Pues Se Quedó Pintada, Mija

The first thing Rosita noticed was how quiet it was.

Not peaceful—quiet, like a theater moments after the curtain drops. The pines stood half-charred and silent, their trunks blackened and flaking like the pages of an old book left too close to a candle. No birdsong. Just crows circling above, drifting lazy spirals into a sun still smeared with smoke.

She told the ranger at the base station she was “just hiking,” and he nodded, but his eyes held the kind of softness that meant he didn’t believe her and didn’t press it either.

No one came here for the scenery anymore. Not since the fire.

Rosita parked her beat-up Jeep by the same trailhead she and Anita used to use, back when everything still smelled like pine and promise. She laced up her boots—still flecked with glittery red dust from some desert detour months ago—and stepped into the trees like a trespasser returning to the scene of something unfinished.

It had been six years. Maybe seven. Last time they were here, the air had smelled sharp with frost and dry leaves, and Anita had tucked a sprig of cedar behind Rosita’s ear, laughing about how it made her look “like a Christmas goddess.” Rosita didn’t know how to receive tenderness back then. She had brushed it off. They had shared a sleeping bag but not a future.

Now, the forest felt hollowed. Pine sap hung in the air, sticky-sweet and medicinal. Beneath it: the wet smell of ash, like old pages turned to soot. But something else laced the wind, too—something that reminded Rosita of burnt sugar and old perfume. It caught in her throat, made her eyes water for reasons she didn’t want to unpack.

She hiked in slow silence, boots crunching over scorched needles and curled bark. The trail was half-gone, overtaken by new growth already curling green and defiant through cracks in the earth. Ferns, impossibly brave.

At a bend in the path, two hikers passed her going the other way. One of them—older, in a sunhat that had seen better decades—paused and said, “You here to see the girl?”

Rosita blinked. “Excuse me?”

“The mural,” the woman clarified, voice lowering as if discussing a grave or a ghost. “She’s up past the old granite outcrop, just before the deadfall ridge. You’ll know her when you see her.”

Her companion tugged gently at her arm, and the woman nodded once at Rosita before disappearing down the trail, leaving behind only the faint scent of eucalyptus ointment and mystery.

Rosita kept walking.

She told herself she wasn’t curious. She told herself she wasn’t looking for Anita. She told herself that the smell in the air—the perfume of smoke and something beloved—was just the memory playing tricks.

The sky had begun to shift by the time she reached the outcrop. Pale blue bleeding into ember-orange. The stone jutted from the hillside like a shoulder blade, wide and weathered and streaked with soot. And there—on its broadest face—was the girl.

Rosita stopped breathing.

She wasn’t painted like street art or murals in the city. There were no hard lines, no graffiti edges. She looked like she had bled into the rock, her face emerging from the stone like a dream remembered in pieces.

A white dress clung to her body. Her hair curled wild at her shoulders. Her hand was raised—not waving, not reaching, but held open as if mid-sentence.

The eyes…

The eyes were the worst part. They weren’t Anita’s. Not exactly. But they held the same stillness. That same wide, waiting look Rosita had seen the last time they stood on this trail, when she’d said, “I don’t think I can do this,” and Anita had nodded, like that answer hadn’t already broken something permanent.

She remembered the last time they stood on this trail—how Anita had bent to tie her boot, then looked up and said, “If we ever get lost out here, just follow the smell of smoke and the sound of my laugh.” Rosita had smiled but said nothing. The air had smelled like pine and potential, and Anita had been so alive it was blinding. But Rosita hadn’t known how to follow anyone yet. Not back then.

Rosita stepped forward slowly, heart pounding like she’d found a relic, a fossil, a body.

She didn’t touch the mural. She just stood there, and let the forest hold its breath with her.

Somewhere behind her, a crow called once—sharp and low.

In the fading gold of the sky, the mural girl stared back. And in the sweet smoke curling around her boots, Rosita thought she heard Anita whisper her name.

Rosita didn’t return to town right away. She sat in front of the mural for what felt like hours, back pressed against a scorched stump, arms around her knees, as the light turned gold then grey. The painted girl stared forward, frozen mid-motion, half-invitation, half-farewell.

The dress was wrong.

Anita never wore white.

She wore forest green, rust orange, the occasional band tee she pretended wasn’t borrowed from Rosita. But never white. Not even when they’d once been caught in the rain and Rosita offered her a change of clothes. Anita had laughed, kissed her temple, and said, “You keep that color. I’d ruin it.”

