In the Paint by Jeff Rud

the locker room door when he emerged. “We’ve got our bikes here, have you got yours?” Jackson asked.
    Matt nodded. By the time the half-dozen boys headed out of the school parking lot, Matt hadn’t even asked where they were going. There was a wet snow falling that made cycling down the darkened, slick streets a little tricky. The heavy snow, back-lit against the orange glow of the streetlights, made it difficult to see where they were headed.
    They stopped at the end of Densmore Street, about eight blocks from the school. Matt knew it well because Wong’s Grocery was at the far end of the block. “Oh, yeah,” smiled Jackson, turning on his bike seat toward Matt and the others. “We’re loaded up for some revenge tonight. You in, Hill?”
    Jackson grabbed at the bag one of the boys — a skinny grade nine named Nate Griffin — was carrying, pulling out several cans of spray paint. It was obvious now that they planned to do some tagging. Matt had never done anything like this before, but it didn’t seem overly harmful. Anyway, he didn’t want to come across as a wuss. He could go along for the ride, couldn’t he? He wouldn’t have to actually spray anything.
    â€œSure,” he said, quietly. “I’m in.”
    â€œGood,” Jackson said. “Let’s go then.”
    They sped down a slushy back alley behind Densmore on their bikes. It had grown even darker, and Matt wondered again where they were going. He was a few feet behind the others when he noticed they had all stopped behind a large, dark metal garbage container at the back of one of the buildings.
    â€œI’m first,” said Jackson, eagerly holding up a couple of the spray cans.
    The others watched from behind the trash bin as Jackson gingerly made his way through the snow to the back of a building. He began to paint. A large, crude red swastika took shape across the white back wall. Suddenly, none of this felt right to Matt. He began to get an uneasy sensation in his stomach. He wished more than anything that he was at Amar’s, eating pizza and watching movies.
    But Jackson wasn’t done. He grabbed another can, this one yellow. He started to write something across the back of the building in huge, three-foot-high letters.
    As Matt strained to read it in the dark, he started to feel nauseous. Jackson had written “Go home Chinks” in ugly lettering across the wall and had also drawn a crude face with slanted eyes. And what was worse, in one sudden, utterly horrible realization, Matt now knew exactly where they were. At first he hadn’t recognized the building because they had come down the darkened back alley. But now he knew: This was the back wall of Wong’s Grocery. This was Phil’s store. And the kids he was with were attacking Phil’s family, maybe not physically but with these horrible words and symbols.
    â€œThat’ll show them for narcing on me,” seethed Jackson, his dark eyes flashing anger.
    Suddenly it all made sickening sense to Matt. Jackson and his buddies were targeting Wong’s for a reason. This must have been the store where Jackson and White had been caught shoplifting. Phil’s grandmother was constantly chasing groups of kids out of her cluttered store because she suspected they were stealing from her. It didn’t surprise Matt that she had pressed charges after catching them. But why hadn’t Phil told him about this? Matt would have never agreed to hang out with Jackson and his buddies if he had known that they might target Phil’s family.
    Matt was incredibly ashamed. Phil’s grandmother had fed Matt handfuls of candy, bowls of noodles and bottles of Coke and had always let the boys watch TV or play video games in the tiny room at the back of the store. She had always smiled kindly at him and often called him “lucky boy.” He wasn’t sure if she had meant he was some sort of lucky