As soon as we had passed the guards, I peeled off from them. I walked down a corridor to my right.
No way! Another security guard. His blue dress shirt with darker blue vest were obvious. And he was coming right at me. For a second, I could have sworn we made eye contact.
Was it extra-security night? I couldn’t believe my luck.
But someone walked between us and I turned to look at something in a window. Uh oh. It was a women’s store. I had to turn away unless I wanted people to think I was interested in buying a bikini.
Thankfully, something caught the guard’s eye. He was staring at hot dogs rolling on a grill. This was my chance to get around him. But I was blocked by some benches. I took a couple of big steps, and then placed both hands and my right foot on the back of the bench. I popped into the air, throwing my left leg between my right foot and hand. I landed quietly on the other side. In the gym, it would have been called a safety vault.
It was so fast, nobody noticed. At least, that’s what I hoped. I sneaked a glance as I walked down the other side of the aisle. The security guy was buying a hot dog. But, man, two minutes in the mall and I’d already leaped over a bench dodging security. If I kept this up, I was going to draw too much attention to myself.
My phone buzzed. It was Parker.
We’re at the checkout. We’ll meet you outside R ‘n’ R.
That was a relief. I was feeling more hopeful that I could get away with this. I still had to make my way up to the second floor, though. I stepped onto the escalator and started the ride up.
I glanced ahead. Seriously?
Another security guard was about to step onto the down escalator. We would have to pass right by each other. I didn’t want to risk it. I took two steps up, placed one hand on either side of the escalator, braced myself and spun over the railing. It was a reverse vault, mostly. Now, I was headed down again with the guard behind me.
I needed another route. I shuffled toward the escalator and started up again. The Run ‘n’ Racket was in view at the end of the corridor.
My phone buzzed.
Meet you downstairs.
Great. That’s just where I had come from. Now I was following Parker. I thought I spotted her, and I hoped she’d look back and join me. That way, I could blend into another crowd. But she never looked back. I was coming down the escalator. Those same two security guards were still at the entrance. If I kept walking, I’d go right past them. I had another idea.
I grabbed the railing and did another reverse vault. Now I was standing on the ledge, about two metres off the ground. But the escalator was shielding me from the guards. I let myself go, landing softly on the balls on my feet. I had more momentum than I’d guessed, though. I had to drop into a parkour roll to absorb some of the fall. I stood and walked calmly toward the door where Parker was waiting.
“Were you just doing parkour in the mall?”
I smiled. My face was red from exercise and embarrassment. She didn’t have to wait for my answer. A big smile spread across her face.
“That’s just crazy nonsense!” she said. “You are so my hero right now.”
Hey, it was just a little ninja trickery. But it really felt amazing to think I had impressed her.
13
Zombie Apocalypse
When we got to the entrance, I stepped ahead of Parker and her two friends — Naomi and Shoana — to open the door for them. It was also my escape from mall security. I was finally outside the Rideau Centre again. I unzipped my jacket a little and lifted the ball cap from my eyes.
I took a deep breath of the cooler night air. Parker’s invitation to do something fun — and my little disappearing act from security — made me feel good. Maybe I was finally starting to figure out this new city. The shoplifting and my fight with Jayden were a little further behind me.
“Seriously, what made you decide to jump from the escalator there?” Parker asked me.
“I am still trying to figure out when you do this stuff. You know, parkour,” I said. “Like, can you get a job doing it?”
They laughed as we crossed the street into the ByWard Market. Shoana jabbed Naomi with her elbow and whispered something in her ear, all the while staring at me. They both giggled.
“You could be a stuntman,” Naomi said.
“And you will be able to save your girlfriend from the zombie apocalypse,” Shoana said.
Parker rolled her eyes at her friends. “Okay, that’s enough,” she said. “What you should do, Tricky, is those obstacle course races on TV. You could win a million dollars.”
I liked the idea of a million dollars. And being in the movies would be awesome. But zombies only made me think of one thing.
“Well, all of those sound good,” I said. “But what sounds better right now is food.”
We gorged ourselves on hot dogs and poutine. I dug my fork into the French fries. The cheese was so melty under the bubbling gravy, it felt like I could pull it forever from the box and it would never break. The hot dog came rolled in pastry. I covered mine in mustard and relish.
Parker and I shared a BeaverTail — the long, flat donut was covered with chocolate sauce and peanut butter candies. We ripped it in half. Her hand darted out and scooped up all the candy that fell off the top.
“Mmm, you’re too slow,” she said as she crunched.
We spent another hour wandering the tents that held the ByWard Market’s shops.
Most were filled with rows of bright red tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, corn on the cob and every kind of apple you’d ever heard of. One whole tent was devoted to maple syrup: cans and glass bottles in shades of gold and bronze, maple candies and maple cookies. Still others sold buckets of exotic flowers with delicate petals on thick green stems. Those stalls were my favourite. They smelled kind of like the forest back home after a sudden, hard rainstorm.
