“Freak mode?” I ask.
He dips another few fries in his ketchup and mayo, lifts the top bun of his burger. and places the fries between the bun and the cheese.
“The questions won’t be a problem,” he says, ignoring my question. He reaches down to the floor to the side of the booth and grabs his backpack.
While he’s looking for whatever it is that he’s looking for, I’m gazing down at my plates. One looks like a dessert and one is definitely not. The one I like is the dessert, but I forgot to stop the waiter and ask which one it is when he was giving Ian his food.
“Here,” Ian says. “I think this should help.”
He hands me his open notebook and I start reading. They’re questions to ask interviewees.
“When did you do this?” I ask.
“I am a college student,” he says. “I do realize there’s going to be homework from time to time.”
I flip the page. The back of the first page and at least the front of the next one are filled not only with linear questions, but with, “if so, go to this question,” and, “if not, go to that question.”
“These are good,” I tell him. “I think we can use these.”
I look up at him.
He’s taking a bite of his burger, and I take a moment to wonder why it doesn’t bother me that he has fries dipped in ketchup and mayo on his burger, but it bothers me when he eats them without.
“Great,” he says through a full mouth. “I’m going to need to up my practice time as the competition comes closer, but I’ll put as much time as I can into this. Despite what you may think, I’m not just some ingrate who expects other people to do my work for me.”
I’m laughing.
“What?” he asks, fidgeting a little in his seat.
“I don’t know if you know this,” she says, “but I saw you biff it when you were trying to drop in at the skate park.”
“Yeah,” he says, looking anywhere but at me. “I know you were there.”
“What was that, anyway?” I ask, still tittering. “I’ve seen you skate before, but you looked like you didn’t know what the hell you were doing.”
“There was some loose gravel at the bottom that I didn’t see in time to react,” he says, but I know he’s lying. Besides, I was at the park for a while, and I caught him running out or crashing every time he went down that half-halfpipe section.
“I don’t think so,” I tell him. “If that was the case, you would have cleared it out before you tried again.”
“I was just having an off day,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You know,” I tease, “for someone who’s been skating as long as you have, it’s pretty hilarious to see you crash out repeatedly on something so basic.”
“Who says it’s basic?” he asks. “If it weren’t for that vert section of the park, I wouldn’t have access to a vert ramp at all. Have you ever tried to roll in on a vert ramp? It’s harder than it looks.”
“Oh my God,” I say, covering my mouth. “You can’t drop in.”
“Shh!” he says, putting his finger to his lips and hunching forward like we’re talking nuclear secrets. “It’s not a big deal,” he says. “I’m working on it and I’m going to have it all down in time for the competition.”
“You really can’t?” I ask. “I was half-joking.”
He takes a few seconds to weigh his options.
“Are you going to eat any of that?” he asks finally, pointing to one of my plates. “What is that, anyway?”
I sigh.
* * *
“This is humiliating,” Ian says as we’re walking up to the park.
“Well, you’re the one that brought your board,” I tell him.
“Yeah,” he says, “I was going to come here and practice after we met up and everything. I just wasn’t expecting to have an audience when I did.”
“There’s nobody here,” I tell him.
It’s actually kind of strange to see the park deserted this early. The sun is setting and nobody ever bothered putting up lights around the park, but with the street lights in the distance, there’s still just enough light to see by.
“You meant me,” I chuckle, “didn’t you?”
“I’d rather nobody see me dropping in until I can actually learn to come out of it,” he says.
As much fun as I’m having with Ian on this, I can’t imagine how terrified he must be to be this close, but doomed to fail. Even if he gets perfect scores in the street competition, if he can’t drop in, that’s it. Game over.
“Why don’t you just try dropping in once and I’ll see if I can tell where the problem is,” I tell him.
He’s looking at me like I’m telling him to kill his cat.
“You know, just because we’ve got our questions for the interviews and everything doesn’t mean that we can just—” he starts, but I think he realizes about halfway through this is just something he needs to do. Either that, or he’s figured out that no matter what he says, I’m going to pester him until he goes through with it anyway. “All right,” he says. “I’ll do it, but I’ve had enough people laughing at me for not being able to do this, and I really don’t need any more negative reinforcement.”
“You know, negative reinforcement isn’t actually what you think it is,” I tell him. “When you add something to a scenario, even punishment, it’s still considered positive reinforcement because you’re adding. If you take something away from a person, that’s called negative reinforcement, and it occurs to me that none of that is really that important right now.” I look up at the spot where he’s supposed to drop in, and I’m just glad I don’t have to do it.
Still, he’s on the cusp of going pro. This is something he should really have in his toolbox if he expects to do well as a pro skater.
“Do you want me to climb up there and observe or do it down here?” I ask.
“It really doesn’t matter, does it?” he asks, and walks past me. For an instant, I think he’s upset with me, but as he gets to the top and looks down, it’s clear what emotion he’s feeling right now. It’s fear.
