I stepped out of the back room and into the store.

"Another boring day at Hot topic store 12 of 30 in area 251..."

(that's store twelve in area 251 in the western united states, yes, I bothered to remember)

Taking my usual place behind the resistor, I plugged my earphones in, and turned on my music. It helped pass the time as well as mute the horrid music the store played. How anyone could like to hear women scream about getting dirty, and losing their souls and such, or men bleeding their guts out and going to heaven for the woman they loved, I didn't know. I listened to a few of the less bloody songs, but most of the time is was industrial, or alternate style bands playing in my ears, and the smooth voice of another popular guy whispering words of love into my ear. And heck, through all the parents and immature or even scary people I had to deal with, the job was worth it. It kept me in the money, and therefore, I could afford living on my own. I was an orphan, but I had time to finish school, and pay for my housing(with a little help from my parents, and the government). I had graduated from high school and was supposed to start my first college classes in about a week, and I wasn't looking forward to them. Life was gonna be hell….get up at 6, come to work and work for 4 hours, go to school for 5 hours, and that puts me at 3. 3 hours of homework, and then I was back at work, for another 4 to 6 hours. Then, I would go home, fall asleep on the dorm room couch and start all over again the next morning. The good side though, was now that I was going to college, I was leaving my old apartment behind and living in the college dorm, which meant I wouldn't have to pay for transportation back and forth. Also the fact that I was a student at the college meant that the price for the rent was less then it had been for the apartment.

It had been an average day so far after the first two hours of work, and the music on the player had finally looped about three minutes ago. I had had at least fifteen people ask me if the store had something, and then point to an area almost right in front of their faces. A rack with a list of all the products we sold. Easy, right? Yep. Unless they don't know what any of the form meant. If that was the case though, I'd usually pass them off to one of the aids walking round the store. If the customer was cute, or good looking(which was hard to find in a crowd of emos and Goths) I would show them myself and try and spark a short conversation. Usually, the emos were to quiet and emo to talk, and all the Goths wanted to talk about was how cool and dark the merchandise was. The one that stood out that day was a boy I had sworn I'd seen before. I remembered seeing someone like him in the shop, but with all the emos buying the same stuff, they pretty much looked the same. He, on the other hand was a little easier to pick out as a "power", though most of the people at the store were the actual posers. He wore a plain black jacket with a logo done in graffiti style across the front, that formed the words "tag zone", and black jeans, not tight, and not to loose. Other then that, he had a messenger bag with a white skull on the front, and a metal necklace with a silver decoration hanging from it, that took somewhat of a globe shape. He also wore a medical patch that covered his right eye. Now, I would have bet my skateboard that I'd seen him outside the store, but being a skater, I wasn't willing to risk my board no matter how sure I was. I had put at least four hundred dollars into that board, and custom painted the bottom, since it started out completely blank.

He spent about an hour looking at the t-shirts, wrist bands, and other logo-ed products before pulling out a few shirts and comparing them to the ones he pulled out of his bag. It was interesting to watch, because every time he seemed to find something he liked, he would make a small sketch of something in a art book….and then put the shirt back on the shelves. When I though he had left, since I couldn't see him any more,(im not a creepy stalker, I just glanced to watch him when there wasn't a wanting customer) he popped up at the counter holding a black wallet with white trimmings, no patterns whatsoever. When I told him the price, he slid out a wallet that looked surprisingly like the wallet he was purchasing, except much more beat up and much fancier. On it was a design I had never seen before, but it also had in very small letters the works tag zone written on the white lining.

"Isn't this the same wallet?" I asked him questioningly

He looked up for a moment, and when his eyes caught mine, he turned a little red and looked down again so his hair covered a lot of his face. He nodded and then continued to hold out the money, offering no explanation about the transformation his wallet had taken.

I made the exchange, and handed him the product in the bag, and watched as he left the store, looking to be in quite a hurry to leave. I thought I might have actually scared him.

I left work around 6, and started my way home. On the way though, I stopped by the park and dropped my bag to the ground next to the wall. I stayed and practiced tricks till it became dark, and then got to work. Taking out a can from my bag, popped the cap and began spraying. Spray paint. It just happens to be another one of my hobbies. My apartment walls are covered in my designs. The new one I was decorating the wall with was of a white skull, surrounded by a dark red background, with my artists name written underneath. A bout halfway through, I heard a cough from behind me and felt a tap on the shoulder.

"Shit," I thought to myself "busted but the breaking cops a week before college starts…this will look just great.."

I turned around to find a cop, but what I found I couldn't really see. It was a boy, just a bit shorter then me, but dressed entirely in black and his face was covered in shadow.

