It’s taking Roxanne forever to get her braid done, so I beg her to skip mine. I need to get out of here. I need to get to the park!
“Hey, Bernie, you know what? I told my mom I didn’t want to do any more commercials.”
Here we go. It’s all about Roxanne. But I listen. She is my best friend, one of my only friends. I have to remember that.
“Mom said I can’t quit. Get this, the money I make goes into an account to pay for my college. What if I don’t want to go to college? What if I want to go to cosmetology school?”
I’m guessing that a cosmetology school is a beauty school, but I can’t be sure. Whatever it is, no one decides their career in middle school. I wipe the deck of my skateboard with an old sock then rub the dust and dirt off of the bottom. Roxanne keeps braiding and re-braiding her hair and yakking nonstop about her favorite subject: Roxanne.
“I have to go to New York again tomorrow. My mom wants me to try out for a toothpaste commercial. I hate these auditions. I get nervous. Unbelievably nervous. Wouldn’t you be nervous, Bernie? BERNIE? Are you even listening to me?”
That’s it. I’ve had it. I slap my board down on the floor and shove it in Roxanne’s direction. “I’m tired of hearing you complain! Get over yourself. Do something about it. Get your mom to listen to you!”
That shut her up. Finally.
“I’m outta here,” I tell Roxanne, picking up my skate gear. “I’ve had a bad day. And news flash! I have things going on that You. Would. Not. Believe.”
I storm out of my bedroom, run down the stairs, and leave through the front door. Roxanne stomps out behind me. I walk to the right, toward the skate park. She walks left. We don’t say good-bye, but Roxanne calls out, “You’re a jerk.”
***
In a Small Village Park
I have to get myself to the park, and fast. I don’t care if Wyatt’s there or not. I need to pound some pavement.
But the second I see Wyatt beyond the gate, I shrink. I can’t roll around him. I can’t avoid him. If my skateboard had magical powers, I’d ask it to make me invisible.
“Yo, Dude,” he calls. “I’ve got the sickest trick for you for the half. You up for it?”
“Um . . . wait . . .” Complete sentences are impossible, and to myself I say, I’m sorry I’m letting you down, Odelia!
I find my courage and look Wyatt straight in the eye. “Why did you laugh at me the other day?”
“What?” Wyatt ollies his board. Twice. Is he nervous or is he just practicing?
Odelia’s lesson, the Art of Crafty Conversation, sneaks into my brain. Speak your mind. I take a deep breath. In and out. And let it rip. “The last time I saw you, you were here with friends, over there.” I nod toward the fence. “You were making fun of me because . . . I was . . .”
Fiddlesticks! This is harder than I ever thought. I yank my helmet off and tuck my hair behind my ears. I dig my heel into the ground. “Were you laughing at me because I was hanging with the kids from Smile Academy?”
“What kids? Smile Academy? What’s that? A school? There’s nothin’ funny about summer school, Dude.”
“Smile Academy is a summer camp for Down syndrome kids. I know the campers.”
“Hey, that’s cool,” Wyatt says, popping a third ollie.
No drama? I was expecting drama. Wyatt seems fine with the campers. “You weren’t making fun of me?”
“Dude! No! Zeke, Troy, and me—we were watching the old guy shred. It was hysterical.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty funny,” I say, relieved.
Wyatt agrees. He rolls away, skating to the top of the nine-stair hubba. He easily ollies up the slanted concrete slab and grinds his way down.
I roll over there and watch. I want to keep the conversation going. I want to tell him what I do at the academy. But part of me worries that Wyatt will see volunteer work as a waste of precious skate time. Despite Odelia’s advice about crafty conversation, I move to keep my fat mouth shut. And simply escape. “Later,” I say, pushing off toward the manny pad to perfect my 50-50.
About twenty minutes go by before Wyatt pulls up next to me. “The trick for the half-pipe, remember? I want to show you one. C’mon!”
“Right,” I say. I sound all calm and casual, but I’m totally freaking out with happiness. Wyatt still wants to help me!
As we skate over to the half, Wyatt asks, “You can do a rock to fakie, can’t you?”
I nod. “Only on the quarter. It’s my fave.” I ask him what his favorite trick is, even though I figured that out ages ago.
Wyatt answers, “Front nose manual.”
Odelia is wrong. Crafty conversation is not like chess. It’s like the game of Twenty Questions. No, a game of One Question. That ends in twenty seconds.
Wyatt rides hard and fast on the half-pipe. When he gets to the other side, he presses on the back of his board so that the front trucks and wheels pop over the coping and the middle balances on it. Then he turns his shoulders and does a 180. Next, like it’s no big deal, he rolls down.
“It’s a rock and roll,” he explains. “After that pivot, you hang out on the coping for a couple of seconds before you go back down.”
I pretend that I understand and can handle it. Truth is, I’m so torn up inside, I feel like an emergency trip to the rec center portable potty might be a good idea.
Wyatt rolls away and does it again. He pulls off the trick as easily as a pro skater. “You’re up,” he says.
“I just learned to drop in. Getting up the other side, doing
