Christian, a twenty-year-old janitor hired through his mother’s connection and instructed to hide his skull tattoos under long sleeves, began his first day tasked with painting a wall behind the gym white—a command he rejected in spirit. As he carried colored paints, he collided with a paint-splattered fourteen-year-old, who was left with tears hidden beneath the colors. When Christian’s sleeves slid up, revealing his skull tattoos, the boy was transfixed.

Noticing the boy’s dropped sketchpad, Christian asked if he drew and beckoned him to a concealed space behind the gym. There, instead of white, Christian had painted a vivid mural of angels, birds, butterflies, and dragons, echoing his mother’s belief that children are born with wings that rub beneath their skin when they feel they do not belong. He considered painting over it to appease the principal, but the boy urgently begged him not to.

Christian encouraged the boy to paint, insisting that art needs friends, not critics, and placed a brush in his hand. The boy painted a dragon; when Christian called it amazing, the boy tried to dismiss it as childish. Christian countered with a quote about learning to paint like a child, then offered spray paint, which the boy used to create tender images of naked men with wings. Christian connected their work to his mother’s lessons and art’s power as “a small break from human despair,” invoking Ragnar Sandberg’s view that art should be purpose-free and irresistible, like birdsong.

As they continued, Christian added skulls and quoted Georgia O’Keeffe to decouple skulls from death, then shared his mother’s fierce love of art and her quip, via Marina Abramović, about having scars instead of tattoos. He revealed he had gone to art school but was expelled for what he was “painting on”—drugs—admitting this with brittle humor.

The boy, carrying stolen pills and bearing red marks on his arms, rattled with shame and pain. Sensing his state, Christian softly told him, “Don’t hurt yourself.” The kindness expanded something within the boy, and the two fell into a wordless collaboration, each recognizing the other’s talent. In that hidden space, their painting suspended their suffering, a blessing for Christian and a miracle for the boy, who had wanted to die throughout the spring.