Free Zee's Way by Kristen Butcher Page A

thought we weren’t looking. Then they couldn’t stop staring.
    Okay, so the five of us don’t exactly blend into a crowd. Danny’s got blue hair and Horace’s head is shaved. Benny’s lip is pierced, Mike has a thing for leather and studs, and we all have tattoos. So what! If our money’s good, it shouldn’t matter what we look like.
    Try telling that to the Fairhaven merchants. Their minds were made up. They didn’t want us around—not that first day or any day after that.
    Whenever we’d go into a store, someone would follow us. Don’t handle the merchandise. Don’t read the magazines. Don’t block the aisles. It was a song that played just for us. Women pushing strollers could jam the aisles. Old people could pick up the merchandise. Middle-aged men could browse the magazines. It was just fifteen-year-old guys who weren’t allowed.
    It was the same thing outside the stores. All we had to do was stand on the walkway in front of a shop and the owner would glare at us until we moved on. We couldn’t even skateboard through the parking lot without getting yelled at. But since we had nowhere else to go, we put up with it.
    Until the No Loitering signs went up. That’s when we decided it was time to take a stand. Not that we really did anything different than what we were already doing.We just did more of it. And we did it on purpose.
    Except for breaking the window in Jack-man’s Market. That was a total accident.
    It was a Sunday morning. The shopping center wasn’t open yet, so we were using the parking lot as a soccer field. The problem was that Benny didn’t know his own strength. Before any of us realized what had happened, he’d kicked the ball through Jackman’s window and set off the alarm.
    We didn’t wait around for the police. Accident or not, we knew we’d be blamed. And we were right. The store owners said the soccer ball was all the proof they needed. From then on they treated us like criminals. We were only allowed in a store two at a time—and only for five minutes. When we came out, we had to clear off the property completely. If we stood around for even thirty seconds, a police cruiser would show up.
    I looked at the sky. The clouds were completely gone now, and I could see the glow of the shopping center lights ahead.
    On the corner of Madison and Harper, I pressed close to a big oak tree and peered up and down the deserted street. Then when I was sure the coast was clear, I bolted across the road.
    Feniuk’s Hardware was the last store on the strip. There was nothing between it and the sidewalk except a Dumpster. I ducked behind the Dumpster and gazed up at the wall of the store. Bathed in the light of a nearby streetlamp, it was embarrassingly white and empty.
    I pulled one of the spray cans from my backpack and began shaking it. Then I looked at the wall again.
    It wouldn’t be empty for long.

Chapter Two
    The reason I painted the wall at night was so no one would see me. But darkness—the thing that makes night a good time for hiding—also makes it a crummy time for painting. Darkness blurs lines and erases details. And it sucks the life out of spray paint until every color looks gray.
    So when I returned to the scene of the crime the next morning, it was like I wasseeing that graffiti for the first time. I had no sooner stepped onto Madison Boulevard than the three-foot-high words started screaming at me!
    My first impulse was to hurl myself at the wall and smother them into silence. My second impulse was to make a run for it. But I didn’t do either of those things.
    Instead, I went and stood beside Horace, who was leaning against the oak tree.
    He wagged a thumb at the wall and the stunned shopkeepers huddled in front of it. “You did that?” There was surprise in his voice.
    â€œYeah. So?” I muttered defensively. Last night the graffiti had seemed like a good idea,