“Shh!” said Sam.
“I’m being as quiet as I can …” whispered Ruby. “Considering what we’re doing here is carrying a skateboat out of your room …”
“Shh!”
“OK, right. Shh it is.”
It’s not easy, this, though, was what she wanted to say. She was a lot smaller than Sam, even though he had by now started to get back down to his normal size, and so between them they were holding the skateboat at quite a sharp downwards angle. It wasn’t as heavy as she thought it was going to be, but it was awkward. Not least because when she turned her head to the right or left, her ears would hit a skateboard wheel. It wasn’t made any easier by the fact that Sam had said they had to bring the binocuscope as well, which kept on rolling backwards and forwards on the wooden boards.
“Shhhhh!!” said Sam again, a bit unnecessarily, as Ruby hadn’t said anything. But they were in the hallway, passing the door to the living room, where their parents were watching TV. The time was 10pm.
Sam and Ruby had on two sets of clothes: because it was September, and starting to get cold, and they were going out in the middle of the night.
As they went through the front door, Ruby whispered: “Should we leave them a note?”
“Who?”
“Mum and Dad, of course!”
“Oh!” said Sam. “No, it’ll be fine. They’ll never even notice we’ve gone.”
They got the skateboat out of the door of their flat easily enough. Not so easily into the lift: Sam had to press his body face-forward against the wall and Ruby had to crouch underneath the skateboat, which was lying diagonally over her head.
“This is horrible, Sam!” she shouted. “I’m too close to the toilet smell! Wee! My nose is near the wee smell!”
“OK, OK!” he said. “Sorry!” Sam reached round for the buttons, and, after some fumbling, pressed G, for Ground Floor.
Down they went, Ruby holding her nose, and indeed breath, all the way.
The lift opened, and they crashed the skateboat through the doors of Noam Chomsky House on to the path, which curved through some sparsely planted trees, down the hill and out to the road.
Then Sam put his left foot on the skateboat, pushed with his right to get going and immediately fell over. The skateboat went off the path into the grass verge.
“Ow!” he said. “Sorry. Don’t know why that happened. Let’s get it and try again.”
And they did. And he fell off again.
“Ow!”
Ruby watched, deadpan. “Have you, by any chance, tried riding this before? At all?”
“No,” said Sam, getting up, “but I thought it would be just like riding a skateboard. Only bigger.”
“Yes, I think that ‘only bigger’ thing may make quite a big difference …”
“Hmm … don’t quite know what to do …” said Sam.
“Hello!” said a voice. They both looked round.
“Oh, right …” said Sam. “Hi, Zada. This is my sister, Ruby.”
“Hello!” said Zada.
“Hello …” said Ruby suspiciously. For no real reason. She was just like that with new people.
“So …” said Zada, looking at the skateboat, “what happened to your board? Did it have … an allergic reaction to something …?”
“Eh?” said Sam. “Oh! No!”
“It’s a long story,” said Ruby, still suspicious, and not really wanting to explain to Zada what they were trying to do.
“OK!” she replied, shrugging. “But I saw you fall off it. Do you want some help?”
Sam looked at the skateboat. Then back at her.
“You think you could help me ride this board too?”
Zada looked at it. “Yes.” She got on the skateboat. “It’s bigger, isn’t it? Than a normal board. So. It’s just a question of …” And she put her foot down firmly on the floor, “doing everything – all your movements, all your weight-shifting – bigger …”
The skateboat moved off towards the bowl under Noam Chomsky House. Sam and Ruby glanced at each other. Zada wasn’t going to … was she …?
But she did. She stuck out her arms in a flying shape, and then leant towards the left. The skateboat moved, slowly, at first, and then disappeared down below Noam Chomsky House.
Ruby and Sam ran over to see Zada on the skateboat, gliding, not effortlessly, but getting more fluid by the second, around the bowl. Up the ramp, down the ramp, around the sides – all the time holding out her arms, like an old-fashioned child pretending to be an aeroplane. As she got better and better, she actually made it seem like she was on a boat, sailing over the waves of a concrete sea.
“This is what you need to do!” she shouted as she went. “Just place your weight more firmly – and use your arms more!”
Then Zada pushed off again round a curve, and up towards where her little audience were watching. As a last flourish, just before she got to them, she added an Olly 360, no pivot, lifting herself in the air and twisting round like a ballet dancer to arrive the right way round by the time the board stopped at an awestruck Sam and Ruby.
“So. That is it, really. All yours!” she said.