EVEN THE SMELL WAS HEADY. It made me dizzy and exacerbated the pounding in my head and the weight in my chest. Slashing red and yellow, swirls of silver, streaks of black. My arms flew, spraying and moving, climbing and blending. It was too dark to see whether I actually created what I saw in my head. But it didn’t matter. Not to me. But it would matter to the girl. The girl needed someone to see her. So I would paint her picture, I would show the world her face. And then maybe she would go away.
I’d been seeing her off and on since mid-summer, since the night of the rodeo when I’d found Georgia tied up and taken her home. Ever since then, I’d started seeing Molly. She wrote her name in fat cursive letters and looped her Y in a long swirl. I saw that name on a math test. She showed me a math test, of all things. There was a crisp A at the top, and I suspected she was proud of it. Or she had been proud. Once. Before.
Molly looked a little like Georgia—blonde hair and laughing eyes. But she showed me things and places that meant nothing to me, like the math test. Sunflowers lining the sides of roads I’d never driven down, a turbulent sky, and rain drops against a window fringed by curtains with yellow stripes, a woman’s hands, and an apple pie with an expertly woven pie crust, perfectly browned.
And then my painting was lit from behind, twin spotlights illuminating the underpass. I threw the can in my hand and slid down the slanted concrete wall, the spray-paint cans in my makeshift work belt slapping against my legs and clanking together like chains as I ran.
But the lights followed, trapping me between the beams, and I tripped, sprawling painfully, the cans digging into my abdomen and hips, the skin of my palms embedded with gravel. The car swerved and braked, and I was released temporarily from the glare as the lights shot over my head. I was on my feet again immediately, but there was something wrong with my right leg and I fell back down, crying out as the pain cut through my adrenaline.
“Moses?”
It wasn’t the police. And it wasn’t the girl’s killer. I was pretty certain she had been killed. There was a certain solemnity and freshness to her colors that I only saw when the death was violent and unexpected. When the death was new.
“Moses?” There it was again. I turned, drawing my arm up to block out the light from the flashlight being leveled at me and find the voice on the other side.
“Georgia?” What the hell was she doing out at one a.m. on a school night? My mental monologue sounded like a parent and I stopped myself immediately. It was none of my business what she was doing, just like it wasn’t any of her business what I was doing. It was like I’d spoken out loud, because she immediately asked:
“What are you doing?” Georgia sounded like a parent too, and I didn’t answer her, as usual.
I struggled to my feet, wincing even as I realized there was something sticking out of my leg. Glass. There was a long shard of glass embedded in my knee where it had connected with the concrete.
“Why do you do that?” Her voice was sad. Not accusing. Not freaked out or wary. Just sad, like she didn’t understand me and wanted to. “Why do you paint all over everyone’s property?”
“It’s public property. Nobody cares.” It was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t explain it to her. Just like I couldn’t explain it to anyone. So I wouldn’t.
“Charlotte Butters cared. Ms. Murray sure as hell cared.”
“So you’re just out tonight, keeping the community safe from paint?” I asked. The overpass was surrounded by nothing but fields of long golden wheat . . . or whatever it was they grew in Utah. A little cluster of businesses huddled around the exit ramp nearby, but they were a tiny island in the sea of gold.
“Nah. I saw you leave. I watched you head toward Nephi.”
I stared at her blankly
“Your headlights hit my window when you left. I was still up.”
That didn’t make much sense. I’d been painting for at least an hour.
“I drove around until I found you; I saw your Jeep pulled off the side of the road,” she finished quietly. Her honesty amazed me. She had no artifice. And when she tried to disguise her feelings I saw right through her. She was like glass—pure and clear and plain as day. And like glass, her honesty cut me.
I yanked at the shard in my knee, cursing as I did, and the diversionary tactic worked, because Georgia’s eyes dropped to my wound. She moved her flashlight to get a better look and cursed right along with me when she saw the blood that was turning my pants black in the moonlight.
“It’s not that big a deal.” I shrugged. But it did hurt.
“Come on. I’ve got a first aid kit under the seat.” She beckoned me with the flashlight, making a looping circle of light as she turned, expecting me to follow. Which I did.
She wrenched open the door, pulled out an orange plastic case from under the passenger seat and patted the seat expectantly.
“Can you climb up?”
I grunted. “It’s just a scrape—you’re not going to have to amputate or anything.”
“Well, it’s bleeding like crazy.”
I eased my pant leg up and Georgia made herself busy playing doctor as I stared at the top of her pale blonde head and wondered for the millionth time why in the world she kept hanging around me. What was the appeal? The girl loved a challenge, that was easy to see. I’d watched her ride that black horse over fences and fields, flying like she belonged in the sky. I’d watched her coax and wheedle the stallion until he was so bewitched he now ran to her when she called him. But I wasn’t an animal and I didn’t want to be her next conquest, and I was pretty sure that’s what I was.
The thought made me angry and as soon as she was done I pulled down my pant leg and stepped out of the cab, heading for my Jeep without a word. She trotted behind me.
“Go home Georgia. You’re breaking another one of my laws. Thou shall not follow me.”
“Those are your laws, Moses. I didn’t agree to any of them.”