“THERE’S NO WAY YOU’LL EAT that,” I said.
“Oh really? How much you want to bet?”
“A Mac Meal. I’ll bet a Mac Meal you won’t eat that.”
I met Damian in the halls of Oak Park High. I was in my senior year and Damian was two years my junior. We had been introduced by Bill Boudreaux who was in the same grade as I was. Damian was the same age as my younger brother Ryan and they had classes together.
I subsequently lost the bet to Damian who proceeded to eat the entire earthworm off the side of the road and then enjoyed a greasy burger and fries courtesy of my emaciated pocketbook. Damian was a skater, rather I should say he skateboarded and was better at it than anyone I had seen skate in school. Bill skated too and I had met him at the Edge skate park only a few weeks prior. It was Bill and Damian who introduced Ryan and me to the other skaters who attended our high school.
Oak Park High was located in a south-end suburb of Winnipeg at the corner of Charleswood Road and Rannock Avenue. I had moved from Regina to Winnipeg with my family. While our new house was being renovated, we lived downtown on Hargrave Street in this crappy apartment complex called the Howard Towers.
My family moved around a lot. My father would move us from one place to another because of work. We eventually moved into a southwest Winnipeg subdivision, which made the bus commute to school much easier.
Ryan and I attended Oak Park High together. Each morning we had to catch the 66 Grant bus from downtown and bulldoze into the suburbs. We had moved five times in eleven years and although each time became harder than the last, my brother and I were now masters at starting over. We had become accustomed to the subtle nuances of the hormonal jungle known as high school. We also understood that gaining peer acceptance was a skilled art and that having an angle was a big help.
Skating was that angle. It was the first day of our second week attending Oak Park High and the noon bell had just gone off. I searched my disastrous locker for my lunch bag. Ryan had his locker beside mine. We had arrived a few weeks into first semester so the Vice Principal found us two unused lockers side by side. Ryan stood waiting with his lunch already in hand. Bill came by our lockers to meet up and we headed down to the cafeteria together. When we sat down, Damian went around the lunch table and introduced the others. There was Ash, whom I’d already seen around school. He had a brother the same age as Bill and I but we didn’t hang out with him much. Todd Johnson reached across the table to formally shake my brother’s hand and mine and then asked if we wanted to trade our Dunk-a-Roos for his butterscotch pudding. We both declined.
We had ourselves a regular high school clique except we had no interest in being cool or popular. The truth was we weren’t popular; in fact we were more social outcasts than anything else. Our peers couldn’t connect with us because we went against the grain in the way we dressed and the music we listened to. Our interests were eclectic and strange. None of us played football, which was the promoted sport at Oak Park High. Our teachers didn’t know what to make of us; they could barely understand us with all the skate jargon we used. We only wanted to skate and joke and prank and skate some more. And then eat.
Skating consumed us, so much so that we were almost perpetually late for class each morning and after lunch. We had set up grind boxes and low rails in the side parking lot, much to the faculty’s disapproval because that was the teachers’ parking lot. Todd Johnson, Ash and I would bring thick wool socks to school and slip them over our regular socks during lunch so that we could slide down the wooden handrails on our shoeless feet. The wool socks made the rails so much easier to slide and by the time you reached the end of the twelve-stair flight, you were really cooking.
Ash was a good skater who was also even better on a snow-board, despite living in the one of the flattest cities in the world. Todd was a born ladies man and was the only one of our friends who ever managed to keep a steady girlfriend. He dated this bird named Andria and they fought like feral cats most days, but we all envied him for having a female around all the time.
I had very little interest in school studies. It’s too bad really, as I was a voracious reader of all genres and had a keen interest in music and the arts. I loved to draw and paint, but I loathed school, homework, exams and that sort of crap. I was also a lover of comic books and during final period I would sit and watch the second hand rotate on the classroom clock, doodling superheroes in the margins of my writing assignments. When the bell rang I talked to no one. I would make my way to my locker where Ryan was waiting for me. We would gather up a few books to make it look like we had homework to do and race towards the bus stop.
We always tried to sit in the back of the bus, because that’s what kids in high school do. My brother had met a kid in one of his classes who introduced himself as the Beave. Everyone else called him the Beave as well and I suspected the Beave might be cool because he carried a skateboard under his arm. Both my brother and I were also skaters, although we rode inline skates instead. The Beave took the bus downtown with us almost every day even though he didn’t live downtown. To this day I still don’t know where the Beave actually lived. One afternoon as we pulled away from the school, the Beave pointed back towards the school’s entrance.
“Lookee!” His nose twitched like a rodent’s.
