I love Saturdays. The whole weekend stretches out in front of me. Ranga and I are skateboarding on my driveway. He’s still sore but not enough to slow him down. The sky is blue, no jobs to do. Sweet!
Our driveway starts out steeper near the house and then flattens out nearer to the road. It’s good fun, but there are little edges in the brick paving that sometimes catch your board a bit. If you fall it’s like landing on a cheese grater so I’m wearing knee and elbow pads. Ranga’s just wearing jeans. I try to tell him, but he reckons it will never happen: not to him anyway.
He is much better than me at skating. It took me ages to do an ollie and I still can’t get very high. I’ve got lumps on my shins from trying kickflips and when I ride fakie it feels wrong. I even get speed wobbles when we skate down the hill but Ranga looks solid either way, and he can do all sorts of tricks that I can’t. When he’s flipping and spinning the board it’s hard to see how he does it and when he lands the board’s always right way up under his feet.
‘Loosen up,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to take a risk to learn a new thing.’
Yes, but I want all my skin and I hate pain.
Ranga wants to enter a competition at the skate park next term. He goes up there, every so often, to use ramps and do grinds and stuff, but there’ll be lots of big guys there today and we don’t feel like riding that far anyway so we practise here.
He gets me to watch a freestyle routine that he’s going to do. He says he’ll fit it in over the ramps, easy. He’s got a map of the park in his head and he just skates it in his mind. One trick joins into another all up and down the driveway. I reckon Ranga will be famous one day if he doesn’t die trying something dangerous first.
‘Hey Sticks,’ Ranga yells. ‘That kid’s watching.’
James is in the front window of his house. I wave and he waves back. Then he backs up his chair and heads towards the door.
Ranga stops skating. He looks unhappy.
‘What?’ I say.
‘He’s never said anything. I don’t think so.’
James’ front door opens and he drives out. He’s waving as he comes down the driveway. ‘Hi Sticks. Hi Warren.’
‘Ranga,’ says Ranga.
‘Hi Ranga,’ James says. He smiles. Then Ranga is smiling too and, just like that, we’re all mates.
Ranga tells James about the skating competition and shows James his tricks. As Ranga leans into a turn James leans his head. When Ranga does an ollie James does this little lurch upwards in his chair. He’s feeling every move in his mind but his body just isn’t going to cooperate enough for him to do it in real life. From the look on James’ face he wants to skate a lot more than I do. It’s unfair that he can’t.
Then, like always, Ranga has a random idea.
‘I reckon I could build a ramp down here.’ He points to the edge of the driveway. ‘I could get speed down the driveway, ollie onto the ramp and get some serious air out onto the road.’
I can just imagine the dodgy ramp he’s going to build. He’ll hit the ramp and even if it doesn’t collapse he’ll skin himself alive and break some bones when he hits the bitumen.
I try to talk him out of it. ‘What about cars?’
James pipes up. ‘I’ll keep lookout.’
What’s James doing? Doesn’t he know what’s going to happen if Ranga goes ahead with this? I have to stop them. ‘We haven’t got any materials,’ I say.
‘You know how Big Rubbish Day is coming up? Well, around on Caledonia Avenue there’s one of those pine pallets out on the lawn already. We could take it apart and make it into a ramp.’
‘Do you reckon the wood’s strong enough?’ I say, trying not to sound like a wet blanket.
‘Those pallets carry bricks,’ Ranga points out.
So that’s it. The three of us head down to get it.
James’ wheelchair is very cool. He keeps up with us if we don’t walk too fast. There’s no footpath on our road. It’s not busy enough or wide enough and halfway down to the roundabout a car comes. James keeps on going like his chair is a car too. The real car just passes him. The driver even indicates and gives James a wave as he goes by.
After the roundabout, there’s a footpath. There’s a gap in the curbing and the footpath slopes down to the road so people with prams can cross the road without having go over a step. The sloped bit is quite steep and James leans his head forward before he drives up it. His chair tips up on quite an angle and then lurches level again. For a second I thought it might turn over but it’s fine. James has done this before.
