Marked

by Norah McClintock

  “You just thought what?”

  “Nothing.”

  Her eyes were dark brown. They stared right at me.

  “What did you think?” she said.

  “Well, if you live around here...”

  “I don’t,” she said. “My clients live around here. There’s a big difference, believe me.”

  The way she said it, it sounded like she was glad she wasn’t part of the neighborhood. I didn’t get it. Who wouldn’t want to live in a nice house with expensive cars in the driveway? If you lived around here, for sure your mom wouldn’t have to work at some lousy minimum-wage job. For sure the highlight of her life wouldn’t be getting a diploma so she could be a dental hygienist.

  “Do you mind?” she said. She handed me a couple of leashes—the ones for the Jack Russell and the pug. While I held them, she adjusted the straps of her backpack. She took the leashes back. “I have to go,” she said. “I’m on a schedule. I have to deliver these guys home and pick up the second shift. Nice meeting you, I’m sure.” And there it was, that half-breezy, half-sarcastic tone that made me wonder what I had done wrong. She was long gone before I realized that we hadn’t really met at all. I had no idea what her name was, and I hadn’t told her mine. She hadn’t even asked. Well, why would she?

  I went back to work. I told myself I wasn’t going to think about her, not even for one second. Maybe she didn’t live around here, but she sure acted the way I bet most of the girls in this neighborhood did, all stuck-up and superior. I told myself that I didn’t care if I never saw her again.

  But if that were true, why couldn’t I get her and her brown eyes out of my mind?

  chapter six

  By the end of my first week on the job, the thrill was gone—not that there had been much of a thrill to begin with.

  “If the utility companies want to get rid of all the graffiti so badly, why don’t they just hire someone to watch their property?” I said to Stike one morning while I refilled my spray bottles and packed some fresh rags. “The taggers always go back to the same place.”

  “Hmph,” Stike said. He was deep into his newspaper.

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  Stike glanced up at me. He looked annoyed that I was distracting him from catching up on what had happened in the city since the last time he’d read the paper.

  “You think the utility companies would be paying your salary if this didn’t work?” he said. “Ray has the contract to maintain the utility poles in this area. You’re just one of a couple of kids working for him. He had a kid working in Hillmount all last month.” Hillmount was a nice neighborhood, almost exactly like the one I was working in. “The taggers got tired of their stuff being removed. They moved on. We haven’t had a call from there in two weeks now. We re-assigned the kid to another neighborhood. There are other contractors with other kids cleaning up across the city.”

  “Yeah, but it looks like it’s always the same guys,” I said. “At least, it is where I’m working. I recognize their tags. Take the utility control box I’m always starting with. I bet if the utility companies got someone to watch that box for a couple of nights, they could catch the guy easy—”

  “Tick-tock,” Stike said, holding his watch out to me.

  Right.

  What did I care what the utility companies did? They were paying me, weren’t they? I had a job, didn’t I?

  Still, I knew I was right. I decided to keep track of the graffiti I removed, so I could prove to Stike that it was always the same guys.

  When I got to the utility control box, I copied all the tags I found into my sketchbook before I sprayed them and rubbed them out.

  I did the same at the next stop. Besides initials that I recognized, there was another one of those neon orange triangles. This one said W to the left, 7 to the right, and S underneath. I copied it and cleaned it off along with the rest of the tags on the pole. I was moving down to the end of the street when I passed a house that had a tall hedge all the way around it—so tall that I couldn’t see the property until I was riding past the end of the driveway.

  An ambulance was parked beside the house. There was a cop car next to it.

  A couple of people were standing in the driveway talking to the cops.

  One of the cops turned as I rode by. He looked right at me. It was the same cop who had asked if I’d seen anything the day the suv was stolen. I was shaking all over as I passed him.

  My next stop was at the end of the street, practically out of sight of the house where the cops were. I wanted to keep going, to get as far from the house—well, the cops—as possible. I had to tell myself that I had a job to do and that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  I stopped where I was supposed to stop. I tried to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. But I couldn’t keep myself from looking back down the street to the house where the cops were.

  Every so often a few neighbors would come and stand on the sidewalk at the end of the driveway. They were probably trying to find out what had happened.

  I worked quickly.

  Two women in running gear jogged toward the house. They stopped at the end of the driveway and ran in place while they talked to the people who were just standing around. After a few minutes, they started running again. They ran past me and then stopped. One of them jogged in place while the other one bent down to tie her shoelace. The one who was jogging in place said, “If she hadn’t gone downstairs to get a glass of water when she did, she never would have heard a thing—she’s as deaf as a post. I hope she’s going to be okay.”

  “This area used to be safe,” the other one said. She started to re-tie her other shoelace. “But that’s the third break-in in a few weeks. Joe’s got a call in to a home security company.”

  “I wish Rob would do that too,” the first one said. “He put security stickers on the windows. He thinks that’s enough to deter a break-in, but I don’t know.”

