The Change.
”Spiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssshhhh.”... ”Kling-kling, kling-kling, kling-kling, kling-kling.” It was the whole experience, he just couldn’t get enough of. He kept going on and on, and when all the painting came together it made a big beautiful motif. He didn’t even know it himself, he didn’t know what could cause him to don’t care about anything else, and just disappear into this dangerous hobby. Was it the tinkling sound when he shacked the can? Was it the smell? Was it the feeling in his body – the touch in his fingers, or was it to know that what you're doing was illegal? He didn’t know, he just kept on painting.

I was walking home from school, Billy and his gang had made fun of me in front of Maria again. I could take it, but when it was in front of Maria… It was killing me. She didn’t know what to do, if she stopped him I would look like a loser, and if she did nothing it seemed like she agreed with him. Billy was the type everybody loved he was big and strong, and don’t get me wrong, a sweet little boy on the inside how probably just needed a hug, but on the outside he was a big fat loser.
He was about a head higher than the rest of the class, and that gave him the rolling in the classroom. But the most annoying thing about him was that Maria thought he was sweet?! Well I don’t know so for sure, but why would she always hang out with him if she didn’t like him? There were so many questions I couldn’t get answers to, and it irritated me boundless.
*Riiiiing* the bell rang and I had free. I saw a rock lying in the sidewalk, as I walked home, and I kicked it, and when I came up to it I kicked it again and so I walked the rest of the way home kicking the same rock, while I thought about what Maria and Billy could have together.
I came home, pushed the door up and shouted loudly "I'm home…" no one answered. I went in to the living room, where I threw my bag on the sofa. I walked across the room and sat down at the piano. I touched it very gently as if it should go in to pieces or break. I almost whispered, "hey sis…" I closed my eyes and imagined it in front of me... The sounds... And immediately I was back, I could hear the sound of the piano without touching a thing myself. The sound was a memory, from when she played. That girl, my sister played better than anyone I have ever heard since. She died. And sometimes I can still hear the screaming wheels and see the yellow car lights in front of me… And of cause the crash, the feeling I’ll never forget. The feeling of not even the thin force can hold you solid. I don’t remember much form back then I was nine and she was seventeen.
Ever since then, I have found it difficult to parcel myself to others, it is why I'm not saying anything back when Billy says I’m a loser or call me or “spass child.” The episode gave me not only a wound on my soul, but also in the mouth, I feel speechless, that is why I think I have to express myself with graffiti.
Later that day, my mother came home as usual, with full shopping bags, and a few hours after around 7:15 came my father. Mom had prepared the food. Roast beef with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. We ate and talked a little about everything between heaven and earth. Everything from that dad had got new fax paper at the office, to mom had seen an exhibition made of one she once knew from her school. But funny enough did the talk never referrer to my school, they couldn’t talk about me or with me. They were like stoned after her death. I know they both tried to send the message they were fine, but inside they broke more and more for each day that passed on.
After dinner I went up to my room and turned up the music and long me on the bed. On all my walls hung pictures of graffiti I had seen others do, it was different from everything I did. Nice but the biggest part of them was written. I made mostly images and designs rather than text. Sometimes I felt very alone with this hobby and thought it seemed so silly. But I kept on doing it, I enjoyed it.
The next morning, I packed my bag, two books for six subjects, and the remaining space was for my graffiti cans. My mother was at the hairdresser and my father worked long on Thursdays, so I had all the time I needed after school to paint. I threw the bag over my shoulder and slipped out the door without giving a sound from me. If they discover it, I was in serious trouble. I reached the bus in time and got to the school. I walked into the classroom and putted my bag on my seat. I looked around but either Maria or Billy had come. I didn’t give it much more thought, I went over to my best friend at school; he was called Mike but I called him Scruffels, I don’t remember why anymore, I just did it. We talked and laugh.
Shortly after entered Billy the room, he was sour and asperity over something. He went straight towards a chair, lifted it up and threw it through the classroom, while he shouted form the top of his lungs "Whore!!" The chair hit the wall and broke into many pieces. He sat down and began to sob. It seemed so unreal to see him, the king of the class, sit there and cry?
I went out in the hallway and saw back and forth after Maria. I don’t know why but I could feel something was wrong. I walked down the hallway, but then my teacher came walking in my direction, quickly was I round a corner and she didn’t noticed me. I walked up and down the hallway a couple of times, without really knowing what I was looking for, but when I saw it would know. I walked up the hallway and suddenly I heard a whistle coming from the female toilet. I went in and found Maria sitting and moan over in the corner. I flew almost over to her. She took a hard grip in my shirt and pulled her in to me "Please don’t leave me, Matthew, don’t leave me." I took my arm around her, and stroked her hair and replied, "I should be dead, if they have as much as the chance, to take me away from you."
I sat with Maria and she told me everything, he had tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away and then he had given her a slap on the cheek, and called her a whore! But all she wanted was to be friends with him because she felt sorry for him; because he said his parents just had been divorced. I listened to her and suddenly she leaned toward me and I did too and before I knew it we sat there and kissed! It was amazing; I had never tried something similar. There were no words. Just amazing.
Later I found out she had feelings for me just as I have had for her. We became a couple and soon became virtually the whole school my friends. Everybody turned their back on Billy, for what he had done to Maria. After that Maria and I had been going out for at couple of weeks, I decided to tell her about my hobby, and she got all excited (which was really unexpected), and told me that her brother also made graffiti, and that perhaps he could give me some tips, and soon I was friends with around five-six people that made graffiti, and I never felt strange or out of the game anymore. My whole life began to fall into place, like before my sister died. I felt great and began to enjoy life. I started making more and more graffiti and now it was on a high level. And in everything I did there was a special touch, so everybody could see that I had made it, the yellow dot.
My relationship with Maria was fantastic, and we always felt good and fun in each other's company. And without Maria knowing I had been working on a piece of graffiti for her, it would be the best piece of art I had ever made. It would be for my princess. So only the best was acceptable! And after at couple of weeks I was done. I decided that we should go out and eat delicious dinner and then I would take her to the bridge where I had made it. During dinner, I sat tense as a bow and I ate so quickly that I got a little dizzy, but all I wanted was to come down to the bridge and show her; my gift. We had finished and I paid. And we set the course toward the bridge, and I told her I had seen a small flock of swans down by the lake below the bridge. And we could hardly come quickly enough down there. None of the boys knew that I had made this graffiti here for Maria. When we came down to the bridge she stood and looked around for them, the swans. I said "I’ll have to disappoint you, but the real reason I had to have you down here was because...
" I lifted my arm and pointed over on the other side of the bridge and on the wall it said “MARIA” capitalized..

