California's Favorite Color

[alaterdate]

Title: California's Favorite Color
Rating: G
Wordcount: 434
Genre: Lit Fic

      The chain link fence wobbles under his weight. He comes down hard on the other side, sending up a flurry of dirt that settles on his tongue. He spits and it arcs like that fly ball he couldn’t catch the last time he saw his dad. He keeps moving down the path flanked by two concrete walls then emerges into the forgotten parking lot like an adventurer entering El Dorado.
      A fresh white wall is his treasure. He sets his backpack down and rummages through it. The cans clink under his fingertips like the tune his mother’s windchimes play when he climbs back in the house through the busted window on the south side of the patio. His uncle says that it’s no use fixing it when nobody’ll want the junk they got inside there anyway; he doesn’t know about the box of spray cans hidden under grandpa’s broken reclining chair. Athletic Field Blue, Safety Blue, True Blue, Morning Sky Blue: the gang’s all here.
      He only learned two useful things from school so far: monochromatic color scheme from Mrs. Murphy—the senile art teacher who always thinks everyone’s work is good, even if it looks like shit because they rush it five minutes before class—and the Four Color Theorem from Mr. Rummler—the history teacher who yells about respect when anyone refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
      The blue nitrile gloves he swiped from the hospital the last time he was there visiting his grandma stick to his skin as he pulls them on, the smell of rubber swarms his nostrils, he tests the nozzle of his spray can, masks the smell of the medical grade gloves. His arm sweeps across his canvas. Here is where he makes his mark. This is how he tells the world that it’s uglier without him.
      He’s nearly finished with his piece when the lights blind him. Blue and red and white. The can slips from his hand, lands somewhere on the cold cracked asphalt and rolls away. He snatches his bag from the ground, hugs it as he runs for the fence, closes his eyes and throws it over, hoping the other cans survive or else he’ll have to pay the bus fare to the good neighborhoods where they don’t lock ‘em all up. The gloves he forgot to peel off are eaten up by the fence as he hops it. He comes down hard on the other side and freezes. His eyes dart between the man in blue in front of him and the end of the street. His ankles tingle the way spray paint sounds when it pulses out from its cage.