Free Pack Up the Moon by Rachael Herron

rattle of cans in the truck as dizzying as the paint’s fumes. That was a long time ago now, more than four years. But you didn’t get over your first love, right? Even limited to stickers as she was now, Pree was still crazy about the big stuff, the colorful work, the murals that shone a million colors, reflecting the sun.
    She drew another sticker, the
R
thick and triangular, then the jagged
A
, followed by the backward
R
and the sideways
E
. She did her standard swirl underneath with some fills over the address area at the top, and then added her signature heart in the right corner. Drawing the heart had started out ironically, something the girls had laughed at her for doing. But then—that whole cliché about San Francisco and where that guy left his heart? Since moving here, Pree sometimes felt as if she were leaving her heart behind when she slapped and moved on, signing her new city with something that mattered.
    “I don’t think the postman’s gonna be able to read that one.”
    Pree jumped. The voice came from behind her, familiar and warm.
    Jimmy. Pree was aware her crush was probably some kind of reaction to living with a laid-back artist for the last three years, because Jimmy was everything that Flynn wasn’t. While Flynn was fair in looks and countenance, Jimmy’s hair was short, his complexion dark. Jimmy favored ironic T-shirts and skinny jeans that Flynn wouldn’t be caught dead in. Jimmy looked like he knew where he belonged (which was everywhere) while Flynn swam upriver, flopping in and out of the current as he went.
    “You made it.” Pree recapped her pen. “Sneak up on girls often?”
    He gave her a look, the one he’d been giving her for a while now, the one she couldn’t quite read. The one she knew she probably shouldn’t figure out.
    “Nope,” he said simply. “It’s good to be out of the office, huh? I like the hooky thing. What are you drawing?”
    “My slap.”
    That look again. At that moment, the sun broke through the fog and hit her cheek with a sudden warmth as it flooded the square. People smiled. She heard laughter and then watched as a very small child lost a blue balloon and burst into tears, bolting away from his mother. She ran behind him, her arms outstretched to catch him. Pree looked away.
    Jimmy pulled out a chair and sat, dropping his bag to the ground with a thump. Two banana stickers and red glitter decorated the side of it. Pree pointed at it. “Did the kids have fun with that?”
    “What?” He looked confused. “Oh. Shit. I guess so.”
    “You didn’t notice?” God, she almost
giggled.
Why did he make her feel so young?
    “I try to ignore a lot of what goes on in my house.” He gave a rueful smile, and Pree’s heart tugged. “Okay, street girl. Show me how this is done.”
    “Yeah, okay.” She pulled three more stickers out of her backpack. “This is a slap.”
    Jimmy turned one over in his fingers. “It’s a mailing label.”
    “It’s called a slap. You put them up wherever you can reach. People actually collect them—can you believe it?” Pree tapped hers with the pen. “I wouldn’t ever do that, peel a slap. But people do. Sometimes I wonder if mine is in an album somewhere . . .”
    “What else do you know about these?”
    “This part is very important. You steal them when you want to draw. You don’t buy them.”
    His eyebrows lifted. “So that’s where the file folder stickers have been going. You’re fired.”
    Her heart galloped. Console studios often laid off their entire team after the project shipped. Their first game in the series ended production last month, and they were out of crunch, into future content support—the juniors were always the first to go. “No! I only took like five— Oh. You’re kidding.”
    Nodding, he said, “I am. I don’t give a shit. Show me what to do with this. And tell me why you do it.”
    Pree handed him a Pilot. “Don’t inhale. Or if you do, enjoy the ride as your brain cells