But in the mural, she was robed in white. The fabric hung off her like a memory still in the process of dissolving. Flames curled up around her ankles, stylized and strange, like a stained-glass window in a church built from wildfire. Her hand was raised—not waving. Not reaching. Just… open.

Rosita stared at it for a long time.

The paint looked old, cracked in places. Weathered. And yet… there was no smoke damage. No signs of recent creation. It was as if the fire had burned around it. Or because of it.

A breeze stirred the ash. Somewhere, unseen, a crow cackled.

Rosita stood, took a step closer. The girl’s expression was unreadable—eyes too wide, mouth too soft, something like awe or grief carved into the curve of her painted brow. It looked like Anita, yes. But also… it didn’t.

It looked like the version of Anita who could have been.

The one who wasn’t held back by their bad timing or Rosita’s fear. The one who might’ve danced barefoot into her life and never looked back.

She reached out. Her fingers brushed the stone.

It was warm.

Not sun-warm—heartbeat warm. Like it had blood underneath. Rosita yanked her hand back, breath catching sharp in her throat. For a moment, she could swear the painted eyes flickered.

She didn’t run. She just walked back down the trail like someone trying not to cry in a public place.

That night, curled on the narrow mattress in her roadside motel, Rosita dreamed.

Anita stood barefoot among the trees, laughing. Not the mural Anita—the real one, the one who once snorted when she laughed too hard, the one who got mosquito bites instantly and wore too much bug spray like it was perfume. Her hair was longer in the dream, or maybe the wind was just being kind. She turned toward Rosita and smiled, wide and sunlit.

“You found me,” Anita said.

Rosita tried to speak but no sound came.

Anita tilted her head—just slightly, just enough. The way she used to when waiting for Rosita to say what she was feeling instead of hiding behind sarcasm. That tiny, impossible kindness.

Then the trees filled with smoke.

And Rosita woke up alone, the pillow beneath her head damp with something she didn’t want to name.

The mural started to change.

Subtly. Slowly. Just enough to make Rosita question her memory—but not enough to stop her from believing.

The first time, the girl’s expression seemed softer. The corners of her mouth bent upward, barely. Like a secret, not a smile. Rosita chalked it up to the light. To the way dusk slanted through the burnt trees.

But the next day, the eyes were closed.

Only for a moment. Rosita swore they had been. When she blinked, they were open again. Still, something had shifted.

No one else saw it.

She asked a group of hikers. A park ranger. Even the guy at the general store who sold her canned coffee and trail mix. They all knew about the mural—of course they did—but none of them had noticed anything different.

“She’s always been like that,” the ranger said, with a half-shrug. “Been there since the fire. People leave flowers sometimes.”

Rosita started bringing offerings.

She left a small lighter from Anita’s old car—one of those cheap plastic ones with a sticker of a koi fish, still tucked in the glove compartment after all these years. She left a pinecone, the same type they used to collect and toss into the lake like skipping stones. She pressed a flower from the motel parking lot between the pages of her journal and carried it up the trail, setting it gently at the mural’s base.

She didn’t know what she expected. Maybe for the eyes to close again. Maybe for the lips to part.

Instead, the mural just watched her.

Rosita began talking to it.

Softly, at first. Just murmured things—memories, bits of songs they used to scream-sing in the car, apologies that cracked in her throat.

“I was scared,” she told it, voice hoarse from smoke and shame. “I thought I had time.”

“I didn’t know how to be… seen. You saw too much.”

“I kept myself busy because stillness felt like admitting I’d missed something beautiful.”

The mural never responded. But it didn’t turn away, either.

She came back every day. Like church.

One afternoon, an older woman appeared on the trail. Silver braid, sun hat, boots that looked broken in by decades. She watched Rosita kneel at the mural’s edge, then stepped closer and said, almost gently, “Some girls don’t pass on.”

Rosita looked up. The woman nodded toward the painted figure.

“They imprint,” she said. “Like deer paths, like prayers. Something happens—grief, love, fire—and they settle into the land like water into bark.”

She tapped the ground with her walking stick.

“She left something here. You’re not crazy.”

Rosita didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

The woman left with the same quiet she’d arrived in, like she was part of the woods. Maybe she was.

That night, Rosita stayed late.

She lit a small tea candle and placed it at the base of the mural, careful to nestle it in the stone so nothing could catch. The flame flickered weak and gold against the painted white of Anita’s dress.

Rosita sat cross-legged, jacket pulled tight, and stared.

“I never stopped thinking about you,” she said, not bothering to hide the shake in her voice. “Not once.”

