Color My World Generation Three In-Depth Summary

     In the passing years, Coal has come to marry Holly. Their first pregnancy together results in fraternal twin daughters, Gilly and Dianthus. Dianthus, not long after turning three, is taken by Eden to visit an ailing Ethereal in the hospital. Ethereal's body has been deteriorating due to the vast amount of genetic manipulation that created her, but Eden does not suspect her time would be up that day. He and Dianthus find her on her last breath. Eden gets to say a final farewell to his sister before she passes, and Dianthus sees from her uncle's despair what it means to have your heart broken. A grieving Amaranth has her promise after the funeral to do all she can to prevent herself from being lost before her time.

     Life goes on and continues effortlessly until Dianthus turns ten. She invites a new classmate, Timber Mountain, to join her and Apple, her and Gilly's best friend and cousin, to the local festival after school. Timber tags along telling Dianthus about how his family is small with just him and his dad. Dianthus' younger brother, Merlot, then starts the bad events of the afternoon by falling off the jungle gym and spraining his ankle. Coal tries to call Amaranth for a ride but receives even more bad news by the way of Eden's death. This tragedy spurs on the friendship between Dianthus and Timber as Timber is someone outside the situation she can seek for comfort. It's why she's all too eager to help him secretly locate and contact Timber's mother, who Timber's father, Russet, has forbidden him to know.

     However, bad luck continues to strike. Dianthus falls down the stairs at the library, a storm knocks out the powers, and a fire breaks out across the street. Dianthus also begins to notice Ember is having weird phone calls, but says nothing for the moment. The day before Dianthus and Timber are to meet his mother who's flying in, they discover the stray cats they've been taking care of have been murdered. Still, the two return to the isolated lake the following day determined to give Timber his chance at a reunion. Roti, his mother, does not show. Dianthus falls into the icy lake after growing faint to awaken at the hospital, Russet having found out about their plan and arriving in time to rescue her. He reveals Roti is as they discovered. She strings people along pretending to care before crushing their hopes and expectations.

     Dianthus and Timber are punished appropriately. Life keeps throwing curve-balls, unfortunately. This time it's the rain. An unending amount of it puts Berrybrook in a bad position when a hurricane turns towards the city. Holly takes the children to Tinseltown to live with Prism and his family while Coal and Amaranth remain to help with the chaos the storm creates. Dianthus and her siblings adjust well enough to their new private school and home, although there's a few bumps along the way. The biggest bump ends up being Ember's stomach. Her strange phone calls had been to her secret love, a boy several years older than her who turns out to be the son of Gilly and Dianthus' new teacher. Ember becomes pregnant by her boyfriend, Tamarix. Dianthus learns when she helps her sister sneak out to tell him the news that Ember had told him the secrets she didn't know, like how her Aunt Mimi raped her father to become pregnant with Ember. Fights are had, tears are shed, and Tamarix eventually proves him to be genuinely in love with Ember. She chooses to stay in Tinseltown with him after graduating high school and gives birth to an albino baby boy, Snow. The rest of the family chooses to stay one more school year as well to give Berrybrook more time to recover.

     The family does move back, building a new house due to the loss of their old one. It is senior year for the twins, and a new student splashes waves. Arbor Thicket is standoffish, grating, and covered in tattoos. The students largely reject him and soon murmur he's the culprit behind the sudden crime spree of more mysteriously murdered cats. Dianthus does her best to offer him a welcoming hand by asking to be his partner for a project, yet Arbor's abrupt rage at her lifelong dream of wanting to be a doctor also puts them off on the wrong foot. Dianthus tries her best to make up with him as they have no choice but to work together. The disappearance of Amaranth's beloved snow globe that's found hidden in Arbor's closet doesn't help the situation. Dianthus is the one to believe he didn't steal it though, and she gives up going to homecoming to spend a night out him. Arbor mistakes her offer as a sign of her liking him, which prompts him to kiss her. Dianthus has to admit that hadn't been her reasoning, but she decides she thinks something could be there. A classmate at school finding them kissing sends Arbor off in another rage shouting hurtful words at Dianthus that confirm her feelings ran deeper than she knew.

     Time and Dianthus' stubbornness repairs the fledgling relationship into something more solid. This support helps Dianthus when her and her sister's cats, Mirage, is found kidnapped and killed along with the cat, Tappy, of Gilly's girlfriend, Confetti. Dianthus calls Arbor to the park for comfort. However, Timber is also there, and he and Arbor have never gotten along because of Arbor's unexplained hatred and distrust of Timber. The boys cease their fighting and separate when their fighting upsets Dianthus more. The days flow slowly, and the pain ebbs away. Dianthus is surprised when Arbor suddenly makes a move to sleep with her after they both turn eighteen. He'd shown a strong dislike of any mention of the word 'sex' before, and Dianthus, being asexual, didn't think to bring up the topic on her own. It comes out that she's asexual, however, and Arbor takes this the wrong way. The moment is stopped, and he kicks her out of the house.

