by Phil Earle
Mom was crying up a storm by now. Shoulders raised and jerking as she forced words out.
“I don’t need to see him on a board for that. I just need him to be careful.”
“And he will be, won’t you, son? You’ve got pads and a helmet, yes?” He shot me a look that screamed, Please tell me you have pads and a helmet!
“Elbow, wrist, knees, and head. All in my bag. Customized as well, with extra padding.”
“See,” said Dad, relieved. “Not a thing to worry about, dear. You’ll see.”
“No, I won’t,” Mom answered, a weak smile on her lips. “You can try all you like to persuade me, but it won’t work.”
She turned to me, and with what looked like the last bit of energy she had left in her body, said, “I’m not going to stop you, Charlie. If you need to do this, then go ahead. But I can’t watch you do it. I just can’t.”
And after a hug that she clearly didn’t want to end, she pushed on through the crowd, leaving me completely torn.
“What do I do?” I asked Dad. “Seriously, what do I do now?”
His reply was certain, emphatic. “Do what you always planned to, son. Go out there and show them.”
“But what about Mom?”
“She’s my concern. Not yours. All you need to do is stay on that board. You hear me? Please?”
And he pushed on too, leaving me alone with Sinus and with a bigger point to prove than ever.
It all came down to this. The highlight of the day, the biggest crowd-pleaser—the half-pipe challenge.
Two minutes to pull off as many tricks as possible, with as much grace, style, and most importantly, as much air between the board and the ramp as possible. Simple, really, but I worried the only move I had left in me was the one that involved running home. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe there was another day we could do this.
Fortunately, the devil in my ear refused to let me get away with such a thought.
“Oh no,” Sinus spat. “Don’t be wigging out on me now. We’re too close. Smell it. Go on, smell it….”
My nostrils flared, but I got nothing but the fragrance of cheap hot dogs.
“What?”
“That’s the last time you’ll smell the air without perfume filling your senses. Look around you, Charlie. Girls! They’re everywhere.” He had a look on his face like he’d just discovered an untainted three-hundred-foot-high wall, so I knew what he was getting at. But I didn’t see girls. All I saw was a sea of bodies, clamoring for a view of the ramp, knowing they were waiting to see people fail as well as succeed.
I tried to take my mind off the nausea, running through the sequence of tricks I had in my back pocket, none of them overcomplicated, all of them dependent on me using my only real assets, size and speed. To nail both the routine and the crowd’s jaws to the ground, I had to put some serious space between me and the ground, have them reaching for binoculars to pick me out against the clouds. I could do it—I’d pulled every single move off in practice—but never back to back. That was the challenge; that was what I had to do.
As a thumping bass line kicked in around us, heralding the start of the competition, we felt the crowd around us swell, a surge propelling us forward, a call for Sinus to pull me by the hoodie toward the ramp.
“We’ve got to get closer!” he shouted.
“But I’m number twenty-seven. We’ve still got time.”
To be honest, I didn’t want to be that close, not until it was my turn. Didn’t think I could hold on to my guts with the other skaters spinning right above my head.
“There’s something you’ve got to see though, pal. My crowning glory.”
Nose first, he plowed a path to the front, and with a grin and a wave of his arm, unveiled the hugest piece of art he’d sprayed in his life. It covered the entire ramp. But there were no more initials, no more teasing with a simple BWB.
Now it read The Bubble Wrap Boy, each letter popping off the surface, looking like they would be punctured by the gentlest of footsteps.
“No way they’re going to forget you now, is there?” Sinus smiled.
If my mind had been crammed with too many conflicting thoughts, it was now full merely of wonder. And it seemed to be infectious. Around me, and on the other side of the ramp, camera phones clicked everywhere. People pointed, mouthed the words, and spoke to the person next to them.
Shoulders shrugged and eyebrows rose: they had twenty-six skaters to watch until the other shoe really dropped.
“It’s amazing, Sinus.” I thought about shaking his hand, before pulling him into a hug.
