Free Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson Page A

4ever. Tre is a manslut. Cowabunga!
Metallic paint was popular.
    The second car said that gay men were for peace, and they’d drawn silver hearts and stars and peace symbols all around the
     words to prove it. There was a tic-tac-toe game that the cat had won. My saints trailed me, mournful, offering no guidance
     as I moved to the next car. I found more silver paint, spelling out
Karen has June Fever
and
Uncle Kulty was here!
    On the fourth car down, on the side that faced away from the road, I saw the rosebud. It was the wrong colors: red with a
     long green stem and poinks of brown paint for thorns. But a rose is a rose, and my heart stuttered at the sight of it. I quickly
     scanned the words around it, regardless of color. To the right, someone had written,
Sex, Drugs, Rock-n-Roll, Anna!
in thick blue paint, and on the other side, there was only
I am the Bringer of Blood
in dark red. I looked down the row and saw the next car sported a red-and-green tulip drawn by the same sure hand. I walked
     down a few steps, and sure enough, the next car’s side had a red daisy. The rose was not for me. It was only some LSD-infested
     flower child in a belled ankle bracelet, getting all literal.
    I went back to the fourth car. The only silver here was under the rose, and it said,
The fun’s at RODEO!
That had to be the gay men for peace again; Rodeo! was Amarillo’s most notorious drag bar. I saw some glints of older silver,
     but the newer messages were all in neons and primary colors.
    I moved on to the next car, then the next, working my way down the row. I found a silver proposal,
Marry me, Lia!
and pictures of musical notes, boobs, and a pair of running horses that looked like cave drawings. Nothing for me.
    I came to the last car, but it was entirely free of fresh silver paint. I searched it even more carefully. There was nothing.
    I hit the final car’s back fin with the flat of my hand, as hard as I could. My palm stung. I pressed my hand against the
     hot metal, panting hard. It was here. It had to be. I must have missed it.
    Or I was too late. Three days had passed since I’d seen her at the airport. She’d insisted that I come out here at once; she
     knew her message would be covered over sooner or later.
    I walked down the row and started again at the first car, hunting more carefully this time, looking for my color under the
     newer words. On the third car, a glittery white paint caught my eye, fooling me, but it wasn’t silver.
    The next car had the picture of the rose. It was drawn straight up and down, ignoring the tilt of the slanted car. The green
     stem ended where the car met the ground, and it grew straight up, so that some of the petals touched the undercarriage.
    All three of the flower drawings looked weathered, as if the paint had been there awhile. The gypsy would have seen this rose,
     then, and she must have guessed it would catch my eye. The words
Sex, Drugs, Rock-n-roll, Anna!
looked fresh, written thick and dark, as if Anna had gone over each letter twice. I leaned in closer. Under those words,
     I could see that something had been written in metallic silver paint. The gypsy may have used the rose as a marker for me,
     but some girl named Anna had taken a can of blue paint, her name, and her unhealthy priorities and wiped the message out.
    I went backwards, moving right to left away from the rose until I found the place where the silver paint began, under the
e
in
Sex
. The writing was small, and two lines of text were buried under Anna’s message. I could make out a capital letter
I
, then a
d
, and what I thought might be the top and the dot of a lowercase
i
that was framed by the capital
D
in
Drugs
. I could see the top half of the letter after that. It was a vertical line, so it could be a lot of things. Another
d
, maybe, or
b
,
k
,
h
, or
l
. Maybe even a
t
with a low crossbar; spray paint didn’t lend itself to good handwriting. Anna had written her important philosophy in thick,
     broad