The boy met the girl at the park only because they were both walking their dogs at 10:32 a.m. in March and both of the leashes were red. He liked the color of her hair because it reminded him of his own and he liked the way their sets of footprints in the snow always converged.
     The boy liked the girl’s jacket very much because it was orange and orange was the color he liked the very best. He liked the way the word orange looked printed on paper, the way the word looked like it could only mean orange.
     He talked to her about colors. He had cans of paint at home with pretty names of all kinds. The boy thought that the girl looked like the kind of person who would appreciate pretty colors with pretty names. He thought she looked like the kind of person who would appreciate the distress of art. He thought this because she didn’t have boots on, but dirty canvas sneakers with stars and moons penned in.
     The boy said, “I love colors.”
     The girl asked, “Why colors?”
     The boy answered, “Can you imagine what the world would look like without lavender or Persian blue or cerise or rich carmine? Without colors, how could you possibly find a way to describe anything?”
     The girl said, “A world without color does exist. It’s called achromatopsia. Absolute color blindness.”
     The boy said, “Oh.”
     The girl laughed.
     The boy knew she meant it in good nature, but he did not like it when girls laughed at him. Not even girls in orange jackets.
     The girl went on, “There are lots of ways to describe things without mentioning their colors. Colors are just details, but then again, most things are.”
     The boy admitted, “I’m not good with words.”
     The girl laughed again. “How can you be good with colors but not with words?”
     “I don’t understand,” the boy said. “They’re different things.” He switched the leash from his left hand to his right only because he felt like their conversation was dwindling and he didn’t know what else to do.
     The girl sat down on a bench near the biking path. She motioned for the boy to sit down next to her. He did.
     “Think of it this way.” she said and crossed her legs. Her dog laid down on its belly under the bench. “Persian blue. It’s a color, like you said, but it’s called Persian blue. Someone must have seen the color and said, ‘Wow, there’s no other way to describe this other than Persian blue.’ How can you come up with names for colors if you’re not good with words? Or, how can you describe colors if you’re not good with words?”
     The boy knew the girl probably had a good point, but regardless of it being a good point or not, it was a point he did not understand at the moment. So he said, “You’re right.”
     “What are you, anyway?” the girl asked. “What do you do?”
She made it sound like he was a grown man with a job, but he was just sixteen.

     He wondered why the girl would ask him this. She didn’t look like a grown woman. She looked like she could be sixteen too. “I go to school,” the boy answered truthfully.
     The girl laughed. Even years later, when the boy stopped seeing the girl at the park, he would remember her by the way she was always laughing. Laughing at him, laughing with him, it didn’t matter. And that was the way he saw her in his head, too. Whenever he thought of her, his head filled with all the yellows and oranges he knew.