I wander aimlessly for a while before I find a spot that looks like it might have some potential. A little one-story elementary school at the back of a corner lot where two quiet streets intersect. The parking lot is empty, and the school is obviously deserted for the weekend. Just the kind of place I’ve been hoping to find.
I cross through the playground to the school and duck behind the building. I’m in the dead space behind the school, where a line of pine trees and a chain-link fence partially shield the area from the street. I stick my face up to the fence. There’s a sidewalk on the other side of the trees, and across the street are some houses, far enough away that I’m pretty sure they don’t have a clear view of the school. A bit farther down the street is a four-way stop sign and some more houses. There’s no traffic in sight.
Confident that the coast is clear, I turn and examine the wall in front of me. A big metal box hums quietly at one end of the building, and two large windows sit just above eye level. I get on my tiptoes and peer through one of them into a classroom. I can just make out little desks and little chairs and colorful kids’ drawings all over the walls. Between the two windows is an eight-foot stretch of clean brick. It’s perfect, the kind of blank slate I’d never find back in the city.
I stop and listen. Other than the electrical box, some kids screaming in the distance and the faraway buzz of a lawn mower, it’s dead quiet. In one sense, this is great. It means that nobody is around. On the other hand, it makes me a bit nervous that there isn’t at least some traffic to help create a bit of white noise. Spray paint can be pretty loud.
I drop my pack to the ground and unzip it, then bend over and start pulling out my supplies. Five spray cans—brown, two blues, black and red. I know enough to leave them in the pack, upright and sticking out for when I need them, in case it needs to be rezipped in a hurry if I have to make tracks.
The first time I did graffiti—I mean really did it, with spray paint, not just markers—I was scared shitless. I’d been out with Rick a bunch of times when he was bombing, but I’d always just stood back and watched. A couple of times we’d had to run for it when somebody got nosy, but he was always totally cool about it. We’d usually end up in some park, hiding in the trees, laughing our asses off and passing a bottle back and forth. The first time I did it myself, though, it was like I had crossed a line. I was doing something I shouldn’t have been, and it felt really good. The thing I liked the most, though, was the final product. We weren’t just out smashing shit up or doing drugs or whatever—we were breaking the rules by creating something new.
I uncap a paint stick. When I’m throwing up a new piece, I like to start with a quick outline. Some people use Magic Markers or charcoal; really good artists just slap up an outline with the spray can, but I like paint sticks. They’re kind of expensive but worth it—they’re slick, so they slide nicely over the walls, and they leave a good crisp edge. They smell really good too.
The trees cast some shadow on me, but it’s still broad daylight, so I have to be extra careful. I’ve been working on this image of a rose. I know it sounds girly, but it’s not, really—it’s got hard edges and, most important, it’s original. I start off with a black outline, then fill in the stem and a couple of thorns with brown paint. I finish the rose with blue—kind of a chalky bluebird-blue for the background, and a deeper blue for the highlights. The final touch is a drop of blood hanging from one of the thorns. I can usually get the whole thing done in about ten or fifteen minutes if I’m working smoothly with no interruptions.
I start sketching, and soon I’m lost in the rhythm of it. Some people are into music, some people play sports, but I get a thrill from the flow of my arm and the smell of the paint.
I finish the outline and reach down to grab a brown spray can. There’s a certain skill to filling in narrow spaces—there’s no room for error, so you need to make sure you have the distance right. Too close to the surface and the paint will puddle and drip; too far and you’ll overdo it, and the paint will feather outside your edges. Either way it will look like shit. I take aim at the ground and shoot a few test blasts, then bite my lip and hit the wall. That’s when I hear a car slow down right behind me, on the other side of the fence, and the whoop sound of a siren, warning me that I’ve been spotted.
I’m careful not to turn around, so my face stays hidden. I quickly and carefully bend down and grab my pack, and then I run. I have a good head start, because the cop car has to take two corners to get to the open edge of the schoolyard entrance. Without taking time to think, I dart to the opposite corner of the playground, tossing my backpack into a small playhouse as I move.
By the time the cruiser makes it around the corner and pulls to a quick stop by the entrance of the playground, I’ve managed to duck behind a garbage can three driveways past the school. I catch my breath and stick my head out just far enough to see a cop jump from the car and run onto the playground. I know it will only take him a minute to realize that I’m not there, so I have to hustle.
As soon as I move out from behind the garbage can, I’ll be exposed, so the question is which way to run. Do I take a chance on crossing the street, hoping there will be a clear path to safety? Or do I run up the driveway of this house and into the backyard instead?
I choose the house, because it will save me a few seconds. As the cop hurries back to the cruiser, I stand up and take off for the yard, as fast as I can. I hear him yell for me to stop, and the car takes off with another whoop whoop, but I don’t look back. I just run.