“Charlie. You’re an attractive man, and I am on the market, but let’s face it, it would never work. Your mom would never accept me.”
I slapped his back hard and tried to push Mom from my head, helped by the first skater appearing at the top of the ramp.
I recognized him, a former high school student who’d been there on bubble wrap day, but now, at the top of the ramp, confronted with a crowd of hundreds, he didn’t look so smug. He looked like I felt—not that I felt sorry for him.
As he pushed off, picking up speed quickly, I didn’t wish for him to fall in the clumsy way that he did, but I didn’t weep either when he was forced to limp from the ramp, his board in need of invasive surgery rather than just TLC.
Others came and went in the same way, with differing levels of glory: the crowd rising as one when someone pulled off a spectacular routine, and wincing together when they tumbled to the ground. One poor soul practically had to be scraped off the ramp with a spatula after a wipeout of epic proportions.
Sinus looked aghast: there wasn’t space on his design for blood splatters, never mind stray teeth.
Fear rose in me as my time approached. I wanted to fidget and pace, but there wasn’t room. Only when skater number twenty-one, Stan, my friend/tormentor appeared at the top, did I decide to watch no more.
“I need to get ready,” I told Sinus.
“Don’t forget what I told you to do!” he shouted above the music.
I nodded. His brief was clear. It should’ve been after the number of times he’d gone over it.
The crowd parted reluctantly, most people not even seeing me as I dipped past at chest level. It didn’t help when one woman asked if I’d lost my mom. I didn’t bother answering.
Instead, I headed behind the ramp, and with shaking hands emptied my backpack of the padding I’d assured Dad I’d wear. There was plenty of it, too, though not as much as Mom had insisted on for that first day aboard the steel rhino.
I didn’t forget about the finishing touches that Sinus had demanded either, hiding as many of them as possible beneath my hoodie.
So that was it. I was set. Looking as fat as I was short.
It was an uncomfortable few minutes before they finally called my number, making me feel like a dish on Dad’s menu.
My head started filling with the same old insecurities: what I was doing to Mom, what I’d been prepared to put Dora through. But strangely I wasn’t worried about what I was about to subject myself to.
A broken arm would heal, and a barrage of abuse was no different from the norm. Plus, the next few minutes could change all that, as long as I kept ahold of myself.
Breathe deep. Look them in the eye. And tell them exactly who you are.
That was what Sinus had told me. That was all I had to remember.
Remembering it at the top of the ramp, though, was a very different matter. It suddenly felt like I was wavering on a cliff edge. Sinus’s design seemed to be a million miles away; I had to strain to make sense of the words, when I knew full well what they said.
Matters only got worse when I turned my eyes to the crowd, realizing to my horror that there were way more people there than I’d thought.
They seemed to be swaying woozily, every one of them laughing at the ridiculous sight in front of them.
Some were wondering what mother in her right mind had let her six-year-old kid teeter his way to the top, wh
ile others in the know simply howled when they realized who they were looking at. A ripple went around, a cruel mixture of laughter and disbelief.
Only the words of the announcer brought me back to my senses, reminding me of what I had to do.
“Number twenty-seven isn’t a newcomer to the ramp, ladies and gents. He’s making a glorious comeback after a short, unexpected break from the sport.”
Another laugh from the crowd. More doubt crept in….
“So show your support, ladies and gentlemen, for the Pocket Rocket, the Bubble Wrap Boy himself, Charlie Han!”
It had been Sinus’s idea to announce the nickname. The big reveal, when the crowd saw the link between the graffiti and the person, the moment when the kids from school, after weeks of subliminal messaging, finally witnessed the other shoe crash to the ground and saw me in a different light.
And you know what? He was right.
I saw them react, fingers pointed at the ramp and then to me, but now people were smiling instead of laughing. They looked at me expectantly, like suddenly I might be worth watching for a very different reason, one that didn’t involve an ambulance.
