The group meets in the store, one day before Mum and Da come to visit.

This is the first time Sta, Mackere, and Hamme see the bright blue sign.

Anemon saw it a week ago, because Ange asked him to come see it only a few days after it happened, so he did, but he said finding the right paints and finding the time to do it between all his job-searching and being sad in bed wouldn't be easy.

Ange told him he'd get paid for painting the sign, but Anemon refused that too--something about not having friends pay him.

The group meets in the store, Sta brings a new kind of cookie called kelp-crunch cookies, they're algae-green and flat and look hard as rocks but they are called crunch cookies so they're probably supposed to look like that.

The group meets in the store, Hamme brings a game that's not L-E-T-T-E-R-S, in a container made out of a giant conch shell with the opening sealed off, but I don't get to see how it opens or what game pieces it holds because we don't get around to playing this game, or eating Sta's cookies, because Anemon brings buckets of neon paints and brushes for ten people (we only have seven people) and says we're all painting the store sign together (or, Ange translates that this is what Anemon's saying).

Seven people, four paint buckets, and ten brushes don't all fit around our store's bright blue wooden sign at once. So half of us sit in the street that's still and empty because it's late in the evening. We build lumpy towers out of mud, and rotate in and out with the half of us painting the sign.

I find the bright blue pretty, like the night sky I read about in books, but art-degree Anemon must dislike it since he has us paint over it with some brown, lighter than the street mud but darker than the original wood.

We give it two solid coats of paint, taking turns with the brushes. Then Anemon makes us all wait inside while it solidifies, and everyone talks and laughs but doesn't get around to cookies or games, and I pretend like I'm busy inspecting the shirts on the tables so I don't have to hover pointlessly beside Ange or Parro while everyone's laughing, but while pretending to inspect them I actually inspect them, and half the shirts are messily folded so my brain goes "FIX THEM FIX THEM FIX THEM FIX THEM" but not in those words just the raw need of those words, panicking that our store's an utter mess, so I fix them, folding all the messy ones on a whole table and then another table and then another table.

Anemon checks the paint, comes back in and says he's going to outline the letters so we can all paint them (so Ange translates to me), but Sta barrels past him out the door and Anemon rushes after, vibrating something from his mouth, and the rest of us rush out too, but Anemon must've chased Sta too slow since Sta's already splattered neon yellow into the vague beginning of Parro's name, and Ange goes up to join her, and so does Mackere, but Parro just floats in the doorway shaking his head. Hamme laughs.

Parro catches me staring at him and I look away but he signs, "Mum and Da are going to question the professionality of our store's reputation."

"Oh," I sign back.

Sta comes down and hands me her neon-orange gooped brush, pointing up to the sign. She laughs something, and Hamme tugs my wrist, pulling me up. Mackere's got the word "and" written out lopsided and art-degree Anemon's waving his fins at her but Ange just laughs, drawing him gently away. He says something, and Anemon calms down a little, gills working, hovering higher.

I stare at where the pair were hovering--at the space on the sign they hid with their bodies. Beneath Ange's half-written name, Sta's started writing out my name--it's the only neon-orange part so far. "Nu." I glance at Hamme, they let go of my wrist and sign "you do."

I glance down at Sta but she's talking to Parro and I tilt my head at the sign again, heart bouncing. Why's Sta putting my name on here? The store is called "Parro and Ange's," it looks weird written as "Parro and Ange's" with "Nudibranc" squished beneath "Ange's," what does that even mean? "Parro and Ange's Nudibranc" makes it sound like they own me.

Hamme spells out my name with their hands, their eyes half-lidded. I blink at them. I nod, I stop nodding, I go up to the sign beside Mackere who's asking Hamme something, and I turn the "Nu" into a lumpy "nc."

I write the rest of my name beneath the empty space of the beginning of Parro's name. So it'll be "Parro Nudibranc and Ange's" with my name beneath Parro's--but the lopsided, tall "and" helps both our names seem like they belong on the left side.

Hamme comes up with buckets of paint for Mackere and I, neon yellow and orange, and I dunk my brush again, and Parro squishes beside me to write his own name after the "P" Sta splatted in place, and Ange writes his, and Anemon and Sta--the two of us most competent at painting--do nothing but watch.

I carefully slide my neon orange brush in the shapes of my name in a second coat, dunking the brush often in Hamme's paint bucket, and I don't drip any to the street. Mackere retreats, and Ange finishes before me too, but his name's super short.

After the last line of the "c" in my name, I hover back. I tilt my head, my heart bounces, I made the "a" sorta lumpy and the "u" dips lower than the other letters, but my name. Now lives on our store sign. My name now lives on our store sign. My name lives on our store sign, over the ridges of some offensive words we've painted over twice.

Parro swims away from the sign, he's added streaks of red into his neon yellow name, and Ange's is almost entirely red.

Art-degree Anemon says something aloud. "Good job," he signs at me.

"Thank you," I sign back.

Parro leans over and signs that Anemon was actually saying "wow, I can't believe it doesn't look horrible," but "he probably doesn't know the signing to say that."

"Never mind," I sign to Anemon. His eyes go half-lidded.

Ange laughs, and Hamme stares at him funny.

My fingers itch to explain, but Hamme doesn't know that much signing either.

Since we're all holding paint-filled brushes, we go inside and clean them out with rags Anemon brought. Mackere has yellow paint smeared onto her fingers and she holds Sta's hand like that while they work, twice as slow, one of them holding a brush and the other one of them scrubbing it with a rag. I don't watch, I tell myself they're just wasting time by holding hands, but really my stomach's gone hollow at the presence of them. So I help Anemon twist his paint lids back on and keep my back toward the two of them, squashing up my hollow stomach.

And my heart keeps bouncing, too: my name's on a store sign. I know my brother and his boyfriend's names have been there for years but now it's my name up there too and that makes my veins all over my body tremble like the sides of an impatient volcano, a volcano with glowing lava bubbling in the sea.

But I keep myself from tearing up; my hollow stomach, my bouncing heart, I ignore them.

We clean up, leave a mess of our clean up by the front door for Anemon to take home with him--buckets, brushes, rags--and we go outside to the empty street, all the businesses closed, all the glass buildings on their anchoring cords swaying slightly in the ocean currents, all the professional wooden signs for "delights of the valleys" and "tots time" and "fresh cuisine" bland and blocky unlike our loopy colorful irregular one, and we build theater buildings in the mud with stained fingers until everyone else has to go home.