It’s a lucky break that this backyard backs onto another with no fence between them, just some hedges. I race through the two yards and make it to the sidewalk on the other side. Right away, I see the back of a little strip mall across the street. Moving quickly, I make it into the alley between two buildings. I pull off my hoodie and hat as I run, wedging them behind a Dumpster. Then I hurry around the corner and through the first door I see.
It’s a convenience store, glaringly bright and pretty much empty. The woman behind the counter is reading a magazine and eating pizza—she doesn’t bother to look up at me. The only other person in the store is some young guy standing by a row of chips.
I glance back into the parking lot and catch a glimpse of the cruiser as it pulls in. Shit. I smooth my hair down, take a deep breath and walk over to the chip aisle.
The last thing I need is for the cop to recognize me, so without really thinking it through, I reach over and grab the guy by the hand just as the door jingles and the cop walks in. The guy looks at me, startled. Obviously, right? I mean, a strange girl just grabbed his hand out of nowhere.
I look up at him. “Please just help me out here,” I whisper.
The police officer stands in the doorway, scanning the store. He stops and talks briefly to the clerk. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but the clerk just shakes her head and goes back to her magazine. Then he walks over to where we’re standing and stops. I try to act as if I don’t notice him and reach out to grab a bag of cheese popcorn. Not too surprisingly, the cop won’t mind his own business.
“What are you kids up to tonight?”
The dude I’ve grabbed glances at me, and I can see the wheels spinning in his head. Please don’t give me away, I think, hoping beyond hope that he plays along. Then I feel his hand give mine a little squeeze.
“Not much,” he says to the cop. “Just buying some chips. We’re probably going to just lay low tonight and watch a movie.” He turns to me. “So what do you think?” he asks. “Doritos?”
It goes against everything I believe in, but I can’t afford to get caught, so I force myself to speak in a sickening baby-doll voice. Anything to avoid sounding like a girl who paints graffiti. “My favorite!” I say. “You know that.” To top it off, I giggle and give him a little bump with my hip.
We both try to ignore the cop, but he just stands there, looking at us. “So you guys aren’t heading to the prom?”
“Nope,” I say, remembering to stick with the girly voice. “I’m in, like, a huge fight with my friend Tiffany, and I can’t be in the same room with her, so we, like, decided to skip it, but she’s totally going anyway, probably just to spite me. I mean, I don’t understand why some people have to be such bitches, right?”
The cop’s eyes start to glaze over. “Yeah, sure, whatever,” he says. “Listen, did you guys happen to see a girl running past the store a few minutes ago?”
“What did she look like?” asks my fake boyfriend.
“She had a dark hoodie on and some kind of knitted hat,” the cop says. He looks me up and down. “She was pretty much exactly your size.”
“Wow,” I say. “A five-foot-five teenage girl. Can’t be too many of those around.” He gives me a dirty look, so I giggle again and roll my eyes for good measure.
“Yeah, anyway, you kids stay out of trouble.” He looks like he wants to say something else, but instead he does a slow circuit around the store before finally leaving. As the door jingles behind him, I let out a deep breath.
Fake boyfriend looks at me with a curious, slightly amused expression. I can tell from the way that he’s dressed—ballcap and a Nike T-shirt—that he’s a bit of a jock, which means that he and I probably have nothing in common. He’s cute, though, even if he’s not my type. He has short, dirty-blond hair and brown eyes. One of his front teeth twists slightly in front of the other one, which makes his otherwise conventionally handsome face kind of interesting.
I smile at him. “Thanks a million.”
“Hey, no problem. Ummm…” He glances down, and I realize I still have his hand in a death grip. I drop it and laugh.
“Sorry. I guess I was a bit stressed-out.”
“No worries. So should I call my lawyer? Am I an accessory to murder or anything like that?”
“I promise you it isn’t that serious.” We both stand there for a moment, smiling. I feel incredibly stupid. “Well, thanks again for your help,” I tell him. “Enjoy your chips.”
At the front of the store, I stop and look out the window. The cop is still sitting in his car, sipping on coffee. Shit. I turn around before he notices me and pretend to stare intently at a rack of magazines.
After a minute, fake boyfriend walks to the counter and pays for his chips. He gets to the door and stops when he sees the cruiser.
“Hey,” he says, loud enough for me to realize that he’s talking to me. “You coming?”
I pause. The last thing I want is to be around people, but I know that if I walk out of the store by myself, the cop will definitely start hassling me, and I can’t afford another run-in. Not tonight.
“Yeah,” I say.
He hands me the chips, and I follow him past the cop and through the parking lot to a big pickup truck with a cab on it.
We get in and he starts the engine.
“Where now?” he asks me.
“I guess we could start by getting my clothes back,” I say.