Black line drawing of a teepee with the words Girls Have Cooties, a cactus, a sun and clouds, drawn on tracing paper beside pens and a hand with a tattooed forearm.

Teepee and cactus desert design sketch

Black and grey · Flash

A pen line drawing of a patterned teepee with the lettering Girls Have Cooties across its front, set beside a cactus, a rising sun, clouds with sparkles, and distant mountains. The linework is clean and even, with dotted and triangular ornament on the teepee and light shading in the desert ground. The design is shown in black ink on pale paper, with a hand and drawing pens at the edge of the frame.

Cactus Sun Cloud Desert Mountain Sparkle Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sheet came off Gran's washing line still smelling of soap, and Ada dragged it across the yard to where Tobias was sawing the last broom handle in half. He had already marked the flap in black marker, letters leaning uphill: GIRLS HAVE COOTIES. 'That's the rule,' he said, not looking up. 'Rules go on the door.' Ada looked at the letters for a long time, then at the saguaro by the fence, which was taller than their roof and had been there longer than the trailer. 'Fine,' she said. 'But you're sleeping outside it.'

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They pitched the teepee in the last of the light, the poles lashed at the top with garden twine and the bottom weighted with bricks from the broken wall. Tobias drew triangles and dots along the sides with a pencil he had borrowed without asking, and Ada painted little stars around the top until the sheet looked like it had been caught in a sandstorm of glitter. When the coyotes started up beyond the wash, they crawled inside together and pretended not to be scared, which was easier than pretending not to be cold.

In the night Ada woke, took the marker from her pocket and wrote a second line underneath the first, in careful capitals so it would be legible by torchlight: AND TOBIAS IS THE WORST. She went back to sleep before he could argue.

In the morning the sun came up red behind the mountains and laid the teepee's shadow long across the sand. Tobias crawled out, read the flap, and burst out laughing. Then he took the marker from her hand, crossed out the second line, and wrote beneath it, slowly and with his tongue between his teeth: EXCEPT FOR ADA.