Yellow's fingers darted nervously across the guitar's strings with tentative butterfly-like movements that produced more discord than music. With a sigh, the girl shifted the instrument to what she hoped would be a more comfortable position on her lap, brushed a stray lock of honey-gold hair out of her face, and then replayed the YouTube video.
The woman on the screen was doing her best to go slowly, explaining the chords she was playing on her instrument. After half-a-dozen viewings, the instructor's words were so much background noise to Yellow's ears. Her focus was on the actions of the woman in the video in order to glean out the valuable information contained in those minute movements. There had to be something that she was missing, Yellow thought. True, she wasn't as clumsy with the guitar in her lap as she had been this morning, but she still didn't understand the exact details she needed to master to turn the sound in her head into music in her hands. That had to be done by careful study and Yellow was nothing if not an astute observer.
That was how she had known that her feelings for Red would go unreciprocated.
The blonde girl left the video playing, but her thoughts were elsewhere now. The guitar lay forgotten on her lap, even with one delicate hand still cradling its neck.
Yellow had always been a part of his friend group it seemed, ever since Blue had brought her along to see the treehouse they were building. The older girl had been, and still was, an awe-inspiring role model and trusted confidante, but almost from the beginning Yellow had latched onto Red. There was just something about his easy confidence and winning smile that had made her heart melt, even at six years old.
Two years seemed like an unbridgeable chasm when they were six and eight respectively, but as Yellow and Red grew older that difference seemed to make less of a difference. They were never in the same class, but once Yellow had started school, the three older kids of Red, Green, and Blue waited with her at the bus stop and she was an observer to all of their discussions. Sometimes, she even participated.
When Yellow's trio of older friends took the traditional year off after completing elementary school to go on their Pokémon journeys, it broke Yellow's heart. After Red and the others returned from their tours of the Kanto region things seemed like they might go back to normal, but then that promise was cruelly ripped away as soon as the first leaf of autumn turned from green to brilliant gold. All three of them were at a different school now. While they still congregated at the same street corner each morning, Yellow now had to ride the creaky old school bus all by her lonesome.
Sometimes it was easy to feel as though there was a conspiracy to rip Yellow away from her friends. The next disruption came when it was time for Yellow's own Pokémon journey. While Red, Green, and Blue had all had each other as infrequent company and competitors during their travel, their younger friend had no such friendships among her own peers. As a result, Yellow's journey was largely bereft of rivals, though this was compensated by the close bonds that developed between the girl and her Pokémon. Part of Yellow had wondered whether spending time away from her crush would nip those feelings in the bud. She had been wrong.
It was after her gap year had finished and she had become an officially licensed Pokémon trainer that Yellow's feelings for Red began to crystalize into something more than mere affection. A year away from each other, with only occasional letters and a lone video call to keep in touch, had seen both of them change. She was, if still not even close to extroverted, far more confident and willing to speak out, even if it meant drawing undue attention to herself. (After commanding Pokémon in battle, she could not imagine why she had ever thought raising her hand in class was a terrifying prospect.) As for Red… Red had started to show signs of the man that he was going to grow up to be.
Eleven and thirteen was still too large of a gap it seemed, so Yellow had held her tongue and remained an observer of his talent on the baseball diamond and his ever more charismatic way of just being himself. After she returned from her journey, Yellow would catch herself staring at him sometimes. She daydreamed about what it would be like to be held in his arms. When he laughed at something she said or looked her in the eye, Yellow would feel her face flush bright red and she would have to stammer out a response. Despite Yellow's inability to hide what was blossoming into a full-blown infatuation, Red seemed oblivious. He appeared completely unaware how much it hurt her when he offhandedly remarked that she looked like a boy after a bad haircut or how much her heart had soared when he had given her a new set of colored pencils for her birthday.
Green seemed to pick up on Yellow's feelings for Red, but beyond a simple grunt or a strategically raised eyebrow the spiky-haired boy was as unreadable as ever. If she had been in her right mind Blue would have teased Yellow relentlessly, but the older girl seemed to have caught the same disease as her younger friend. Sometimes Yellow would see her watching Red with a far-off look and a soft smile, and other times her attention would be directed towards Green.
Everything was getting very confusing by then. Yellow would spend what seemed like weeks thriving off of a single act of kindness from Red as her Butterfree had sustained herself while waiting to emerge from her cocoon. Somedays she would want to tell Blue everything and ask for her advice, and somedays Yellow would shun her for trying to take Red away from her.
Like when the older girl had kissed Red.
Yellow stopped the video now and gingerly leaned the borrowed guitar against the wall so that she could stretch her tired limbs. When she had first found out that Blue had kissed Red, Yellow had felt so angry that it seemed like the feeling belonged to another person. Now, the memory just made her feel regret for how naïve she had been.