Down the hill, past another roundabout, and up along Caledonia for fifty metres and there’s the pallet. A man is weeding his lawn. Ranga marches up to him and says, ‘Can we have the pallet?’
The man smiles. ‘Go right ahead.’
‘Thanks,’ says Ranga.
He watches us pick it up. Ranga gets on one side of it and I get on the other. It’s heavy. ‘Gunna build somethin’, boys?’ the man says.
‘A ramp,’ Ranga says.
The man looks worried. ‘For bikes?’ he says.
‘No, skateboards,’ Ranga says.
‘You’d better double up the boards. They’re too thin for that. They’ll flex and snap.’
I can see the advice go in one of Ranga’s ears and out the other. ‘Thanks,’ he says, nodding like he really listened.
Walking twisted sideways with the pallet between us is hard. We put it down and rearrange ourselves. I follow Ranga and he follows James, like a little procession.
We stop for a rest at each roundabout and halfway up our hill. When we finally get to my house my fingers are red and there is a groove across them where the edge of the pallet was digging in. Ranga is flexing his fingers and rolling his shoulders too. We’re both sweating. James is fresh as a daisy.
Just for a second I think a motorised wheelchair would be a good thing. Then I see James trying to straighten out one of his legs which looks like it is trying to cramp up. It obviously hurts him. No, the chair is cool but cerebral palsy is a terrible price to pay for one.
We’re too hot to build the ramp just now so we stash the pallet around the side of my house and go over to James’ house to play on his computer. His mum gives us glasses of lemonade and Kingston biscuits. Between the three of us we get James’ avatar to the next level and then we head back to build the ramp.
Ranga seems to have a plan in his head. He won’t let me or James measure anything or suggest any changes. I reckon he thinks he’s one of those handymen on television. Whack a bit off here, join it there. Easy! The nails go in without bending and the whole thing goes together straight and strong: except ours doesn’t. It’s a bit crooked and wobbly, with bent-over nails hanging out all over the place. When I push on it, the boards flex in the centre.
I shake my head. ‘It’s dangerous. It’ll break as soon as your skateboard hits it.’
‘No way! Look!’ Ranga stands in the middle of it and bounces. I can almost see the nails working loose.
‘I’m not going on it.’
Ranga starts making chicken noises and flapping his arms.
‘I don’t care what you say,’ I shout. I hate it when he calls me chicken. I turn to James. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘I can’t skate,’ he says, ‘but if I could, I’d give it a go.’
‘Don’t do it Ranga,’ I say. I’m almost pleading and I hate myself for it ’cause it sounds like I’m scared, but I know what’s about to happen. I’ve seen it before.
Ranga stands at the top of my driveway, near the carport. ‘Any cars coming, James?’
The road’s clear. James shakes his head and Ranga’s off. He pushes off with his right leg, twice, and then he crouches ready to ollie on to the ramp. He lands on the exact middle of the ramp and it flexes, but it doesn’t break and it seems to spring him into the air. He gets about a metre into the air but he can’t land it properly and he takes a couple of steps, falling forward with his legs kicking up behind, before forward-rolling across James’ lawn. I can’t believe his survival reflexes.
James is hooting his head off. Ranga’s head swells. He jumps to his feet, grabs his board and runs to the top again.
The third time he lands it properly but on the fourth there’s a loud crack from the ramp as he takes off. We check it out but everything looks okay so Ranga gets ready for jump five. He’s going to do a grab this time.
He pushes off and gets set early, but when he hits the ramp everything goes wrong. I can’t tell exactly what happens even though I’m standing there watching. The ramp seems to fly to pieces and Ranga cartwheels through the air. Somehow he gets his feet down first and breaks most of his fall before he lands on his back on the road. Then his skateboard smacks into his face. His eye is swelling before he even sits up. What’s amazing, there’s no grazes on his elbows or shins, just a bit of a rough patch on one hand and one shoulderblade.
Mum gives him an icepack to put on his cheek. Then Dad puts a bit of wood down outside the door and it makes enough of a ramp for James’ chair to get in through our front door so we can watch telly for a bit.
Ranga pretends his prang didn’t hurt much but when he gets up to go home he’s limping. You’d think he’d learn, but he doesn’t.