“Yeah. Benny Santangelo. What's wrong with that?”
“Benny Santangelo. Sounds like a gangster.”
Zach laughed in spite of himself. “He's pretty cool.”
“Pretty cool for a nerd, you mean.”
“I'd like to see you make a ramp as good as the one he made,” Zach challenged.
“It's pretty good, huh?”
“I'm telling you, you've gotta try it. The cones are phat, too.”
“Okay, we'll come down,” Brian said. He ordered two scoops to go, then said, “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I'm getting my tattoo tomorrow.” Brian flashed him a conspiratorial grin. “Right here.” He pointed to his left bicep. “It's gonna be a skateboard, flying through the air, with the word ragin' written on it.”
“Ragin', huh? Cool,” Zach said, staring at his sundae to avoid Brian's gaze.
“You gonna get one, too?” he asked Zach. “All the other guys are doing it.”
“They're all getting the same one?”
“Uh-huh.” Brian shrugged. “Unless you've got a better idea.”
“No, that one sounds good,” Zach said, nodding. Inside, he could feel his heart hammering in his chest. Tattoos hurt a lot, he knew. All those needles puncturing you. And they sometimes got infected. … And they were part of you forever.
Zach had already been burned once, bleaching his hair. This time, he decided, he would wait to see if the others went ahead with getting tattoos. After all, this was the first time one of his old friends had spoken to him for a long time. How was he to know for sure if they were really going to go through with it? He still wanted to be a part of their crew—after all, they were the skateboard renegades of Moorehead City—but it wouldn't hurt to be the last one to get tattooed.
“Wanna come with us and get it done, all of us together?” Brian asked.
Then Zach remembered, with a huge rush of relief, that he had a perfect excuse. “I can't,” he said. “I'm going out to California for the holiday, to visit my uncle.”
“My condolences,” Brian told him, assuming Zach didn't want to be going. “Well, we'll all meet you Tuesday after school, then. Four o'clock—your driveway?”
“I'll be there,” Zach told him.
“Great,” Brian said, paying for his ice cream and heading for the door. “We'll check out your skateboard course, and then we can all board down here to Foley Square, and get you tattooed like the rest of us!”
Zach thought about that tattoo all the way to Los Angeles International Airport. Only the sight of his uncle Skeeter in the terminal took his mind off the prospect of getting hundreds of needle pricks in his arm.
Skeeter had straight blond hair, done in braids that reached all the way down his back. His dancing eyes were light green—so light that they looked almost yellow, like a cat's eyes. He wore a floppy black hat with a rainbow-colored feather in it, a woven Mexican vest with fringes, and big shorts that went way down below his knees. Old, torn sneakers topped off the look.
Skeeter looked like a bum—or an old hippie or a retro fashion statement—depending on how you looked at it. Zach glanced around the airport, a little embarrassed when Skeeter gave him a big hug in greeting.
“How're you doin', big guy! Whoa, look at you, dude. You are seriously big.”
Zach smiled shyly. “I grew four inches this year already,” he told his uncle.
“Is that all the stuff you brought?” Skeeter asked, pointing at Zach's duffel.
“Uh-huh.”
“Where's the board?”
“In the bag.”
Skeeter nodded, grinning. “Cool. Let's be off then, amigo.” He led Zach outside to a bus stop.
“We're taking the bus?” Zach asked in amazement.
“I don't drive,” Skeeter said.
“Why not?” Zach asked. “Was it the accident?”
“Well, obviously I stopped after that, yeah,” Skeeter replied. “But that isn't mainly why. I just got tired of contributing to air pollution and the destruction of the rain forests.”
“Yeah, but one more car isn't going to mean that much,” Zach pointed out, unhappy at having to take public transportation in a city where having a cool car is as much a part of the scene as breathing.
“Ah, that's not the point, though,” Skeeter said as the bus arrived and they got on. “Either I'm a part of the solution or a part of the problem. I figure if I want to feel at home in my own skin, I've got to be part of the solution as much as I can. Over the year in the hospital and rehab, while all my bones were mending, I found out I could live without the four-wheeled vehicles. I skateboard all around Venice. It's cool. Everybody skates there or runs or bikes. You don't need a car—trust me.”
