Skateboard Renegade Page 6

  “Shut up, Brian,” Zach scolded him, putting his arm around Lorena's shoulder to comfort her. He could see the tears already forming in her eyes.

  “Thack'th nithe,” she told Brian. “Not like you. You're not nithe at all!”

  “Tho thorry,” Brian joked, starting another round of laughter.

  Lorena, bawling, broke free of Zach and ran into the house.

  “There. Are you happy now?” Zach said to Brian. “You made her cry. Nice going.”

  “Oh, Thack!” Brian said, still not done. “You're tho thenthitive!”

  Zach gave him a little shove. “Cut it out,” he warned.

  Brian smirked. “It must be the Amherst Academy effect,” he said. “Makes you all soft and gooey and nerdy inside, so you want to spend all your time with little girls.”

  “Shut up, I said,” Zach muttered threateningly. “I had to give them lessons, okay? I had no choice.”

  “Oh? And why not?” Brian wondered.

  “I … borrowed some money from Zoey,” Zach said, motioning with his eyes toward Zoey, who was still there in the driveway watching the confrontation. “For the haircut and the ear piercing.”

  “Yeah, right,” Brian said. “Don't give me that baloney. You didn't even get your ear pierced.”

  Zach drew back, surprised. “I did too,” he said. “Here—see?”

  Brian examined the hole in Zach's ear. “Oh,” he said. “So you did. My mistake.”

  “That's right,” Zach said, nodding to show he was righteously offended.

  “See, I just figured since you were using a clip-on earring, you hadn't done the dirty deed.”

  “A-a clip-on earring?” Zach stammered.

  “Yeah. You dropped it at Moorehead Park. Here. I kept it for you.” He handed Zach the diamond stud.

  Zoey's eyes went wide, and she came closer to get a better look. “Hey!” she cried. “That's my earring! Zach, you thief! You stole my earring, too!”

  “Whoa, dude!” Brian said laughing so hard, he could barely stand. “You're wearing your little sister's jewelry now?” He backed up, exchanging humorous glances with the other guys. “Okay, I'm outie. Come on guys. See you sometime, Zach, huh?” They all skateboarded off, leaving Zach there in a state of total humiliation.

  But the worst was yet to come.

  “I'm telling!” Zoey shrieked, running inside before Zach could stop her. “Mommy! Daddy! Zach stole my money and my earring! He let the other boys make fun of me! Mommy! Daddy!”

  Zach sank to the pavement and sat there, his head in his hands. “This is it,” he said to himself. “This is what they mean when they say, 'You've hit rock bottom.'”

  10

  It was the beginning of a long, painful month for Zach. His parents grounded him until he repaid Zoey all the money he'd taken from her piggy bank. They forbade him to go skateboarding without Zoey, which pretty much meant he was confined to the driveway and the sidewalk of their block.

  Kareem called once, to say the boys were hanging out in back of the A&P, whose parking lot was so big that part of it was always empty. It wasn't as good a layout as Moorehead Park; aside from some curbs and a couple of speed bumps, there wasn't much in the way of obstacles. But at least the pavement was better, and until they fixed Moorehead Park, it was the only game in town.

  Zach explained why he couldn't go. Kareem sympathized, but after that, there wasn't much to talk about, so they hung up quickly. And that was the last he'd heard from any of them—three weeks ago.

  He'd done a lot of baby-sitting in that time. Lorena's parents had given his name to some friends of theirs who needed help Friday and Saturday nights. He'd spent the afternoons giving the girls lessons. They could now actually ride their boards.

  Zoey had already extracted a skateboard from their parents as an early birthday present. Lorena was working on her parents to do the same for her, and it seemed that she wouldn't have too hard a time getting one, even though her birthday wasn't till just before Thanksgiving.

  Zach had splurged on some cones for them to work with. It had set him back a day of baby-sitting wages, but he didn't care anymore. It gave him a chance to set up different slalom courses in the driveway.

  His skills were actually getting better with all this practice. Even though most of the tricks he tried were really easy, he was getting so good at them that he could put together a few at a time, which enabled him to create routines on the board.