“All right,” I tell him. “Let’s see what you’re doing and let’s see if we can’t figure out a way to do it better.”
“Helpful,” he says. “Ready?”
“I’m ready when you are,” I tell him.
He takes one more look at the slope and gets his board ready, the tail on the lip, and I’m hoping that my years of watching skate competitions live and on television have prepared me to be able to dissect what he’s doing and tell him how to fix it.
“All right,” he says, and he puts his other foot on the board.
What happens next doesn’t really compute in my head. I see him leaning forward, I see him crouching like I’ve seen other skaters, and then, about halfway down, something I can’t even see goes wrong and he comes off his board, managing to stay on his feet and running out of it.
His face is already red and I can feel his frustration from over here, but I honestly don’t even know what happened.
“Any thoughts?” he asks.
“Do it again,” I tell him. “I need to figure out what went wrong and it happened too fast the first time.”
“What makes you think it’s going to happen slower the second time?” he asks. “Camera phone and a slow motion replay?”
“Now I know what to look for,” I tell him. “We can start taking videos and breaking them down, but don’t you think we’d just end up spending all our time on the film and none of it on the actual work that’s going to change things? Don’t you want to get this right for the competition?”
“Of course I do,” he says. “I was just hoping to be able to do this on my own time and without anyone to see just how bad I am at it.”
“Give it another run,” I tell him. “I bet I’ll have a better idea after this next one.”
He’s shaking his head, but he climbs back up to the top anyway.
This is one of the things th
at really drew me to skating in the first place: the determination. I’m convinced that it’s impossible to be a successful skater without that particular personality trait.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I call back.
I’m watching more closely this time. Whatever happened, it happened when he was about halfway down the ramp.
His board’s in position and he’s leaning forward, only this time, he loses his nerve just as the wheels are coming down on the ramp, and he free falls the 14 or 15 feet to the ground.
Oddly enough, his second attempt does seem to take longer than his first, but I think that’s only because he’s on his way toward a tremendously hard fall, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
It looks like he tries to tuck and roll as he comes down on the hard ground, and he surprisingly is on his feet less than a second later, but it looks like he’s gone straight from frustrated to pissed as he tracks down his board, slams his foot on the tail, catches it, and starts stomping back toward the ramp.
“Hold on,” I tell him.
“What?” he asks.
“You’re hurt,” I answer.
He looks down. His pants are torn just above the knee, and there’s a pretty decent cut from which he’s bleeding pretty steady.
“Fuck,” he says. “Well, that sucks.”
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“I’m fine,” he says. “I don’t even know what happened that time.”
He starts walking again like he’s going to go for another run, but he’s leaving a trail of blood and I can only see the situation growing worse if we don’t take care of it.
“No,” I tell him. “We need to get that wound cleaned up and make sure you’re not going to need stitches. You don’t want it to get infected, do you?”
He groans.
“This was such a bad idea,” he says. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.”
“Hey, just be glad I’m here to talk you out of going back up there, or who knows what kind of gash you’d end up with,” I tell him.
It takes a minute, but I finally convince him to postpone the drop-in practice or whatever we’re calling it and get where we can get a better look at the laceration. The only caveat is that he insists we go to his house, as he says it’s closer.
We start walking, and I don’t know if the wound really isn’t hurting him or if he’s trying to put on a brave face, because he’s not limping or favoring the leg in any way, though I can see the two sections of skin puckering and parting like lips when I catch a good angle through the new tear in his pants.
We’re walking a few blocks, and the lower-middle class surroundings start turning into upper-middle class surroundings as the houses grow larger, the cars grow nicer, and the number of people outside doing their own yardwork plummets.
“I didn’t know you were a rich kid,” I tell him.
“I’m not,” he says. “My dad’s a lawyer. Me, I don’t have shit for money, at least not yet.”
We take a right and walk a little longer before we come up to what must be Ian’s house. Even for a lawyer, it looks like his dad is doing particularly well for himself.
“Nice house,” I tell him.
“Yeah, it’s all right,” he says. “We’re going to have to go in through the back if we don’t want to track blood over all the carpet. There’s a bathroom just off the sliding back door, and it’s all tile through there.”
“Okay,” I answer, and follow him around the house. There are a couple of lights on, but there doesn’t seem to be any signs of noise or movement.
We go in through the back door and I follow Ian to the bathroom he was talking about.
“Come in,” he says, one hand on the door, the other motioning for me to enter.
I walk in and he closes the door behind us.
“What first aid stuff do you have around…” I start, but am unable to finish.
Rather than simply lifting the pant leg or opening it where it’s already torn, Ian went for the much less expected option of simply dropping his pants altogether.
“What’s wrong?” he asks and tries to angle his upper leg under the sink faucet, but it doesn’t quite bend that way.
“Do you have rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s just up in that cabinet. There should be bandages and antibiotic cream in there, too. Would you mind grabbing it while I try to get myself cleaned off here?”
