Colorblind

by Siera Maley

I was what some might’ve called an enabler. Heart disease was the leading cause of death in America, and yet here I was, working at a fast food place on the outskirts of San Francisco, with the literal ability to see peoples’ age of death, and – in cases like this guy – helping make it happen.

“Harper, people are not milk cartons,” Dad sighed out. “You don’t pick and choose the ones you think will last the longest without going sour. If it feels right, you just go with it until it doesn’t feel right anymore. And sometimes when something goes wrong, it hurts. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it in the first place.”

“Ah.” I nodded, feigning understanding. “I watched a lot of Spongebob Squarepants as a kid. Must be why I have this strange urge to live in a pineapple under the sea.”

“You can totally tell a lot about a person by the ice cream they like.” She eyed the vanilla cone in my hand judgmentally. “I have this theory that people who like vanilla ice cream are super safe and unadventurous.”