Back then Yellow had possessed no idea about how complicated things were between her three older friends. She had taken it for granted that the start and end of the trio's dynamic all occurred in front of her eyes but seeing how much they had changed after her year away had made Yellow painfully aware as to the dizzying Spinarak web of memories and feelings between Red, Green, and Blue.
Blue claimed during an evening walk later that summer that she had only kissed Red as a test, a prank, a jab at Green, and a thousand other excuses. Whatever the real reason was, and Yellow now suspected that the older girl herself did not know it, it didn't matter. All that had mattered in that moment was the sight of the two of them together and Yellow's feelings of powerlessness. She was supposed to have become confident and strong after her Pokémon journey, so why did such a simple stupid betrayal still have the power to make her cry?
After the kiss, the next blow came when school started back up. Red and the others were going to start high school, leaving her in the junior high by herself for two years without even the small comforting ritual of waiting at the bus stop with her friends. Yellow had tried to convince herself that she was still too angry to miss them, but that lie couldn't even be maintained through lunch of her first day back at school. She had no one to sit with, and it looked like she was in danger of turning back into a shrinking violet after she had tried so hard to change.
Enter Silver and Gold.
The two of them were in her grade, and in fact had been in class with her back in primary school. While she had chosen Kanto for her journey, they had toured the Johto region instead, challenging the gyms and forging their friendship over the course of uncountable battles alongside or against one another. Most importantly, the two of them operated on the fringes of the student body, largely due to their reputation as a pair of hoodlums and future criminals.
Rumors like that made Yellow hesitate at accepting their invitation to sit at their lunch table that first day of school, but when Gold, silently backed by his red-haired friend, extended the offer again on the second day, Yellow decided to accept.
It was one the best decisions she made in her life.
A large part of their infamy was well-deserved. Gold was a first-rate scam artist and gambler while Silver's talents for outright theft was almost more impressive than it was concerning. The two of them got into fights with an alarming frequency, using Pokémon as often as not, and even coming to blows with one another every other week. All of that was not easy to overlook, but Yellow did so because they were genuine. The two of them wore their hearts on their sleeves, whether it was Silver's whispering cynical jokes to her during class or Gold's bold strategic decision to ask out every girl in their grade at some point or another, including Yellow. When she had said no, Gold had simply grinned and said, "Well, can't blame a guy for trying."
Silver and Gold made Yellow feel like part of a group, and not as a tagalong kid either, but as a full member. In return, she tried to keep them at least somewhat on the straight and narrow. Red and Green were skeptical about Yellow hanging out with two hooligans and Blue's distaste for Gold was balanced only by her lingering affection for Silver (He was another kid that she had babysat for apparently). The disapproval of the older kids stung sometime, but they were in another world now and they had fewer and fewer opportunities to tell Yellow what they thought of her new friends.
After a year, Yellow found out that she had not been the only one making friends outside of her grade. Silver and Gold had a friend, Crystal, who was a year younger than them. Despite her primary role being a combination of tutor and answer bank, she also managed to hold her own with the two rowdy boys. Initially, Yellow was worried that the blue-haired girl's return might see her pushed out of the group, but there had been nothing too fear. Crystal was a sweet girl and Yellow found her a valuable ally in trying to prevent the worst of the boys' bad behavior.
That was not to say that she and Crystal were paragons of virtue. They had certainly helped out more than once, albeit begrudgingly, with some of Silver and Gold's schemes. And those two were hardly the unrepentant thugs that they pretended to be. After all, the guitar that Yellow was trying to learn how to play on was Silver's. He had loaned it to Yellow this week after managing to pry the reason for her recent weirdness out of her. It seemed like Silver had been down where Yellow was at some point because he had just listened and asked if she wanted to know what had helped him get through the feeling of being rejected by someone. Remembering hat still-fresh memory made Yellow smile. Though he would deny it to anyone, the red-haired boy was surprisingly sweet.
Maybe she should have seen what was coming with Red, but it was still hard. Yellow had carried a torch for him for more than half of her life now. Sure, fourteen was as far away from sixteen as eleven was from thirteen and as six was from eight, but only in absolute terms. More abstract factors mattered too, she had thought. Now that she was starting high school, Yellow would be going to class in the same building as Red for the first time in two years. He and Blue had started driving to school (Green, in a turn of events that had baffled everyone most of all him, had failed his test and still had months to wait before he could try again for his license), and it would only be natural for Yellow to join their carpool. It also was important that high school was a different world socially than junior high. Dating would stop being the exception and start being the norm, and who better to date than an old friend. Especially since, Yellow had allowed herself, there was no chance of her being mistaken for a boy now with her long flowing honey-colored hair and developing figure.
