Free Into the Danger Zone by Matt Christopher, Stephanie Peters

CHAPTER ONE
    “Man, I can almost
taste
the warm weather, can’t you?”
    Charlie Abbott spun around on his skateboard and grinned at Jonas Malloy. “I hear you, dude. I like snowboarding and all, but it’s been a long winter. I’m craving some action on the half-pipe and rails!” He pushed off and started moving down the sidewalk again. “How many more weeks until the skatepark reopens?”
    Jonas groaned. “Alison said at least three. No exceptions.” Alison Lee was the teenager who ran the local skatepark and the snowboarding slope behind it. She set the rules for both and made sure everyone followed them.
    “That means mid-April at the earliest,” Charlie said. He dodged around a dirty pile of old snow. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to wait that long!”
    “No kidding. But what can you do? Rules are rules.” Charlie heard someone shout his name. He and Jonas both stopped as Xavier “X” McSweeney boarded up beside them. He was clutching a newspaper.
    “You will not believe this!” he cried. He thrust the paper into Jonas’s hands and pointed to an advertisement.
    Jonas’s jaw dropped. “No
way!
” he exclaimed. He handed the paper to Charlie and double high-fived X.
    Charlie read the ad out loud. “‘Rocket Robert and the Shred Devils to appear one night only!’” He gave the paper back to Jonas. “Who’s Rocket Robert, and what’s a Shred Devil?”
    Jonas and X stared at him in amazement. “Have you been living in a cave?” X said. “Rocket Robert is only the best skateboarder in the country! He and the Shred Devils — the other boarders and inline skaters in his group — are on a worldwide tour. They’re going to put on a show here!” He turned to Jonas. “Remember when we saw Rocket Robert two years ago?”

    Jonas grinned. “You and me and Bizz were just getting good at boarding,” he said. Belicia “Bizz” Juarez was another friend who loved skateboarding. “We kept doing our moves in the stadium parking lot, hoping Rocket would see us and ask us to be in the show!”
    X cracked up. “Yeah! And we had that one move we thought was killer, where we did that thing with our arms —”
    “— and that other thing with our legs!” Jonas finished. He flailed his limbs, laughing so hard he almost lost his balance. “Mark and Savannah thought we were crazy!” he added, referring to their pals Mark Goldstein and Savannah Smith.
    Charlie couldn’t help smiling with them, even though he had no idea what they were talking about. He had moved into town less than a year ago. He was still getting to know X and Jonas and the others, while they had known each other almost their entire lives. Sometimes he envied them their long friendships.
    “So when is this Rocket Robert show, anyway?” he asked.
    “Next Saturday,” X answered, “so we gotta get our tickets soon!”
    “Next Saturday? I don’t know if I can go!” Jonas and X looked at Charlie questioningly. “My old friend Patrick is coming to visit next Friday after school. His mom just got remarried, and my parents are going to meet her new husband for the first time. They’re staying the whole weekend.”
    “So bring ol’ Pat along, dude. You can’t miss Rocket Robert!” Jonas cried.
    X echoed Jonas. “Yeah, it won’t be as much fun if you’re not there!”
    Charlie’s heart warmed. So what if he hadn’t known them all his life? He was still their good friend.

CHAPTER TWO
    “So who is this guy Patrick, anyway?” X asked as they continued boarding down the sidewalk.
    Charlie popped his board into the air, did a kick flip, and landed safely back on the board again. “I hung out with him a few years ago,” he replied. “He’s a good guy. Went through a pretty tough time when his parents got divorced.”
    Jonas nodded as if he understood, and Charlie remembered that his parents, too, were divorced.
    “Anyway, I haven’t seen him since we moved away a year and a half ago. We kept in touch through e-mails and