She freaked and couldn’t stop jumping up and down, kissing me and telling me how happy she was. It was a fantastic feeling to give something to another human being no one else could give them because you made it with your own hands. We went home and spend the night at my place. My parents were still walking around in like a zombie state, since all that with my sister. And they haven’t noticed that their second child had begun to flourish. But it was their problem.
The next day at school started well, I got breakfast and reached the bus in time. And when I came to school I was all cheerful and happy, but just as I was entering the classroom Maria's bigger brother pulled me aside and say "Hey dude, one of this days coming up the boys and I intend to sneak us into a train station and just go crazy with graffiti on the trains, huh, are you in?" I thought a moment and then said "yes of course!" without considering the serious consequences of my answer. He smiled and went away, I stood there and tripped and shouted then "Jimmy!" he turned around and came back - what I didn’t know was that another person had also heard me shout, and was now listening from inside the classroom, it was Billy! - "Jimmy, what if they recognize my writing or the yellow dot I always do over the i’s?" "They will not know, who would be able to proof that you make yellow dots? You’ll be fine!" He made it sound quite okay and I felt so too. Inside the classroom was Billy rubbing his hands, with an evil laugh on his mouth. His father was a policeman, and of course he gossiped, that little flea bag.
Later the same day, two policemen came to my main door, and told me to follow. My parents knew nothing of what happened, and it was in this moment they woke up, and saw they had another child, who also had problems. I talked with the policemen for several hours. They had found my work as vandalism, and good God they said that word many times, vandalism, vandalism, vandalism. But all in all, I was forced to pay a fine on $ 5000 because it would cost $ 2500 to remove all the graffiti, and the fine came on top, as twice.
They removed all the graffiti I had ever made, they found it all, everything but "Maria" I don’t know why they never found it maybe because it fell beside my graffiti style and there was nothing there pointed in my direction like yellow dots. But when I left the police station I had a smile on my lips, I left with; a fine, two new parents and a conditional sentence of two years. With the conditional sentence, I couldn’t do graffiti in two years if I did it I would have to go to juvenile prison.

