Fading Shades

by Quaeitur

A series of one shots focusing on minor characters, their families, unseen and departed characters, and colors. Open to requests. Chapters so far: Dash's mother, Elliot's past, Paulina's sister, Vlad's family, Tucker's (half?) brother, Jack's parents, Maddie's father, Sam's siblings, Star, Valerie's mother, Maddie's mother, and Kwan's father.

3. Pink

Pink was the color of everything Paulina's sister wore.

Well, not everything, but the older Sanchez sibling seemed to have an obsession with all shades of it, from magenta to pale rose, paired with anything from jeans to more pink or even white and black. She wore layers and layers, two skirts with two shirts and arm warmers and bright pink bracelets and two layers of socks. She was so bright their father jokingly held up his hand to shield himself from her.

And of course she would laugh, because Estrella was nothing but laughter and smiles, she was a song composed of joy and energy, kinetic and blurry as she went about her life. She had many friends, and her sister was shy back then, Paulina just a little shadow following a pink leader. Estrella gave Paulina things – shirts, socks, hair curlers, anything she asked for – in an attempt to help her along towards her own confidence. Paulina was happy to have what her sister gave her, but skewed more towards organized fashion, magazines and advertisements.

Sometimes, despite the neon pink and white color scheme, despite the hair put up into a single bun over on the left side of her head, and despite the clicking of bracelets, Estrella stole make up for her sister. She was good at finding things and places where everyone's eyes were on the gangster girls and not her, and came home to sneak into her sister's room, with gifts aplenty. They were poor back then. Their mother gambled away all their money. Life was often dark and gloomy, but Estrella punctuated it by creating something from nothing, spending time with Paulina playing with make up and smiling. She taught her how to do her hair, she taught her how to match shades, and they tried to ignore the growing number of arguments between their parents.

Paulina collected pieces of Estrella, shirts and dresses she outgrew, and though she wore them differently, her sister always thought she was beautiful. Even though their mother had promised to do it, Estrella was the one who took her sister to get her ears pierced and held Paulina's hands while it happened. They walked home together after school every day until Paulina began to become popular with other people in her own class, something Estrella approved of. After all, they would always be able to talk about everything and anything at home, sitting beside each other on Estrella's bed, going over all the things that went on in their world.

Then their parents got divorced, and they were split apart. It was harder to tell who cried harder, whose make up ran more, but their last night together Estrella gave her a whole pile of clothes in pink. Some of it, she'd have to grow into. That wasn't the point. It was the fact that these were ties to her family that couldn't be broken that made them so valuable. They parted with promises to call every day. And at first, they did. On their matching pink phones, Estrella's covered with stickers of cartoons she was way too old for, they talked endlessly. It was as if they were clinging to each other to prevent the world from ending.

But Paulina became popular. Estrella had a group of friends who accepted her, in her oddities and loud clashing clothes and hyper activity. Paulina had a circle she hung with, cliques and levels of social tiers she climbed, and eventually the other girl just fell away, forgotten. Paulina let the calls go to voice mail again and again until they slowed, then stopped completely. By that time Paulina was a cheerleader, an A-lister, a girl who wouldn't give a girl like Estrella the time of day.

The pink in her closet lost all meaning, just another color in a world of them.