I couldn’t help but look for Dan and Stan, and took pleasure as they shrank before my eyes. I smiled at them before pulling off my hoodie, giving the crowd a flash of my kidlike torso and not even caring. Instead, I straightened the bubble wrap bandages covering my elbows and knees and pulled my T-shirt down, showing the words sprayed on it to every person watching.
Flying for Dora, it read, with a halo replacing the dot above the i. It didn’t matter that no one understood what it meant, because I did. I remembered how her eyes used to flit across the skies from her chair, watching every single bird that swooped by. And I couldn’t help but hope that, somehow, she might be watching in the same way now.
I felt a series of sobs threaten my chest, which exploded into panic, when, in the far corner of the crowd, I thought I spotted her, her piercing brown eyes burning with intensity.
It threw me. I blinked then stared again, heart almost stopping when I realized it wasn’t Dora at all, but Mom.
It was definitely her. I recognized the air of panic, could almost hear her stress levels as they radiated off her. Dad was next to her, arm on her shoulder, exuding everything she wasn’t: a calm excitement for what I was about to do.
I stared at them for longer than I should have, ignoring the music that had started, marking my two minutes of glory. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t easy to break her grip after fourteen years, even now, even when she was a hundred feet away.
The crowd was getting restless—not booing or anything—but I realized I risked losing them. The board nipped at my fingers, reminding me of what I had to do, but I couldn’t get Mom’s worried face out of my head.
A slow hand-clap started, gathering momentum quickly, until I was full-on panicking. My eyes went back to Mom, whose expression mirrored mine. But Dad wasn’t flustered. He smiled supportively and cupped his hands to his mouth, shouting five words with a volume that I never knew he possessed.
“Do it, Charlie! Do it!”
And that was it. It was all I needed. With a roar of my own I threw the board under my feet and pushed into the void, feeling the wind pick up as the walls blurred. But as the wheels hit the bottom of the curve, I knew my balance was in the wrong place, and as the sky came into view, I felt the board flip from under me, throwing me backward as it continued toward the clouds.
I braced myself as I tumbled down, no clue where the bottom was but knowing that its fist was clenched, waiting.
Mom flashed into my head, running in slow motion to catch me, not that the image gave me any comfort. There wasn’t a person on the planet who could run that quickly.
The ramp slapped me hard on the back, my body screaming. I heard my own wail echo back from the crowd and vowed never to move again. I waited for the laughter, but it didn’t come. It was like everyone had disappeared.
The only thing I heard was the sound of four wheels spinning on wood.
My board rolled against my arm, nestling in my grip.
Then there was a shout, a single voice. Sinus.
“Get up, Charlie! Get up.”
And in that second, from nowhere, I felt a jolt of energy, enough to roll me onto my side. My insides groaned, but not enough to stop the spark igniting, and before I knew it, I was on all fours, pushing into my wrists as my knees straightened. My body groaned as I stood, but I couldn’t shout loud enough to stop my legs from walking toward the slope, board in hand.
My heart hammered and blood pounded in my ears, but I still heard the crowd. Shouts of encouragement and disbelief, more and more, louder and louder, until their words scrambled into a huge roar of approval that drove me, running, up the ramp wall.
I could’ve chosen to grab at the ledge and pull myself up, but I didn’t have a clue whether I had the strength to manage it. So instead, as the wall went vertical, I leapt into the air, planted my feet on the board, and with hands holding those imaginary bags of takeout food, hoped my balance would kick in.
And it did. The breeze whipped at my jeans as I descended, and although I didn’t have the speed to grab any air yet, I knew that with one more shove I’d be exactly where I needed to be. Making myself as small as I could, I tucked into another descent, then straightened as I passed the top of the ramp, the board obediently joining me.
I can’t tell you how it felt—there isn’t a page big enough to hold the buzz, relief, or excitement—but I knew then that momentum was with me. All I had to do was not drop it.
My speed picked up by the second, my confidence accelerating too. I focused hard, remembering what I’d planned, daring to throw my body higher with every single kick-turn.