Parker and her friends pored over handmade jewellery for sale. They held up flowing dresses in pink and green. They tried on sandals.
I zipped into a candy store and came out with five dollars’ worth of licorice for my mom. Ottawa suddenly felt like a very different city. It felt smaller. Everyone said hello to us. Maybe I’d been too quick to dismiss Ottawa as a place that did not want me.
Parker and I said goodbye to her friends when Naomi’s mom came to pick them up.
“Do you guys want a ride?” Naomi’s mom asked us.
“My mom is coming soon,” Parker added. “We will give Tricky a ride home.”
“Do you want us to wait? It’s getting awfully dark out.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to get trapped by the zombies!” a laughing Naomi said as she climbed into the back seat.
Parker closed the car door on her friend and laughed. “We’ll be fine. Thanks for the offer.”
The car sped away and we turned to walk back through the market. It was suddenly quiet too. Most of the tents were closed and lights were turning off for the night. We could see shadows working around corners, but we did not see many people.
Parker and I looked at each other. She tried to smile and so did I.
“I can take the bus,” I said.
“And leave me here alone? Thanks a lot!” She was laughing as she said it. “It’s fine,” she added. “We almost drive right past your place on the way home.”
Parker was shivering a little. Her head was turning from one direction to the other.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, totally. But let’s get going. This place is starting to weird me out. We have to meet my mom on the other side of the mall.”
Something crashed right in front of us. Parker shouted and I jumped. One of the farmers loading her truck had dropped a box of tomatoes. Red goo spread across the pavement.
“Now where?” I said.
Parker took two big strides and jumped for the wall
of a building next to us. She burst past the spilled tomatoes and planted her foot on the wall while gripping the ledge to pull herself up.
“Nice!” I said.
I followed, jumping off my right foot and planting my left on the wall. It was an easy escape, thanks to a wall jump.
“Hey, cool moves!” someone said from a doorway. Two men laughed a creepy laugh. They were hidden in darkness. We scooted past them down the sidewalk.
“Are they following us?” Parker asked.
“Nah,” I said. But I wasn’t sure.
Just to be safe I waved Parker to follow me to our right. We turned a corner quickly. Some park benches stretched out down the middle of the sidewalk. I led the way this time, going at them quickly.
I placed my hands on the back of a bench and vaulted over it. Parker was right behind me. We were now far away from the two weirdos.
“That was fun,” I said.
“We have a few minutes to kill,” Parker answered, looking at her phone.
We walked along a low stone fence that looked down on a park below us. I vaulted over some posts cemented into the ground. They were to keep cars off the sidewalk, I guess. Parker ran along their tops, one by one. It looked like she was flying. She barely landed on each before springing to the next one.
I ran ahead. I jumped onto a fancy, old-fashioned street light and spun around it with my hands. We sprinted across the street, vaulting over more of the concrete barriers. We danced along the edge of some flower beds and did a gate vault over a fence.
A statue of an old soldier greeted us at the end of the sidewalk. The path circled around it. We rounded the corner, only to stumble upon three people staring into their cell phones, leaning against a fence.
“Ah!” Parker shouted again, but then started laughing.
The three people didn’t even look at us. They just swayed a little in our direction, mumbling something about “brainless kids.”
We kept running.
“He said ‘brains,’” I said.
Parker was laughing so hard she could barely vault over the fence. We cleared it and did parkour rolls on the grass.
“We are so far from where we need to be,” Parker said.
We turned back and found another path back to the street.
“There she is,” Parker said.
We crossed to where a black SUV was waiting. It was so sleek and shiny it glowed in the night. Parker’s mom saw us and started the engine. It growled to life.
“Mom, step on it. To Tricky’s, I mean Patrick’s house.”
“Were those guys real zombies?” I asked Parker.
“At least now we know we can survive the apocalypse.”
Her mom looked at us like we were losing it. But she managed a small smile. “I don’t want to know,” she said.
I looked around me as we pulled away. The leather seats were cool and smooth. The cabin glowed from a digital screen in the centre. It dawned on me as I pulled on my seatbelt: Parker’s family was loaded.
That bit of nagging doubt suddenly crept back into my head. Why was Parker hanging out with a poor kid from the boonies, anyway? Maybe Jayden was right. Maybe he and Parker belonged together. Parker and I didn’t have anything in common.
14
Beast Mode
They looked like boring monkey bars to me. But Coach called them laché bars. They were tucked off in the corner of our gym. I had barely paid them any attention until the moment Coach led us to them at the next practice. There were three steel posts bolted to the floor. I reached out and grabbed one. A dull rattle answered back.
Bars stretched between the wall and posts. Everything was connected by rivets, nuts and bolts. It looked like something you’d see on a construction site.
The first bar was just above my head. I jumped up and grabbed it with both hands.
“Demo day is coming up, and it’s time to start the really hard work,” Coach said. “These are easy, fun skills to add to your runs. You’ve all been on monkey bars before, and some of you have tried these. So let’s get busy.”
