Skateboard Sibby

by Clare O'Connor

  “Want some?” says Charlie Parker Drysdale.

  “What?” I say.

  “DO YOU WANT SOME?” he says louder. “Saw you staring,” he passes me a piece.

  “Never heard of tofurkey, either?” asks Esther. But she says it like it’s a sentence and not a question. I don’t know why but it makes me feel funny about admitting I haven’t.

  I take a piece. Chew. Open lunch/compost bag. Spit. Close lunch/compost bag.

  I liked the sour milk better.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Needs ketchup or maybe…real turkey.”

  Charlie Parker Drysdale shrugs.

  “I’ll take a piece,” says Esther. And then she points to the container of food she’s eating.

  “Do you want some of mine?” she asks me.

  I’m totally done with new things so I point at my sandwich, “Nope. Thanks. Ham and cheese.”

  Then I look at Hannah’s lunch. It’s a pile of tangled looking yellow noodles that remind me of Freddie’s hair, except the noodles have green specks. I decide not to ask what she’s eating.

  Lunches at my last school weren’t this weird. I always had ham and cheese and Vera always had bacon, lettuce, and tomato. Simple.

  “Are there other skateboarders in our class?” I ask.

  “Just Freddie and Jake,” says Hannah.

  “And now you,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale.

  Then who owns that board? It must have been left behind.

  Esther is holding a forkful of food near her mouth. “By the way, Freddie doesn’t fall, so you need to be good to beat him.” There’s a white band in Esther’s hair and it’s keeping the hair off her face. My bangs are in my eyes. Long bangs are better than a haircut.

  Fffffffpp. I blow air at them.

  “Sibby’s good,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale. “I’ve seen her skateboard. Hey, remember last Easter? You were practicing that one trick over and over.”

  I nod. It was when I tried to learn an invert on the wooden box in the back lot behind the school.

  Hey, behind the school! If that skateboard was just left behind, maybe I could use it out back. Just once.

  Charlie Parker Drysdale swallows the last of his food and looks up at the ceiling like he’s remembering something. “Wait a minute, so I guess I have seen you fall. A lot.” He looks at me and he’s smiling. “Remember that?”

  “An invert is hard,” I tell him. “You’re basically doing a handstand and your skateboard is in the air above your head.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” he says and he’s smiling, which makes me mad.

  I mean why remind me that you saw me fall and then smile about it? I want to ask Charlie Parker Drysdale what the heck he’s smiling about, but I don’t feel like talking about skateboarding or Freddie anymore.

  I look at the wall clock. We’re not even halfway through lunch. All of this talk is making me not hungry anymore. I miss my old school. If I were there right now, Vera would be eating her usual. And she’d be wearing shoes that are actually shoes, not loafers. And she sure wouldn’t be smiling about me falling.

  I don’t like this school…or the people…or this lunchroom…or fake turkey.

  “I mean I just couldn’t believe that you kept going down over and over,” continues Charlie Parker Drysdale.

  “Yeah, I know but that was a long time ago,” I snap. I’m getting mad because here I am talking about me falling, which is exactly what I don’t want to talk about.

  “I thought you’d have bruises everywhere,” he says.

  “Skaters fall,” I say. “Even Jackson Jo says so.”

  “Who?” ask Esther and Hannah at the same time.

  I sigh.

  “She’s a famous skateboarder. Wins all kinds of competitions. She can do street, tranny, and freestyle. And you should see her do a backside bluntslide. It’s…”

  Esther, Hannah, and Charlie Parker Drysdale are staring at me the way Vera would if I passed her a piece of tofurkey.

  We need to talk about something else. Anything. Esther is chewing with her mouth open. And now I understand why Dad says never to do that.

  “Hey, how come just part of your hair is blue?” I ask.

  “Cause I only wanted blue tips.” She’s looking at me like I just asked a dumb question.

  “She did it with Kool-Aid,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale.

  “Hair dye isn’t good for you,” says Hannah and she starts sniffing like she’s going to sneeze.

  “My sister told me how,” says Esther. “She was going to help but she’s in high school and she’s really popular and busy…like my parents.” Esther smiles, but it’s the same kind of smile Ms. Anderson had earlier. The kind of smile you give when your insides and outsides don’t match.

  “Achooo!” goes Hannah. Wow. She sure is a loud sneezer.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Allergies. New pollen must be out.”

  And then she sneezes again. I’m waiting for the third one. Everyone sneezes in threes.

  “Heyyy, Sibby,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale as Hannah sniffs. “You could tell Ms. Anderson you’ve got really bad allergies and need to go home. That way you don’t have to meet Freddie after school.”

  Hannah opens her mouth.

  Ugh. Again with Freddie.

  “Hey,” says Esther. “That might actually work.”

  Why doesn’t anyone want to stand up to a bully?

  “Achooo!” goes Hannah for the third time. This one is even louder than the last. It’s so loud that the whole lunchroom gets quiet just as I shout, “I’M NOT AFRAID OF FREDDIE!”

  Lots of faces are looking at me.

  “Crap,” I whisper because I didn’t mean for everyone to hear me.

