Night Owls Read Free Page A

time?
    “Shit.” Jack pulled the yellow stop cord drooping across the window and bent over his backpack. Irving and Ninth. A popular stop. Mine was still several blocks away, which meant one
thing: My night bus fantasy was ending. What should I do? Ignore the umbrella lady’s warning and give him my name?
    What if I never saw him again?
    The bus jerked to a sudden stop. Jack’s backpack tipped sideways. Something rolled out from a gap in the zipper and banged into the toes of my boots.
    A fancy can of spray paint with a metallic gold top.
    I picked it up and paused. The way he tightened up and ground his jaw to the side, there might as well have been a neon sign over his head that flashed NERVOUS ! NERVOUS ! NERVOUS !
    I held the spray paint out. He stuffed the can in his backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “Good luck with your cadaver drawing.”
    My reply got lost under the news ticker of recent headlines scrolling inside my head. All I could do was quietly watch his long body slink into shadows as the door shut and the bus pulled away
from the curb.
    I knew who he was.

3
    SINCE SCHOOL LET OUT IN MAY, GOLD GRAFFITI HAD been popping up around San Francisco. Single words painted in enormous gold letters appeared on bridges
and building fronts. Not semi-illegible, angry gang tags, but beautifully executed pieces done by someone with talent and skill.
    Could that
someone
be Jack? Was he an infamous street artist wanted for vandalizing?
    The remaining leg of the ride blurred by as I recalled everything I’d heard about the gold graffiti on local blogs. I wished I’d paid better attention. I definitely needed to do some
research, like,
right now.
    When the bus got to my stop on Judah Street, I raced off, eager to do just that.
    I live in the Inner Sunset district, which is the biggest joke in the world, because it’s one of the foggiest parts of the city. Summer’s the worst, when the nights are chilly and we
sometimes go for weeks without seeing the sun. But apart from the fog, I like living here. We’re only a few blocks from Golden Gate Park. There’s a pretty cool stretch of shops on
Irving. And we’re just down the hill from the Muni stop. We live on the bottom two floors of a skinny, three-story pale yellow Edwardian row house and share a small patch of yard in the back
with our neighbor Julie, a premed student who rents the unit above us. She’s the one who got me the appointment at the anatomy lab.
    I jogged up a dozen stairs to our front door. As I fumbled for the house key, a taxi pulled up to the curb. My brother jumped out and quickly paid the driver before spotting me.
    “Mom’s on her way home!” Heath called as he raced up the stairs, imitating an ambulance siren. He was dressed in a tight jacket, tight jeans, and an even tighter black shirt
with silver studs that spelled out 21 ST CENTURY METAL BOY . He also reeked of beer, which is why I didn’t believe him.
    “Where have you been?” I asked.
    “Me? Where have
you
been?”
    “Picking up criminals on the night bus.”
    He made an “uh-huh, whatever” sound as he combed his fingers through spiky hair the same shade of brown as mine. Standing one step above, I was almost taller than him; we both took
after my mom in the height department. He glanced at my skirt and boots. “Hold on. Why are you dressed up?”
    “It’s a long story. You smell like a brewery, by the way. Are you drunk?”
    “Not anymore,” he complained. “Hurry up and let us in. I’m totally serious. I saw the paddy wagon pulling out of employee parking when my cab passed the
hospital.”
    The paddy wagon is my mom’s ancient white Toyota hatchback. It has two hundred thousand miles on it and a dent in the fender.
    “I paid the cabbie extra to run a red light so we could outrace her. Grrr!” he growled impatiently. “Any day now, Bex.”
    Bex is what my family and friends call me, as in short for Beatrix, and Bex only—not Bea, not Trixie, and not