Page 59 of Jagged

"My first?" I smirked while the memories flooded back. "The stone wall beside the foster home that treated me bad. I tagged, bat crap crazy, on the side of their porch in black and blue lettering. I did not sign my name to it."

"Bat crap crazy?" Clem laughed softly. "Why that?"

"In the group home, we only got to watch old shows on DVDs. The X-Files collection was one of them. Scully called Mulder bat crap crazy once, and at the time, it was my phrase of choice," I said, smirking as I pushed my plate toward her. "Your turn."

"Yay." She slid the second half of her bowl to me. "What was the first piece you signed?"

"The first one that I was proud of. There were a bunch of protestors that kept lining up outside this abortion clinic downtown. They spewed out their religious nonsense and attacked patients as they walked inside. They always stood on the west side of the building by this big stone wall because they weren't allowed elsewhere. So, one day I decided that wall was the gamechanger. I spent all night making a giant mural of The Virgin Mary holding a sign that said My Body My Choice. It was my first full wall-size piece. And from then on, every time those protesters appeared in photos, they always had that image in the background." I grinned at the memory then used my finger in the air to pretend to draw my tag. "Jagz appeared first then. That mural is still there. Aged and peeling, but they never removed it."

Clem's eyes twinkled with excitement while she listened to my story. "Oh my goodness. I've seen that work! It's amazing."

"Thanks." I chuckled and shrugged. "My fifteen-year-old self had some good ideas."

"How did you know you could paint like that?"

"I started small. Tagging little things, then larger over time. I could always draw. It was my one sanity at times, and so I expanded it. But I was a runaway, a thief, and a property destroyer. Even if people liked it."

"So many labels…" Her brow furrowed while she nibbled the pita.

"Yeah…those labels got me in trouble."

"How so?"

I smirked, shrugging as I decided on the spot to spill it all. "I got arrested a few times back then for vandalism. Most of the time the charges were dropped because of the content of the art. The property owners didn't hate it, I suppose."

"I mean…street art is beautiful. Seattle has celebratory displays of it."

"Yeah, but like twenty-years ago it wasn't so celebrated. After like six arrests, with the cops constantly chasing me, I wanted to do something big to piss them all off. So…during Pride month, overnight, I tagged the Aurora Bridge in rainbow colors with buckets of paint. I planned it for days. Hid the paint, got the quick applicating rollers. Went wild. I used cones I stole to redirect traffic and everything. But I didn't account for paint drying time. Morning traffic made a huge mess of the rainbow. It was a literal disaster." I smirked at the memory, despite the tangle of satisfaction and guilt that accompanied the memory. "Cars drove over the paint and covered the bridge in a rainbow tie-dye mess by seven."

"I remember that. It was in the news." Her eyes widened. "People went crazy celebrating that, too. It's in the Pride history books, so to speak."

"Maybe, yeah. But the city didn't think it was so great. That time, I got picked up and taken to juvenile detention. For a while." I let it rain, releasing all the information no potential-girlfriend ever wanted or needed. "If it wasn't for Detective Miller, I would've stayed there."

"How's that?" Clem tilted her head, concern still dominating her expression.

"She somehow persuaded the judge to put me in a diversion program. I ended up volunteering at the Seattle P.D. She must've arrested me half a dozen times over the years and instead of just criminalizing me, she gave me a chance."

"I'm glad she did. Is that how you became a cop?" Clem piled her empty plate on top of mine, and her lack of disturbance over the situation unnerved me slightly.

"Yeah. First it was helping out with the youth programs like the anti-drug campaign, the gang violence unit, and then at community events like the gun take back things or the medication return days. Things like that."

"Did you like it?"

"Not at first. I felt forced into it." I smirked and shrugged. "It didn't stop me from tagging either. I just got smarter about it."

"I mean, up until the bridge stunt, you seemed pretty smart about it."

"Yeah. I let my ego and anger take over for that one. I got smarter because I started asking private business owners if I could mark their walls for free as long as I could tag it. Almost everyone said yes. Tatiana helped me make a portfolio by taking high res digital photos of all my work and printing them up," I explained. "It worked out in the end."

"It did." She held her hand out to me. "You're fidgeting really bad. Are you okay?"

"Huh?" Only then did I notice how badly I picked at my nails and tugged at the hair tie around my wrist. "I'm fine." I accepted her gesture and she squeezed my hand. "Doesn't it freak you out that I've been in jail?"

She shrugged, her expression casually calm, which worried me just the same. "Should it? It was like almost two decades ago. And you're a cop now. If you were released from prison a week ago, I might be worried, but not things you did as a kid, and as a result, turned your life for the better. How could that freak me out?"

"I'm not sure, but it's realistic."

"It is, but I know you as you are now. That's who I like. The only thing that freaks me out is that Frankie is your sister. She's overwhelming."

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