My parents talked a lot with me when we came home, and I think the clock was about half past two before I was allowed to sleep. Next morning I got a kind of attention from my parents I had never seen before; my mom checked my bag pack for graffiti cans, I assume, and filled it with a lunch box and the rest of my books. I turned around to say “I wasn’t a psychopath or something like that, but I just had made graffiti.” But in the second I turned around, she putted an apple in my mouth and said, “You have a good one.”
I don’t think I was thinking that much I just walked out the door and went to the bus stop. I sat completely in my own world in the bus, and didn’t even notice that it was the stop Maria used to stand on, on. Then suddenly she was there "OMG! How are you?" she asked, and hugged me, I got a bit of a shock. But I just started filling her head with the information I had received it yesterday, she nodded in a long time, and then said “I'm so glad, you're okay.”
I was just tired and looked forward to relax at school. But I was wishing, because I didn’t get far into the school before Maria's brother saw me and shouted "HEY, MATTHEW!” He ran towards me “What’s up dude? Are you ready for an evening with graffiti, or what!? Joey just got some cool new colors, and we have been putting extra glue in our painting so those train losers can’t get it off!" Just seeing his lips move, or even knowing what he was talking about, or just to know what chance I have here, made me delirious. And at once I took myself standing and thinking like that, and then I just acted suddenly, I interrupted him and said "No!" I was just as completely flabbergasted as him.. "What? You have plans or something?" he then said "No, I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore, all of it, I’m sorry." I patted him on the shoulder, and ran down the hallway. He stood back as a big question mark. I came closer to class and heard two unusually high voices screaming at each other, it was Maria and Billy. He raised his arm in a threatening way, I steered into the classroom and knocked him down, "You touch her as much as once more, and you’ll be able to pick your teeth up from the floor, you little bitch!" I went to Maria to make sure she was okay. I just stood and looked at him and said "You know it's funny when I first met you, you were 10 feet tall, and now I look at you are smaller than my thumb."
I felt stronger than ever, and with the word in my power, I went over and hugged my girlfriend.

…TEN YEARS LATER...
And the winner of the Oscar; best new artist is "Matthew Winter!" I couldn’t believe my own ears! It’s fantastic, I won? Me and Maria got up hugged and I went up on stage. Shacked hands with a man called Thomas. And headed to the microphone… "I would like to start this speech by giving a thank you to my wonderful fiancée Maria." People clapped and I thought a little and said then, "I think I’ll talk a little bit about a word, the word; no. It is a strong word, and I sure would like to say that I once, many years ago about ten years I think, used that word; no, and it’s the wisest word I have ever said. I said no thanks to something I wanted to do with all my heart, but I said no, and I thank myself for that, if I haven’t said it, I wouldn’t be here… Thank you, ladies and gentlemen."

Yes it’s true, I said a word that changed my life, a small but powerful word, a word we should use wisely and only say at the right times. That night the “Graffitiboys” were caught. If I had been with them, had I been in a youth prison and wouldn’t have arrived at the art academy, and probably never taught a phrase I have been using much since. Or for that matter, learned that I needed was to express myself that was why I did graffiti. So I made a change, I changed. I don’t think that I could live without that change, because that change gave me everything. Change is good the important thing, and so is to change in the right way, or change the right things! There is a lesson in here for all of us.
The sentence was –
“One need, two ways.”