Dez Wade couldn't remember a time he didn't like art. From the time he could hold a crayon, he had been coloring and drawing. When he was growing up, the Wade fridge had always been covered from top to bottom with his drawings. He was a happy-go-lucky kid, and art was his outlet. With art, he could recreate his happy world. He could share the colors of his life and imagination with others. He had always thought that he would be an artist when he grew up. That was until he looked through the viewfinder of his first video camera. It was then that he fell in love with film. It was like drawing and painting, but even better. Film was art come alive with sound and movement that allowed him to share the many colors of his life with others. Dez knew he would be a filmmaker, but he would never forget his first love which was why he was sitting in art class at Marino High that November afternoon.
"Okay that's enough talk about color," he heard Mrs. Sherick say at the end of class. "It's time for you to apply what you have learned. You will each grab slip of paper with a color on it as you walk out the door. For your next project, you will create a pencil drawing that represents what that color means to you. Your assignment over the weekend is to brainstorm about your color and decide on something to begin drawing in the next class period."
The bell rang, and Dez eagerly grabbed his backpack and headed for the door. He couldn't wait to see what color he would get. He grabbed his slip of paper from green mesh basket and read it as quickly as he could. It said "red". He couldn't be more excited to see it. Red was such a powerful color with so much personality.
Dez heard someone coming up behind him as he hurried down the hallway to his next class. He turned around and saw that it was Dylan the guy who sat next to him in art class.
"Oh, hey," Dylan called out eagerly. "What'd you get?"
"Red." Dez replied.
"Oh, you lucky ducky. You have so many possibilities. You could do lava or fire engines or apples or even your hair. My color is boring old brown." Dylan replied jealously.
"Well, I'm not sure what I'll do yet. I want it to be just right." Dez countered. "Art matters, you know. I've got to feel this, and I haven't yet."
Dez was not one for doing homework on Saturday afternoon or anytime really unless you were talking about art homework. However, this assignment had already gotten more puzzling the more he had thought about it since his conversation with Dylan the day before. He just wasn't feeling inspired. The assignment felt important, and Dez was afraid that he would mess it up somehow. It wasn't an issue of the grade—Mrs. Sherick graded mostly based on effort, and Dez always applied himself in art class. The problem was that Dez loved color. He knew that colors existed not just for utilitarian purposes. Colors had personalities and could communicate deep concepts and emotions. Dez owned clothes in practically every color not to make a fashion statement but rather to be sure that he always had something to wear that matched how he was feeling. This is getting frustrating, Dez thought. It was the most exciting assignment of the semester so far, and he didn't even know where to start.
Dez could think of many examples of red things—sunsets, old fashioned appliances, cars, tomatoes, and many more, but none of them really said red to him. Red was more than just the sum of the red objects on the planet. He grabbed his art binder and picked up his mechanical pencil. He wanted to feel this assignment not just stumble his way through it, and none of his examples so far had fit. He would start with what red meant to him. What is red? he thought. He began writing in his sloppy Dez script… Red is strong and confident. It is passionate and independent and at times intense and defiant.
Wow, he thought as he wrote his definition of red, that sounds like a person. Who did he know that was like red? Carrie? No. Austin? Nope. Ally? She could hardly be farther from it. Didi? Um…No, her hair was the most "red" part of her.
Trish? Well, maybe, he thought. Trish mostly dressed in hot pink and zebra print, but she wasn't the pink type really. He thought back to the first day they had met in Austin's room. It was her strength and confidence that had impressed him. She had shown up in a magician's outfit complete with a tuxedo with coattails and a red bow tie, and she had poked the boy she had just met with a magic shocker finger. Just weeks later, she had let him teach her a dance routine, and she had totally rocked it in front of Austin and Ally. She wasn't afraid of the many important things that she had to do as Austin's manager. Calling big shot executives, no problem. Pretending to be Ally at an interview, bring it on. Lead role in the school play, she'd rock it. Yes, Trish had confidence and strength like no other girl Dez had ever met.
She was also passionate about the things that mattered to her. To the casual observer, Trish seemed lazy because she didn't hold a job, but Dez knew differently. She went from job to job to job because she didn't care about those jobs. She knew that down the road she would need to hold a job, but for now she enjoyed the unexpected adventures she could have on her long breaks and when she was in between jobs. When it came to Team Austin, she was on board one hundred percent. Team Austin was first, and she did everything in her power to make their dreams come true. Her hard work was maybe not as visible as Ally's contributions, but it was just as important. Then, he thought about the other passion that they shared—Zaliens. Trish was almost as big of a fan as he was. She was ready to do anything that had to do with Zaliens regardless of how silly or unusual it was. It was on their Zalien adventures—making a fan movie, going to the movies, and attending the convention—that they finally got over their personality differences and became friends. Yes, Trish was definitely passionate.
They would have been best friends except for the fact that Trish was also strongly independent. She liked having friends, but she didn't want to feel like she needed them. She could conquer the world on her own. To preserve her independence, she put up boundaries. The problem was that Dez couldn't really tell where they were, and it seemed like he was somehow always crossing them. And Trish was not pretty when her boundaries were crossed. Her fire came out—she was intense and defiant. He couldn't count how many times she had threatened him with bodily harm or insulted him after he made what he had thought was just a friendly gesture. He had to look no further than the time a few weeks ago when she had threatened to tear off his arm when he told her how happy he was that he had met her.
The more he had seen of her the more he had been impressed with her. Her no-nonsense passionate attitude and confidence were inspiring to him. Dez often underestimated himself, and he found that Trish's little complements meant more to him than he would have thought. One day, he suddenly realized that Trish's redness complemented him. They could be a team—she could be…his Trish. He quietly began exploring to see if she would be open to the possibility. For a time, he had kept hoping that if he was persistent she would realize that she wanted him too. But one day, his hopes were dashed. He had struggled to hide his disappointment when she announced that she was dating Jace. Jace was a nice guy, and Dez wanted more than anything to be happy for her. But it was hard for him to be when the president had the first lady, Austin had Ally, but he did not have his Trish.
From then on, Trish's insults felt like she was taunting him. It was then that he had decided that he had had enough with the intensity and defiant attitude. He would forget her and find a girl who would never hurt him. He had met Carrie, and she had fit the bill. She was bright, happy, random, and innocent. Best of all, she needed him. And they had lived happily ever after.
Well, not really—Dez suddenly could see that he was unhappy and had been for a long time. There had been so many colors in his rainbow that he hadn't realized that one was missing. His world was missing something—it was missing red. Dez didn't need a bright little happy green girl. He needed red—he needed the confidence, strength, passion, and yes, even the intensity, independence, and defiance. He needed Trish.
Dez picked up his pencil. He could see the entire drawing in his head—Trish in a beautiful red dress in the center of a colorful ballroom and him standing in the shadows taking in the red his world was missing. Best of all, he finally had discovered what he never knew he needed.