  Just like that she turned her head and saw that I was listening to her. She gave me a frosty look, like, how dare I eavesdrop on her. I finished up what I was doing. The two of them started running again.

  I was packed up and was getting back on my bike when someone called my name.

  It was that same cop.

  I stood where I was while he walked down the sidewalk toward me. He wasn’t that tall, but he was built. I bet he worked out. I bet if you punched him in the gut, it would feel like punching a brick wall. He had a way of walking that let you know he wasn’t afraid. Well, why should he be? He had a gun and one of those batons, plus pepper spray and a radio right there on his right shoulder so that he could call for backup anytime. I had nothing.

  “Can you account for your presence here?” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” I unfolded my work order and held it out to him.

  He scanned the pages, looking up at me every couple of seconds to make sure I didn’t try anything. He handed the pages back to me.

  “You’ve been in a few scrapes before, isn’t that right?” he said.

  He must have checked up on me after the last time he talked to me, so there was no point in denying it.

  “Yes.”

  Across the street, I saw the girl with the dogs. She was heading back toward the house that had been broken into.

  The cop asked me some questions about my job.

  The girl with the dogs paused for a moment opposite the house that had been broken into. Then she crossed the street and talked to the people who were standing there. They seemed to know her pretty well. I wondered if any of them were clients of hers but decided they weren’t because nobody paid any attention to the dogs.

  The cop asked me how I knew to come into this neighborhood. I told him that it was all up to the utility companies.

  “They have this graffiti hotline,” I said. “I guess people around here call in a lot.”

  The cop didn’t say anything except, “You can go.”

  I got on my bike. I glanced back, looking for the
girl. I didn’t see her, but there was the cop, staring at me as if he were trying to decide whether to arrest me. I felt like pedaling as fast as I could to get away from there. But that would probably make him suspicious, and I didn’t want that. I sure was glad that my next stop was two streets away.

  chapter seven

  I calmed down a little once I was away from the cops. I concentrated on what I was supposed to be doing. I copied down the graffiti that I found. And after a while, I started to notice something new. I found different initials in different places, but no matter what the initials were, the style was always the same. Maybe I was wrong—I’m no expert. But I do have a good eye. And what my eye was telling me was that a lot of what I was finding, including the neon graffiti, looked like it had been done by the same person.

  Finally, I took a break for lunch. One good thing about the neighborhood where I was working was that there were little parks everywhere. There must have been six or seven. None of them were big. A couple of them had swings and slides for little kids. One of them had a sandbox with a lot of toys in it. That made me stop and stare. If anyone left toys in a sandbox in my neighborhood, they’d be gone before you knew it. A couple of other parks just had a few benches. In one park, I saw old people feeding the birds. In another one, I saw dog owners letting their dogs fool around.

  I chose a quiet park and sat on a bench to eat. While I munched my sandwich, I glanced around. Someone was sitting with her back to me on a bench at the other end of the park. I didn’t realize at first who it was. In fact I don’t think I would have realized at all if it hadn’t been for Buster.

  He was off his leash and was frisking around, chasing a squirrel one minute, sniffing the base of a water fountain the next and racing in circles around the bench right after that.

  That’s when the girl turned. She said, “Buster, sit.”

  Buster raced around the bench again. He didn’t stop until the girl unzipped her backpack and reached inside. Then all of a sudden he plunked his butt down on the ground and watched her, his ears pricked up like little sails.

  “Good boy,” the girl said. “Lie down.”

  Buster hesitated.

  “Lie down,” the girl said again, firmly but patiently.

  Buster dropped his front end down onto the grass in front of the bench.

  She popped a treat into Buster’s mouth.

  Buster stayed put.

  Then the girl saw me watching her. She turned away like I was poison, even though I had caught Buster for her that time.

  I got up, dropped my sandwich bag into a garbage can and walked over to her.

  I guess I startled her because she dropped the paper she was holding. I was going to pick it up for her, but she snatched it from the ground first. It looked like a letter. I guessed it was personal.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She just stared at me.

  “I saw you this morning talking to those people,” I said. “I heard what happened to that woman.”

  “You heard?” she said.

  She was acting like she was mad at me for something. But I hadn’t done anything.

  “I heard someone say her place was broken into. I heard a couple of women talking about getting better security. One of them said her husband just puts up security stickers. He thinks that will protect his house.”

  “Yeah?” she said, her face still serious. But now she seemed interested in what I was saying. “You mean, those women who were jogging?”

  I was surprised that she had noticed me near those women.

  “Yeah.”

  “The blond one said that, right?” she said. “She’s out all day, and her husband travels a lot. I asked him if he wanted me to walk his dog for him, but he said no. He’d rather leave it cooped up in the house all day than pay me ten dollars to walk it.”

  “It wasn’t her,” I said. “It was the other one—the one with the dark hair.”

  She looked at me for a moment.

  “I saw a cop talking to you,” she said finally.

