Frida's fourteenth birthday evening was when the blue haired teenager looked over her new gifts and cards. Lying on her back on her bed, in the final peaceful seclusion of her room, she read the cursive of her mother.
Obeying the law can be as much of an art as music, Frida! It read. She sighed, glancing at the book that her mother had given her. An art? She scoffed and turned her back on it suddenly turning towards it sitting up abruptly.
"You're waiting until I go to sleep, aren't you?" she hissed at the hardcover. Her room was silent as she awaited a never coming response. She looked away finally, passing her black painted nails over the strong strings of her new red guitar designed especially for her. She passed through music albums that classmates had individually given her, three of them the same- two she could easily sell over the internet.
With dull dark blue eyes, the rebel pressed a silver button on her CD player- a rare get in stores and pricy, though she couldn't care less. As the rock drilled through her ears she flopped back on her bed, eyes closed and waiting impatiently for sleep to hit her or for her player to stop playing, its batteries finally dead.
It was through sheer luck that she had been able to hear the tapping by her window and glance at the swaying curtains playing over an unwrapped, unopened and unnamed white crisp box. She frowned, slowly sitting up.
"You got her a paint set?" Manny's grandfather asked as he glared with puzzled eyes over the white box a few minutes earlier. The Hispanic teenager grinned.
"Not just a paint set," he responded.
Frida held up the box in her hands, staring at it incredulously before laughing over the roar of her fresh music.
"A can spray paint set." Manny finished before flicking his belt and dashing through the window.
"Dude," Frida managed, opening the box and lifting out a can with its cap in bright red. "Get out of my head."
She suddenly noticed a small card taped onto the side.
I'm not in your head. She read and had to smirk. "You know me too well," and- out of curiosity- she turned the card on its back.
I know.
Outside of her window, El Tigre grinned, his arms crossed and slightly shivering in the night air. His green eyes blinked at the blue hair that stuck out of the warmth of her room. Frida grinned and he smiled back.
"You look pretty cold out there," she toyed.
"You look pretty warm," he added back, "Can I come in?"
"When can't you?"
Easily slipping through her window he muttered: "When your dad or you dogs are around."
Frida laughed.
The next day, Manny and Frida were placed in three weeks detention for graffiti on the cafeteria's wall.
"The best gift ever," Frida whispered to her best friend, who whispered back in a well rehearsed voice:
"Anything for my best friend."