We said good-bye and stood by the side of the road. The house looked small and empty and sad. There was a For Sale sign in the front lawn. “This is where I grew up,” I said.
“Can we go in?”
“No,” I said. “Maybe some other time. This isn’t what I brought you here for. C’mon.”
I led her to the church first. As we walked up the front steps, she looked puzzled. “It’s a church,” I said. “It’s the only one here. I thought we should get married.”
She looked totally stunned.
“Just kidding,” I said and laughed.
“Do people have weddings here?”
“Sure. My parents got married here.” But as soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t.
“Watch this,” I said. I dropped my board, pushed for a blast of speed on the top smooth surface, lifted and took the rail for a perfect board-slide down the full length and then a short drop to the sidewalk below.
“You ever get hurt doing that?”
“Lots of times.”
“But you didn’t give up?”
“Never.” And with that, I ran up the steps and did it all over again.
“You only have to fall four hundred and fifty three times before you get it right. It just takes practice,” I said.
“You counted how many times you wiped out?”
“I think I had a new scar for each time. That’s how I kept count.”
The door to the church opened then, and Reverend Darwin walked out. “I thought I heard a familiar sound,” he said.
“Reverend Darwin, this is Jasmine.”
He smiled at Jasmine. “Welcome. You know Quinn taught me that miracles can happen. He proved that he could defy the laws of physics right before my eyes.”
The door to the church was open now, and you could see the sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows. “Can we go in?” Jasmine asked.
“Of course,” the minister said. “Anyone can go in any time. The doors are never locked.”
We walked inside. Jasmine was blown away by the quiet beauty of the sanctuary. “It’s so beautiful,” she said.
“And so empty,” the reverend added. “We barely had twenty people here last Sunday. Would you like some tea?”
“Sure,” she said.
And we were led to the office in the back where Reverend Darwin made us tea. He and I reminisced about “the good old days,” before the town began to die. When we left, I felt both calm and sad. I made one final board-slide down front, with Reverend Darwin in attendance, and I led Jasmine down to the shore.
chapter ten
“I think I’d like to live in a place like this,” Jasmine said.
“Most people want to move away from here. Looks like most people have moved away from here.” There were way more empty houses than I’d expected.
“It’s like going back in time,” she said.
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Yeah. It’s a real good thing. I love everything about this place.”
When she said that, it made me feel good because I knew that it wasn’t just that she liked the town. She liked where I had come from.
We followed the footpath out of the village and through a grassy field. “And now for the main event,” I said. “Close your eyes.”
She closed her eyes, and I led her further along the path until we came to the rocks. The Ledges. The ultra-smooth, sea-sculpted, rock formation by the ocean. “Open,” I said.
When she opened her eyes, she blinked a couple of times, and then she understood why I had brought her here.
“This is where I learned to skate,” I said.
Parts of the Ledges were smooth and slick and rounded with small hills and valleys. Other parts were layered and, in places, looked like steps. Some parts of the formation looked like waves. The water at the base of the rocks was dark blue. It was a calm day, and small waves lapped at the rocks.
“I love it,” Jasmine said. “But how did you learn to skate here?” She looked at the water below.
“I lost my first two boards. Then I started using a leash. Then I got good and didn’t need a leash.”
“But you never ended up in the water?”
“Well, I did. A couple of times. But it kept me humble. Once the waves were kind of big and the water was freezing. But I got out. I learned my lesson.”
“Which was?”
“Not to fall into the water.” I didn’t say another word. I just tossed my board and shot off across the higher flat part of the rock face. I hit the Ledges at breakneck speed and took them like the steps of the public library back in the city. Then I dropped down onto the smooth rounded granite, kicking for air over the little moguls that were made by Mother Nature.
Finally, I dropped low across the front, the ultra-smooth sloping face of rock that was like a wave. I carved a wide powerful arc as I dropped. Jasmine must have thought I was about to plunge into the sea. But I knew just where to make my bottom turn. If I did it on a wet patch or anywhere with slimy green, I’d lose it, but I’d done this hundreds of times before. There were gritty patches where the wheels grabbed as if they were on concrete.
I cranked the bottom turn and raced back towards the top. Then I did a one-eighty at the top and retraced my path. I was breathing hard when I finally came to a stop in front of Jasmine. I felt only a little guilty about showing off.
“Now my turn,” she said.
I wasn’t expecting that. “Um. Are you sure?”
“Yes. Tell me what I need to know.”
“Well, for your first time, stay high. Work those little slopes in the rocks and don’t go for the big rock face. It’s not gonna feel like concrete. It’s smoother in some places and rougher in others. And there are cracks to watch out for. Just keep some speed and control and let the rocks teach you. I’ll stay below in case you lose it.”
There was a determined look in her eyes. I was hoping she’d play it conservative.
She did at first, but then she got more adventurous. She dipped down the sloping rock wave once, then twice, then a bit further. That’s when she hit one of the wet spots and lost her board. She fell onto the granite, and I had to make a dive for the board before the waves got it.