  One day he brought his boom box outside and gave his routine some background music. Zoey and Lorena really enjoyed the addition of a sound track to their boarding activities. They were each improving steadily and were certainly no longer embarrassing.

  Outside of giving the girls lessons, the only good things in Zach's life were his technology classes and Computer Club at Amherst. They were really interesting, and he'd learned a lot. And with his hair and clothing close to what Amherst kids considered normal, he was slowly making friends, although none as close as Benny Santangelo.

  One day Benny and he were sitting next to each other in computer engineering class, when the teacher handed out a series of sheets detailing their big end-of-semester assignment.

  “You'll be working in teams,” Mr. Schmidt said. “You'll have to come up with a detailed computer design of a structure with moving parts.”

  “What kind of structure?” one of the kids asked.

  “That's entirely up to you,” the teacher said. “It could be a drawbridge or an elevator for a building. Try to be creative. But I'll expect a two-page written report explaining how you came up with it and how it works.”

  “Cool!” Benny said, turning to powwow with Zach. “Got any good ideas?”

  Zach shrugged. “You're the idea man,” he said. “Just one request.”

  “What?”

  “We work at your house. I need to get away,” Zach said, rolling his eyes. “I'm in prison at my house.”

  “No problem,” Benny assured him. “I'll have my mom call your mom and set it up.” He winked at Zach, and they shook on it.

  That evening Zach's mom was about to drive him to Benny's for a brainstorming session on their big project when the phone rang. His mom went into the kitchen to answer it.

  “Skeeter, hi!” Zach heard her say, greeting his uncle. “How are you? How's the weather out in sunny California?” She listened, and then said, “Well, I'm just driving Zach over to a friend's house.”

  There was a pause. Zach tapped on the back of the sofa impatiently.

  Then he heard his mom say, “Oh, we're surviving, I guess. Things have been tense with us. …”

  Zach knew she was talking about him. He could tell by the hush that came into her voice. He edged over to the open kitchen door, to hear better.

  “He just doesn't seem to want to play by the rules,” his mom was complaining. “We can't do anything with him. Do you know the police brought him home one night? And Zoey caught him stealing from her piggy bank, can you believe it? Oh, Skeeter, you have such a way with kids. Maybe if you had a little talk with him? Everything we say just goes in one ear and out the other.”

  Zach, hiding on the other side of the kitchen door, felt a sudden urge to sneeze come over him. He tried to stifle it, but it was too late. “Aaah-choo!!!”

  His mom, hearing him, broke off the conversation. “I'll call you back later,” she told Skeeter, and hung up. “Were you listening in, Mr. Sneak?” she asked Zach as she came out into the living room.

  “Listening to what?” Zach asked innocently.

  His mom frowned, but didn't say anything else until they were in the car driving to Benny's. Then she said, “That was your uncle Skeeter on the phone.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Zach said flatly. He loved his uncle Skeeter, who was one of the most fun adults he'd ever met. But right now he couldn't muster much excitement for anything.

  “He sends his regards.”

  “That's nice.”

  His mom sighed, and shook her head. “What time shall
I pick you up?” she asked.

  “I'll call you.” Zach got out and went up the steps to ring Benny's doorbell. He didn't look back as the car drove away.

  “Well?” Benny asked him as he let Zach in.

  “Well, what?” Zach asked.

  “Any ideas for our project?”

  “Nope. You?”

  “Not a one,” Benny pushed his broken, taped-up glasses onto the bridge of his nose. “But I did come up with a cool program for simulating whatever we wind up making. Wanna see?”

  “Cool!” Zach smiled and followed Benny down into the basement, where the Santangelo family had their computer desk set up. Benny called up the program he'd written.

  “Say you wanted to do a bridge,” he began, and showed Zach how, by entering just a few commands, he could create the bridge, see it from any angle, and even make it sway in an imaginary wind.

  “That's incredible!” Zach said. “You did that yourself?”

