What disgusting fools, Maribel thought as she heaved the can of bone white paint towards her neighbor’s wall. Dripping blue lettering read “die, hate, cry” in uneven spaces. Cyclers passed by giving her odd looks. To be fair, she looked like Pink Panther from any angle with her mink coat and strawberry socks. She poured exactly ¾ of a cup of paint into her pan and took out three white socks attached to a rolling pin. As she painted across the cursive letters, she pinned up a pale yellow paper decorated with bitter stabs of ink. “Don’t colour,” the cursive spelled out. Her eyes twitched with satisfaction as she drove off to get a fresh can of paint.

It was always like this with Maribel. She loved to pop other people’s bubbles but keep her own nice and shining in her mink coat. Even though Walgreens was closer, she didn’t dare go there and instead drove to John’s Hardware to get two paint cans to store in her car trunk. As she followed her usual route through the store, she noticed something peculiar—something she had never seen before. It was what looked like a bent rolling pin engraved with jumbles of characters splashed on hastily like the sticky notes her friend Atlas used to leave her. Her body involuntarily shivered. I’m probably overthinking. Maribel rolled up her strawberry socks for reassurement and continued her journey around the numberless counters. She found it quite annoying that there were no numbers but that would be a different matter for a different day. 

“Excuse me,” someone called out. 

Maribel swiveled her head around to find a young boy looking up.

“Oh hello, dear!” she exclaimed. “Do you need anything?”

The boy started whimpering. The whimpering turned into a wail as the boy ran to his calling mother. She unconsciously reached for her phone to tell Atlas about her encounter with the boy. But Maribel stopped herself from calling the number which probably had a new owner. 

What did I do wrong? Maribel analyzed her every action leading up to the boy running off. Was it my coat? My smile? My makeup? My walk? She rushed to find the boy but ended up at the peculiar rolling pin. Heavily sighing, she went back to haul her cans of paint to the cashier. Maribel was making her way out of the store when she met with an unruly sight: blue graffiti spelling out “prick” on her car. Maribel went closer to take a look at the blue sticky note. “It’s color, not colour. Stop messing things up,” it read. She scoffed at the message and ripped it to exactly twenty-one pieces—the number of breaths she would take before she erupted. 

Idiots. 

But before Maribel could storm the security office, the young boy came back tugging at her coat. 

“Stop touching my coat!” she screeched, swiveling around to slap the boy. “It’s mink!” 

Maribel stared in shock as the boy came to hug her legs.

Maribel and Atlas had exactly one bond keeping them together: Denver Nuggets. Atlas would always bring takeout from Chicken Rebel and Maribel would prepare the festivities as she would see fit.

“It's their second year,” Atlas said. “They need to win the playoffs.” 

“Who cares,” replied Maribel as she fluffed her hair with the rainbow pom-pom. “Could you go get strawberries from Walgreens? I really don’t want to go and get them.” 

Atlas gave Maribel a sidelong glare but still got up to grant her wishes, giving her a sideways hug. Atlas never knew how to say no to her, and Maribel wanted to keep it that way. 

“I’m bringing my brother when I come back,” Atlas shouted as he made his way out the door.

“Whatever you want to do,” came a lazy reply. 

Maribel made sure the front door was locked and went back to the couch.

Atlas had never returned after that. Maribel only remembered getting the phone call from the hospital—everything after was a blur of his body jerking to the electric shocks and the motorbike rider repeatedly apologizing to her. She had only realized how much Atlas did for her once she was alone. There was no one to talk to about her day. There was no one to watch the Denver Nuggets with. There was no one to eat strawberries with. She had left a box of twenty strawberries by Atlas’s grave the other day, the number of times she wished she had said I love you to Atlas but never did. 

“Charlie, get over here,” his mother shouted, glancing apologetically at Maribel.

“No—no, it’s fine,” Maribel responded. “I, I really don’t mind.”

She hadn’t had physical touch in what felt like forever. For a peculiar reason, the boy had reminded her of Atlas—the friend who would always approach first and give her a hug. 

Maribel hugged the boy back and then drove back to her home, thoughts of the paint streaked over her car gone. She went with a heavy heart into the room, remembering all the times she and Atlas would repaint her walls into her favorite flower patterns. Atlas would always bring yellow paper and bottles of ink so they could write sticky notes to each other. A tear dropped from Maribel’s eye. She remembered his presence like a bloody glove she couldn’t take off. 

“I’m doing fine, I’m doing fine,” Maribel chanted in her head as she hung up her mink coat in the empty closet.

Maribel rolled on another pair of strawberry socks. She would be the same each day she woke up—with a seeping wound in her heart she was trying so hard to stitch back together.

For Atlas.