     Dianthus is more angry than sad. She's willing to forgive him without explanation when he calls her to the lake the next day to reveal his reasons, but Arbor is adamant about telling the truth. He tells her the difficult tale of how he was kidnapped from the hospital when he was ten by a female doctor named Dr. Wool. She kept him handcuffed and locked up as she sexual abused him for a week until she was arrested and he was rescued. Arbor has been struggling to recover from the ordeal all these years, and he'd grown into the mindset he was disgusting because of what he'd done. He'd thought when he found out Dianthus couldn't be turned on by him that this was the world's confirmation of his fears. Arbor took the night to recognize that wasn't true, and that he loves Dianthus and all she's done to help heal him. On the other side, Arbor chooses to spend time overseas with his grandparents in order to continue healing and casting off the last of his demons.

     Almost two years pass. Dianthus and Arbor had been able to maintain a long-distance relationship for a time until the stress of Dianthus' suffocating schoolwork caused a panic attack. She avoids Arbor relentless fearing she ruined everything by becoming more and more distance afterwards. Gilly and Arbor, along with some wise words from a friend, show her how wrong that mindset is. Dianthus agrees to give the relationship another chance even though it is her who will be leaving now at the end of summer to go someplace far away. She and Gilly will be returning to Tinseltown for schooling and work, respectively, with Confetti joining Gilly. Dianthus scoffs at Holly's suggestion that Arbor go with them, but begins to think that maybe she doesn't have to pick between her career and love. In the meantime, a secret of Merlot's comes out. He'd been hiding a transgender friend in his closet to prevent her from abuse at her grandfather's hands. The two run away when Coal and Holly refuse to adopt Willow, but the situation is resolved when the wayward youths return home realizing their mistake. Arbor's parents adopt Willow, and Dianthus finally talks to Arbor about moving in with her. He agrees.

     Days before the move, the matter of Dianthus' and Arbor's intimacy comes to the forefront as moving in together will require them to share a room. Dianthus works up the nerve after Arbor gets into a fight for her honor and takes him to a nice hotel room. They spend the evening together, Arbor revealing he finally feels like himself again no longer burdened by his past hurts. Neither have any idea, unfortunately, when they separate the following morning to return home it will be the last they see of each other. Dianthus is told by her family that Company influence has been worming itself into their family for the longest time...by way of the Thickets. Dianthus refuses to believed Arbor and his family have been plotting against them, but can't do anything but hope for the best when they are all arrested. She goes for a walk with Timber to vent only to realize when spotting children at the park that she and Arbor didn't use protection. Worse yet, her date of ovulation was close. Dianthus tries to get to a pharmacy for a morning after pill, but Timber knocks her out to reveal a surprise he'd been planning for her was actually his admittance that he and his father were the Company influence.

     Dianthus awakes in a basement bunker built just for her. Timber soon arrives to tell the whole story. His father is Buckeye's son, who was also working for the group Buckeye was employed with when Buckeye went wild and eventually got himself killed when trying to kill Coal. Russet sought revenge, having Timber through a surrogate to have a child to help integrate himself into the Vivid's lives without suspicion. Timber reveals he can't feel and that his father has tried many times to get him to stop as he came to understand his vengeance was misplaced. Much of the tragedy Dianthus' family went through was due to them. The deaths of Ethereal and Eden, the cat killings, Timber pushing Dianthus into the lake and down the stairs, Timber stealing the snow globe, and so on. Timber found revenge interesting though to go off with a bang. He planted fake evidence to incriminate Arbor's family and arranged hits that resulted in the killing of Gilly and Merlot while leaving Holly and Ember injured. Dianthus is someone Timber likes as much as he can like a person, so he chose to keep her with him.

     Stuck in her pretty prison, Dianthus bides her time and takes what steps she can to stay sane as Timber forces himself on her a number of times. Her fear of becoming pregnant becomes real, although now she can't tell who has gotten her pregnant. A doctor, Sterling Ash, Timber brings in to monitor to pregnancy becomes her best ally. He is able to stop Timber from sleeping with her, provides her his company, and gives support when it's revealed Dianthus is having twins as well as going through a placental abruption. The day of the birth comes and shows the truth. Both men have fathered a child, the older twin girl, Cinnamon, belonging to Arbor and the younger twin girl, Nutmeg, belong to Timber. Timber is able to tell the difference right away, and he catches onto Sterling trying to sneak the children away to Dianthus' family. He kills Cinnamon once a paternity test proves him correct, and, to Dianthus' surprise, he turns the gun on her. Timber wants someone he can control, and Dianthus will never stop fighting him. Nutmeg is the only one who can be his completely.

     Unable to think of anything other than how she failed her promise to Amaranth of not being lost before her time, Dianthus' world goes black when Timber pulls the trigger.