In the morning, she sees the golden sun rising outside her window. ‘What a beautiful start to my day?’ she thinks.

Before school, she dresses in a shiny gold dress and strappy gold heels. She smiles at her reflection in the mirror. ‘I look good in gold,’ she thinks.

At school, she admires the gold star at the top of her English paper. ‘I deserve this,’ she thinks.

After school, the team goes out to eat. She buys fries and sits down with her friends. She throws out the burnt black fries and the undercooked yellow fries. She smiles at the fries that are left. ‘Only golden fries for me,’ she thinks.

Before the game, she uses a gold scrunchy to put her hair into a high pony. She wears a gold jersey. ‘Gold is the color of winners,’ she thinks.

After the game, she receives a gold medal. She meets up with a boy with gold hair. He gives her a gold bracelet. ‘Only the best for me,’ she thinks.

Before bed, she uses a gold glitter gel pen to write in her journal. She smiles. ‘I wish tomorrow will be another happy day,’ she writes, ‘a day filled with golden moments.’

The next morning, she sees only black outside her window. ‘Where is my golden sun?’ she thinks.

She looks for news on her phone. She sees the headline: “Sun has turned to gold. Black skies. The end has come.”

‘I refuse to believe that my golden sun is gone,’ she thinks.

She turns on the overhead light. ‘I’ll just pretend it’s my golden sun shining through my window,’ she thinks.

Before school, she grabs her gold dress out of her closet. Or she tries to. ‘It’s stuck,’ she thinks.

She loses her balance and strikes her eye against her solid gold dress. She sees red. ‘My gold dress has turned into real gold,’ she thinks, ‘just like the sun. But I can’t wear a solid gold dress. What am I supposed to do?’

She sees only red clothes in her closet. ‘I refuse to wear red,’ she thinks.

She wears her pajamas to school and goes bare foot.

At school, she sees empty blue hallways. She crosses her arms and stares out at nothing.

She goes to her classroom and sits at a desk. She is the only person in the school. ‘I won’t get a gold star today,’ she thinks. ‘There is no one here to give it to me.’

She stares at her blue desk. ‘I refuse to miss my gold star,” she thinks.

She goes to the front of the class, to the teacher’s desk. She pulls out a heavy gold star. ‘It’s real gold now too,’ she thinks.

After school, she goes out to eat by herself. She sees a packed and messy green restaurant. She sees people shoving food into their mouths. She feels sick to her stomach.

“Eat whatever you want,” says a man with a saucy green beard. “No one is working because the world is ending. Just don’t eat the fries. The black burnt ones and the yellow undercooked ones are good. But the perfectly cooked ones have turned to solid gold now.”

“I refuse to eat black or yellow fries,” she says, “and fries are the only food I’ll eat.”

She leaves the restaurant.

She goes to the house of the boy with the golden hair. She rings the doorbell.

The boy’s dad answers the door with a gray face.

She knows what the boy’s dad will say before he says it.

“He can’t see you,” he says. “He turned solid gold, just like the sun.”

She goes home to find her gold glitter gel pen. She knows, before she even sees it, that it will be solid gold, that it won’t write anymore.

She walks into her room. She sees her yellow glitter gel pen. She picks it up and stares at it in awe. ‘I thought it would be solid gold,’ she says, ‘but it’s not even gold colored anymore.’

The pen opens it’s eyes and looks at her.

She drops it and jumps back.

“What color am I?” it asks. “Will you write with me? Will you write with a yellow pen?”

“No,” she says. “I refuse to write in yellow. I refuse to have any moments that aren’t golden.”

“Then what will you do,” asks the pen.

“I just won’t write in my journal today at all,” she says. “I’ll go to sleep. Tomorrow will be filled with only golden moments.”

“If you go to sleep,” the pen says, “without writing in your journal, then tomorrow won’t happen at all. If you won’t write in yellow now, then you will never write in gold again.”

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“You have to accept all of your moments not just the golden ones or you can’t have any moments at all,” the pen says. “To have the golden moments, you need to accept the black moments, the red moments, the blue moments, the green moments, the gray moments, and the yellow moments. You need to write in yellow now or you can never write in gold again.”

She thinks about this. She doesn’t understand it at all.

‘But,’ she thinks, ‘if accepting this yellow moment means that I can have more golden moments, then I think I can do it.’

She takes the pen. She opens her journal. She writes in yellow.

She keeps writing and the color of ink changes as she writes. She writes in black about the end of the world. She writes in red about her abysmal wardrobe. She writes in blue about being alone at school. She writes in green about the messy restaurant. She writes in gray about the golden-haired boy turned to solid gold. She writes in yellow, ‘I wish tomorrow will be another day filled with many colors.’