  Freddie stands up at the table where he was eating his lunch.

  “Come see the new girl and me hit the park after school,” he says in a loud voice. He’s pointing at me. “She’s the one sitting over there at the table with blue hair, big glasses, and Muppet-vest.”

  Mr. MacDonald starts walking toward him, which makes Freddie stop.

  “Sure hope you can beat him, Sibby,” says Esther to me. “I mean what if he gets worse?”

  “Yeah,” says Charlie Parker Drysdale, “sixth grade only just started.”

  I reach for my lunch/compost bag and toss my half-eaten sandwich inside.

  Can’t wait to tell Vera that the best part of my day was drinking sour milk.

  I look over at Freddie. He and his friends are leaving the lunchroom, but just as they are about to go out the door Freddie looks at me, points to the window, and yells, “Skatepark!”

  And that reminds me: Ghost board.

  When we leave the lunchroom, Hannah says she’s not going outside because she needs to practice debating. Charlie Parker Drysdale and Esther head toward the front door.

  “You coming?” Charlie Parker Drysdale asks me.

  “Nope,” I say.

  And then inside my head I say, I need to practice too.

  Chapter 8

  Snake Sense

  The thing about having your super, super best friend’s voice ringing in your head is that it can only help so much. I mean Vera’s not here, so I can’t say, “Yeah, okay, I’ll stay chill unless I meet a total jerk-face bully,” or “Yeah, I’ll avoid trouble, unless I need to, you know, take a skateboard that isn’t mine.”

  If Vera was here and I said that last part, I’m pretty sure she’d say, “Imma stop you right there.”

  And then I’d say, “It’s a ghost board. Ghost boards don’t have owners. Pretty sure. And, besides, I’ll put it back when I’m done.”

  And then I can’t hear her voice. I can only see her shaking her head. But then I picture her nodding her head, because, the thing is, Vera’s not actually here.

  I tighten m
y fist and it feels so good to feel the front truck of a skateboard instead of just air. I bet this ghost board misses skating as much as I do.

  “You’re just a loan,” I tell the ghost board in a super quiet voice and then I peek out the front door. Everyone is scattered all over the schoolyard. I look toward the skatepark and I see Freddie, so that means Jake’s probably there, too. And then I see a bright green sweater-vest and a girl wearing a pink helmet with stars on it standing on a scooter.

  I walk calmly down the stairs and then duck around to the back really fast.

  I can’t believe this is actually working. I’m actually about to skateboard. Feels like years since I was on my board. Years.

  I think about Vera again.

  Borrowing a board isn’t trouble. And I’m about to become very chill because that’s what happens when a skater skates.

  I decide that Vera worries too much.

  Even the sound of the skateboard landing on the pavement makes me feel like, just for right now, things are normal. This skateboard is super dope. The deck is even wider than I thought when I saw it on the shelf. And it has a dope design. It’s black with small white stars all over it. There are tiny flecks in the stars and they sparkle when the sun hits them at the right angle.

  I skate across the empty lot and watch the sparkles.

  “Sick,” I say. “You have to be a board without an owner. I mean, who would leave a board like you just lying around? Has to be someone who doesn’t skate or who maybe moved away and left you behind in the classroom all summer. Whoever it was won’t care that you and I are skateboarding right now. Right? Cool.”

  This big empty lot is perfect. The school is on one side and on the other side are houses with their backyards stretching to the lot. There are trees bunched in clumps behind me and scattered between the lot and those houses. There’s way more weeds coming up through the pavement than I remember.

  “Perfect,” I say as I start to weave in and around those weeds like they’re pylons. I’m leaning forward and backward on the board as I go. The whrrrring sound coming from the wheels on the pavement is like music as I head to the other side. The faster I go the more I feel the wind moving my bangs around my forehead.

  There’s a line of weeds straight ahead. Instead of weaving around them, I head right for them. I like being in the air, so I decide to ollie.

  I snap the tail of the board just before the first weed and slide my front foot forward. I’m in the air over the tallest one. And then I’m on my way back down. The skateboard is right underneath my feet. It’s super dope the way you can feel something underneath you, supporting you, even though you’re not touching it.

  BAM! I land.

  That sound makes me smile a total smile. Mouth and eyes.

  Repeat.

  Mom and Dad would be so mad if they saw me skating without a helmet or pads.

  “Promise us,” said Dad when he bought my first board. “Never without a helmet.”

  “Sure,” I had said. “Promise.”

  Being mad at Dad helps me feel a little less bad about breaking my promise.

  I get ready for my next trick.

  Kickflip.

  I bend my front knee and lift the front of the board up. I slide my front foot up and flip. I catch it with my back foot. But just before I drop, I hear a noise. It’s a rustling sound like someone is moving in the trees and it’s coming from behind me. It makes me look up while I’m still in the air.

  Instead of a BAM, I hear a clunk and a scrape. I land on my feet instead of the board and the board lands on its side.

  I look behind me. Trees are moving in the wind and then I look around the empty lot. Nothing but a hopping crow.

  I pick up the board.

