The key to mixing paint is to let the pigments separate, to float them in the medium just so, so that the colors band in this distinct-but-merged way—like how you can see pink and orange and green winking all at once in an oil puddle at the gas station, or in the nacre lining the edge of an oyster shell. But to get this kind of separation, you have to know when to stop, to thin out, to pull back. Painting is about overestimating the time it takes to pull the trigger.

I tried to match the color of the red lake water that drained from my pink hair, reaching for something that wasn’t totally pink or red, but held pieces of tangerine and sunlight too, with a smear or two of the softest, darkest algae, or the reflective blue of a fish scale somewhere in there. When I was satisfied, I made a lot of it.

I spackled the mix onto panel two and pushed it into the holes of the lattice that I’d attached. I did this over and over, making pocket after pocket of this nacreous blood red. And I was so involved with my painting, headphones plugged in, my world reduced to Prudence’s four panels, that I didn’t hear the studio door opening—or someone walking up behind me.

*  *  *

“What are you doing?” a voice demanded angrily and directly into my ear, cutting through the music. I jumped, almost tripping into the painting. Marlin Mayfield stepped back. I watched her mouth move as she gestured around the room and toward my paintings and me. I yanked out my headphones.

“This is my studio,” she was saying, hands on her hips, in white overalls spattered with dark ink, narrow feet shoved into white Birkenstocks, brown hair pulled into a knotted bun. “Hello? Are you fucking listening?”

“I’m so sorry,” I said quickly, sincerely, fingers splaying across my chest, trying to diffuse the tension. “Ju-Julian gave me the key,” I said, the words coming out jumbled, too close together.

“We’re already giving you a place to sleep,” she said. “Now you’re taking my studio?”

“I completely understand,” I said, raising my eyebrows, letting my jaw fall open, my hands in the air, don’t shoot. “Honestly, I’m in a real bind here. I need the space. My studio burned down.”

She squinted, stepped back, crossed her arms over her body, and said nothing as she walked around the studio, looking at each panel of Prudence carefully before she glanced back to my face.

“Huh,” she said. “Well. I’m Marlin Mayfield.”

“I—I know,” I stammered, “I was at the Academy after you.”

“I know,” she threw back. “I read that article.”

“That reporter wanted to fuck me,” I said sheepishly. “It doesn’t count.”

She laughed—an inroad.