The Beave was pointing at the school’s sign, which was a series of individual letters mounted high above the front entrance doors. Someone had climbed the roof and painted in the letter “T” in front the word Oak.
“Haha, Toak Park. Get it? Man I bet Jimmy the Banger put that up there. He’s a genius. That dude loves to blaze.”
The Beave rotated himself in his seat to face us.
“Check this out. I boosted it from Chem class today.”
The Beave had a tin cigarette container in his hand. He opened the lid and inside was a viscous shiny silver liquid.
“That looks like mercury,” I blurted, not able to curb the shock in my voice.
“It is mercury,” said the Beave with a mischievous smile which formed seemingly in slow motion across his face.
The bus came to a stop unexpectedly and the Beave lost his grip on the cigarette box. It tumbled to the ground, hit the floor and the quicksilver lived up to its name, running chaotically between the vinyl grooves of the flooring of the bus. The Beave lifted his feet off the floor and crossed his legs on the seat. My brother and I followed his lead. We watched, mesmerized, as beads of mercury raced against themselves, back and forth with each movement of the bus, like an ocean’s tide.
At our stop downtown, the Beave exited with us. We told him we were heading to our place to grab a snack and our skates then we were going to head over to the Edge to ride the ramps.
“The Edge, yeah, I skate there all the time,” he said looking over his shoulder, completely disinterested.
“Do you want to come with?” I asked.
“Nah, I got some business downtown,” he shrugged and started off on his own.
My brother and I skated the Edge almost everyday for five years and we never saw the Beave there once.
The Edge Skate Park was originally located on Nairn Street in an old fire station. They had a four-foot mini ramp with a six-foot extension on one side. There were some scattered quarter pipes and various street obstacles, but the real draw was the eleven-foot vert half pipe with a roll in. The ramp was so high you could catch air between the steel columns of the rafters. The masonite surface had been painted with black paint that made it twice as slick. A few years back, this skater named Dennis took a bucket of grimy water and added three cans of cola to it. Then he mopped the whole surface of the ramp and let it dry. The sugar from the cola-water mixture gave our urethane wheels the perfect traction. From then on, someone mopped the floor the same way before every session.
The skate park had opened its doors in 1989 and two guys named Peter and Luke ran the skate sessions. Over the course of a year, the youth patronage grew exponentially until an announcement was made during a session that the Edge would close its doors and re-open in a new location at the corner of Lily and Pacific Avenue in the heart of Winnipeg’s exchange district.
Luke opted not to reprise his role of running the new Edge location, while Peter was ecstatic about the new spot. Peter handled the design and layout of the skate park ramps and street course, all the while listening intently to the requests from the various skaters who anxiously awaited the doors to open. Damian, Ash, Ryan and I even answered the call for volunteers because it meant we could skate for free anytime we wanted to. We also liked Peter.
Peter was cool. Besides being able to “talk the talk” about skating or biking, he also knew a lot about other street things such as graffiti art. He was a graph master and he used the walls of the new Edge as his canvas. I connected with him because of my own personal interest in art and drawing. Meanwhile at school, my grades began to slip more and more. The only class I participated in was art class, which is where I met Terry. He was two years older than me but hadn’t graduated yet.
“Art doesn’t have deadlines,” he would say. “I have a very stringent process of elimination. If it doesn’t feel right than it isn’t.”
It seemed to me that he never finished any art piece he started. Terry never really worked all that hard at his artwork but stressed about it all the time. This was oddly uncharacteristic of him though, because outside of art class he had a very simple and laid back approach to everything. A lot of girls liked Terry because he was so easygoing but more importantly because he was old enough to buy them booze whenever there was a party.
Terry liked to drink himself. His choice was always beer and it was rare to see him without a beer in his hand, although he never appeared to be drunk. He didn’t slur his words or stumble around. He was sharp, quick-witted and even occasionally charming.
Terry also held two jobs, which came as a surprise to me, probably due to his lackadaisical attitude. He worked at the drive-in movie theatre and gave free admission to my broke friends and me because he worked the ticket wicket. I liked Terry. Not because he let us in for free but because he didn’t do it to gain favour, he just did it, even though Damian and Todd were dressed only in their boxer shorts at the time because of the intense summer heat.
Terry also held a job at a local convenience store in Charleswood. He worked at the store on weekends and the theatre most other nights. Some of my other friends like Bill and Damian worked jobs but eventually got fired for being late, eating the merchandise, being rude to customers, or whatever teenage delinquent act seemed appropriate that day.
School rolled on and into the second semester. It was going to be a difficult second term with a tough load of classes, which included math and chemistry. I didn’t know anyone in my chemistry class. The lab desks sat two at a table. When I arrived, I sat alone in the back with the intention not be noticed. My plan lasted all of fifty-eight seconds.
