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thought—” I shut my mouth. I didn’t want to say anything that she might take the wrong way.
    â€œYou just thought what?”
    â€œNothing.”
    Her eyes were dark brown. They stared right at me.
    â€œWhat did you think?” she said.
    â€œWell, if you live around here...”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œDo 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 secondshift. 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.
    â€œIf 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.”
    â€œ
Hmph
,” Stike said. He was deep into his newspaper.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œYeah, 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 towatch that box for a couple of nights, they could catch the guy easy—”
    â€œTick-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