The painting covered the softball field.

Needless to say the girls were displeased.

The girls of Wilkok High (matching pinstripe uniforms and mismatched maroons socks) and Gredmont Academy (form fitting blue sweats that covering flattering Navy and gold uniforms) noticed the painting when a fine blue powder began to cover their shoes.

It was expansive. Composed of paper and dream it covered the field flawlessly. Test scores, homework papers, last week’s tabloids, coupons for laundry detergent, adds for Brittany’s No Butter, No Weight Cream! Thick layers of paint covered theses mismatched companions, only their corners and forgotten edges spoke of their original purpose. Mounds had been dug to call emphasis to purple patches of spray paint that stood like violet islands in an intangible sea. Splatters oil pastels seemed to suggest castles, chessboards and music notes. Hourglasses made from the blue power the girls had stepped on emanated from a fence that blew over last spring. Nothing tied it together other than its girth and dysfunction.

“FUCK!”

A girl from Wilkok threw down her bat, covering herself in yellow powder. The girl then screamed at the Gredmont girls and dragged off her closest friend off the field. The prettiest girl on the Gredmont team simply stared at the ground beneath and near her feet.

The softball field was bright that night. Flashlights were everywhere scanning the surface of it and hastily ducking as others appeared, trying not to taint the elaborate designs that had been overlooked, wondering if the powder would stain their drab clothes, wondering if their footprints would show. But flashlights alone could not account for the otherworldly glow. The painting emitted something that allowed it to be as sunlight in the dark. The next morning none spoke of the pilgrimage, but purple oil paints in their hair and red smudges on their wrists uttered what words did not.

The unspoken meetings on the field continued for a week.

The city council was outraged. This reverence for graffiti would only encourage more behavior of this kind. They pressured the local high school to a request a clean up as soon as possible, but within a half hour of its submission found its way into a the field trip applications which bought up the mismanagement of paper work which after a heated debate brought up embezzlement and two town hall meetings we called to satisfied the matter.

The janitor was outraged, but infinitely more sensible; he turned on the lights. The visitors lessened, but the next morning telltale footprints still danced around the edges and insides of the painting. So with a broom handle that looked like a vaguely shotgun in dim light the janitor positioned himself in the middle of the painting on top of red whorls. Most on-lookers changed course when they saw him, but a few came to the border of the abrasive light, looking with a longing, displacement and hunger, that made the janitor feel no guilt or regret at waving his broom handle dangerously in the air, kicking at the multicolored ground, and distorting the images that lay below him.

The next three nights none came. The softball field was finally written off as a prank and the patron who had so generously donated the field informed the school board that sufficient funds to repair it would arrive as soon as her current business venture matured.

It was forgotten.

Somewhat.

That evening the girl who had stained herself yellow, known to her friends as Kelly, finally gave in to take a closer look at what she called just another prank but her friends called magic. Upon arriving at the softball felid she saw the pretty girl from the other day whose name was Gabriella, but who wanted to be called Gabe. Dirt and what looked like oil paints smeared her designer jeans. And a surprisingly plain T-shirt was stained a multitude of colors. She scrubbed furiously with what looked like steel wool; red paint stained her fine and fine, elegant hands. She whispered, “Please. Please,” and blue blotched her face. Kelly had previously given the field a large birth, fearful of even more yellow stains, but bit by bit she sneaked forward, bit back her resentment and spoke.

“Are you al –“

“I’m sorry,” the words shook. “They didn’t mean for it to be this bad I just wish they hadn’t and I thought it wouldn’t I, I the red paint, I’m not supposed to tell in . . .”

Kelly felt her fists tighten. “You did this?”

“No! Not me! Some guys from the Academy, they thought it would be fun and Paint and Moore donated all this stuff and I said it was okay if they kept it small and they ran out of supplies and are so nervous and won’t do it again and they just went to the city council and I don’t want to get. . . “

“Never mind. I don’t really care.”

Kelly cursed herself for ever thinking enchantment, walked over to the far most light post, jimmied the lock that was older than her, flipped three switches and muttered, “Waste of goddam electricity.”

The pretty girl Gabriella, not Gabe, was left alone in the dimming light.

They did not bring flashlights this time, they knew that they would see clearly in the gloom. Many whispered beautiful and sacred some whispered blasphemy and crime, but all looked and none moved. Because it was sacred and was a crime. And beauty is best when mixed. They gathered together and torched the painting, letting it cover their hands and fingertips, embracing it with their souls. It spread though no one intended it, it grew though none required it.

The next day the painting covered the bleachers.

And none knew quite what to think.