“This seat taken?”
Her name was Dana and I’d seen her hanging around the smokers’ doors even though she didn’t smoke. She hung out with kids your parents wouldn’t want you to hang out with and in this instance, your parents would be right for once. She had long dark hair and small lips and didn’t dress like the other girls. She dressed kind of like a punk and kind of like a folkie. She always wore dark boots with flat heels cut just below the knee, which made her look taller than she was. She wasn’t fat or thin but landed somewhere in the middle. She looked good and she knew it. She often got her way with people, especially guys.
“It’s a yes or no,” she said, waiting for me to stop staring.
“No.”
“Good. I hate sitting in the front.”
I smiled. “Me too, I always sit in the back. I do the same on the bus.”
“You take the bus?”
“Yeah, I live downtown. But we’re moving soon.”
She made intense eye contact with me. I felt uncomfortable but didn’t look away.
“You’re not from Winnipeg?”
“No, we moved here from Regina not too long ago.” “A new-boy.”
“I guess, whatever that is.”
“It’s a boy who is new. It’s not supernatural. You sure you’re ready for chemistry class?” she mocked, smiling at me.
I screwed my face up a little at her. “It was this or biology. I kind of wish I’d selected biology.”
“Yeah I know. Then you wouldn’t have to sit beside me. I talk a lot.”
“No it’s not you it’s—” She cut me off.
“I know it’s not me.” She smiled in a nonchalant way looking down at her class schedule then looked back up at me. The room got warm.
I saw a lot of Dana over the next few weeks. She always seemed to pop up wherever I was. My feelings about her were complicated; she was attractive, an opinion that was shared by many, but something about her made me only want to be her friend and nothing more. Other high school girls worried about candy coloured lip-gloss, the brand of jeans they wore and who would date Rodney, the Captain of the Raiders. Dana didn’t give a shit and I liked that a lot.
As summer rapidly approached so did the last days of school. We had finally moved into our new home. When living in Regina, my brother and I had an eight-foot half pipe in our back yard. My father, who had promised our move to Winnipeg was the last one we’d make, had hard time convincing us of such. As part of his bargaining posture, he offered an amount of cash to build a new eleven-foot half pipe in our back yard once we had settled in.
In art class, I mentioned to Terry that I was building a half pipe in my back yard because at some point, he had mentioned that he used to skateboard. Terry said he had actually built many ramps in the past for friends.
“You don’t believe me?” he asked, sensing my lack of faith in his completion skills.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just, well, you’re so busy here,” I said, trying to change the slant of my words by emphasizing how important his art was.
“The art can wait. The summer’s here my friend, a ramp waits for no man. We must build this thing and then we must skate it.” He looked crazed, but his enthusiasm was genuine and hard to ignore.
My dad was thrilled that Terry was going to help build the ramp because Terry agreed to work for beer. As long as my dad had beer waiting for him, Terry showed up for work, and on time too. We would work on the ramp and then go street skating together. Sometimes Damian or Ash would join us, who were more than anxious to see the ramp completed. In the meantime, we divided our time between skating the Edge and skating the street. We spent the greater part of our summer driving around in my parent’s minivan, scoping out spots to skate around the city of Winnipeg.
Skating on the street happened mostly later at night because the local businesses didn’t like you skating on their property and often if a business employed a security guard, they would yell at us to leave the premises. This of course was understandable, however we selected our responses very carefully and tried our best to articulate a strong curse word into an intelligent sentence. Damian once pulled down his jeans and the city of Winnipeg experienced two full moons in one evening. There was the odd time that we would be approached by a real police officer. We spoke less abrasively towards the police but still showed little to no respect for them. We weren’t bad kids really; we just didn’t understand all the forced discipline and authoritative bull being jammed down our throats. Thus we often responded to people in negative ways. In truth we just wanted to skate which to us seemed like a very wholesome activity, despite the late hours we did it at. When most other kids were trying to score alcohol illegally or were hot-boxing their cars and smoking up with their friends, we were out sliding down handrails, trying our best to get good at something that unfortunately no one else understood except us.
Terry and I continued to work on the ramp. We wanted to finish it before school ended so we could start skating it immediately. We did run into some snags though.
“I’m not sure that’s right,” I said, looking at one of the braces supporting the lower transition on the ramp.
“If it doesn’t feel right than it isn’t.” Terry was looking at the crude spec drawing he had made during art class.
Terry put back the rest of his beer and popped the cap on a fresh one.
“No big deal. Let’s go skate a bit and clear our heads. Things will look right when we get back.”
