Kripa Ramesh

Third Place: Fiction

“red is a lie” 
by Kripa Ramesh
10th grade, Hillsborough High School

—

The color red is a lie. 

It isn’t real, at least for me. I know what others say. About roses, sunsets, blood. But I’ve scraped my knees and watched nothing spill. I’ve seen fire alarms that don’t scream in crimson. And I’ve walked through fall without a single leaf burning. 

People point it out. On shirts, on signs. I nod. Pretend. I’ve learned to squint, blur the edges, convince myself if I tilt my head just the right way, I’ll see what they see. But, no matter which way I contort my face, there’s still that gap of color. 

Sometimes I think I remember it.

Not the color itself, but the feeling. 

Once, when I was a little kid, my older brother had bought me this red balloon at the county fair. It was a nice gesture, but I let it go the second he turned his back. Watched it drift up and vanish into a sky that couldn’t hold it. My brother had been confused about what had happened when he faced me once more. He must have thought it was a mistake, since he bought me another one. He gave up once that balloon mysteriously disappeared as well. 

I think that was the first time I realized something was wrong with me. Not in the way adults meant either, when they called me mature for my age. 

No, this must have been something else. My brain had drawn a curtain over a part of the world and refused to let the light through.

In science class, we learned about wavelengths—how color isn’t real, not really. Just light bouncing off things at different speeds. I wanted to raise my hand and ask, what happens when it stops bouncing? When something refuses to be seen? 

What happens then? 

The textbooks didn’t have an answer for me. No one did. 

There’s a photo I keep tucked in the back of a drawer. I don’t look at it often. But when I do, I stare at the boy beside me. My brother, grinning. His summer tan left him burnt and freckled, his smile perfectly carved onto his face. We’re standing in front of the ferris wheel, and you can see my eyes fixated on something above me. My head is tilted upward so the camera only captured my chin. 

Lately, I’ve been visiting him more. It started once a week. Then twice. Now I just sort of show up whenever I can, like I’m afraid he’ll disappear when I’m not looking. The room doesn’t change. Pale walls, the familiar sound of machines beeping, the same chair I always sit in. He doesn’t talk—hasn’t in a while—but sometimes I pretend he does. That he’ll wake up, blink, and tell me he likes the color of my shirt. 

I speak to him, sometimes. Tell him things I’d never say if he could hear me—how school is fine but pointless, how Mom barely leaves her room, how the world outside feels thin. Like plastic wrap stretched too tight.

Yesterday, I told him about a dream I had.

We were at the fair again. Only this time, I held on to the balloon. I didn’t let go. I asked him what color it was. 

He laughed like it was the dumbest question in the world.

“Red, obviously.”

I woke up with his words still in my head. Red. Obviously.

I wish I could remember it the way he meant it.

Today, the nurse handed me a bouquet before I walked in.

“From your mom,” she said. “They’re his favorite, right?”  

I nodded as she handed me the gift. They crinkled in my hands. But where the flowers should have been were big gray splotches. A cavity between me and the rest of the universe. 

But then—

For a second—

I thought I saw it.

Just a flicker. Like a match being struck. A brightness that didn’t belong to yellow or orange or anything I’ve ever known. I blinked, and it was gone.

I didn’t mention it to anyone.

Not the nurse. Not my mom. Definitely not myself.

It felt like something fragile—something that would break if I even said it out loud. Like saying it would be admitting I was wrong. 

But that flicker stayed with me. All day. The spark hadn’t quite gone out.

I found myself staring longer at things. Apple skins. Brake lights. The stop sign outside my house. Still nothing. Still empty. But my eyes lingered, just in case.

At night, I dreamed again. Not about the fair this time. About the hospital.

My brother was awake. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked right at me.

“You’re not really looking,” he said.

“I am,” I told him.

He shook his head. “No, you’re hoping not to see it.”

Then I woke up.

I didn’t go to school the next day. I told Mom I wasn’t feeling well, and she didn’t argue. 

I went to the hospital instead.

I stood beside him and stared. Not at the machines or the tubes or the pale stretch of his arms. I stared at his face. The way his eyelids twitched like they might flutter open. How his freckles dotted along his cheeks like constellations. 

That’s when I realized something—something I hadn’t let myself think before.

I felt it like a weight in my stomach. Like falling without impact.

Like letting go of a balloon and knowing it’s gone forever.

So I sat, finally, and said it out loud.

“You’re not coming back.” My voice cracks.  

Silence.

Just the machines. The hum. The quiet.

Then something shifted— 

Not in him. In me.

I looked down at the bouquet. The same one I’d ignored. And this time, I didn’t blink.

It wasn’t bright, not yet. More like a bruise, soft and slow. But it was there.

A whisper of red.

The kind you only see when you stop pretending not to.