After that, she let the rocks teach her where to speed up and where to slow down. Before long she had it wired. I’d never seen anyone learn so fast.
I didn’t skate alongside her at all. I stayed below, ready to assist, but I wasn’t needed. Then I went back up top to join her.
“How was it?” I asked, knowing that she’d just had an amazing session.
“Like skateboarding on the moon,” she said. “Only better.”
chapter eleven
I think it’s safe to say that everyone who saw Jasmine and me after that day knew we had a thing going on. This was all new territory to me. I actually looked forward to going to school.
Jasmine started coming over to my house to help me with my homework. She had a way of explaining things that made sense. And when I didn’t know what to write my English research paper on, she suggested I write it on the history of skateboards. The girl was brilliant.
“You should be a teacher,” I told her.
“I want to teach geology at university,” she said. “And I’ll get to travel and do research.”
“Maybe find real gold, huh?”
“All you need to know is where to look.”
“Think there’s gold in those rocks at Willis Harbor?”
“For sure,” she said. “We already found it.”
I woke up one Saturday morning and discovered my dad hadn’t left for work. He was sitting in the kitchen with his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, staring at the refrigerator.
“Dad, you okay?”
“No.”
“What is it?”
“I lost the job.”
I’d never seen him look so down.
“They were a little slow getting around to that background check. The criminal
record thing.”
“But you never committed any crimes.”
He scratched his unshaved jaw and put his hands in the air. “When I was twenty-one, I got into a fight with this older man, Harve Boyle. He’d been beating his cat with a stick. I made him stop, and the cat ran off. Then he took a punch at me. I fought back. Not much came of it, except that he called me all kinds of names and we got a couple of swipes in at each other.
“But later, the police came, and I was charged with assault. I had to go to court. Harve told the judge that I had threatened him and tried to injure him. His wife claimed to have seen the whole thing.”
“But that’s not fair.”
“Who ever said life was fair?”
“You did. And so did Mom, that’s who.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I forgot. I guess we wanted life to be fair. Anyway, I was found guilty, but the judge knew that Harve had a reputation as a nasty character. So I just got a slap on the wrist.”
“And a criminal record?”
“Bingo.”
“Can’t you explain that to them at the police station?”
“I have an appeal in, but it doesn’t look good.”
“Now what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” my father said, looking totally defeated. “I just don’t know.”
I heard him on the phone that night. It was the first time he had called her. He was in his bedroom with the door closed, so I guess he didn’t want me to hear. They talked for a really long time.
I was trying to study for a history test, but I was getting all those nineteenth-century wars mixed up. I couldn’t figure out who was fighting who over what. I’d read a page and then not remember a single thing. All I could tell you is that the War of 1812 probably took place in 1812.
I’d read about at least a dozen wars before the phone call was over. Then there was a tap at my door. My dad walked in.
“I’ve been talking to your mother,” he said in a low voice.
“How is she?”
“She’s good.”
“You told her you lost the job?”
“Yep.”
“How did that go?”
“She said that she feels bad about that. Then she said she still loves me. And you too.”
“I knew that,” I said. “On both counts.”
“And so we talked.” He was stalling. The room was deathly silent.
I closed my history book. “Yeah?”
“Well, your mother and I think it might be best if we move out there to join her.”
I had not seen that coming. “You want us to move out west?”
“For now, yes. She says I’ll have no problem getting a job. Maybe even train in the same course she’s taking. She’ll be finished in a couple of weeks and working. I’ll go to that school, work a little on the side, and pretty soon, we’ll both have good jobs. We’ll be able to buy a nice house.”
“Where?”
“Wherever,” he said, looking at the floor.
I almost blurted it out. No way. I refuse to move. But I didn’t. I knew what my father was going through, and I’d cut him a tiny bit of slack for now.
“But I’m happy here now. Things are looking good,” I said.
“I know. You’ve got a girlfriend.”
“And I’m starting to feel like I belong here.”
“I know that too. Just think about it for now, okay?” And he left.
I wanted to scream. The walls were closing in. I had to get out of there. I put on my jacket and shoes, grabbed my board and went outside.
It was dark, chilly and damp. The streets were mostly empty. I tossed my board down and began to cruise along the sidewalk, dodging a few pedestrians. I thought about going to see Jasmine. She’d invited me over a couple of times. She wanted me to meet her father. But I had chickened out. No, I wouldn’t go over there tonight.
I headed to the skate park. I’d heard it was a tough place at night. No little kids banging their boards around the kiddie bowl. No daytime regulars. Just a whole other scene. Kids with pellet guns. Drug deals. It’s one of the reasons that some people had proposed taking a bulldozer to the skate park.
I’d never seen the place with lights before. It had a steely cold feel to it. It felt like a different place altogether, a place where bad things happened.
Some older kids were skating the pipe. And at least a dozen older guys and girls—nineteen, maybe twenty years old— were sitting on the benches and on the concrete, drinking from cans and passing around a bottle. Nighttime at the skate park.
