Books Aren't Yellow - By Shayaan Mohammad

Chapter One

Books Aren’t Yellow

Brian had a lot of thoughts. More than most people, he suspected, though he had no real way to prove it. The thoughts came at bad times mostly — during math class, right before sleep, at dinner when everyone else was just chewing and existing and not thinking about anything interesting at all.

Today’s thought arrived on a Tuesday, which was already a bad sign. Tuesdays were slow. Nothing good ever started on a Tuesday.

He was sitting on the floor of his room, surrounded by books he’d pulled off the shelf for no particular reason, when it hit him.

“Books aren’t yellow,” he said out loud, to no one.

He looked around. It was true. Every single book around him — the thick one about space, the thin one about frogs, the chapter book with the dog on the cover he’d never actually finished — none of them were yellow. Not really. Some had yellow on the cover, sure, a bit of yellow here and there. But the book itself? White pages. Dark words. Never yellow.

Why aren’t books yellow?

He didn’t know. And not knowing something was Brian’s least favorite feeling in the world, right below stepping on Lego in the dark and slightly above having to explain a joke.

* * *

Johnny was in the kitchen eating cereal at 4pm, which was the kind of thing Johnny did and no one said anything about.

Johnny was fourteen. Brian was eleven. The age gap meant that Johnny had figured certain things out — how to be cool, how to not care — and Brian hadn’t yet, and this was apparently the worst thing in the world according to Johnny.

Brian: “Hey. Books aren’t yellow.”

Johnny: “What?”

Brian: “Books. They’re never yellow. Think about it.”

Johnny: “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.”

Brian: “Why though?”

Johnny: (long pause) “Because it just is.”

Brian: “That’s not a reason.”

Johnny: “Brian.”

Brian: “What?”

Johnny: “Go away.”

Brian didn’t go away. He leaned against the doorframe instead, which he knew was annoying and did it anyway.

Brian: “You said it’s dumb. But you can’t tell me why.”

Johnny: “Because it’s just — it’s not a real question.”

Brian: “All questions are real questions.”

Johnny: “Yellow Pages.”

Brian stopped.

Johnny looked up from his cereal for the first time, spoon halfway to his mouth, with the specific expression of someone who has just won something and knows it.

Johnny: “The Yellow Pages. It’s yellow. It’s a book. You’re wrong.”

Brian: “That doesn’t count.”

Johnny: “Why not?”

Brian: “Because — it’s not a real book.”

Johnny: “It has pages. It has words. It’s called a book.”

Brian: “Nobody reads it.”

Johnny: “People used to.”

Brian: “It’s basically extinct.”

Johnny: “So books that are extinct don’t count?”

Brian: “It’s only yellow because it’s called yellow. That’s cheating. It’s yellow in the name, so they made it yellow. That doesn’t mean books are yellow, it means someone named a thing and then colored it to match the name.”

Johnny stared at him.

Johnny: “You need a hobby.”

Brian: “This is my hobby.”

Johnny: “Mom. Brian is being weird again.”

Their mom was in the other room. She said something that sounded like “that’s nice” and then a door closed and she was gone, which was what she usually did when Brian and Johnny were having a conversation she didn’t want to be part of.

* * *

Brian went back to his room and wrote it down. He had a notebook for this — for thoughts that felt important enough to keep. The cover was blue. Obviously.

He wrote: Books aren’t yellow. Why? And then underneath that: Yellow Pages doesn’t count. Named yellow, then colored yellow. That’s not the same thing.

Then, because he couldn’t stop: What even makes something a book? Pages? Words? Does someone have to read it?

He hadn’t expected the Yellow Pages. That was the problem with theories — the moment you said one out loud, someone threw something at it. And sometimes the thing they threw was actually pretty good, and you had to figure out on the spot why it didn’t apply, and sometimes you weren’t sure it didn’t apply, and that was the worst feeling of all.

But he’d caught it. He’d explained it. The Yellow Pages was yellow because someone decided to name it that. Actual books — the ones people made to say something, to tell a story, to explain the world — those weren’t yellow. Nobody chose yellow for those. Nobody chose anything. They just came out white, every time, and nobody asked why.

That still felt true. More true, actually, after defending it.

He added one more line to the notebook: Johnny couldn’t explain why it was dumb. He just found one exception. That’s different from being wrong.

* * *

That night at dinner, Johnny told their dad that Brian thought the Yellow Pages didn’t count as a book, and their dad said “hm,” which meant he was listening but also wasn’t, and Brian opened his mouth to explain the whole thing —

— but then closed it again. Some thoughts needed more time. More pages.

He looked down at the book sitting next to his plate. White pages. Dark words.

Nobody ever asked, he thought. That’s the whole thing.

He picked up his fork.

Tomorrow he’d find out if that was actually true.