screen is black, but then words flash across it in bright-orange letters, revealing the title: CHROMOPHOBE.
The scene opens on a character, aged seventeen. The name KAITLYN flashes across the screen. Kaitlyn (played by me) is sitting in an empty room on a stool. A light shines on her as she stares off camera, nervously wringing her hands together.
Someone off camera says, “Can you tell us how it all started?”
Kaitlyn glances into the camera with transfixed fear. She nods nervously. “Well . . .” It’s obviously hard for her to discuss. “I think I was five, maybe? Six? I don’t know exactly . . .” The camera zooms in closer to her face. “But . . . I remember every word of their conversation as if it happened just this morning. My mom and dad . . . they were standing in the living room, staring at the wall. They had all these . . . these . . . plastic paint swatches in their hands. They were trying to decide on a shade of white to paint the walls. And that’s when it happened.” Kaitlyn swallows but continues, despite her reluctance. “My mother looked at my father. She just . . . looked at him like the words about to come out of her mouth weren’t about to ruin our family forever.” Kaitlyn, obviously disgusted by the memory, wipes away a tear that’s sliding down her cheek. She sucks in a deep breath and then continues speaking on the exhale. “My mother looked at him and said, ‘How about orange?’”
Her own recollection causes Kaitlyn to shudder.
The screen fades to black, then cuts to a new character. An elderly man, gaunt and gloomy. The name PETER flashes across the screen. This character is played by Gramps.
Peter is sitting in a green midcentury modern chair. He’s picking at the chair with his frail fingers, loosening some of the fuzz. It falls to the floor.
Again, a voice somewhere off camera is heard. “Where would you like to begin, Peter?”
Peter glances into the camera with dark almond eyes encased in years of accumulated wrinkles, all different in depths and lengths. The whites of his eyes are bloodshot. “I’ll begin at the beginning, I suppose.”
The screen cuts to a flashback . . . to a younger version of Peter, in his late teens. He’s in an older house, in a bedroom. There’s a Beatles poster hanging over the bed. The teen is rummaging through his closet, frustrated. Older Peter’s voice begins to narrate the scene.
“I couldn’t find my lucky shirt,” he says.
The scene playing out on-screen is of the frustrated teen (played by Miller), walking out of his room and then out the back door.
“So . . . I went to find my mother. To ask her if she’d seen it, ya know?”
The mother is standing at a clothesline in the backyard, hanging up a sheet.
“I said, ‘Mom? Where’s my blue shirt?’”
The screen is back on the older version of Peter now. He’s staring down at his hands, twiddling his thumbs. He blows out a quick breath, bringing his eyes back to the camera. “She looked right at me and said, ‘I haven’t washed it yet.’”
The screen now shows the teenage boy again. He’s staring at his mother in utter disbelief. He brings his hands to the sides of his head.
“That’s when I realized . . . ,” Peter’s voice-over says. “I was left with only one option.”
The camera follows the teenage boy as he stomps back into his house, back to his room, and back to his closet. His hands push apart the clothes in his closet until the camera is focused on a lone shirt, just hanging there, swaying front to back.
“It was the only clean shirt I had.”
The camera is back on older Peter. He presses his sweaty palms against his thighs and leans his head back against his old green chair. He stares up at the ceiling in thought.
A voice from off set calls out to him. “Peter? Do you need a break?”
Peter leans forward, shaking his head. “No. No, I just want to get it over with.” He releases a puff of air, looking back at the camera. “I did what I had to do,” he says with a shrug.
The camera follows the teenage boy as he rips the shirt off the hanger. He yanks the dirty T-shirt he was wearing off and then angrily puts on the clean shirt he just removed from the closet.
“I had to wear it.”