  “No scuffs,” I say, as I look it over. If the ghost board does turn out to have an owner, it’s not cool that I borrowed it and left scuff marks. “Nope. None.”

  I put the board down and decide to do a kickflip again, but then I hear the same noise. I turn really fast.

  “This is getting creepy,” I whisper, but again, I don’t see anything.

  Thing is, I feel something, just like I felt that snake last summer. Not a slithery snake, a skatepark snake. I was standing at the top of the skatepark in Charlottetown just about to drop in, but I felt like I was about to be snaked. I popped the tail of my board, grabbed the nose and turned really fast. There was Evan Rothsay’s little brother Ewan, just about to drop in right in front of me like he didn’t even care that it was my turn.

  “Hey, no snaking,” I had said. “We coulda banged right into each other. And it was my turn.”

  “Um. Sorry,” he said.

  “You see everyone up here?” I made my index finger go around in a circle to show that I was talking about everyone around the bowl. “They’re all waiting their turn. No one likes a snake.”

  Some snakes, like Ewan, snake by accident. I’m feeling like I’m about to be snaked, and that it’s not by accident.

  “Georgie,” I hear a voice from one of the houses call. “Georgie come!” And then I look through the trees and see a little black dog run toward a woman standing on her back deck.

  “A dog?” I say and I’m relieved but disappointed, because it means my snake radar must be broken. Moving to Halifax really has changed everything.

  I wish I had a watch. I don’t want to go back inside, but there can’t be much time left until lunch is over. I look at the big wooden box next to the stairwell leading in and out of a basement door.

  It’s the box I had used to practice doing an invert when Charlie Parker Drysdale said he saw me fall over and over.

  I stare at it and picture myself using it to do a trick.

  “No helmet. No way,” I say.

  But then I start thinking about Freddie. If I want to beat him, I have to do more than ollie and kickflip.

  Sure would be nice to do a trick that would show everyone I’m every bit as good as Freddie. A backside bluntslide would probably shut him up once and for all.

  I skate toward the wooden box and run my hand along its side.

  “Wish I had wax,” I say to the ghost board. Sliding along a dry ledge will make lots of noise. I doubt Freddie would hear from the other side of the school, but I can’t take that chance.

  Then I look down the stairwell leading to the basement door. It’s all brick and cement and the rail between the stairs is iron. One wrong twist and I could end up down there. There’s a pile of dirt in the corner but it’s not big enough or soft enough to break my fall.

  “Sibby, no way,” I hear Vera’s voice inside my head.

  “I could just land and pop out. No sliding,” I argue like Vera’s here.

  “But—” I hear her start to argue.

  “But you’re not here,” I say, and then I skateboard back far enough to give myself lots of room to get up speed. I lift my foot in the air and push off.

  I’m skating toward the box and staring at the ledge.

  I get closer.

  “Freddie sure is good,” I hear Esther saying in my head, and that makes me kinda mad. I don’t like thinking about Freddie, especially when I’m about to do a trick. I shake my head to make her voice go away.

  Closer.

  “The dude is good.” I hear Jake’s voice.

  “Shut up,” I tell the inside of my head.

  Closer.

  “Poser,” I hear Freddie say.

  “Ugh,” I say. “Go away. All of you.”

  I lean my body slightly forward.

  “I saw you fall. A lot.” Now it’s Charlie Parker Drysdale’s voice I hear.

  “Quit it,” I say as I’m in the air. As soon as my back truck hits the ledge, my back foot starts to slide right off the tail. I know I’m done so I decide to bail. Jackson Jo says learning how to bail is as important as learnin
g almost any trick. First thing is never to try to land back on your board. If you decide to bail, commit to the bail and kick the board behind you. And when you land, let yourself roll.

  I kick my board behind me. I hear it making a ton of banging sounds, so I know it’s flying down the stairs.

  I land on the pavement on my backside. But I can’t roll. Not yet. I can barely move.

  Total.

  Slam.

  I try to say ouch, but I can’t get a single word to come out.

  Wind.

  Totally.

  Knocked.

  Out.

  Of me.

  Can’t breathe.

  I should be thinking about getting my air back, but all that goes through my head is, What happened? I have to do it again. I can’t compete against Freddie after THAT. Breathe, okay? Please breathe.

  GASP.

  Wind is back. I’m so happy to be able to breathe again that I start breathing in and out really fast just because I can. I roll forward and then backward and then I get up and run down the stairs toward the ghost board. “No, no, no. Please don’t be broken. Or scuffed,” I mutter as I go.

  It’s lying deck down in the pile of dirt. I grab it and look it over. Still in one piece. No cracks or dents. But there’s lots of dirt on the grip tape and some scuffs.

  “This is not cool,” I say. “I need to make this right.”

  I don’t even think about it. I just push the basement door and it opens right into—darkness.

  At first, I can’t see a thing. I blink a few times and then I see a big open gymnasium in front of me. On the other side of it are stairs leading up to the main floor where my classroom is.

  “Yesss,” I say, but then I look to my right. There is an open door leading to what looks like a janitor’s room.

  Standing in front of that open door is Hannah.

  “Uh-oh,” I whisper.