Kasey kicked up the stop on her bike, sitting herself on it as she slung her bag into the basket mounted between the worn handles.

"I like your jacket!" A girl Kasey never met with colored hair shouts from the campus parking lot before she entered her car.

"Thanks." Kasey responded just a moment too late, the snake patchwork design she scrapped together during a weekday late night billowing in the wind as she smoothly rode downhill. The modernized buildings of Crystal Institute of the Arts faded into an impressionist footnote in the colorful view of floral shops and restaurants lining the narrow street.

A golden retriever barked happily at the strangers cooing over it and giving it attention, which brought the young girls lips into a smile. Kasey cruised on the side of the road, narrowly missing a car driving way too close to the bike lane (which had the audacity to honk at her) and turning to the corner to the abandoned sect of the city. She slowed her bike to a park, spotting the graffiti lined walls she was looking for.

“Mmh…what do add this time..?”

The girl stretched and combed a hand through her short mess of auburn curls, before reaching for her bag and pulling out a can of paint. She shook it rhythmically staring at the wall of her cartoons and tags.

“Oh, it looks like they responded. Hah- is that a goose?”

The art student found this spot in the beginning of the school year. It was bare and free rein, an inspiring and intimidating concrete canvas. Now it’s a conversation. With who? She has no clue. One day it was just her art, and the next these cartoon animals and angular tags started appearing next to hers. This time, it was a goose eyeing the apple she painted.

“Do geese even eat apples..?” Kasey mused, her attention shifting back to the paint can in her grip, popping off the lid.

At the corner of her eye, stray cat lazily lifted its head from its spot in the alleyway, napping under the direct beam of sunlight that highlighted the particles of red paint as Kasey sprayed the chemicals on the wall with a harsh hiss. She curved the arc of her arm around the existing messages, shaking new cans of blue and white, layering texture and stepping back from her masterpiece, bumping softly into the side of her bike.

Kasey tilted her head, looking at the story on the wall she made with her friend. Friend? She never said that in her head before. Can she be friends with someone who she’s never met face to face? She traces wall to the first message they responded to, on the far left by the mossy clovered corner. A simple hello in the familiar bright green and black.

“Wait..” Something new.

It isn’t in an edgy font with mastered gradients, it seemed like a last minute decision but with the same sharpness of the rest of the stranger’s art.

She hunched down into a squat, her eyes widening in interest. 433…127- wait was this their phone number? Kasey looked underneath for clues and found none. She traced the drawings, her amber eyes flitting over the colorful pictures and tags. The astronaut. It has a friend now. A cheeky looking space dog holding the end of a rotary phone, accompanied with small speech bubble:

“Call me.”