I didn’t see how avoiding the problem was going to fix it but Terry seemed pretty persuasive. I agreed to take a break as we had been working almost all evening and it was starting to get dark. When we got back, the sun had disappeared completely and the sky was black.
“See? Problem solved,” he said, looking at the ramp.
I looked too, but it was too dark to see the problem anymore. Terry seemed satisfied with these results and grabbed another beer.
It was Friday and chemistry class was almost over. I had a hard time staying awake and kept nodding off, but Dana kept jabbing me in the side with her elbow to wake me up. I looked up at the clock and did my best to stay awake for the last twenty minutes of class. Dana handed me a tiny little book she had made during class, which consisted of an encyclopaedia of skater slang words. It was actually rather impressive and had little explanatory drawings to accompany certain words. The booklet had an elastic binding and I spent the remainder of class rather entertained.
When the bell rang, I collected my books and started to make for the door.
“Where are you off to so fast?” Dana asked pryingly.
“Nowhere. It’s Friday and I want to get out of this place.”
Dana looked at me and said nothing for a moment.
“Oh, okay.” She looked disappointed.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing, I was just going to ask if you wanted to go to a party with me and a couple of my friends tonight, but if you’re hanging out with your gang…” She said the last part with a sarcastic eye roll.
“Nope, I was just going to work on the ramp with Terry but I could do something after that. Besides, we can only work outside until it gets dark.”
“Cool, I have my parent’s car tonight. I’ll pick you up at nine?”
“Yeah, okay, sure.”
She wore a sincere smile when I accepted. I suddenly felt nervous. I had never met any of her friends. They didn’t even go to our school.
I met Damian and Ash in the hallway outside of chemistry class and we walked to my locker. Todd was there with Bill and my brother. They had all made plans to go street skating downtown that evening.
“You and Ryan going to take the van and meet us there?” asked Damian.
“I can’t guys, I’ve got plans with Dana.”
Damian laughed. “Ouch! You’re gonna ditch us for a bird?”
“Come on man, it’s not like that at all, plus she’s not that bad,” I said defensively.
“I heard she hangs with some pretty messed up dudes down on Osborne on the weekends,” added Ash, looking genuinely concerned.
I had never thought to ask Dana where the party was. I had also heard the rumours about her too but never cared.
Todd was smiling at me then looked at the rest of the gang, “You all have got to cool down. Your boy here is heading out with a girl tonight. When is the last time any of you went out with a girl?” If there had been any crickets in the walls of Oak Park High they had missed their cue that afternoon.
That evening, Terry sat on the curb of my driveway and sipped a cold beer as the sun fell over the western horizon. I sat next to him and had just popped the top on a can of cola. I set the can out in front of me on the road.
“You popped it but aren’t drinking it. That’s a crime in some countries, you know,” said Terry, looking down at the perspiring can in the warm summer heat.
“I like to let it breathe a bit,” I said, half smiling. “You think we’ll finish the ramp before school’s out for summer?” I asked.
“Yup, well maybe, I don’t know. We’ll finish when we finish.” It was a classic Terry answer. I took a sip of cola. The smudgy colours of the setting sun had been painted across the sky. We sat and drank until a Plymouth Reliant pulled into my driveway. Dana killed the headlights and stepped out of the car.
“Hey Terry.”
“Hey Dana.”
“You two know each other?”
“Yup.” They both answered exactly the same way at the exact same time.
“You ready to go?” Dana asked, looking past Terry to me.
“Yeah sure,” I replied, and then looked at Terry. “You want to work on the ramp tomorrow or something?”
“Maybe, if your dad fills the beer fridge. He’s all out.” Terry got up and walked down the street, waving with his back to us.
Dana was leaning up against the passenger door. She looked the same as always; I was surprised that she wasn’t more dressed up for the party. She opened the door for me and went around to the driver’s side. She got in and started the car. The cassette player was on and the Descendants came through the speakers.
“I know it’s not the Ramones but this will have to do,” she joked. She knew the Ramones were one of my favourite bands.
“I like the Descendants too,” I said, trying to stand up for my musical tastes. “How do you know Terry?” I tried changing the subject.
Dana smiled, acknowledging my ploy. “Everyone knows Terry. He bought me beer a couple of times”
I should’ve known.
We picked up Dana’s two friends Janie and Kara. Both girls were rather made up and wore provocative clothes which accentuated certain key areas of their form. In all honesty, I was uncomfortable. If it had been Todd, he would’ve been right at home in situation like this but I tried my best to hide my nerves.