All of those hopes had risen up in her like a massive tidal wave, only to be dashed against the rocks of reality. Two years had passed, and things had changed again. Not everything, of course. In the most basic facts of his striking good looks and contagious self-assurance, Red was still the boy Yellow had been pining for since before she knew what the feeling was. But it was impossible for him to keep his light hidden from the world. That wasn't the kind of person he was, and that wasn't the kind of world that high school was. When Yellow went over to his house for the first time in an eternity to ask him about the carpool, she had been met with a truly unpleasant shock.
Red had a girlfriend.
Her name was Misty. Yellow had discovered the identity of her unwitting competitor when Red opened the door and made introductions. In an instant, all of the changes that Yellow had gone through were revealed for the hollow lies that they were, and she was back to being a terrified little girl faced with a reality too big and brutal for her. All while she sat on Red's couch and heard the couple's stories, Yellow's head was swimming and it took everything she had to stop herself from screaming, or crying, or anything else that might give away how her heart was breaking once more. Misty was a good-looking girl, even Yellow in her black state of mind had to concede that. Where the blonde was petite and delicate, the red-head was leggy and athletic. Misty was at least a foot taller than her with skin kissed just right by the still bountiful summer sun, but that wasn't the worst thing about her. The worst thing was that Yellow couldn't hate her. She was such a nice person and the way that she and Red interacted seemed so comfortable and easy. It was a far cry from the awkwardness that characterized the few wonderful and terrible times when Yellow had been alone with the object of her affections.
Red and Misty's relationship was easy, that was all there was to it. And so Yellow had gotten the information for the carpool (which Misty was not a part of, thank goodness) and politely excused herself to go home. She had cried, yes, and that did not make her feel any better. All that did was add a feeling of guilt for being so pitiful to her already foul mood.
As the last few days of summer had passed away, the prospect of starting her freshman year loomed larger and larger for Yellow. When her sketchbook lost its escapist wonder and her school supplies had all been painstakingly assembled and exhaustively evaluated, Yellow had finally left her self-imposed isolation to see Silver, Gold, and Crystal.
As soon as she met them at the park to figure out what they were going to do on a gorgeous August day, Yellow found herself feeling better. Her sour mood did not go away entirely, but it was largely forgotten in the excitement of the simple joy of hanging out with her friends. If Yellow had been a little slower to laugh at jokes and prone to furrowing her brow at the sight of couples walking hand in hand, none of her friends said anything.
At least this was the case until Crystal pulled her friend aside under the pretense of needing Yellow's advice on getting new clothes. Once they were safely ensconced in the protective bubble of women's apparel into which Silver and Gold were afraid to venture, the blue-haired girl looked at Yellow and asked, "Are you okay?"
Coming from Blue, Yellow would have interpreted these actions as a ploy, a maneuver to assemble some gossip or material for teasing. Crystal's sincerity seemed self-evident though, and the combination of concern in the younger girl's eyes and Yellow's own realization of how conflicted her feelings about her two groups of friends had become made her want to talk.
Yellow spilled out as much as she could, trying her best to lay things out in a logical chain of events but she was aware that she was backtracking and repeating herself in spite of those efforts. Telling Crystal what was going on was made even harder by Yellow doing her best to exorcise her feelings for Red from her story. Crystal, to Yellow's eternal gratitude, listened intently and seemed to follow things well enough, tracing out the threads of friendship, affection, and isolation that had led up to Yellow's current troubles. Like any great friend, she offered just the right number of platitudes. If Crystal knew that Yellow was not telling her the full story, she let it go without comment.
The two of them rejoined the boys just in time to prevent Gold from setting off some firecrackers in the shopping mall. The rest of the day passed in the halcyon fashion that is recalled decades after the fact without much detail other than the quiet confidence that it was a good day.
That Yellow could not bring herself to share her feelings about Red with Crystal troubled her, but not enough to spoil the time spent with her friends.
It was not entirely intentional, but for the rest of the summer Yellow ended up completely shunning her older neighborhood friends in favor of her new group. Days were spent in a happy haze of talk, play, and mischief. The only threat to the young teen's bliss was the calendar on her fridge at home which steadily was counting down the days until the first day of school.
Yellow's recollections were interrupted by the gentle buzz of her cellphone in her pocket. She fished it out and read the message that Silver had sent her, "how goes the rock n roll?"
She smiled and her thumbs flew across the touchscreen, typing out, "Not good. Don't know what I'm doing :)"
For a few seconds, the phone showed that Silver was typing, but the reply was surprisingly short: "Can I help?"
