Free Skateboard Tough by Matt Christopher Page B

Medler.
    When Shannon broke away from him, Kristyne gave him a hug too, though not a bear one like Shannon’s. “You were fantastic, Brett,” she said, stepping back and looking at him. “I never dreamed anybody could do the tricks you did.”
    He grinned, and shrugged. “It just takes practice,” he said modestly
But, in his case, was it only practice?
he asked himself. The question didn’t want to go away. Those accidents, and near-accidents …
    “When do we eat?” he asked, forcing a laugh as he turned to his mother.
    She smiled. “Can you wait fifteen minutes, champ?”
    “I can wait,” he said, and gave her a hug.
    A couple of mornings later, a little after ten o’clock, Brett got tired of just sitting around the house and went out to ride The Lizard. He’d done a couple of chores — swept off the walks and cleaned out the crawl space underneath the house — and was getting restless. Now that the contest was over he felt let down. He just had to get out and do something, and nothing would make him feel better right now than skateboarding.
    He waved to the mail carrier coming up the walk, then was attracted by some familiar noises coming from down the street. Sensing action in the offing, he headed in that direction.
    Around the corner, a small, two-story house was being lifted from its foundation to be placed onto a flat-bottomed truck. Skateboarding on the street in front of it were Johnee Kale and a couple of other kids.
    “Hi, guys,” Brett called as he wheelied to a stop in front of them.
    “Hi, Brett,” the two boys with Johnee answered him. But Johnee just gave him an unpleasant look and skated away. Brett couldn’t believe it. Johnee was mad at him! Brett guessed that it had to do with taking his number at the contest.
    Geez,
Brett thought.
Can’t he understand that it was important to me? What difference did it make, anyway?
    “Okay, boys, take off,” a man wearing a helmet said to them as he came from behind the moving house. “It’s dangerous here.”
    Brett walked out into the street, glancing back and forth to see if cars were coming. He and the other kids waited for two to pass by, then skated to the intersection, where all the kids except Brett turned left. He turned right. Might as well head back for home, he decided.
    He skated for a while in front of his house, doing some of the easier tricks — if his mother saw him pulling off some of the fancier freestyle stunts now she might fly off the handle — then left The Lizard on the walk and went into the house.
    “That you, Brett?” his mother called him from the living room.
    “Yeah,” he answered.
    “Look on the table,” she said. “There’s a postcard for you.”
    He saw it, picked it up, and read it. It was printed in ink.
    Lizard Boy,
    Put that skateboard back where you got it from, or you’ll be sorrier than ever.
    Lance Hawker

14
    I saw that note,” his mother said. “Who’s Lance Hawker?”
    Brett reread the card, feeling an icy chill starting at the base of his spine and working upward.
    “Did you hear me?” she repeated. “Who’s Lance Hawker?”
    A deep frown appeared on Brett’s forehead. “The guy who used to own The Lizard,” he said, his voice so low it was barely audible.
    “How do you know that?”
    “W.E. told me.”
    “How does he know?”
    “W.E. knows a lot of things,” Brett said, and went into the next room, feeling like squashing the postcard into a lump in his hand. But he didn’t. He had to keep it for proof. He was going to show it to W.E., call him a rotten, dirty rat for writing him such a note, and shove it down his throat. Because nobody except W.E. had ever said that The Lizard was hexed. Nobody. It had to be him.
    “Maybe you should rebury it, Brett,” Shannon’s voice came from the chair by the window. She was studying one of her music sheets.
    He glared at her. “Rebury it? Why? You crazy or something?”
    “No. But ever since you’ve had The Lizard you …” She