He jumped up and grabbed the nearest bar with both hands. He kicked his legs out for momentum, and after three big swings, he was nearly flat on his back in the air. He let go, reached out and grabbed the second bar. He repeated that between the second and third bars. Then the third and fourth. When he reached the end, he threw himself straighter into the air. He twisted in mid-air and grabbed the bar before heading back toward us.
“Just practise swinging on one bar,” he said. “Then let go and land properly. Don’t try swinging from bar to bar yet. That will come later.”
He walked us down to the far post.
“When you swing and land, run for this post and do a twist around it before you head back into line.”
I stepped up for my first swing on the bar. When I grabbed it, I felt the skin on my palms pinch. I had to readjust my grip a little. I kicked my legs forward to get as much momentum as possible. It was an easy thing to do. But it was also more painful than I had guessed.
My hands felt chapped almost from the start. But I wanted to get a feel for how much strength I’d need to swing from bar to bar. So I kicked my legs hard.
I let go and reached for the second bar. I was still too far away from it, so I landed on the balls of my feet with bent knees. I ran at the post and twisted around it.
After fifteen minutes, it felt like the skin on my hands was cracking. I was glad when Coach called for a water break. Pushing the button on the water fountain felt strange after so much swinging and twisting.
I was hoping Coach would take it easy on us after that. I was wrong.
“Ready for a workout?” he shouted. “Hands and knees, friends.”
Everyone in class groaned. That meant quadrupedal movements. QMs had us crawling on the floor.
“Let’s do the monkey,” Coach shouted, pointing to the other side of the room. “Here and back.”
I squatted and reached out with my arms to the right. I planted my hands — still aching from the bars — and lifted my feet off the ground and kicked to my right. Then I repeated it to my left. We all shuffled, left then right, across the gym floor. It must have looked funny to an outsider. A dozen kids squatting and shuffling like chimps searching for our next meal.
“Don’t give up on me now. Cat walk!” Coach yelled. “Backs straight and weight forward.”
I shifted from the side-to-side movement to a straight-ahead motion. As my right hand reached out ahead of me, my left foot followed. Then I switched to left hand and right leg. It felt like climbing a ladder laid on the floor. My pace quickened as I loped across the floor and back.
“Who loves crab?”
Coach’s jokes were not that funny, especially when it came to training. I turned over so my belly button faced the ceiling. I pushed my hips high and clenched my stomach muscles. My arms reached behind me and I walked like a moving table.
I knew what was coming next. My hands and stomach muscles were not happy about it. We still had bears and frogs left in our intense zoo workout.
“Frog legs, forward and backward.”
Coach made sure to stress the “and.” I guess there would be no breaks today. All the while, I kept thinking how this would pay off in the end. I hoped I was getting stronger. That would make my parkour better.
I squatted, bending my knees deeply. I leaned forward so my hands just touched the mat in front of me. I jumped forward like a frog, kicking my feet out behind me and reaching forward with my hands. I kicked my feet out wide. Then I had to draw them back under the centre of my body.
Everyone was slowing down now. I glanced over to see Parker going slowly. Jayden was just ahead of me. But he was not kicking very high.
The backwards frog was nearly impossible at the end of such a tough training session. I planted my hands, pushed
off the mat and kicked my legs back.
“You can’t do parkour without muscles!” This was Coach’s version of encouragement. He shouted it as he walked alongside us.
He was enjoying watching us suffer, I think. I guess that’s what coaches do.
“Last but not least, let me hear you shout it together.”
“Beast mode.” It was what we called bear walking with a harder twist at the end.
“That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Get your beast walks going. Let’s finish strong, shall we?”
I wanted to get it over with. I got down on all fours again. I put my hands out and balanced on my toes. My back was flat. I reached out with my right hand. My left foot followed. We bear walked — left-right, left-right. Then Coach yelled out, “Beast!”
I braced my arms under me and did what looked like a push-up. But one foot — whichever foot you were not using when Coach called out — was suspended in mid-air. The crawling was not so bad. The push-ups were amazingly hard.
My biceps were shaking by the third push-up. At the end of the first line, we turned and headed in the other direction. I reached out with my right hand and lifted my left foot for the first crawl. But before I could get anywhere, my left arm collapsed under me.
I fell on top of it. A shock of pain shot up to my elbow. “Ah!” I cried.
Everyone kept crawling.
Coach came over to me. “Let’s see,” he said.
I sat up, holding my left wrist with my right hand. I flexed the fingers on my left hand.
“I’m okay,” I said.
That was a lie. My wrist was throbbing. But it didn’t feel broken. I broke my wrist two years before while skateboarding, so I knew what broken felt like.
“What happened?” he asked me.
“My hand wobbled. I fell on it.”
Coach leaned down and put an arm around me. Before I knew it, I was standing.
“Get some ice on that,” Coach said as he called an end to practice.
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