I felt out of place at the party too. I didn’t know anyone and Dana disappeared for a while, leaving me to fend for myself amongst the drunken fodder. I met a guy who said he used to skate when he was younger. He looked really old because he had grey coming through the stubble on his face. He seemed nice enough so I did my best to cling to him for a while and pretend to be interested in the topics he wanted to discuss, such as why two and two shouldn’t make four and the notion that the perfect joint is not made but rather is a state of consciousness. I was out of my league.
Dana eventually found me and seemed to have misplaced certain articles of her clothing. She was also drunk but still somewhat coherent. I told her I was going to check out because I was bored and offered to drive her home. She declined and I asked how she intended to get home. She said she was close with the owner of the place and always stayed over on a party night.
“You gonna be able to find your way home, new-boy?”
“Yeah, the guys are downtown skating anyway. I know the spots, I’ll find them or take the bus.”
Dana swayed a bit like she was going to topple over. I caught her and straightened her out.
“Nice save, new-boy.” She looked down at my hands which were holding her arms. She looked up at me. Her face was flushed with red and her eyes were under the influence. I took my hands away.
“Had enough, have you?”
“I…”
“You what?”
“I’m going to take off.” I didn’t like her like this. She was too aggressive. I made my way through the confined sweaty bodies, broken beer bottles, clouds of smoke and even a few passed out dogs in search of the door. As I left, I could hear Dana faintly in the background behind me.
“Bye, new-boy.”
I eventually did find the gang skating a set of stairs at a building downtown. It’s not hard to locate skaters in the city of Winnipeg at night if you know where to look. Damian and Ash were trying to kick flip down a set of stairs at least eight steps wide. I saw my brother sitting on the far side of the steps with Bill and Todd.
“Well, if it isn’t Casanova,” yelled Bill into the silent air as I came into sight.
I smiled, “Not likely.”
I took a seat next to my brother.
“They land it yet?” I asked the three onlookers as Ash stumbled on the landing and his skateboard shot away in front of him. Ash silently got right back up on his feet, dusted himself off, fetched his board and climbed back up the steps to try again.
“Nah, they just started to hit this thing,” said Bill.
Todd looked past Bill at me. “Where’s Dana?”
“Back at the party. I guess. It was lame and I was really bored.”
Todd smiled. “Girls!”
I sure didn’t understand girls. It was like everything they did or said was a big mystery. Half the time they just looked at you like they could read your mind and eventually would made some sort of facial gesture, but then said nothing. The worst part wasn’t the cryptic things they said but the things they held back and didn’t say.
My brother changed the subject and informed me that they had gone to the Edge to skate earlier. Peter had mentioned that we could skate a private session tomorrow because he had a few repairs to do around the park. That cheered me up and I went to go grab my skates from the trunk of their van. As I started to walk away, Damian landed a kick flip clean down the stairwell and almost rode right into me.
“Hey buddy,” he said and slapped me five.
“Nice catch,” I said, congratulating him on the landed trick.
“No biggie. Watch Ash ‘cause he’s about to board-flip down the set.”
Ash rolled up and landed a board-flip just as Damian had called it. Only a few moments later, a security guard appeared at the top of the stairs and advised that we had to leave as the police had been informed of our presence. The guy was nice about it and no one gave him any grief as we packed it in.
We piled into the van and went to a few other spots, then hit a drive-thru for some food. We also added about ten cups of water to our order. We drove around in the van with the sliding back door open, providing drive-by cool downs to un-suspecting people on the sidewalk. Some were pleased, some weren’t. We felt it was our civic duty to continue until all the cups were empty. Then we headed for home.
I took a seat on the bench and watched as Damian tried in vain to feeble grind along the quarter pipe. Peter took a seat beside me and handed me a can of cold soda.
“That kid is getting good!” He popped the tab on the can and it made gurgling sound. “So are you,” he added.
I looked over at him. No adult had ever said anything about my skating before, let alone something in the way of a compliment. I didn’t know what to say.
“I’ve heard around that someone from Maverick Skates is interested in talking to you. That true?”
“Yeah, there was a rep here last week watching me skate. I guess they need some skaters to do shows and demos overseas. He said there’ll be some professional contests they’ll be entering me in also.”
“What do you think of all that?”
I told him I was really interested in traveling and getting paid to do something I loved.
“I bet it would be pretty sweet to see new places and meet new people all because of skating,” he offered.
I smiled. I had the feeling Peter was worried about me still being in high school and taking off alone around the world. Damian landing the feeble grind interrupted my thoughts. He rolled over on his board and took a seat beside Peter and me.
“You see that shit?” he asked, breathing heavily.
“I did, but you could’ve come out fakie, it would’ve looked cooler.”
I promptly received a punch in the arm for my joke and Damian rolled away. Bill, Todd and my brother were sitting up on the landing of the spine ramp while Ash skated in the transition.
