blue
At five years old, Robin Buckley says her favorite color is pink when asked by her kindergarten teacher.
It seems like the right answer, it's what all the other girl's say (except for a few who say purple, but Robin thinks of the flowers at her grandma's funeral earlier that year that were a sickly shade a mauve), so it must be hers as well.
She doesn't mind wearing it, but she thinks it's bright, easy to call attention to. She gets scolded in second grade by Tammy Thompson when she says it's really just a shade of red, after that she decides she doesn't like it as much anymore.
In fourth grade she says it's green when her mom asks for a color to paint her room. It's the color of outside and Robin likes to play there.
Her favorite shoes are forest green and she sits in the green section at lunch with her best friend Barabra Holland. It's a good fit.
But in sixth grade Tommy Hagan tells her it's a boy color and if she likes it then she's a boy. And so Robin changes it again. This time it's yellow.
Yellow is a safe color, neither gender seems to claim it and it's the shade of the sheets on her bed where she spends most of her time now that Barbara seems to prefer hanging out with Nancy Wheeler.
Yellow is the color of the stray cat that she feeds eyes and the shade of the lamplight she likes to read under at night.
She changes it to red in tenth grade when she hears Tammy Thompson say she likes it (even though she got mad at Robin for her earlier suggestion of pink being a light shade of it), and she really thinks it's the right one too.
It's the color of her beloved converse and the shade of the only makeup she owns, scarlet lipstick her aunt got her for her fifteenth birthday.
It's a color of her Scoops uniform and the dry erase marker she uses to mark down Steve Harrington’s numerous fails at flirting.
It's the color of blood staining her shirt and dripping from Steve's nose on the Fourth of July, 1985. The color of fireworks being thrown at a monster made up of red flesh and the color of the ambulance lights that flash as she sits in it.
After that she doesn't have a favorite color. It changes whenever someone new asks, alternating between the ones of her past.
It's green to Steve and pink to the mother renting a movie for her daughter. Yellow for Dustin and for a project in English class.
It's never red though.
But then 1986 rolls around and it's suddenly blue. The color of the sky and her favorite shirt is navy. The color of a denim jacket and the waters of Lovers Lake.
The color of Nancy Wheeler’s eyes looking at her in the library. Cerulean in the sun and cobalt as they trek through hell.
Bright azure when reflecting fire and the sparks of flying bullets. Soft maya blue under hospital lights.
They're shining admiral when they meet hers outside the Wheeler house two weeks after it all. Her tears match the rain when they kiss. Baby blue when they finally part.
It's blue when Nancy asks as they lay together in their apartment just outside of Boston. She jokes it's for the ocean that they had visited that summer, but later she tells her it's for her eyes.
It's blue like the ring she proposes with, cheap but full of meaning. Blue like the lilies of the Nile and bellflowers of Nancy's bouquet she tosses in the air.
Sapphire like their daughter's name and the chair Robin sits in when she reads to her. The color of her cookie monster cake for her first birthday and the rims of Nancy's reading glasses.
Blue like the dress she's buried in.
Blue like the flowers on their side by side graves.