The three guys skating stopped and joined the others, slugged back from the cans. Laughed and hooted.
I cruised over to the half-pipe and noticed broken glass at the bottom again. It wasn’t hard to figure out where that came from. Like before, there were jagged chunks of bottles, but the other guys skating hadn’t bothered to clean it up. Heck, maybe they were the ones who busted the bottles.
chapter twelve
Just go home, the voice in my head said. But then someone cruised past me on a skateboard and jabbed me in the ribs as he went by. He had a hood up, and I couldn’t see his face. With a few swift kicks, he was up the wall and making a one-eighty turn at the lip, and then dropping a gloved hand to graze a turn and avoid connecting with the glass in the pit. He popped back and forth a couple of times, and then raced straight toward me, hood still low over his eyes, like he was some kind of phantom.
I thought he was going to plow right into me, but I held my ground.
He came to an abrupt stop inches from my face, kicked his board up into his hand and popped the hood down. Hodge. His breath smelled funny. I think he’d been drinking beer.
“Hey, Freak. I figured this was past your curfew,” he said.
“I don’t have a curfew,” I said. I pointed to his board. “I thought it was strictly bikes for you. I didn’t know you skated.”
“Only at night when the little weasels have all gone home and there’s elbow room.” He paused. “One on one?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“We got the pipe to ourselves. You follow me. Then I follow you. Move for move. See who loses it first.”
“What about all that crap at the bottom?”
“It makes things more interesting.”
I shook my head no.
“C’mon. We can bet on it. Twenty bucks.”
Leave it to Hodge to turn it into a contest. “Na.”
“Look at it this way: I’ll probably lose. The bike is my thing. I just skate as a sideline. You are the full-meal deal. You skate all the time. You’ve got the advantage.” He had that devilish grin again, the one that had prompted me to skate off his roof.
I had come here to skate, to get my mind off that phone call. I couldn’t go home. “What the heck,” I said. “Sure.”
“You first.”
The crowd on the sidelines was watching as I pulled up into the pipe. Hot on my heels was Hodge, move for move. He’d obviously done this before. I dropped in, skittered over some of the smaller chunks of glass, rolled up the other side and took my first bite of air. Hodge was right behind, making contact with the wall just inches behind me. The next time I took the wall, I felt something not quite right, tiny particles of glass had embedded into my wheels. Each time I tried to turn, there’d be a hard spot where the wheels would lose their grip and slide. Not good. I eased up a bit. Hodge noted that I was on cruise control. And then we stopped at the top, both of us kicking our boards up high into the air and catching them.
“Quite the circus act,” he said, breathing hard. “But that was just warm up, right?”
I remembered the bet. Twenty bucks. Twenty bucks that I didn’t have. “See those guys?” He pointed to the older drinking crowd—our audience. “They got money on this too. They know who you are. They’ve seen you. Some think you’re good. Some think I’m good. Whoever wins, some of them are happy. Whoever loses, some of them are not so happy.”
“I’m out,
” I said. “I don’t skate for money, and I don’t want people betting on me. This sucks.”
He shrugged. “Then pay up. I’ll explain that you wimped out.”
I could see I was in a no-win situation. I felt trapped. “Okay, your turn,” I said.
That devil smile again. I tried to pick the glass out of my wheels, but he was already off. I was the dogman this time. Hodge knew how to work me. He made it easy at first, slow and graceful moves, some rail-slides across the lip, some full-on drops, not connecting until halfway down and always avoiding the worst of the jagged glass. We went on like that for about ten minutes. I could sense he was getting tired. I was thinking I might win after all.
And then he misjudged. His trucks caught on the lip and he lost it. I watched the shock on his face as his feet lost his board, and then he was falling backwards down into the pit. His shoulder bounced him once, and then he rolled onto a broken bottle.
I was already down onto a cleaner part of the bottom of the pipe, so I kicked my board up and ran over to him. There was blood on the ground. He was lying on his back. The look on his face said he was in pain.
“Someone call an ambulance,” I yelled to the older guys. But they were getting up to split. No one seemed to be in the mood to be a Good Samaritan.
A police car had just driven up onto the edge of the skate park.
Hodge let out an unearthly howl. He was in serious pain.
Two police officers came running over. I think they believed we’d been in a fight. Maybe they thought I’d knifed Hodge.
“Stand back and don’t move,” one shouted at me.
“He’s hurt,” I blurted out. “We were skating. He fell on a busted bottle.”
One officer called for an ambulance while the other carefully rolled Hodge over. A chunk of the bottle was lodged in his lower back.
Hodge was crying now. I watched as they put pressure on the wound without taking the glass out. I felt scared and helpless. And angry at myself for getting lured into a stupid bet.
When they hauled him off in an ambulance, I had no idea how bad the injury was. The cops asked if I wanted a ride home, and I said yes. They were cool enough about it. They said they were sorry about my friend but that we shouldn’t be there at night.
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