  Benny shrugged. “It was easy,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. Man, we are gonna get an A-plus!” He high-fived Benny, but then their smiles began to fade. “We still need an idea,” Zach said. “We could do a bridge, I guess.”

  “Uh-uh,” Benny said, shaking his head. “Bernard and Enid are doing a bridge together. They'd clean our clocks. Bernard is a genius, and Enid's smarter than he is.”

  “What about an elevator or something?”

  “Nah. Everyone in class will be doing that,” Benny told him. “But my program isn't limited to buildings, see. We can do anything—a spaceship, maybe?”

  “That's not a bad idea,” Zach said. “Kind of corny, though …”

  “Yeah, I guess you're right,” Benny agreed reluctantly. “So what do we do now?”

  “I guess we sit around until we get the idea we want to do, and then you program it in for us.”

  Benny made a face. “I think you should come up with the idea then, Zach. It's only fair.”

  “But I can't think of anything!” Zach complained. “My brain needs a break. What else do you have to do around here?” Zach looked around the basement, examining Mr. Santangelo's weights and Mrs. Santangelo's treadmill.

  Then he opened a little wooden door, and gasped. “Wow! What a cool workshop!”

  Zach had always liked shop class at school. He was good at making things, and the projects he did invariably got A's. But his parents weren't handy at all, and the tools they kept around the house were totally lame. So Zach never really got much of a chance to exercise his talents in woodworking.

  The Santangelos, on the other hand, had an incredible workshop set up in their basement. There was a huge worktable, with saws, a lathe, and other power tools. On a pegboard along one wall were all kinds of hand tools. Sheets of plywood were stacked against the far wall, and more lumber was piled in bins in one corner.

  “My dad likes to do wood projects,” Benny explained. “He built our deck last year, and now he's working on an addition to the family room. Mom always complains about all that scrap lumber, but she sure loves the finished project when it's done!”

  “Scrap lumber?” An idea suddenly came to him. “Hey, Benny, do you think I could use some of this plywood and those tools to make a skateboarding ramp for my driveway?”

  “Well, this stuff isn't mine,” Benny pointed out. “It's my dad's. And my dad doesn't let anybody work without supervision.”

  “Oh,” Zach said, disappointed.

  “Of course, if I asked him nicely, he'd probably come down and help us.”

  “Really?” Zach asked, his jaw dropping.

  “Nope,” Benny said with a smile. “He just loves to work with wood. It's what he does for a hobby, and he loves it when I do it with him. Kind of like a father-and-son thing.”

  “That's phat. Oh, man, I hope he says yes. A ramp in the driveway would be so cool!” Zach mused. He told Benny about the cones he'd put out. “It would make my skateboarding course complete.”

  Benny turned to the computer and logged on to the Internet. “Let's just see if we can download some building plans for a ramp and go find Dad!”

  Three hours later, when his mom came to pick him up, Zach was standing in Benny's driveway. Next to him was a curved wooden ramp made out of plywood. “Hi, Mom!” He waved to her.

  “What's this, Zachary?” she asked him, getting out of the car.

  “Benny's dad's giving me this ramp,” he told her. “It's for skateboarding tricks in the driveway.”

  “Well, isn't that nice of him!” his mom said with a smile. “I'm so glad you're making such nice new friends at Amherst.” Then she cleared her throat. “Of course, Zoey is not to go anywhere near that thing, do you understand?”

  “Of course not, Mom!” Zach said, rolling his eyes. “Do I look that stupid?”

  “All right, all right,” she said. “Come on, let's get this thing in the back.”

  They managed to lift the ramp between them. It just fit in the back of the station wagon. As they drove off toward home, his mom asked, “So what did you two boys come up with?”

  “Uh, nothing,” Zach said lamely.

  His mother's mouth grew tight. “What do you mean, nothing? I drove you over here so you could work on your project. Did you do any work at all?”

  “We tried, Mom,” Zach explained defensively. “But neither of us could think of anything good.”

  “I'm sure,” his mother said, making a face. “You probably just played video games or watched TV.”

  “Whatever you say, Mom.” Zach stared out the window. He sure wasn't going to volunteer the information that they'd spent their homework time building a skateboarding ramp.