FLASHBACK

The last time they’d come to Big Bear together, the forest was golden.

The air had smelled like cinnamon and smoke—that soft fall scent that makes everything feel like it’s about to start. Aspens had fluttered in the breeze like butter-colored confetti, and Rosita remembered thinking the trees looked like they were laughing.

Anita carried a dented thermos of coffee, laced with cardamom and cinnamon. “Still warm,” she’d said, passing it to Rosita with that lopsided grin.

They’d hiked up to the overlook and sat close on a sun-warmed rock, trading sips and inside jokes. Everything was easy—until it wasn’t.

Anita had turned, leaned in. Not suddenly, not boldly. Just softly, like she was saying, I’d like to try, if you’ll let me.

Rosita had pulled away.

“Now’s not a good time,” she’d mumbled, clutching the thermos like a life vest. “I’m not… ready. I don’t want to ruin this.”

Anita had nodded. Said nothing. Her smile faded just a little, like sunlight slipping behind a branch.

They finished the hike. Didn’t talk much after. That was the last time they saw each other.

Anita moved out of state a few months later. And a year after that, she died in a house fire. Rosita found out through a Facebook post. Anita’s cousin tagged her in a photo from a memorial she didn’t attend.

She never said goodbye.

PRESENT DAY

“I just… I thought I’d ruined it. That if I came back, it would hurt too much.”

The mural didn’t move. But the wind changed.

Smoke curled low through the trees—soft, not choking. Like incense. The scent was sweet again: pine sap, and jasmine, and something old and sugary that clung to the corners of Rosita’s memory. She closed her eyes and breathed it in until her chest ached with something too big for a name.

When she opened them, the mural looked the same.

But Rosita didn’t.

She reached out, fingertips brushing paint and stone and time. Her reflection shimmered in the glossy surface—the faint sheen of weathered sealant, maybe, or something else. For the first time, she didn’t flinch at what she saw.

She stepped closer.

The mural had changed again.

Both of Anita’s hands were visible now. One rested gently at her side. The other—open, reaching—extended just slightly from the painted stone.

Not a plea. Not a ghost’s grasp. Just a hand offered. A hand remembered.

Rosita stepped forward, barefoot in the ash-soft dirt.

“I’m sorry I didn’t follow you,” she whispered.

The mural turned to face her.

Not fast. Not sudden. Just… shifted. As if it had always been waiting for the right moment to move.

The eyes closed again. And for a second, Rosita swore the mural smiled.

Then the flame flickered out. Smoke curled upward. The woods fell still.

She didn’t feel watched anymore. She felt known.

When she returned to the mural, Rosita brought nothing.

No pinecones. No matches. No bits of pressed wildflower or borrowed trinkets.

Just herself.

The clearing was quieter than it had ever been. The wind barely stirred the scorched trees. The crows weren’t calling. Even the ash seemed to hold its breath.

She noticed it right away—the mural had shifted again.

Anita was turned slightly to the left now, as if beginning to walk away. Her shoulders angled gently, hair falling like shadow across her cheek. The flames behind her had softened into watercolor, less consuming, more like memory.

Rosita’s throat ached.

“I loved you,” she said, voice thin and shaking. “I know I never said it. I think I thought if I said it out loud, I’d have to… be it. And I didn’t know how.”

The mural didn’t move.

She took a step closer, breath catching.

“I’m sorry I didn’t follow you.”

She didn’t reach out this time. No hand to stone. Just her eyes meeting the painted ones. Just her breath fogging slightly in the cool, still air.

Slowly, slowly, the mural turned.

Anita’s body shifted, not jarringly—but with the unhurried grace of a memory returning home. Her gaze met Rosita’s fully now. Eyes wide, expression unreadable, and then—

Rosita saw it.

In the curve of the lips, the set of the brow, the trembling warmth behind the gaze.

Her own face.

Her own eyes.

Her grief and her love and her becoming, all reflected back in pigment and stone.

The mural wasn’t just Anita anymore.

It was them—the love that bloomed and broke and lingered anyway. The ache that shaped Rosita’s silence. The warmth Anita offered, and the warmth she now gave herself.

Something inside her loosened.

She smiled through tears.

The mural shimmered, faintly, like a painting caught in the last rays of dusk. The flames blurred at the edges. The hand stayed outstretched, but lighter now—less a haunting, more a benediction.

“Thank you,” Rosita whispered.

She turned and walked away barefoot, ash clinging to her soles like a final blessing. The wind picked up behind her, gentle this time. The forest watched her go.

And the mural faded into stone.