They had to transfer buses to get to Venice Beach, north of the airport, where Skeeter had his bungalow.
“These were beach bungalows for the movie people back in the day,” Skeeter told Zach as they walked down the pedestrian lanes of Venice.
Zach could hear the distant sound of the surf hitting the beach. “This is such a cool place!” he enthused.
“You ain't seen nothin' yet, dude,” Skeeter promised as he opened the unlocked door of his bungalow.
Inside, the place was small, dark, and cool in the midday heat. There wasn't much furniture, Zach noticed, but there sure was a lot of other unusual stuff. Native American artifacts were scattered here and there. Several clay flutes were laid out on a worktable, some of them still unpainted. Sculptures of animals made from folded dollar bills decorated the mantelpiece. And there was a whole room full of skateboards!
“What in the world are you doing with all these?” Zach gasped. Some of the boards were decorated in fantastic, futuristic colors. There were old-fashioned ones as well as new models Zach had never seen.
“I fix people's boards,” Skeeter explained. “Repair them, decorate them. It's a living—if you live like I do, that is. Meaning it's not much of one.”
“That's your job?” Zach asked, awestruck.
“One of my jobs,” Skeeter said. “I've got a few. But they're all pretty cool. You'll see.”
“But … why'd you ask me to bring my board with me?” Zach wondered.
“Because, dude, I want to see what you ride on. How else are we gonna jazz up your act?”
Zach was totally blown away. He had thought he was coming out here to get a lecture, by way of his parents, delivered by good old uncle Skeeter. He hadn't believed his mom's cover story—that he was going to be having the time of his life skateboarding—until now.
“Can we go out boarding right away?” Zach asked.
“After lunch,” Skeeter said. “Gotta charge the old batteries. You like sprouts?”
Zach swallowed hard. “Sprouts?”
“Alfalfa or bean. They're excellent, dude. You're gonna love 'em. And they love you, too.”
When Zach first saw the Venice boardwalk, he thought he'd died and gone to heaven. It was made of pavement and was more of a promenade than a boardwalk. But it was more than either of those. It was a show.
Street performers were out in force on this Saturday of a three-day weekend. There were mimes, jugglers, magicians, a fire-eater, and lots of guys with guitars playing music.
Crowds of people passed by the performers, stopping to watch and listen, or hurrying on, walking, jogging, skating, boarding, biking, running, dancing, unicycling. The mood was good, with everybody seeming happy on this golden, sunny day.
“Tune into the chi, dude!” Skeeter said, as he boarded down the promenade right behind Zach. “Go with the flow!”
He caught up to Zach, and Zach got a look at the way Skeeter danced on his board, his whole body bouncing to the music of the street performers. Skeeter skidded into a wheelie, then ran off seven or eight 360 turns in a row, spinning like a champion ice skater. Everyone applauded, and Skeeter tipped his black feathered hat.
Zach smiled and shook his head. He wondered how his mom and Skeeter had gotten a
long growing up together. They sure were different!
“Hey, Skeeter!” some of the street performers waved as the two of them skateboarded by. “How's it goin'?”
“Excellent!” Skeeter called back. “Rock on!”
He turned to Zach. “What do you think, dude?”
“It's awesome!” Zach acknowledged.
“When your mom told me you were boarding, I knew you had to come out here and see this place. Wait till you see the boarding park, where they're doing the exhibition. Ramps? Half pipes? Dude, they have it all.”
“Did you get us tickets?” Zach asked.
“Tickets? Amigo, we don't need tickets. I'm in the competition.”
“What?”
“Your uncle's got game, kid,” Skeeter said with a wink, and hopped into a handstand on his board!
“Wow!” Zach gasped.
Skeeter spun it around for a few 360s before coming down to earth again.
“That is so awesome!” Zach said giddily. “Man, I am soooo glad I came here.”
