“What do you mean?”

“Now’s not the time.”

Apollo, Kai, and Theo began to return to the dumpster, but Zed waved them back to their perches. Such awful timing. Sol was finally opening up.

“You sure?” Zed asked.

“Yeah, finish this shit up. It’s hot as hell out here.”

Zed hopped back onto the dumpster, her backpack at her feet alongside the sketchbook. This time, a blueprint wasn’t needed. Streams of blues and purples and yellows flared from her fingertips, coats upon coats of colors. She strafed across the dumpster, barraging the wall with paint. After forty minutes, her arms were slack, her shoulders searing with thorough fatigue.

Triumphant, Zed hopped off the dumpster a second time, summoning the last fragment of energy left in her body to push the dumpster back to its original position, alone. She joined Sol again, this time greeted by a wide belly slap. It stung, but it felt appropriate as Zed looked at the disfigured owl, its torso and lower face devoured by her tag, that beaming smile replaced with Lorde Zed, the stylized letters looking like demented braces. Apollo, Theo, and Kai returned again, bearing telling smiles. Zed’s arms were too tired to throw into the air, but she flung them anyway, their limp fall even more effective than she’d hoped. No one said anything, even Theo. A month of detailed planning and research, and he was just getting invited along because Kai wanted him there, as if his absence in the past month had always solely been her decision and not a collective effort. “Sure,” Zed said, responding as if Kai had been asking a question. She turned to Theo.

“This tag is amazing, Zed,” he offered, his body language confident and eager. She knew Theo wouldn’t let them down on purpose, but Zed could already feel the plan unwinding. She gripped the mural map in her pocket, withdrawing it and crinkling it in her fist. She walked to the dumpster and dropped it in, its pathetic plop drowned out by the screeching metal of the dumpster lid slamming shut.

“What was that?” Apollo asked.

“Nothing. Let’s go home. I just saw some cops pass,” Zed lied.