Clara balanced on the edge of a overturned police van, her overalls streaked with mud and what looked like blood-red ink. She was painting a mural on a bedsheet hung from a lamppost-a skeletal figure in a suit devouring coins, its throat slit by a giant pair of scissors labeled BILL 207. Around it, she'd scrawled: "THEY STARVE US TO FEAST."
"Art isn't pretty!" she shouted to the crowd, her voice hoarse but electric. "It's a mirror! A knife!" A teenager handed her a spray can; she tagged the sheet with a sunflower sprouting from the scissors' blades.
Mateo's pencil raced across the page, shading the desperation in her eyes, the way her braid lashed like a whip as she moved. But as she jumped down, a line of riot cops advanced, shields clanking. The crowd surged backward, knocking Clara into a news van.
He grabbed her elbow, pulling her upright. Her stencil slipped, slicing his palm-a papercut sting. Blood smeared the sunflower on her mural.
"Nice save," she said, eyeing his sketchbook. Her hands were stained with ink and what smelled like vinegar (a tear gas remedy, he'd read online). "You here to sketch or fight?"
"Both, maybe." He nodded at her mural. "They'll just tear it down."
She grinned, wild and unapologetic. "Then I'll paint it again tomorrow. On their offices, their cars-everywhere." She ripped a page from his sketchbook, scribbled her number, and tucked it into his jacket. "Come help me. Art's louder with two."
Before he could reply, a canister hissed. Smoke plumed. Clara yanked a bandana over her mouth and threw him one. "Stick close!"
They ducked into a subway entrance, protesters streaming past them. Clara's laughter cut through the chaos. "You're bleeding on your shirt."
Mateo glanced at his palm. The cut mirrored the slit in her mural's corporate ghoul. "Worth it."
She arched a brow. "Romanticizing struggle? Careful, Picasso."
"Says the girl who used her own blood as paint."
"Touché." She pulled a marker from her boot and drew a tiny scissors-and-sunflower on his wrist. "There. Now you're a co-conspirator."
Later, in his apartment, Mateo stared at the doodle. The community center where he volunteered-where his late mother had once served meals-was on the bill's chopping block. He flipped open his sketchbook, adding Clara to his gallery of fighters and survivors. Her defiance felt like a match struck in the dark.
But as he sketched, the news played in the background: "...Bill 207 passes preliminary vote..." Outside, a helicopter bathed the streets in cold white light. He traced the scissors on his wrist, wondering if defiance was enough.