“Dude,” Skeeter said, putting an arm across Zach's shoulders, “so am I.”
That night they sat on the low concrete wall that faced the beach and the ocean, and watched the sun go down and the stars come up.
“Mom and Dad think I'm the worst kid in the world,” Zach was saying, staring out at the ocean as he talked. Skeeter sat next to him, with his arms around his knees, his eyes fixed on the fading light to the west. “They think my friends are future criminals or something.”
“And they're not,” Skeeter said softly.
“No, they're not!” Zach retorted. “They're just kids. They're supposed to be immature sometimes, right? They're not perfect, and neither am I. But that doesn't make me a criminal.”
“No,” Skeeter agreed. “That doesn't make you a criminal. Stealing, that's a crime.”
Zach sneaked a glance at him. Was Skeeter talking about how he'd stolen from Zoey's piggy bank or taken her earrings? Or did he just mean stealing in general? From Skeeter's tone of voice, it was hard to tell.
“I stole something once,” Skeeter went on, still staring out at the ocean. “I was somewhere around your age. We were in this store, and I saw something I wanted. I guess I didn't have the money or something, or maybe I just wanted to see if I could get away with it. Anyway, I took this thing, whatever it was, I don't remember.”
“Did you get caught?” Zach asked, his voice not much more than a whisper.
“Nah. But I lived in fear for about a year after that,” Skeeter said with a little laugh. “I think I suffered worse than if I'd gotten caught and punished.”
“Skeeter,” Zach said in a low voice, “did Mom tell you about Zoey's piggy bank?”
“She mentioned something about it, yeah.”
“She told you to talk some sense into me, didn't she?”
“You heard her, huh?” Skeeter said with a little smile. “You know what, amigo? She's worried about you, and so's your dad. Whether they're crazy or not, they love you and they care about you. Otherwise, they wouldn't be worried, right?”
“I guess,” Zach mumbled.
“So what have they got to be worried about?” Skeeter asked.
Zach shrugged, sighing. “I don't know,” he said. “I guess because the police brought me home that time we skated on the steps of the school, and Brian bumped into this lady, and her baby in the stroller almost went into the street.”
Skeeter shook his head. “You've gotta be more careful than that, dude.”
“I know, I know. It was just that stupid Brian,” Zach said. “It's always Brian.”
“Brian, huh? He's the ringleader?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, he does something, you all do it?”
“Kind of. Everybody laughs at all his sick jokes, and I got my hair bleached and my ear pierced because of him.”
“Mmm …”
“Now I'm supposed to get tattooed,” Zach confided.
“Tattooed? Get out of here!” Skeeter said, surprised. “You're not gonna do that, are you?”
“I don't know,” Zach said. “If the other guys all do it, I guess I would. But I don't like needles, and they say it hurts a lot.”
“It does,” Skeeter told him. “Believe me, it does. But not as bad as getting one taken off.”
“How do you know?” Zach asked him. “Did you have one taken off?”
“Uh-huh. Stupidest thing I ever did, getting that tattoo,” Skeeter said, remembering. “Her name was Isabella. That's a long name, man, but no, I couldn't just get a red heart. I had to have the name, that's how crazy about this girl I was. Two months later we broke up, and how was I supposed to explain my tat-too to the next girl I went out with? I had to have it taken off!”
They shared a laugh at poor Skeeter's misfortune. “So don't be stupid. Anyway, nobody needs to go through that anymore.”
“They don't?”
“Nah, not when there's henna.”
“Henna? What's that?”
“It's a kind of natural plant dye that stains your skin for a few weeks. They've used it for thousands of years in North Africa and Arabia. It's great, because if you get tired of a tattoo, it's gone pretty soon. And if you like it, you can always draw it again. No needles, either—you just smear it on yourself. Or better yet, you get one of the artists out here on the boardwalk to do you.”
Zach's eyes were wide with excitement. “Can I?” he asked.
“Sure, dude,” Skeeter said with a grin. “We'll both do it. My treat.”