Most of his bleeding stopped a while ago, but he is a hell of a mess.
I nod and try not to gaze too long at the bulge of his anatomy pressing against the fabric of his boxers.
After rummaging through the cabinet for a minute, I manage to get everything I need: hydrogen peroxide, bandages, antibiotic cream, cotton balls, cotton swabs, and a pair of latex gloves. When I turn back around, Ian’s managed, somehow, to get his upper leg under the sink faucet and is carefully rinsing off the area around the wound.
I set everything on what’s left of the open counter space.
“You know,” he says, “I think I can probably get this on my own.”
As unappealing as tending a wound generally is, I protest, “Oh, quit being such a baby.”
“I’m not,” he says. “I’m telling you that I can take care of it. That’s kind of the opposite thing…”
He trails off, because not only am I ignoring him, I’m also holding a cotton ball over the mouth of the hydrogen peroxide bottle and tipping it just enough to get the cotton wet.
I hand him the cotton ball and tell him, “If you think you got this by yourself, go for it.”
As soon as the cool wetness of the hydrogen peroxide touches his fingers, Ian shudders.
“All right,” he says. “Thanks. I’ll be out in a minute.”
I walk out of the bathroom and take a seat on the nearest piece of furniture, what looks like an antique chair or a reproduction of an antique chair. Either way, I’m really uncomfortable even touching the thing, much less sitting in it, so I quickly get back up and knock on the door.
“You about done in there?” I ask.
“Would you mind coming back in here for a minute?” he asks.
I open the door and find him sitting on the counter, the cotton ball about six inches above the wound and just far enough off to the side that, when it drips, it doesn’t drip onto his wound.
I sigh. “You’re such a baby,” I tell him, and before he even asks, I put on the gloves, take the cotton ball from his hand and start cleaning the area around the wound.
“I hate to be a bother,” he says, “but would you mind getting the cut itself? I hate that peroxide stuff.”
“You’d think, being a skater, you’d be used to it,” I tell him, drying my hands and grabbing the bottle.
“I think I had to have it so many times that it built into a phobia,” he says. “I can get through it and everything, but if I’m going to do it myself, we’re probably going to be here for a while.”
I take a look at the cut. Now that the area around it is clean, the thing doesn’t look so bad.
Ian’s eyes are on the lid of the bottle as I’m unscrewing it, and then on the space where the lid was once I’ve removed it.
“Don’t you need one of those cotton balls?” he asks.
I give him a sideward glance. “You know, for someone who’s sat through what I can only imagine must have been a few days’ worth of tattoos, I’d really think you’d have developed a pair of balls somewhere along the way,” and I dump a little hydrogen peroxide straight into the wound, and I laugh a little as Ian’s mouth gapes and his hands are just above his leg as he wants to try something to take the sting away, but doesn’t want to contaminate the wound and end up having me do that again.
“Totally different thing,” he says. “Tats can hurt and everything, but they’re not dripping poison into open wounds.”
“It’s not poison,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t drink it, but…” I p
our a little more over the wound, and Ian has his eyes closed and he’s banging the back of his head against the wall.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying this maybe just a bit too much.
“You know,” I tell him, “with as much blood as you left on the ground, I was expecting something a lot deeper.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I bleed a lot when my heart is racing.”
I look up at him with a smirk. “You’re really hung up on dropping in, aren’t you?” I ask.
“It’s kind of the only thing standing between me and that fat sponsorship they’re offering the winner of the Midwest Comp.,” he says. “As much as I know my dad would love for me to just quit boarding and be a lawyer like I’m supposed to, I’d really hate to actually end up working a regular job.”
“Is that all it is?” I ask. “You don’t want to end up in a 9-to-5?”
“I wouldn’t say that’s all it is,” he answers, “but you’ve got to admit that’s some pretty strong motivation right there.”
“I guess,” I tell him. “I always thought it was more important to actively do something you love rather than just trying to avoid the stuff you think might bore you.”
“I love to skate,” he says. “That’s kind of the point. I’m always going to love to skate, but the question is, how far can I take it? I’ve spent a lot of time getting good, trying things I haven’t seen other guys try and all that. I’d still skate if there was never any money on the line, but I would like to be able to move out of here and not end up on the street as a result.”
“I know you’re not going to like this, but there’s some dirt and what looks like a couple small bits of gravel in your cut, and I’m going to have to get those out of there before we can bandage it,” I say.
“Maybe we should go to a hospital,” he says.
I look at his face and then back down at his leg. The cut really isn’t all that bad. He’s not going to need any stitches. There’s no real reason to go to a hospital, unless he thinks they’re going to shoot him up with something to take his mind off of the pain.
“If you think you need to go to the hospital, we can get you to the hospital,” I tell him. “Really, though, it’s just a matter of cleaning it out and dressing it. There’s not a whole lot more anyone’s going to be able to do about it. It’s a fairly long cut, but it’s not deep at all.”
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