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tightly.
    I’ve never seen her before and I’m about to ask her what the hell she’s doing when the bells on the door jingle and I see a cop come into the store.
    I glance down at her face and can tell that she’s scared.
    â€œPlease just help me out here,” she whispers.

CANDACE
    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