  “Look, young man,” she said, pulling into their driveway and stopping the car, “you are still officially grounded until you work off your debt to your sister. Since you're obviously taking advantage of our good nature, next time you and your partner can work on your project here at our house.”

  Zach clucked his tongue and got out of the car without answering her. What was the use, anyway?

  As he came into the house, the phone rang. Zach picked up the extension. “Hello?” he said.

  “Zach? It's your uncle Skeeter, dude!”

  “Oh, hey, Skeeter,” Zach said grudgingly. “You want to talk to Mom again?”

  “Actually, I called to talk to you, partner,” Skeeter said, in that hippie twang of his. Skeeter had once been an actual hippie—living on a commune in northern California for two years after dropping out of college. Later he'd gotten work harvesting giant sequoia and redwood pinecones by climbing hundreds of feet up into the great old trees. On one of those climbs, he'd taken a fall of over a hundred feet and broken nearly every bone in his body.

  Skeeter had recovered much better than anyone could have hoped, but he never got back to having what Zach's parents would have called a “normal life.” He now lived in Venice, California, in a little house just off the beach and the boardwalk. Zach had no idea how his uncle got by, since according to Zach's mom, he never had a job.

  Still, Zach really liked Skeeter. Normally he would have been happy to talk to him. But right now Zach was in a pretty foul mood. He knew the reason Skeeter wanted to talk with him was that Zach's mom had asked him to.

  “I gotta go do something right now,” Zach said.

  “Okay, this'll only take a minute, dude,” Skeeter said quickly, not letting Zach off the hook. “Look, I've got lots of space out here, and not a lot of company, so I was wondering if you'd maybe want to come out and visit me over Columbus Day weekend. We could spend some time hanging out, and I could show you the scene out here. It's pretty incredible.”

  “Sounds okay,” Zach said. “But I don't know if I —”

  “There's a big skateboarding exhibition gonna happen on the boardwalk,” Skeeter said, tempting him. “Professionals from all over the country.”

  “For real?” Zach gasped, forgetting his reluctance.

  “I know some of these dudes from the old days,�
� Skeeter said. “I could introduce you. You might even pick up a pointer or two, assuming you're not already a super hotshot yourself.”

  Zach laughed. “Okay. I guess I could make it.”

  “Excellent!” Skeeter said, in his Valley-guy surfer-dude voice. “And bring your board, dude. It's gonna be a party on wheels!”

  11

  On the Thursday before Columbus Day weekend, Zach finally paid Zoey back the last of the money he owed her. He even had a few dollars left over.

  Feeling confident that his parents would give him some money to spend in California, he decided to celebrate by spending his few extra dollars on a sundae at the Ice Cream Parlor, down by Foley Square.

  He rode his skateboard over there, sat down on one of the old-fashioned swivel stools by the bar, and ordered the house special sundae—chocolate ice cream with fudge and strawberry sauce, topped with whipped cream and sprinkles.

  He was just digging into it when who should come into the place but Brian Jeffers. “Hey, Halper! Long time, no see!” He came over to Zach and put a hand on his shoulder. “Que pasa, man? What you been up to? Still playing with your little sister?”

  “I've been grounded, okay?” Zach shot back. “I had to give Zoey lessons till I paid back the money I took from her.”

  “Oh, yeah? I notice you're out and about.”

  “I paid it off today.”

  “Cool! So now you're free to come boarding again?”

  “That's right.”

  “Too bad Moorehead Park's all torn up. There's no place else in this stupid town to board. The A&P lot really stinks.”

  “Actually, you should check out my driveway. I've got it all set up,” Zach told him.

  “Yeah, right. Your driveway.”

  “No, listen, it's really working. It's long and pretty wide, and I put out cones and a ramp, too.”

  “A ramp? Where'd you buy a ramp?”

  “I didn't buy one. I made it.”

  “Yeah, right, you made a ramp.”

  “I did, with my friend Benny and his dad.”

  “Benny? You've got a friend named Benny?”