“You guys want to go grab some wings after this?” asked Peter as he watched Damian roll by. “It’s on me.”
“I don’t think that will be a hard sell,” I replied.
At the restaurant, Damian crowded into the booth next to me, Ash, and Todd even though there was more room on the other side with Bill, Peter and Ryan. Ash took some water into the straw of his beverage and spit it down Damian’s back. He wreathed and wriggled uncomfortably from the cold wet feeling running down his back and changed to the other side of the booth accordingly.
Peter took us out now and again for food. He didn’t have kids of his own, so I think this was his way of being a bit of a dad. He always gave us all a ride back to one of our houses which meant we didn’t have to take the bus. But these kind gestures weren’t what made Peter cool; he listened to us in a way most adults didn’t. He also understood the things we were into because he used to be into them too and still messed around on a skateboard from time to time. He built and maintained all the ramps in the park, so we could always talk about the possibility of a new obstacle. He even introduced us all to a great band called the Undertones.
Bill and Todd ordered “super hot” wings and had to eat two bowls of vanilla ice cream afterwards because their stomachs were on fire. Ash mixed six different table condiments together, including vinegar, ketchup, mustard, soya sauce, hot sauce and three packets of sugar. He then dared Damian to drink the concoction. Despite having eaten two pounds of wings and fries, Damian asked for his usual payment of a Mac Meal. Ash agreed to the terms and Damian put the hideous liquid down his throat. He promptly vomited on the floor beside the booth. Peter signalled for the cheque.
On Sunday, Terry came by my house to work on the ramp. My father had restocked the beer and we set out to complete the final stages of the work. We worked beneath the hot sun until the damn thing decided to leave us. We had put in a full day of work and now stood back and looked upon the completed ramp. We just stood there and stared for who knows how long. It was Terry who broke the silence.
“This feels right.”
I smiled. It was his finest piece of art work and the only thing he ever finished. That night Terry had to work at the convenience store. Two men with guns robbed the store. Terry ran out after them to get the license plate number and a third person, the lookout, shot him in the face with a shotgun. He died two days later in the hospital.
I didn’t go to school on Monday. I told my parents I was sick. I think they knew the truth though. I spent most of the day in bed. When I finally got up I went to the window of the backyard and looked out at the lonely ramp. It was beautiful day, perfect. He never even got to ride it once. They say time heals all wounds; I’ve never stopped thinking of Terry though and it hurts to this day every time I do.
It was two weeks into summer vacation and the gang had spent almost every day in my parents’ backyard skating the ramp. My friends never mentioned Terry or the events surrounding his death and I was grateful for it. I had attended his funeral just before school ended. I went with Dana. She was quiet and not at all herself. In fact, she didn’t really say anything to me and left without saying goodbye. That evening when I called, her parents answered and said she wasn’t feeling well. I asked if I could speak to her anyway. They called out to her and Dana answered the phone.
“Hello, new-boy. What do you want?”
“You’re not sick, are you?”
There was pause. “No, not the kind you’re thinking of.”
She wasn’t responding sarcastically like she usually did; she sounded meek but serious.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, concerned.
“Nothing.”
I pried a little harder. “Is it about Terry?”
“Why don’t you mind your own fucking business!” She slammed the receiver down and hung up.
I listened to the dial tone in shock, and then I finally hung up the phone too.
A few weeks passed and I concentrated on skating the ramp in my backyard. I had been trying to learn how to do a McTwist and couldn’t quite stick the landing. I skated well into the evening and my parents flicked on the backyard light for me. I stood on the landing at the top of the ramp. I was eleven feet up and over the roof of my parent’s bungalow I could see a car pull into the driveway. Dana stepped out and waved at me. She came around back and I skated down the ramp to meet her.
Dana sat in the chair next to me as I proceeded to take off my skates, pretending to do some adjustments to my bindings.
“I’m pregnant.”
I dropped my skate. I looked at her.
“It happened at the party, after you left. I was really drunk and tried to sleep it off and a guy came into the room and… and…I, he held me down and I was so drunk I couldn’t stop him.”
She started to sob. I didn’t know what to say. I just put my arm around her while she cried.
After a while she stopped and looked up at me. Her eyes were puffy and her face was blotchy.
“I don’t really remember it that much, you know. I tried to stop him, I told him to stop and then I must have passed out.”
I still couldn’t find any words; my tongue felt dry and my throat was raw and parched.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally.
“I’m sorry too. I mean for yelling at you.” She paused again, working her way up to say something else.
“Will you go to the doctor with me? I’m really scared.”
“Right now?”
