Aunt Evie added, “And also you did bring your skateboard, didn’t you Max? I think I may have found a great skatepark we could go to. I know, you probably don’t want me watching, but we could go have a look and see if you liked it, and if you did, I’d wander around the neighborhood while you skated.”

Max’s eyes lit up. He asked Tess to hold his camera for him and he ran back to the room to get his skateboard which he had brought with him from Switzerland. When he came back, skateboard under his arm, Tess handed him back his camera and offered to hold his skateboard under her arm so he could snap pictures whenever he wanted.

They only had to walk a block to find an exceptionally beautiful sculpture of a black dragon, ebony colored, but polished so that it almost shone, its wings spread, even though it was standing, its mouth frighteningly ajar. A few blocks later, Tess pointed out two angels to him, elaborately carved, set above the threshold of a private house which Max grudgingly shot, too. Max rounded out his photo-taking with a shot of a white wall, the white barely visible, as it was practically covered in graffiti. And then across from it another wall with a different image and landscape.

Some of the graffiti they saw in London was more like street art, real art, rather than spray painted graffiti surreptitiously drawn in the middle of the night the way it was in New York. One of the walls was particularly striking, with a rendition of a snake, hidden, as if by tall grass, and a moonscape above. The opposite wall was filled with children. The images of the children were almost stick figures, but each had its own expression. Max showed the pictures to Aunt Evie and Tess. Aunt Evie squirmed when she saw the snake. “That was a scary wall,” she said.

The snake didn’t bother Tess particularly. It was the one with the stick figures that struck her to the core, as if it was something she should be frightened of, stick figures with their own expressions. Stick figures that seemed almost to have a personality of their own.

Max thought the pictures were pretty cool and Tess had to admit that was also true.

Aunt Evie stepped out into the street to try to hail a cab.

Tess looked back up at the wall behind her with the child-like stick figures Max had photographed. The sun was out now, and part of the wall was in shadow and part of it was shining brightly.

They quickly bundled into the cab with Aunt Evie who had already told the driver where they were going. It was a longer drive then they expected but they finally arrived at Victoria Skatepark.