The Mural

The apartment on the third floor was exactly two people wide.

Tai had claimed that as a scientific measurement. She was 5'3" on a generous day, with messy red hair that she cut herself in the bathroom mirror, pointy ears that poked through it no matter what she did, and a grin that showed off her canines a little too much. She said it made her look like a friendly vampire. Vix said it made her look like she would bite the mailman.

Vix's half of the apartment was a different climate. Black hair, black chipped nail polish, black coffee gone cold while she underlined Camus until the pages bled. She was 25, a philosophy major in her last year, and officially, professionally, angry about life in a way that was almost academic.

Tai was an art major who was chaotically cheerful in a way that was not academic at all.

It was 8:17 on a Tuesday and Tai was standing on the kitchen counter.

"Okay, don't be mad," she said, which is how every conversation with Tai started.

Vix looked up from *The Myth of Sisyphus* and her cereal. "I'm already mad. It's my resting state. What did you do?"

"I improved the kitchen!"

Tai had. The entire north wall, which had been landlord-white and slightly stained, was now covered in a sprawling mural in acrylics and what looked suspiciously like Vix's expensive ink. A huge, dramatic portrait of Vix herself, hair like a storm cloud, eyes narrowed, holding a bowl of cereal like it had personally offended her.

Vix stared.

"You used my ink."

"I borrowed your ink," Tai corrected, hopping down. Her socks didn't match. One had little ghosts on it. "And it's you! Look, I made you look powerful! Like a goth queen of breakfast!"

Vix stood up, walked to the wall, and got very close to her own painted face. The silence stretched.

Tai's ears, which usually twitched when she was nervous, went flat against her hair. Her grin faded just enough to hide the canines.

Then Vix said, "My nose isn't that sharp."

Tai blinked. "What?"

"My nose. In real life it's rounder. You made me look mean."

"You are mean," Tai said, relieved enough to be honest again. "You're beautifully mean. Like a beautiful, mean cat."

Vix actually snorted. A real, undignified laugh that she immediately tried to turn back into a scowl.

"It's crooked," she said, pointing at the painted cereal bowl. "And you spelled 'existence' wrong in the background. There's three S's."

"There are three S's in existence if you believe hard enough," Tai said, already grabbing a brush. "Hold on, I'll fix the nose. Stay angry, stay exactly there, you're perfect lighting."

Vix sighed, the deep, put-upon sigh of a philosophy major who knows she is doomed to live with an art major who paints murals at 8 a.m.

She didn't move. She leaned against the counter and let Tai climb back up and paint, close enough that Vix could see the flecks of blue in Tai's red hair and the way her pointed ear twitched every time she focused.

"You're getting paint on my book," Vix said, but she slid the book out of the way instead of closing it.

"You're welcome," Tai said cheerfully, smearing yellow across Vix's painted cheek. "Now the apartment has soul."

"It had soul before. It was just a tired, depressed soul."

"Yeah, well now it has two souls. One angry and one with pointy ears."

Vix looked at the wall again. The mural was messy and too bright and completely unapologetic. It was exactly like Tai.

"Fine," Vix said. "But if the landlord sees it, you're explaining it as a dialectic on rental precarity."

Tai beamed, all canines and joy. "Deal. I'll tell him it's your idea."

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