Street Artist

Chapter 1: The Hobo's Name is Fred

"... In other news, the street artist called 'K' and her crew have struck again. The elusive band of teenagers known for vandalising buildings all over New York has had a mixed reaction from citizens in the past, ranging from anger at the blatant disregard for both private and public property to what could be called excitement. In the past, the alleged K has appeared to use this art as a form of protest, targeting businesses in the city. Who are these teens and is their art simply self expression? Or is it dangerous and disrespectful to the city and its citizens? Coming up..."

"Damn kids. 'Self expression' my ass! That right there is vandalism! Can you believe this, Katie? This is the reason why your... your mother and I stopped you doing art," my dad starts.

"Yes, dad. I know."

I've heard this a thousand times before. Every time I sneak out as K, the next morning I can expect two things: a news bulletin on how horrible I am for drawing on brick buildings that no-one uses anymore and my dad ranting about those lousy street artists. Honestly, sometimes it scares me how good I've gotten at lying to him. I feel bad about it, sure, but it's way better than the alternative. If he- or anyone else for that matter- found out that I was K, I would find myself in some kind of juvenile correctional facility in the blink of an eye. I don't want to go to juvie...

"Katie, please hurry up or else you'll be late for school," my dad says, not bothering to look at me.

"I'm ready to go."

I quickly pull my waist-length, chestnut brown hair into a loose braid and put on my black glasses with the thick, rectangular frames. I don't really need glasses, but they help with the whole nerdy image. And it's not like my dad ever really paid enough attention to me to notice any difference. I wear the glasses for the same reason that I wear my uniform how it should be worn, instead of altering it like the other girls do. I need to seem like a nerd. For one thing, my dad doesn't pay any attention to me normally, unless I do something wrong. I need to be the perfectly good daughter in order to improve his image in the business world he seems to live in. If I didn't dress like this and got anything under an A in any of my classes, he would actually take notice of me. That would make it a hell of a lot more difficult sneaking out in the middle of the night to meet the crew and do my art. Plus, the less I look and act like K the better.

"Bye dad. I'm leaving for school," I tell him, walking to the front door. He mumbles what could be considered a response and I walk outside to my sterling silver Mercedes-Benz. Mommy and daddy dearest were freaking loaded because of their business connections and, before splitting up, were considered the power-duo of real estate.

Having Richard and Morgan Parker as my parents and attending LPA for school makes my life the perfectly cliche example of the lifestyles of the rich and obnoxious. Oh joy.

I pull up to the parking area in front of the giant, unnervingly pristine building that is LPA and take a moment to mentally prepare myself for the regular verbal abuse from the snobby rich girls sporting matching nosejobs and equally fake... well, everything else, before entering the school. This school is literally the real-life example of every cliche you can find in movies about the rich and famous and American highschool hierarchy rolled up into one perfect, polished building. That includes the classic one in which the bottle-blonde richie bitch made of plastic (Courtesy of daddy's credit card) decides it is her duty to make the poor little secretly epic nerd girl's life hell. I, myself, am the nerd girl in this case. Her name is Courtney. Her interests and hobbies include (but are in no way limited to) plastic surgery, sex, hot-tub parties, blowing money on useless things and the sluttiest designer clothes in existance, cheerleading, and, last but not least, harrassing me.

Fortunately, she is not here today because her family is on vacay in Hawaii. It's really great when she isn't in school, not only for obvious reasons, but also because whenever she isn't there to lead them, her army of Barbie look-alikes act totally confused and lost without her and quite honestly it is freaking hilarious.