Beach Challenge by Lucas Steele

Author:Lucas Steele
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2010-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Slash And Burn

by Michael Bracken

Slash rode goofy past the No Skateboarding on Sidewalk sign because he always rode on the sidewalk and he looked in the store windows as he passed.

I rode through the shopping centre parking lot, matching his speed but about five feet back. He darted among slow-moving shoppers still dressed in their church clothes and I dodged minivans and SUVs driven by soccer moms who paid more attention to the rug rats inside than the traffic outside their vehicles.

He wore baggy blue-jean board shorts, a tight-fitting black wife-beater that revealed the tat sleeves inked from his shoulders to his wrists, and he had his finger-length black hair spiked. I wasn’t nearly so brave, nor so fashionable. My blond hair hadn’t been combed in days, and I wore jeans, a long-sleeved black hoodie, and thin black leather gloves. I was nowhere near as good as Slash, and I’d slammed so many times I think the palms of my hands will forever have the texture of coarse-grain sandpaper. That’s why I’d started wearing the gloves.

As Slash approached the end of the shopping mall’s sidewalk, the old lady who owned the Sew-n-Sew at the south end of the mall stepped out of her store and yelled at him.

‘Can’t you read? How many times do I have to chase you hoodlums down? I’m going to call the police!’

She never did.

Slash smiled at her and did an acid drop off the curb at the end of the sidewalk. I kicked a little harder and caught up to him.

‘Why do you torment her like that?’ I yelled.

‘Why does she torment me?’ Slash yelled back. ‘Skateboarding’s not a crime!’

We’d spent the morning at the skatepark with Tall Tony and some of the other guys and were on our way to my garage apartment, where I had an unopened box of frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts on the kitchen counter and two quarts of Mountain Dew in the refrigerator. It wasn’t much, but it was more than Slash had offered me for dinner at his place two days earlier.

Slash and I had met at the skatepark and we’d been together almost two years. I was taking accounting classes at the junior college, lived over my grandparents’ garage, and relied on my parents for most of my pocket money, something they would only dole out if I maintained a B average. Slash, barely a year older than me, worked part-time at a bike shop and spent most of his available time at the skatepark perfecting his technique.

His uncle gave Slash his first skateboard, and as soon as he could nail some basic tricks Slash started entering contests. He wanted to turn pro, but he hadn’t been able to attract the attention of sponsors. They didn’t even comp him boards or other cool stuff. It wasn’t about boarding ability, they told him, it’s about attitude and marketability, and they didn’t see anything in Slash that they didn’t see in dozens of other boarders. Their attitude frustrated Slash because he didn’t know how to make himself stand out from the pack.

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