“Coffee. Lots of it.” I hear Violet’s voice float above me, but she doesn’t prod me to sit up straight. And it’s a good thing, because booze makes my brain feel so much heavier than the rest of my body. It’s amazing that anyone can stand up straight.
The scent of strong brew hits my nose and Violet pats my hair, rousing me. “Have some coffee, Stella, and tell me what’s wrong.” I straighten up and narrow my eyes at her. How did she guess something’s wrong? Is she psychic?
“Oh, everything’s peachy,” I say. “Perfect. Groovy. Fan-frickin-tastic. Turns out I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.” I drink from the steaming mug and sputter, the coffee burning my mouth in a bitter assault.
Doesn’t Violet know I like my coffee sweet and light, like Tyler does?
Tyler. Mr. Double Standard, when it comes to secrets.
I push the thought of him aside and blow on my mug, taking a careful sip. This mug is hefty enough that it might not break if I pitched it at the window. But this café never did anything to me. Not like Heath.
“You don’t have to go to work? Like a vacation day?” Violet’s voice is hopeful.
“Yeah. Just like that. Except it’s lots and lots of vacation. Like, forevevever.” My lips get tangled around that last word.
Violet sips her own coffee and taps on her phone. When the waitress comes to take our orders I ask for chocolate chip pancakes, something I haven’t eaten since I was a kid, and a side of sausage. And bacon.
“Poor Wilbur will never know what hit him,” I say, and giggles break from my chest as if I’ve told the world’s funniest joke. “Here, piggy, piggy. Come to my fork, piggy!”
Violet shushes me and her phone pings. She reads a text and her eyebrows shoot up, then she pockets her phone. The jig’s up.
“Neil?” I ask.
“Yeah. He said you—you kind of lost it.” Her eyes are soft with sympathy.
“Yup. Lost my job. But I didn’t lose my fucking self-respect. I didn’t throw my boyfriend under the bus to write a story about him. My non-boyfriend, anyway.”
“Tyler?”
“Yeah. I got fired because I didn’t report on the Kim Archer fiasco.”
Violet arches a brow in question and it’s clear she missed the news this morning. That’s fine. I have no interest in filling her in, and anyway, I don’t want her pity that I’m sort-of dating some guy who’s getting shaken down by his alleged baby mama.
The pancakes arrive and I tear into them while Violet picks at her poached eggs and toast. She must not really be starving like she said. I offer her a piece of bacon and she takes it, I think, to get me to quit my piggy noises. But they’re hilarious.
“So what are you going to do next, Stella?”
“Sleep it off. Whatever.” I truly don’t know the next thing I should do after I finish my breakfast and I’m scared. I had to reinvent my future once before when I fled my family and Manser Academy, but somehow starting over seems even harder this time.
Unless the settlement thing I read last night is true. I haven’t called the lawyer yet to find out.
“How about we walk it off?” Violet asks. “It will make you feel a million times better. And I could use an extra pair of eyes.” Violet pats her square nylon camera gear bag.
“You’re gonna make me walk? In these?” I point at the same Mary Jane heels that got me in trouble the first time I went to Tyler’s place. I’m breaking them in, but they still pinch a bit.
“Lucky for you, I came prepared,” Violet says. She dips into her gear bag and hands me a silver pouch that’s a little fatter than a wallet. I unzip it and pull out foldable flats. This girl is a genius.
I swap shoes and follow Violet out of the diner, decidedly more sober with coffee and pancakes to soak up the booze. We wind through East Village streets without speaking, turning off Avenue A to walk east on East Fifth Street.
Violet slows our pace, her eyes scanning the buildings. We traverse one side of the street and then the other, and her lip trembles as if she might cry.
“It’s not here,” she says, frowning. “It was supposed to be here, but it’s not.”
I look around, taking in a no-frills bar, a long flower stall outside a bodega, a used bookstore, and a restaurant called Goat Town. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be looking for, but I scan the buildings anyway.
Violet retraces her steps, following the side of a building to an alley where a Dumpster is shoved against a wall, slightly askew. Violet seizes on this, craning her neck to see into the dark crevice behind it.
“Help me, Stella. Help me move this.”
I try not to think of the sludge that probably coats the Dumpster as I lay my hands beside hers and tug on the corner of it, careful not to let it roll over my feet.
When it comes away from the wall, I hear Violet gasp and I move to see what she’s staring at.
It. Is. Stunning.
On the wall, a faux sidewalk is painted as if it’s part of this alley. A small girl crouches to inspect a flower growing from a crack in the sidewalk, which is actually a real crack running up the building’s wall. It’s just spray paint and stencil, but it feels like more. It feels like art.
The painting is black and white with only the flower petals touched in yellow. The girl’s eyes are sharp and bright, a testament to the exquisite stencil and its careful application here.
Next to the girl is a phrase: Find your moment.
I try to understand this riddle. Why would anyone paint this perfect little image on this wall? What makes this dingy alley special, and why would the artist cover up their work with the Dumpster?
Or did the artist cover it at all? Somehow Violet knew to look for it here. My head swirls with questions and remnants of alcohol, but I don’t want to interrupt Violet as she frantically unpacks her gear.
She shoves the Dumpster aside further until light fully reaches the painting, then she takes dozens of shots from slightly different angles, squinting at her digital display between each handful of frames. I imagine she’s looking for the best angle.
Violet’s focus is singular and completely unselfconscious. Her long, slender body moves like a dancer’s as she stoops and bends. After fifteen long minutes, she’s satisfied.
“Help me push this back. I don’t know how long until it’s discovered, but I want to protect it as long as possible.”
I grunt and strain with her and it takes considerably more effort to get the Dumpster back into place. Violet hustles me back down the alley to the main street and looks both ways as we emerge, as if we’re in a spy movie.
I grin. “That was cool.”
“Cool’s not even the word for it. That rocked my world,” Violet says. “You feeling better?”
My head throbs but the fog has lifted and I’m clear-headed enough to know that I am in serious shit. But I’m not ready to go back to the real world yet, so I beg Violet for details.
She’s cagey at first, revealing only that she’s been stalking the street artist responsible for this painting for several months. She doesn’t know why he does it or where his next work will pop up, but she stumbled on a cryptic Twitter feed that’s led her to the last three.
“It’s like a treasure hunt,” Violet says, her eyes brighter and more full of life than I’ve seen before. “And the works are so fleeting—either destroyed or removed and sold to galleries—that I have to capture them before they disappear.”
We walk several long blocks and Violet’s shell cracks open wider. She tells me more about her photography project, how she’s documenting this graffiti, but she can’t figure out who the artist is or how to reach him.
Violet wants to publish a photo profile, but no magazine will take her seriously or assign a feature writer until she finds the painter.