I started to enjoy myself, grabbing at the board to rotate it as I turned, balancing on one leg, kicking the board skyward without ever losing control. I knew I was getting some serious air because the crowd was cheering me on, hands in the air when they weren’t applauding.
They were all with me; I could sense it without even looking down from the top of the ramp.
But it was in that ultimate moment of acceptance, I realized that, ironically, it didn’t really matter what they thought. I knew what I was doing, and knew I was doing it well. If they wanted to come along for the ride, or slap me on the back afterward, then fine, but I didn’t need their congratulations to know what I’d achieved.
There was a clutch of people, though, whose opinion did matter, and although my time on the ramp was short, I couldn’t wait to see what they thought.
So after one last rotation with my arms spread wide, I slid the base of the board along the ramp edge and skidded to safety. The crowd boomed again, raising a grin the width of my face. But my smile got wider still when I caught sight of Sinus, deep in conversation with a girl beside him. He was pointing at the ramp with one hand, and at a decorated wall with the other. She might have been impressed; it was hard to tell. I had a long way to go until I understood girls the way I did skating. I didn’t think Sinus would ever be a teacher to learn from either, and so I left him to it.
I searched for my folks through the crowd of raised arms.
I found them eventually: Dad’s face was blurred by furiously clapping hands, though I could still make out a smile as he whooped his approval.
But it was Mom’s response I really craved. And though her hands weren’t clapping and her mouth was closed, I knew I’d made the impression I could only have dreamed of. Because there she stood, arms raised above her head, fingers stretched to the clouds in wonder, as tears of something other than grief slid gently down her face toward her smiling lips.
And that was enough for me.
I must’ve only had seconds left on the ramp, but there was no way I was coming down. Not yet. I hadn’t done enough to win: knew I couldn’t, even if I stayed up there for another hour.
But I needed to do it one more time.
So after punching the air in joy and ri
pping the bubble wrap off my shoulders and knees, I dropped my body and the board into the void one last time, laughing as the wall rose in front of me, before disappearing.
It wasn’t the highest I’d flown, but that didn’t matter.
Because just for a second, as I reached the top of my leap, I thought of Dora, and in that moment, I swear she held me there, before gently letting me fall back down to earth.
Charlie Han didn’t always live above a Chinese takeout. In fact, for a long time, Charlie wasn’t Charlie at all. He was Bud Cotton, and he looked like this:
I didn’t draw this; my pal Boz did, over ten years ago. We worked on Bud Cotton for a long time, many drafts, many sketches, but never managed to get him or us into print.
I do need to thank Boz, though, for being such a great and supportive friend for the last twenty years. Without his support, I wouldn’t have tried to write in the first place.
My thanks also to Jodie Hodges, who I love working (and gossiping) with, and to Caff and Mark Ward, whose skating expertise was priceless.
Thanks very much also to the team at Puffin, especially Ben Horslen, who inherited the dubious honor of being my editor (and still managed to smile), Katy Finch for another belting cover, and Sam Mackintosh, the greatest copy editor ever.
Huge thank-yous also to the brilliant Booksellers Crow, the Dublin Davids (O’Callaghan and Maybury), Matthew Williams, Marcus Sedgwick, and especially Phil Carroll, who has given me masses of support this last year—what a pal you are.
Finally, a huge thank-you to my folks up in ’Ull, who support even my craziest ideas; my friends in the Palace, who constantly make me grin; and most of all, Laura, Albie, Elsie, and Stan, for putting up with me and allowing me to dream.
I’m a lucky, lucky lad.
Phil Earle’s first job was as a care worker in a children’s home, an experience that influenced the ideas behind The Bubble Wrap Boy. He then trained as a drama therapist and worked in a therapeutic community in south London, caring for traumatized and abused adolescents. After a couple of years in the care sector, Phil chose the more sedate lifestyle of a bookseller and now works in children’s publishing.