He sat in the garden with a small, child’s palette of paints. The colors were garish and bright and juvenile but he didn’t seem to care. He sat with a rock he had chosen carefully from the collection of cool gray stones near the back shed: it was large and just barely fit in his two hands when he cupped it gently and set it down on the ground before him. Around him the dandelions swayed easily in the breeze, the weeds now running the garden that had once been so lush and full. He didn’t mind them: they were yellow, and his father’s favorite color was the same buttery gold.

He remembered the last time his dad had come to visit, wearing a pale blue collared shirt, gray slacks, polished black shoes and sleek black belt. He had only just come back from Denver to visit for the weekend, and to the boy he seemed very different. Aloof, almost. Distant. Certainly, he was better dressed, his tangled beard gone, and his dark hair was turning gray. The only thing that remained the same was his canary yellow tie.

He was supposed to be coming home again this weekend, for it was the boy's birthday and his only wish had been to see his dad. He's decided he would give him a gift; maybe it would convince him to stay. Maybe it would convince him to leave Stacey alone in Denver and come back to live here, where the boy was. Stacey had been a pleasant secretary when the boy had met her in his father's office, but now when he thought of her she became some sort of monster, much like the twisted gorgons he'd been reading about in the book of Greek myths his dad had bought for him on his last birthday. He imagined her: long red nails curling into claws, white smile becoming a sharp-toothed snarl, her dark curly hair now a nest of writhing snakes. If his father was yellow, he decided, Stacey was a deep, muddied brown. Like sludge. Or Medusa.

He dipped his brush lightly in first the red paint, and in a few quick strokes had messily covered a corner of the rock in color. The rock was to be for his dad. They'd collected rocks together when he'd lived with them: they were still behind the shed, all one hundred and twenty-eight of them. He wondered if his dad remembered. He rinsed the brush and added green, slathering the surface in what he thought would be the perfect color for a pet lizard, if he had a pet lizard.

He wished he had a pet lizard: in fact, he wished he had any pet at all. It was very lonely coming home from fourth grade to an empty house when his mother worked those late shifts at the hospital and he stayed home by himself. If only he had a pet lizard to keep him company.

His dad had once promised him a gecko: not quite the same as a lizard, but close enough. That was before his dad moved to Denver, before his mom had started picking up the night shifts, before the garden had become overrun by these pleasant yellow weeds. By now, he’d painted the rock red, green, purple, and blue.

He’d only just realized he’d run out of yellow.