The sun poured over the low grassy hill and lit the chalk mural painted across the grey pavement. A blue sky stretched in white and blue lines, with two small figures holding hands beneath it. The wooden bench sat empty at the mural's edge, and the afternoon breeze curled a loose corner of paper in the air.
Nettle yanked the red crayon free and tore the drawing clean in half. "No, I'M using it!" she shouted, and the two ragged pieces skidded across the chalk sky, smearing red wax into the blue they'd drawn together. She gripped the jagged edge on the bench, and the loose corner of her half curled upward in the wind.
Milo's sneakers squeaked up the grassy hill, one little screech after another, until the sound thinned to nothing. Nettle stayed seated on the wooden bench, her red crayon tipped between her teeth, watching the loose corner of her half flutter like a broken wing. She thought: the sky didn't need him.
Nettle dragged her torn half across the empty bench and scraped the red crayon in tight circles on the pavement, trying to finish the sky alone. The chalk beneath went smudged and grey. Where his half used to be, the line wavered, broke, and left a gap the size of two open palms. She capped the crayon with a soft click and shoved the paper deep in her pocket.
From the top of the grassy hill, Nettle took three slow steps down toward the bench where Milo sat, knees pulled to his chest, a blue crayon balanced across his knee. She stopped. Held out the half. "It's not a sky without this part," she said, and the ragged edge caught the afternoon sun like a thin bright thread.
Milo took the other half and they pressed the torn edges flat on the bench while Nettle peeled a strip of clear tape from her jacket pocket. The jagged rip opened a zigzag river straight through the middle of their drawing, its banks already alive with tiny blue and green strokes. "Oh," Nettle whispered. "It's a river."
Milo uncapped his blue crayon and grinned, the tip waxy and sharp against the paper. "Blue," he said, and started filling one bank. Nettle uncapped red and began the other. The taped seam held firm, and neither of them looked away. They just colored, back and forth, back and forth.
Shoulder to shoulder, they colored the river blue, green, and a streak of sunset orange where it met the ground. Chalk dust and curled crayon shavings drifted onto the soft grass like tiny colored snow. Nettle capped her red crayon — click — and below the river, in shared red and blue, they drew one wide, wobbly smile.
