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Neptune Frightens The Children

Fiction by Wythe Marschall

The order went: Rico said he saw it, then Jamie, then Jameel, Malika’s cousin who lived in Maspeth. Over the next month, they talked to each other about it—at Minny’s or the Hacienda or Jamie’s house—and confirmed the details, so they figured it must be true. For one, Rico never lied, not to them, not about paint, and for another, the yard was close to Queens, so it figured Jameel would’ve seen it—he was obsessed with geography, with the good walls and the spots no cops would drive by. They had all just found about this new yard, and Josie hadn’t gone yet. They all wanted to tell Josie about the problem right away, but it was just too hard, because Josie’s whole life revolved around paint. He was like the little ball-bearing inside the can that shakes up the paint, that lives forever in paint. He didn’t just write ZEUS—he was. »