“No, yeah, I guess. I don’t think I can do it alone.”
“What about your parents? Have you told them anything?”
“No.” She looked away from me and I could tell she felt filled with shame.
“Okay, I’ll go with you. I’ll do it.”
She looked back at me and didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. The look on her face made her thoughts clear.
I read a magazine about hunting in the waiting room. I found it weird that a hospital would have a magazine about killing in a place that was supposed to save lives. After about three hours of waiting I got up to go to the vending machine to buy a beverage. I took a sip and set the can on top of the machine. I reached over my head to stretch and a powerful yawn pushed free. My weary arms found their place again at my side and as they settled, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and Dana was there. Her face looked worn and pale, her eyes expressed an exaggerated fatigue.
“Let’s go.” That was all she said.
I was so anxious to know what had happened that I left the soda can on top of the vending machine.
In the car Dana said nothing so I in turn said nothing, waiting patiently for her to talk. Only she wasn’t going to say anything; I could tell. I wanted to ask her what the doctor had said but was afraid she would get angry with me for prying into her privacy again. Like a fool I did it anyway.
“You okay?”
There was a long silence before she responded.
“The doctor said I had a miscarriage. You see, I wasn’t lying when you called the other night and I said I was sick but not how you think. I was sick. There was a lot of blood I was so scared. I yelled at you but I really wanted to tell you the truth right then. I should have gone to see the doctor right away but couldn’t face my parents.”
There were tears coming down her cheeks but she didn’t realize she was crying. I put my hand on her hand. She looked over at me and then back on the road. She didn’t say anything else and neither did I.
By mid-summer, I had signed a contract with Maverick Skates for a year to skate in contests and shows in various countries, starting in China. I met Peter for lunch as he had known the news even before I did. Peter and I ate lunch and talked like real friends do. After lunch, I felt it right to shake Peter’s hand for all he had done for my friends and me over the last year. He shook his head at my hand.
“I think good friends can do better.” And we hugged.
That was the last time I ever saw Peter. He would die from a heart attack while I was only a month into my first world tour. I missed his funeral.
I visited Dana at her house the night I signed the contract. I told her my news and that I would be leaving before the end of the summer. She told me she was also leaving at the end of the summer as she’d been accepted to attend UBC. We didn’t say much after we exposed our respective new life paths. Everything was changing so fast all of a sudden.
“My friends are having a going away party for me next week,” she said, looking down at the ground. “Will you come?”
“Yeah, sure, of course.”
She smiled a little. “I’m going to go inside. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”
I walked home and tried my best not to think about all the things that had happened during my final high school summer. I reached down on the ground and picked up some flat stones and threw them one by one into the puddles on the side of the road as I walked. For a moment, I wished it were two years ago when all I had to do was get passing grades in school and skate for kicks. Now everything felt so…adult. I could feel that the weight and complexities of life were more than I could understand or handle. I found it hard to find answers to why bad things happen to good people like Terry or Dana. Maybe there were no answers and things just happened. Maybe we are just supposed to cope with them the best we know how. It was a bitter resolution but the only one I could find on a walk home.
At night, the gang and I street-skated a lot. Their reaction to the news about me going away to skate was good. Bill and Todd bickered about the best concrete ledge to skate overseas. They did however agree that the concrete bowl in Marseille was the best in the world. France was somewhere in the middle of the tour and promised I would skate it as much as possible.
Ash gave me a hug and made me swear to send him a post card from each country I was in. Damian was surprisingly quiet about the whole thing. When we drove home that night in the van I was in the far back bench with him and he leaned in to talk to me.
“You gonna skate the bowl in Munster?” he asked quietly.
“Yup,” I replied
“Good. What about London? There’s that ledge on London Bridge, I mean, you gotta grind that right?”
“I will.”
“Okay, good.”
He reached his hand out for mine and he shook it like regular folks did; there was no high five. He just took my hand and shook it like we had made deal, and that was that.
We skated a lot those final nights and made noise, ate bad food and drank Slurpees. We played the Ramones over the van speakers as loud as it would go. We hassled security guards and refused to take cops seriously when they held us up. One night when we were skating in an underground city garage, we found two street cleaners parked. I managed to get both vehicles started. We activated the sweeping brushes and played bumper cars with them until the fuel ran out.
We really didn’t miss a single night to be out until the night of Dana’s party. The guys made their regular jokes and I pretended to ignore them as usual.
Dana picked me up sometime after nine in her parent’s car. I noticed right away that she was wearing lipstick. She caught me looking.
“Like it?”
“I’ve never seen you wear it before.”
“I know, I never do but I thought maybe I would tonight. I can wipe it off.”