"I was just going to tell you that you messed up a bit," he said in a rather sarcastic voice "on the entire thing."

"thanks." I muttered back "if I messed up so much, show me where."

He then proceeded to point out at least ten or eleven mistakes that after seeing, I couldn't figure out how I hadn't noticed myself.

He looked back up at the art though and stared at it before he spoke again.

"Still," he muttered, "Its pretty good for someone who's only been doing this for about a month."

I looked at him star struck. I had started just a little while ago, but I only had started painting on the street in the past three weeks. It had taken weeks just to get the courage to paint actual art, on the walls or on the streets, or anywhere else for that matter. And he had guessed perfectly.

He made a few more comments, then put his hand to his face, and pushed something over to the right side of his face. A medical bandage. He was wearing it over his left eye before hand. He then proceeded to kiss me on the lips and disappear into the shadows.

Wait…..

"He kissed me!" I taught to myself. "He kissed some guy he didn't even know!"

I though I knew who it was before he kissed me, but afterwards, I completely tossed the idea. I thought it had been the emo boy I had seen earlier at the store that day, but he had some major differences. His attitude had taken a complete 180 and he had become dark and strong spoken, where as the boy had been soft spoken and happish. And he also had no show of emotion. The boy had been completely emotional and shy, so I was able to see no connection between the two, other then they both wore black and they both wore a medical eye patch. And something I noticed before he turned away. He had the same kind of jacket. A black hood with the words Tagzone painted on the front.

-Next Morning-

I woke up late the next morning, and found a message few messages on the answering machine. One was from my mother, wishing me well, and saying that she would send more money to me as soon as she got another job. The other two were of less importance. My school had left a digitally recorded message, reminding the students about the first day of school and the first day we could move into the dorm, which was tomorrow. The last message was from my boss, giving me the week off to get into school, though he promised he would still pay me for the hours I had signed up for, since he understood my circumstances.

I eat a small breakfast, made of whatever was in the fridge, and sat down in front of my computer, and started up the Internet browser. Googles search page popped up and I began to type. I spent the next hour and a half logging all the references to the words Tagzone and the unknown artist. Why? I remembered the previous night about the first graffiti art I had seen. It had been on my locker, two years ago. Other then the random references to "Tagzone" sites(places for graffiti artists to host their art), I found a few pictures and a page or two with articles by other artists about the art. In the actual ring, in the better artists, he was one of the best. "His art was incredibly detailed," one article stated, "has the ability to go pro and sell his designs, but he never seemed to have that in mind. His art started showing up at a local high school, and has since expanded to street art and a single web page that hosts pictures of his art, but has no constant address, since all the pictures seem to come from different computers and false accounts, it is impossible to trace him. He has many fans, some that start painting because of him, but he is still very unknown due to his quiet nature."

The end of the article had a link to a simple web page,

It was a black page, with a simple title, "TagZone-Fun till you get caught". Everything else was pictures labeled with a number and a date, number being the number of the painting out of all the street graffiti he did, and the date, simply the day he did it. The first picture surprised me. It was a red locker, from my school. Namely, my locker. I knew because the stupid stickers I loved then were plastered all over the locker(I had been given hell by the principle for it, but it had been worth it). It was simply labeled, First and only. From the looks of it, it was like who ever it was had labeled me as their own. Or at least that the locker was theirs. Or maybe that it was their territory. If my first theory that he marked me as his property was correct, I could assume that he had known me since before two years ago. And it also made sense that if the boy who I had run into last night was the artist, it meant that he had just marked me again. Not with paint, but with an invisible mark. Isn't it great to know that you've had a stalker for at least two years and you had absolutely no clue? But what didn't make sense was the fact that the boy I had met was absolutely straight forward. If he was the same person, why hadn't he ever bothered to confront me two years ago, or sometime between then and now?(though I guess last night kind of counted)

Maybe it was because it was a homosexual crush…I spent the rest of the pay pondering this, and cleaning up, packing the little clothes I had, as well as the things I owned. All non clothes(ie-my laptop, CD player, five CD's, and my five cans of spray paint, plus a binder or two) fit into my back pack, and I strapped my skate board to that. The clothes fit into a single duffle bag, and I spent about an hour finding all the change and one dollar bills I had left all over the house in the past two years(which came out to be around 100 dollars, cause I found an old envelope containing a cash payment from my father for my birthday, that I hadn't entirely used. I eat what remained in the fridge, and fell asleep exhausted EARLY for the first time in months. Besides, it wasn't that bad, I had my college experience starting tomorrow.