Ash:Um hello? If u two are done, still need help over here.
Onny:Talk to her about art.
True:But not too much art.
Ash:I LOST MY VOICE.
True:Right. Prob better that way. You get all insufferable when you’re in art professor mode.
Onny:Agreed. Professor Ash is super unattractive.
Ash:I am not insufferable.
True:Professor Ash is insufferable.
Ash:Worst friends ever. You’re supposed to be helping me.
Onny:Wanna know what tarot card I flipped for you?
Cassidy reappeared. Ash stuffed his phone back into his pocket and started picking up the broken fence boards.
She joined him but stopped after the second one. “Oh my god!” Cassidy said, holding up a shattered board. “These are all painted different colors.” She turned to look at the rest of his backyard. “Your whole fence is a mural, isn’t it? And I ruined it.”
Her shoulders slouched as she pointed at the entire perimeter of his yard. Each of the three fences was, indeed, painted. Including the one that now had a jagged hole in it.
You couldn’t ruin anything, even if you tried,he wanted to say. Cassidy’s mere existence negated the broken fence, global warming, the lack of world peace, and anything else wrong in the galaxy.
Aloud, though, he only said—very quietly—“It’s fine.”
Cassidy crouched on the ground and tried to fit together the broken boards like puzzle pieces, as if she could reconstruct the mural. “Oh wow. These are incredible. It must’ve taken you ages to paint all this. And each section of the fence is different. Do they mean anything?” She glanced over her shoulder at Ash, and something about how small she looked and the remorse in her frown loosened up his nerves.
Maybe Onny and True were right, that art was a subject he was so comfortable with, he could even talk to Cassidy about it.
“Yeah, each mural represents the neighbor behind it,” Ash said. His voice was still scratchy, but it was there.
“What I wouldn’t give to be this talented. All I can create are goofy hoodies.” She pointed at herI’M MADE WITH RECYCLED PARTSlogo.
“You designed that?”
“Pitiful, huh?” The tip of her nose turned pink as she got embarrassed, and it was possibly the cutest thing Ash had ever seen.
“Not pitiful at all,” Ash said. He loved the spark in everything Cassidy did, and the fact that she dabbled in art—even though graphic design was different from Ash’s painting and mask making—made him tumble even deeper into the rabbit hole of feelings he had for her than before.
Still, she self-consciously crossed her arms over her sweatshirt. “Tell me about the murals?”
“Sure.” Ash sat on the ground near Cassidy—but not too close—and pointed at the house on the other side of his. Black-and-white fractals covered that fence, the geometric patterns repeating over and over in tidy and never-ending spirals. “The Johnsons live over there. They’re an older couple, and they like things just so.”
“What do you mean?” Cassidy settled onto the grass, with the broken boards separating her and Ash.
“Well, for example,” Ash said, “the dog is let out every eight hours, at quarter past on the dot, and she gets fifteen minutes, then has to go back inside. Or, like, every spring, Frank starts vegetable seedlings indoors in their sunroom, but the morning after the last frost—usually around the second week of April—he plants them in the raised vegetable beds outside.”
“You’re really observant,” Cassidy said.
Ash shrugged. “I guess?”
“So what does Frank plant? Is that also like clockwork?”
“Yeah.” Ash grinned. “It’s always kale, cabbage, broccoli, and collard greens, because Maryann loves cruciferous veggies. One year he planted spinach, and he got such an earful, he never did that again.”