  “He saw me working near a house that got robbed last week,” I said. “Then he saw me again today. He’s probably wondering if it’s a coincidence.”

  She stared at me with those dark brown eyes. “And you told him it was, huh?” she said.

  What kind of question was that?

  “Yeah,” I said. “Of course.” I glanced at the paper in her hand. “So, who is that from? Your boyfriend?”

  “My brother.”

  “Your brother who owns Buster?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Where is he? On vacation somewhere?”

  She gave me a sharp look. I felt as if I’d said something wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what. She stood up and snapped a leash onto Buster’s collar.

  “My name is Colin,” I said.

  She didn’t tell me her name. Instead she just turned and walked away. well, big surprise. For all I knew, she had a boyfriend— maybe he lived in this neighborhood.

  chapter eight

  It was a week before I saw the girl again, and then I saw her twice in one day.

  The first time was in the morning. I was cleaning a utility pole when I spotted her on the other side of the street with her five dogs. She didn’t look at me. But I looked at her. Maybe she wasn’t friendly, but she sure was pretty.

  A car stopped beside her. The driver rolled down his window and said, “Alyssa! I thought that was you.”

  Her face lit up, and she looked even prettier. Alyssa was the perfect name for her. It seemed to go with her gold-streaked hair.

  “Dr. Evans,” she said. “Hi.”

  “Mrs. Petroff was in the clinic the other day. She asked about you. She’s thinking of getting another dog and wanted to know if you were still in the dog-walking business. She said she hadn’t seen you around for a while. I’ll have to tell her you’ve moved your business to another neighborhood.”

  “Thanks to Mrs. Linzer,” Alyssa said. “She hired me to walk Freddie.” I wondered which one was Freddie. “She gave my name to some of her neighbors. But I’d go back to Hillmount if she needed me, especially to walk a puppy.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Dr. Evans said. “And I could use you back at the clinic on Saturdays once summer is over, if you’re interested.”

  “That would be great,” Alyssa said.

  “You have a way with animals,” Dr. Evans said. “We’ve missed you. You have a good summer, and I’ll see you in September.”

  He rolled up his window and drove away.

  Alyssa glanced across the street. She saw me, but she didn’t wave or smile—not that I expected her to.

  I saw her again later that day. This time it was nowhere near the neighborhood where we both worked. I was on my way home after handing in my work sheets to Stike. My mom had class that night. I knew she had left me something I could warm up for supper, but now that I was making money, I decided to get myself a meatball sandwich. I was on my way back to my bike with it when this little white blur with black-and-tan markings hurtled toward me, trailing a leash.

  Buster.

  He jumped at the bag that had my sandwich in it. I held it above my head. No way was I going to let him grab my supper. I looked around for Alyssa. She was dropping something into a mailbox down at the corner. Buster was yapping and jumping as if he thought he could leap right over my head and snatch my sandwich if he just tried hard enough. Alyssa didn’t even notice that he was gone.

  I kept the sandwich out of Buster’s reach as I scooped up the end of his leash.

  “Come on, Buster,” I said.

  I led him over to Alyssa.

  “You lose something?” I said.

  When she turned around, I saw that she had been crying. She looked at the leash in my hand and at Buster, who was still yapping and jumping for my sandwich.

  “Thank you,” she said. She took the leash from me.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  Stupid question. Her eyes were all watery.
Her cheeks were wet. Her lips were trembling. I could see she was trying hard not to cry in front of me.

  She stared at me for a moment. Then she said, “I just heard. My brother is in the hospital.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He was beaten up.” Her eyes burned into me.

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “what happened? Does he know the guys who did it?”

  Here yes went from burning to freezing.

  “He was trying to protect me,” she said.

  That confused me.

  “I thought you said he was out of town,” I said. I wondered how he could protect her when he wasn’t even around.

  “Right,” she said. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  The way she said it, it sounded like she didn’t believe me. What was going on? Why did she always act like she thought I was lying to her?

  “Come on, Buster,” she said. She wheeled away from me. I watched her march down the street, moving so fast that Buster’s little legs were a blur trying to keep up with her. It was only when I was back on my bike heading home with my sandwich that another question occurred to me: What was her brother trying to protect her from? I kept an eye out for Alyssa the next day and the day after that. But I didn’t see her.

  So I concentrated on my work and what I thought was a good plan—convincing Stike that if the company could catch the person doing all the graffiti, they could save a lot of money. My mom laughed when I told her about it.

  “If they catch whoever is doing it, you won’t have a job,” she said.

  I told her about the kid who used to work in Hillmount.

  “They’d send me to someplace else,” I said. “And anyway, if it was nice graffiti, if it was done by someone who really knew how to draw, I wouldn’t care so much,” I said. “But this is ugly—just stupid initials by someone who’s probably trying to make people think there’s a gang involved. But there isn’t. I know there isn’t.”

  I turned out to be wrong about that.

  For a while things were going along so smoothly that I started to think my biggest problem for the rest of the summer was going to be how not to die of boredom.