“No, you don’t have to,” I looked right at her. “It looks nice.”
She smiled. “Thanks.”
At the party, Dana stayed with me the whole time and she didn’t drink much. It was a similar crowd to the last party I went to with her but this time she just didn’t seem that much into it. Her friends tried to convince her to try some mushrooms but she declined and they told her she was lame. She asked if I wanted to leave and I said yes because it sucked worse than last time.
Outside, the temperature was hot and the air humid as we walked along the sidewalk towards the Plymouth. Someone behind us started to make rude comments at Dana. I turned and a guy stepped out of the back lane. He gave me the finger and called Dana a terrible name. He was taller than me and easily weighed seventy pounds more than me in muscle alone. He looked like a football jock.
“Who’s your pussy friend?” he asked Dana, still walking towards us.
“None of your business,” she replied, trying to act tough, but I could see she was sick with fear.
I whispered to her, asking who this guy was. She took my hand in hers and said nothing. It was then I knew that this was the guy who had raped her.
“You better take off, pussy,” he said, glaring at me.
“You touch her and I’ll kill you.”
He stopped walking towards us. He took out a knife from his jacket pocket.
“Now you can leave superman or I’ll give this to ya.” He was rolling it around in his hand.
I couldn’t make out the guy’s face as it was still protected by the shadows of the buildings in the back lane. Suddenly there was a dull thud. The guy fell to his knees and then crashed forward, smacking his face painfully on the concrete. From behind him in the shadows came a short stout figure. It was the Beave. He looked like he was holding an old muffler pipe in his hand. He looked down at his handiwork.
“What a douche!” he said, then looked up at me smiling.
I eventually collected my wits. “What are you doing here?”
“Had some business downtown. You gonna go skate the Edge tomorrow?” He dropped the muffler pipe.
“Yeah,” I replied, dumbfounded
“Cool. See you there.” He disappeared again down the back lane.
“Who was that?” asked Dana, who was still holding my hand.
“A kid from school. I think.”
“Lucky us.” She looked at the fallen Goliath on the sidewalk. She walked over to him, fished in his pockets and took his wallet. She opened it and took out sixty dollars, then dropped the wallet between the sewer grates on the street; driver’s license, social insurance number, bank card, all of it right down the gutter. You had to hand it to her.
She walked right past me and opened the car door for me.
“Get in.”
“Where we going?” I asked
“Just get in.”
So I did. She drove off and I watched in the side mirror to see if the guy would get up, but he didn’t. He was going to be in rough shape when he finally did come to.
Dana drove us away from downtown and in the direction of Charleswood. We drove beneath the overpass of the perimeter highway and turned into the gravel driveway of an old run down building, parking behind it. In front of us were train tracks with fields of grain fading into the horizon. She got out of the car and told me to do the same. She climbed up on the hood of the car and sat down. I climbed up on the hood beside her.
She took a small mickey from her jacket pocket, unscrewed the top and took a pull. She handed the bottle to me but I waved it off.
“You never drink, huh?” she asked.
“Not really, I can’t be drunk and slide hand rails I guess.” That was my answer but it never sounded much like the truth, even to me.
“Dana, what are we looking at here?”
“Just be patient,” she said, taking another swig and then tucked the bottle back into her pocket.
There was a faint rumble in the distance and then the squealing sound of metal on metal that continued to escalate in volume. I realized Dana had been waiting for a train to come. She reached over and took my hand again as it approached. The noise became much louder and then it was upon us, only mere feet from the front of our car. The sound was deafening. Dana let go of my hand, put her arm around me, leaned in and kissed me. Everything went silent. She moved her hand to the back of my head and I felt her tongue move into my mouth. Then the train was gone and the kiss was over.
“I ruined my lipstick.” She was smiling at me, playfully, and then became serious.
“I’m really going to miss you.”
“Yeah me too.”
She looked like she was going to say something else but didn’t. This time I didn’t let it pass.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She slid off the hood and I followed her down. Dana dropped me off at home. We saw each other only once more and only briefly before I left for China. After that I never saw her again.
I’m forty-one now. I’ve long since retired from skating after various injuries wouldn’t permit me to continue. Sometimes, when a summer day is hot and perfectly peaceful like they can be from time to time, I do look back on that one summer. I think of Terry and building the ramp. I reflect on skating with my brother and the gang. I think of Peter and how the news of his death made me cry one night in China.
I’m married now and have a boy of my own who is about to start high school. He skates and likes to draw like I did, although he’s better at the latter than I was and at a much earlier age too. On weekends his friends come over and skate some grind boxes that I built for him in the backyard. Sometimes a girl with dark hair hangs out with them too and I smile when I see him talking to her.