Yellow hesitated, but after her brown eyes darted from the guitar to the video that she had watched enough times to recite it from memory and then back to the borrowed instrument there was only one sensible answer. "Yes! Hurry!"
The prospect of help being on the way gave Yellow the perfect justification to take a break from her music lesson. She stood up and went to the bathroom to make sure that she was looking presentable. While she was brushing her long hair, Yellow's mind wandered again to the past week.
Despite repeated offers from her parents, Yellow ended up being driven to school by Blue. Green was riding in the front passenger seat and Yellow was sitting in the back next to Misty, with Red on the other side. Before getting into the car, Yellow was worried she would turn back into the timid and silent girl that she had worked so hard to shed. Indeed, for a few minutes, it looked like things were trending in that direction. Stilted conversation accompanied Yellow's reintroduction to the group as the other passengers worked to adjust their dynamic to accommodate her. By the time that they arrived at the high school's parking lot, however, Yellow had miraculously been able to hold her own, getting a crash course in her new school's teachers and cliques and even fending off a few of Blue's friendly barbs. As for Red, he seemed content to listen, aside from adding in a few affirmations of what others said, and Yellow was fine with not engaging him any further. In fact, during the ride she said fewer words to the dark-haired boy than to his girlfriend.
They all went their separate ways after that. Yellow met up with Silver and Gold to wait out the last few minutes of freedom before school officially started. For most of Yellow's day, Silver, Gold, or both were in the same classes as her, but there were also opportunities to meet new people. Despite any new acquaintances that she made, when the bell rang for lunch, there were only two real options for where to sit. Despite their waving invitation, Yellow shunned Red and his group for Silver and Gold. It surprised her how easy a choice it had been, and Yellow had feared that there might be fallout from her older friends. She shouldn't have worried. The ride back to her house after school was just as cordial as it had been that morning. That was the clearest sign that Yellow had of the break. She would be friends with the older teenagers, yes, but she was no longer trying to be one of them.
That revelation hurt, but it was a low throbbing kind of heartache rather than the violent tearing that Yellow had endured all those times before. She knew that she could get through it, maybe not right away, but eventually. It was this confidence that let her confide in Silver, Gold, and Crystal the entire story.
They listened and all offered help in various ways. Crystal baked a loaf of "feel better soon" banana bread. Gold managed to go for three whole days without landing in detention, although by then his reputation as a disciplinary nightmare had already been cemented so this quiet period aroused fear and suspicion in Gold's teachers more than anything else.
As for Silver, he waited a day and then biked over to the park near Yellow's house between the end of the school day and dinner. The two of them talked a bit and he explained about how lovelorn he had been over Blue. What helped most of all in his case was music, not just listening to it but trying to put his own feelings into music. Not for anyone else, he insisted, but just for his own peace of mind. Then he offered Yellow the guitar he had peddled over with. It was not the prettiest instrument as it was covered in scratches and scuffed in several places, but for Yellow the sweetness of the act from such an unexpected source gave the guitar a beauty all its own. While she was much more of a drawer and painter by trade, she was willing to give Silver's remedy a try. And so it was that same guitar that he had given her that she had been fumbling over all day today.
When the doorbell rang, Yellow was just retying her ponytail and she rushed to the main room to let her guest in. Silver was welcomed inside with all of the usual pleasantries, but conversation quickly turned to how Yellow's attempts at learning how to play the borrowed guitar were going.
"Not too well," she had to admit. "I think that my fingertips are going to fall off if I keep trying much longer."
"Oh, well, maybe I could show you how to…" The red-haired boy trailed off.
Yellow smiled as she finished for him, "…actually play the guitar."
Despite the suggestion and the whole reason for Silver's visit, neither of them moved to pick up the instrument leaning against the wall. Before the silence could become awkward, Yellow piped up, "How about we do something else?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know, we could go see a movie?" the blond girl pressed. "You and Gold couldn't shut up about that new Spinarakid movie."
One of Silver's eyebrows rose. "You still haven't seen Homecoming? Then we really don't have any time to waste. Call up the others and I'll order the tickets."
"Well," Yellow began, suddenly very interested in the hardwood floor, "I was thinking maybe it could just be the two of us."
"Just the two of us," Silver repeated back dumbly.
"Yeah, kind of like a-"
"Yeah."
They stood there for a few seconds, neither one daring to make eye contact with the other. Yellow was about to call the whole thing off when Silver said, "Yeah, let's do it."
Yellow smiled wide and practically skipped her way to her room to get her purse. After she returned and got her shoes on, Silver asked, "Ready?" and she nodded and took his hand. As the pair stepped outside into the midday sunlight, Yellow marveled at it all. Whatever the future might hold was still a mystery, but right now Yellow was excited for it.