Skate Freak (2 page)

“Huh?” I had been expecting him to yell at me.

“It's good to see a young man doing
something worthwhile with his life. Do you believe in God?”

“Yes,” I answered to please the reverend. If it allowed me to do the only railing in town, I'd believe in God.

“Excellent,” he said, patting me on the back. “Bless you.”

Then he went back in the church. Willis Harbor was that kind of place.

In the city, I made the rounds of a half dozen churches after school each day until the Friday after the bike incident. I had still not made contact with SLG, though I almost got up the courage twice before turning into a wimp.

I was at the Baptist church near the brewery. Some people were inside practicing for a wedding. I should have just gone down the street to the Catholic church. But the Baptist rail had a sweeter slide.

I had just made my move down the rail and was planting myself back on the sidewalk with that satisfying
whack
of wheels
hitting concrete, when the police car pulled up. An officer got out almost before the car stopped.

I swallowed hard.

“You know that's breaking the law, right?” the cop asked.

“Um,” I said. I wasn't good at skill-testing questions.

“You've probably been warned before, right?”

“Not really,” I murmured. “Back home...” I was going to explain about Reverend Darwin, but I didn't have a chance.

“I don't know where back home is,” he said. “But in this city, damaging property like that is an offense.”

“I wasn't trying to damage anything. Maybe I scraped a little paint off but—”

“I'd call that vandalism. That's what I'd call it.”

The wedding party was on the steps now, staring at me as if I'd just murdered someone.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“You're lucky, you know that?” the cop said.

“I am?”

“Yeah, we just had this campaign shoved down our throats by the mayor. We're supposed to make the city more kid-friendly.”

“Well, that sounds like a good thing,” I stammered.

“For you. It means that I won't fine you this time. I won't take you in.”

“Thanks,” I said. I was trained to be polite when someone was giving me a break.

“But, I am going to confiscate your board,” he added. And with that, he grabbed my skateboard, turned and got back into the police cruiser. “If you want it back, you have to come down to the station with a parent.”

And he drove off.

With my board.

My father was watching a rerun of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
when I walked into the dingy apartment. “C. The answer is C,” he said to the
TV
screen.

“Dad?”

“Just a minute.” He didn't look away from the screen.

I heard the contestant on TV answer, “D. Final answer.”

“Sorry, the answer is C” the show's host said, and the audience sighed.

My father turned to me and said, “If that had been me, I would have won fifty thou.”

“Dad, I need you to go to the police station with me.”

“The police station?” he said, his voice rising in volume. “What did you do?”

“Nothing really.”

“Must have been something.”

“It was nothing. I was skating in front of a church. A cop came and lectured me. Then he took my board.”

“Then why do we have to go to the police station?”

“To get my skateboard back. He said I need to bring a parent.”

“Looks like I'm the only one available.”

“That's what I was thinking. Can we go there now?” I was feeling naked without my board. I felt lost. Almost dizzy.

“No,” he said. “I think maybe this is a good thing. Time to stop fooling around
with kids' stuff like skateboarding and move on.”

I thought about calling my mother's cell phone number, interrupting her in her heavy equipment class maybe. But I thought I might start crying if I heard her voice on the phone. I wished there was something I could do to pull my family back together. But I knew there was nothing I could do. Nothing at all. So I went into the kitchen and microwaved a slice of frozen pizza. It tasted like crap. I'd put it right up there as the number one worst piece of pizza I'd ever nuked. The worst I'd ever eaten. Maybe the worst piece of pizza on the planet.

Saturday morning. Six
AM
. This was not territory I was at all familiar with. Someone was shaking my shoulder.

I opened my eyes. My father was standing over me.

“Get up, Quinn.”

I looked at him, looked around at my crummy room. Oh yeah, I had to say to
myself every morning. I'm not in Willis Harbor anymore. My life is a disaster. I tried to focus on the clock. The number six on the clock confused me. “It's Saturday, right?”

“Right.”

“I don't have to get up for school.” I noticed then that my father had a jacket on. His hair was combed—that was totally weird.

“No, but you have to get your butt out of bed, get dressed and go down to the police station with me.” He was smiling now. I hadn't seen my old man smile since before my mom left. I guess he felt sorry for me losing my board after all. This was more like the father I knew back in Willis Harbor.

I shot out of bed and scooped up yesterday's clothes from the floor.

The city was strangely likeable in the early morning. The streets were nearly empty. I was beginning to see some possibilities. We made it to the cop shop by six thirty.

My father was nervous. “We're here to
see about the boy's skateboard,” he said to the tired man behind the desk.

“Skateboard?”

“Yesterday,” I said. “He said I needed to come down with a parent.”

“He who?”

“The police guy.”

“You don't know his name?”

“He didn't tell me.”

“You should've asked.”

My father interjected, “It was only yesterday. Could you please help us find it?”

“Been a long night,” the man said. He let out a sigh. “Okay. We got this room with bikes and skateboards. Let's go have a look.”

We followed him down a hallway, and I could tell being in the police station made my father nervous. Me too. I guess we'd both watched too many cop shows on
TV
. The hallways seemed really dirty.

“Nice place you have here,” my father said, trying to lighten things up.

The man laughed. “Janitor quit this week.
Chief can't seem to get his act together to hire someone.”

He stopped and opened a door. Inside were about twenty bikes and a big pile of skateboards—must have been almost fifty. “Probably in there somewhere,” he said to me.

Now, me and my board go way back. We were soul mates. I walked forward and grabbed the trucks, picked the board up in an instant. I felt the universe lock back into place. I could have grabbed any board there. I could have taken a really expensive board. But I didn't. I wanted
my
board back.

