like Mr. Hammond and Old Mr. Jeffreys are forgetting a few key facts: Kids will be kids. And it could be worse.
We could throw real eggs.
Mr. Hammond informed us that detention after school would involve a personal apology to Mr. Jeffreys, and we should bring the rest of our friends. The magic lab would be closed, and applied magic class canceled, until the rest of the culprits came forward.
#
After school, all of us showed up. We value solidarity.
Mr. Jeffreys met us outside, hands on his hips. He wore an amethyst suit. Sunlight broke through holes in the overcast as if God took a three-hole punch to the clouds. Some of us with the sun in our eyes squinted, blinked; some of us just closed our eyes and felt the solar energy on our lids.
We’ve been cut off from magic-egg-making materials and the tools to construct them. We’re not cut off from the feelings that got us into this mess. We want to experience the transcendent. We’re a little bit disappointed. Classes canceled, we wonder what our parents will think of this limit to our education; we’re supposed to learn applied practical hands-on advanced magical law. We could probably have protested, but we caved. One by one, we told Mr. Jeffreys we’re sorry. We’re disappointed that we got caught, got in trouble. We want to break curfew, stay out all night — like the heroes on TV who catch villains during the hours everyone else is sleeping. If there are no bad guys to catch, we can be the burglars, kidnappers, vandals; we’ll break the rules, break curfew, break some eggs, and break open the notions you spent a whole lifetime constructing about right and wrong and justice.
Because you rooted for us, didn’t you? Because of the colors.
“When the colors faded,” said Mr. Jeffreys, “I was surprised by what I felt: Disappointment that they were gone. You scared us in the night, but I accept your apologies. I wonder if you would mind coming back to decorate my store again. Perhaps you could design the colors to last a little bit longer.”
We sure could. Mr. Jeffreys requested that the lab be reopened, and we reconfigured the eggs to splash colors that didn’t fade for a week. We took a long walk to Different Sky Books. We cracked our colors all over the glass in 256 x 256 x 256 different hues, each of a dozen eggs overlapping in a splash of vibrant pixels, lit up like a screen saver on a computer screen, layering over the display of decomposing old books in the window. Crowds gathered to watch.
Our teachers made us come by every week, by daylight, after school, to spark new colors. We didn’t get so much as an art credit for our work. The crowd shared their videos and selfies, bought stacks of books, and told all their friends about the angels from the high school down the street who painted a business red and bluebell and sunset and ube and uranus every week.
I’ve been holding on to this story a long time. It got rejected by the New Yorker, no joke. I submitted it in 2019 :) Thank you for reading.