“Awesome!” Zach enthused. “I'm gonna go back and show the guys my new tattoo, and they're gonna think I went through major pain!”
They laughed again, and slapped five. “Come on, let's go have some dinner,” Skeeter said.
“Can we have sprout sandwiches again?” Zach asked hopefully. “They were excellent.”
“I've got something better planned for you tonight,” Skeeter said. “Macrobiotic South Indian curry. Trés spicy.”
“I don't know,” Zach said, frowning.
“Just kidding, dude!” Skeeter said, breaking into a smile. “Let's go get some pizza, okay?”
“All right!”
After dinner Skeeter said, “It's time to go to work.”
“Work?” Zach asked, getting up from the table and stuffing the last slice of delicious California pizza into his mouth. “Whmf wkk?”
“You'll see,” Skeeter said, putting on his backpack and pushing off with his skateboard down the boardwalk. “Come on!”
Zach followed Skeeter for about half a mile, until Skeeter said, “Here's good,” and did an instant walk-stop move that made Zach blink.
“How'd you do that?” he asked.
“You've never seen that one before? Here, let me show you.” Skeeter demonstrated how, by pointing the toe of your front foot, you could step off the board with your back foot and let it come up into your hand—going directly from skateboarding to walking in just one step. “Your friends are gonna love that trick. It takes about six tries to get it right, and then it's yours forever.”
While Zach practiced his stylish new dismount, Skeeter took off his black feathered hat and put it on the pavement, top down. Then he reached into his backpack and pulled out a set of devil sticks. “I made these myself, out of a special composite material,” he told Zach as he started to do tricks with the sticks, using the two he held in his hands to manipulate the third, larger stick.
Skeeter was amazing, Zach thought, as he watched his uncle do dazzling maneuvers, throwing the stick high into the air, catching it with the other two behind his back, all while “dancing” on his skateboard.
A crowd gathered in no time. As Skeeter continued the show, they started throwing bills and coins into the hat. They all applauded when Skeeter took his bow, but before the crowd dispersed, Skeeter made an announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so very much. Now I want to show you the marvelous musical instruments I've made with m
y very hands. They're for sale at ridiculously low prices, should you wish to negotiate a purchase.”
So saying, he removed two flutes from his backpack, stuck them both in his mouth at once, and began playing them in beautiful harmony.
After a moment, and another round of applause, he took out a set of bells—“from old-fashioned telephones,” he told the crowd—and played them, making a wonderful, eerie ringing sound. The crowd oooed and aaahed, and soon Skeeter had made several sales.
When a mother bought a flute for her little girl, Skeeter took the money she gave him, and fished out the change. But before giving it up, he folded one dollar into a peacock, and handed the amazing creature to the little girl.
“Wow—you've got mad skills!” Zach told him when it was all over, and Skeeter was putting his things away and counting his money.
“I had plenty of time while I was recovering from my fall to develop those skills,” he said.
“So this is your job, then?” Zach said.
“It is for now,” Skeeter said with a smile and a shrug.
“Mom always says you've never had a real job,” Zach told him.
He saw the pain in Skeeter's eyes. “She also thinks you're a bad kid, you say.”
“True,” Zach said thoughtfully.
“She just wants something more from us,” Skeeter said. “And actually, I agree with her.”
“What?” Zach said, stunned. “You do?”
“Yeah, in a way. I mean, this is a fine life for a guy like me, who doesn't care about money or the things it can buy. But I couldn't have a family and live like I do. And let me tell you, Zach—it's good to have a family. It gets lonely for me sometimes.”
They were silent for a few minutes as Skeeter finished packing up his performing gear. Then Zach said, “You think Mom's right about me, too?”
“She doesn't really think you're a bad kid,” Skeeter assured him. “You've disappointed her, and that's how she's showing it, by saying stuff like that.”
“Oh.”
“But she said when I talked to her the other day that you'd been doing better lately—helping Zoey and all.”
“Oh, yeah. I paid back what I owed her, plus I gave her free lessons, and her friend, too.”
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