“Kids,” the man said to my father. “I got one of my own. He's fifteen. Plays video games nonstop. Can't figure him out.”

“I know what you mean,” said my dad.

I was smiling from ear to ear. Both men shook their heads and laughed.

In the hallway, my dad asked the guy, “So, are you looking for a new janitor?”

“Bet your ass we are, why?”

“Can I apply for the job?”

“Can you start tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“We'll have to run a criminal check on you this week though. Is that okay?”

“No problem.”

Outside, in the cool morning air, the world seemed a little brighter. The funky smell of the brewery wasn't present, and I thought I could smell the sweet salt air of the sea.

My father took me out for breakfast, and we both ate like pigs. Which was very cool.

“I always wanted to be a janitor,” he said, after we'd shoveled eggs, home fries and bacon down. He was joking, but it was a good joke. Then he smiled at me like the father I knew when I was little. Back when things were great.

The next day, I heard my father get up early again to go to his job at the police station. I lay there looking at the cracks in the ceiling when it clicked.
Sunday morning.
The skate park would be empty.

I shot out of bed and gathered yesterday's clothes, dressed and grabbed my board. I kissed my board, I was so pumped.

The skate park was beautiful. The air was cool, and there was no wind. The sun
was low in the sky, and everything looked green and fresh. The smell of wet concrete was awesome. I thought I was alone. Then I heard the sound. Someone was in the bowl.

When I saw her, my heart stopped.

SLG came up out of the bowl and popped ever so slightly into the air, tagged her board with her hand, indy-style, and landed gracefully back down onto the arched wall of the bowl, making hardly a sound. She was alone.

She went up the other side and did it again. As gravity tugged her back to earth, her ponytail swished up in the air in a way that paralyzed me.

And then she leaped off her board, kicking it up into the air. She stood there staring at me. The frozen boy.

And then she skated over to the half-pipe and continued her run.

I rolled ever so cautiously up to the bowl she had just vacated. I dropped, went halfway up the slope and just kind of rolled
around for a bit, afraid to try any tricks with her nearby.

I was trying to get up the nerve to skate beside her, to introduce myself. But as I finally made my first real attempt on the lip, there she was. Right there, looking at me. I tried to ollie over onto the flat, but I lost my board and it tumbled below. And so did I.

Ouch.

She looked down at me without sympathy.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She didn't sound thrilled to see me.

“Trying to avoid the crowds,” I answered, attempting to stand up and recover what was left of my dignity.

“I liked having the place all to myself,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“I got tired of all the agro guys during the week. Just not worth it.”

“I know what you mean.”

She stared some more.

“You want me to leave?” I asked, fully on my feet now. I grabbed my board and walked up the sloped side toward her.

“I dunno yet.”

“That's cool.” when it came to conversations with girls, I was not the sharpest tool in the shed.

“Got a name?”

“Quinn Dorfman. Dorf for short.”

She laughed. “I'd change that if I were you. Sounds too much like Dork.”

“I'm used to it. I don't mind.”

“I'm Jasmine,” she said.

“You're kidding,” was my brilliant reply.

“Jazz, for short. You go to Random, right?”

“Yeah, I saw you too. You keep your board in your locker.” I made a serious effort to take my foot out of my mouth.

“And you like to stare. I noticed.”

“Sorry. I just thought...” I was going to say she was cute or pretty or beautiful, but I stopped myself. “I just thought you had a really hot board. Homegrown, right?”

“Yeah. It was a present. My grandmother bought it for me.”

“Your grandmother skates?”

“My grandmother is dead now. And she didn't skate. But she understood that some things are important.”

“Sorry.”

“About what?”

“About your grammie being dead.”

“How'd you know I called her Grammie?”

“I didn't. That's what I called my grandmother. She's dead too.”

“Sorry.”

“S'okay. Wanna skate? Before the place gets crowded?”

“Sure.”

And it's just about then that a guy likes to show his stuff. He likes to show off. It was rather predictable, but I couldn't help it. I ripped. And so did she. We had the place to ourselves for another forty-five minutes. The only problem was that she was as good as me. Maybe better. And she knew it.

Then we were invaded by a rat pack of younger kids. Dweebs and dweebites on little bikes and scooters and a couple of skateboarders with runny noses.

The scab eventually fell off my forehead, and my lip wasn't as puffy anymore. I still had bruises on the backs of my legs, but they didn't hurt that much. Ever since I met Jasmine, I started to feel a little better about school despite...well, despite everything else.

As I walked by her locker, I stopped and said hi to her.

“You're still stalking me?” she asked. But she was smiling.

I blushed immediately. I didn't know what to say.

“Just kidding,” she said. “It's okay.”

“How come you have rocks in your locker?” I asked.

“Because I like rocks. I collect them. I'm going to be a geologist.”

“Oh. Well, that's cool.” A geologist? SLG wanted to be a geologist?

She held out an amazing purple crystal. “This one is amethyst.”

I held it in my hands and was dazzled by it.

“And this one is an agate.” She showed me another rock, this one polished with an incredible design inside it. “My favorites are the geodes though,” she said and lifted out another one.

“It's hollow.”

“That's the cool part. On the outside, it looks like a dull, boring rock, but inside it's like a magical kingdom.”

The hollow cavern inside the rock had a thousand little crystals. “I know where some really cool rocks are,” I blurted out, trying to keep up my end of the conversation.

“You do?”

I handed her back the amethyst. “Well, they're not like this, but they are amazing. Really amazing.”

“Can you take me there some time?”

“For sure. It's by the sea. The town
where I grew up. This place is a very special place.”