Free Skate Freak by Lesley Choyce Page B

go out west and get what she called “a real job.” So if I was going to figure out how to meet this girl, I was on my own.
    I was too shy to ask anyone who she was, so I just thought of her as Skateboard Locker Girl (SLG for short), which sounds incredibly lame, but that’s what I called her.
    After the skateboard accident, I was walking around school with a fat purple lip and a scab on my forehead that looked like a piece of pepperoni. The look added to my aura of loserness, I’m sure, but I didn’t care. I thought I’d let my face heal a little before I tried to speak to SLG.
    But she caught me watching her from down the hall. It was as if she could sense someone was staring at her. She turned. And smiled.
    At least I think it was a smile. I’m not sure. It was an almost-smile at least.But the bell rang right away, and she slammed her locker and fled.
    SLG had long dark hair, dark eyes, a beautiful face and, oh yeah, she had a sweet custom skateboard from Homegrown Skateboards, one of my favorite board makers. I vowed that some day (after a bit of facial healing), I’d walk up to her and tell her straight out that I liked her board.
    That’s what I would do.
    After school, I retrieved my own beat-up board from my locker and spit on the right front wheel for good luck. Some younger kids saw me, and I could tell I grossed them out.
    â€œSorry, dudes,” I said, “it’s what I do.” As if that explained anything.
    I don’t like having to explain myself. I do what I do and I have my reasons.
    Or not. But I do what I do anyway.
    Outside, it smelled really funky. There was a brewery down the street and, well, it smelled like a brewery, I guess. As I cruised down the sidewalk on my board, I sniffedat the funky air, sang some of the lyrics from the Dead Lions song, “Garbageville,” and I thought about Willis Harbor.
    I didn’t wear earbuds or have an Mp3 player in my pocket. I don’t do that. I make my own soundtrack. I don’t sing as well as Linus from Dead Lions, but I like hearing my own voice. I sing lyrics from my favorite bands: Dead Lions, Dope Cemetery, crime of the Century, Skate Moms and Poorhouse. Sometimes the music is just in my head. And that’s cool too. The songs remind me of my old life—the good old days.
    Aside from skateboarding, home life in Willis Harbor had not been great. My father worked at a fish plant and my mother was a waitress at a restaurant that was busy in the summer and slow in the winter. Then the fish plant closed, and so did my father.
    It was a crummy job, but once he lost it, he seemed to give up. My mother was making next to nothing in tips since summer was over. Then she saw the adin the paper. It was for free training for women to operate heavy equipment— something to do with oil drilling or mining. But we’d have to move out west.
    My father didn’t want to move. And neither did I.
    But I guess my mother did.
    She left. I thought she was coming back, but that didn’t happen.
    My father’s plan of action was really no plan at all. We’d move into the city and
something
would come of it. He thought there would be a good job for him in the city. Maybe he was thinking of getting a job at the brewery. Maybe he thought a job would just happen. Just jump up and bite him in the ass.
    But it didn’t.
    Pretty soon the unemployment money would run out. Then my father would have to stop watching television twenty hours a day and get a job.
    My after-school routine in the city was to skate the streets until dark. Then,sometimes, skate some more. I stayed away from the skate park though. The streets seemed safer. Cars I could understand. Territorial skate dudes I could not.
    I found some good rails—at churches mainly. All the city churches had excellent railings. Many of them were empty during the week, so I could get a couple of amazing slides and grinds and move on before anyone