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He was like a bird of prey, soaring above our heads. His swift landing on a rail caused a chorus of cheers from the other kids at the park. His blonde hair whizzed past us, as if I was on a quad, and he was a wheat field, vast of hope and opportunity.
"I bet you couldn't do that." Ryder's nasally voice jolted me out of my trance.
"What?" I gave him an accusatory look. "Don't be ridiculous, that's completely out of my skill level." I laid my board on the smooth concrete, crossing my arms.
"I thought you were the expert. I always hear you talking everybody's ears off about your so-called skill." Ryder snorted, causing his colossal helmet to slant on his head. "If you think you're so good, go on the big ramp like that guy earlier. I thought best friends were supposed to impress each other—“
“Yeah, no.” I promptly cut him off by putting my foot on the front of my board aggressively, causing Ryder to flinch.
"I'm not here to show off, I'm here to teach you how to skateboard. That's it. End of discussion." I recite, as I practically hear my math teacher's monotone cadence projecting through my own voice. "It's too busy, Ryder. I don't
wanna ram into some unsuspecting person and possibly injure them."
"So? You're a pro, you can just go around them." Ryder smirked, punching my shoulder. "I want to see .... or are you a chicken?" Ryder's clucking noises sounded like a distressed flock of ugly chickens. I huff, finding somewhere else to look instead of Ryder's smug face. I stared intently at the blonde boy, who was now doing kickflips with his skateboard, the wowed kids watching him. He made it look so easy.
"Dude, I'm seriously going to nail a kid in the gut and send them flying into next Tuesday. I'm only here to show you the basics. Besides, you're cons away from doing that." I gesture to the ramp, which lay bare, the other kids
skated mindlessly around it. My futile excuse only seemed to catalyze Ryder's unimpressed face. My shoulders slumped, a resounding sigh escaping my lips. Ryder seriously expected that I couldn't do it. Yeah freaking right.
I wiped the defeated look off of my face and looked Ryder in the eye, taking a deep breath. "Alright then, if you think you're so smart, then I will show you! I guess you think you can handle my wicked skills!" I say smoothly, cracking my knuckles.
"Also dude, your helmet's crooked. You look like an idiot." I laugh at the stupid look on Ryder’s face, and kick off of my skateboard, leaving him in the dust.
I bent low, and the wheels picked up speed as the concrete dipped down. I take care to weave around the abundance of middle schoolers, and I lurch to a stop at the top of the big ramp. Due to the fact that I was locked in on impressing Ryder, I had failed to realize that most of the park's eyes were on me. Kids of various ages had a vast amount of expressions on their faces. Hope, suspicion, and expectancy. It had gotten to the point where it wasn't just Ryder's expectations. It was everyone's.
A bead of sweat trickled down my cheek, a reminder of my sudden nervousness. A dozen or more pairs of eyes were on my every move. They were a squad of snipers aimed at me, not afraid to fire at a moment's notice. I looked down, and the ramp seemed a lot longer from the top, and I felt my knees go weak. This was it.
"Are you guys ready to see something crazy?" My vocal cords acted on their own as I received a cheer from the
crowd. I took a long, deep breath, and kicked off of the ledge, down the dip, and I soared up. I felt the ground disappear below me as I streamlined through the air, like a jet plane thousands of metres in the sky. I'd done it. I'd proved Ryder wrong. For once in his nerdy life, he was wrong. I aim for the ground, but my board meets terrified eyes as I feel the wind knocked out of me.
"Did you see that? She landed on a kid!" shocked voices to my left spouted homologous statements one after the other. I turned my head to the left and the kid I'd almost killed was crying. Her face was a waterfall of tears, her knee lacking the top layers of skin. She wasn’t badly hurt … right? I felt my whole body slump. My body, sprawled on the concrete, hurt. Really, really hurt. It was pins and needles to the power of a million. I thought that maybe, I should just lay there and the crowd of skaters would just forget I was there, until a shadow
passed over my face. It was the concerned expression of Ryder, leaning over me as if I was dead.
"Carmen! Are you okay?" His arms, which had probably never seen exercise, heaved me up to my feet with a great effort. I stumbled to my feet and I winced in pain. Ryder dusted his hands off on his cargo pants and adjusted his crooked helmet, his expression morphing into that of disappointment and shock. "I didn't really expect you to almost kill someone!" Ryder whispers urgently, looking back at the mob of kids surrounding the injured middle schooler.
"First of all, the kids got a scraped knee, and second of all, you were the one who begged me to do it, Ryder." I give him a dirty look. The pot of emotions in my stomach threatened to boil over as I gritted my teeth. "Happy now? I showed you my 'wicked' skills." I felt tears prickling in my eyes. I had been severely humbled by a middle schooler, who didn't have the slightest bit of survival instinct.
“I wasn't forcing you." Ryder shot back, his tone becoming more agitated.
"Uh huh, and I'm Frank Sinatra. If you hadn't forced me-"
"I didn't! You just went ahead and decided to be a show-off! You’re all bark and no bite!” Ryder's words pierced me in the heart, and I stagger slightly, baffled at the audacity of his logic. The pot of emotions boiled over, and I saw red.
"So you just expected perfection? Is that what you think of me? A perfectionist?" I snapped, and the other kids turned to us.
The silence was deafening, but I refused to break eye contact with Ryder. "Because of you, I injured a middle schooler. My reputation is in the garbage, and you just expect me to forgive and forget? Fat chance Ryder, because I’m livid with you." I forced myself to look away, not bearing to look at Ryder's
expression of guilt. "Return my skateboard on Monday, and don't follow me!"
“Carmen, wait—”
I stormed off, determined to get the last word in. Ryder’s protests were in vain as I tuned them out, not wanting to hear another one of his pathetic excuses. I was already one hundred metres away when I realized I'd forgotten to apologize to that poor kid. I unclip my helmet and toss it into the grass angrily, my body slumping onto a bench with a dull thump.
My head was in my hands, my eyes threatening to flood buckets of tears onto the ground. I was humiliated. For once, I was able to prove to Ryder that I was finally better than him at something, and even that bit me in the end. My fingers
clutched at my long black hair, knotted from my helmet. The setting sun cast a golden light across the path, the trees a more brilliant green than usual, an intense contrast of the absorbing shade of hair that grew from my head. The golden hour provided a heedless calming feeling as I released my hair
from my grip. I leaned back on the bench, watching the watercolour clouds. Its vastness swirled across the sky, like an otherworldly grandma was knitting the perfect pastel sweater.
I couldn't show my face there again. Suffering that embarrassment had taken a machine gun to my pride and pummelled with bullets, leaving nothing left but fine dust. The middle schooler's terrified eyes flashed in my mind, branded molten hot onto my memories. My joints throbbed to the beat of my heart, now homeostasis after my influx of epinephrine had dispersed.
The words still stung in my throat after I had raised my voice at Ryder. It was all his fault I'd been humiliated and practically blacklisted from the park. I sat in silence for a long time, wondering if anybody was wondering where I went, if I was still the topic of their gossip. The girl who'd almost severely injured a twelve-year-old at the skate park, who had desperately tried to impress everybody there, who'd desperately tried to impress her skeptical best friend.
The tranquility of the golden hour in the sky, and the turmoil inside my mind disrupted the equilibrium in my vicinity. I looked down, and studied my skateboard, which had been abandoned upside down at my feet. I stood up from the bench, and gingerly picked my skateboard up, turning it over in my hands. I stepped onto the main path, and laid the skateboard parallel to the winding concrete. With a resounding click of my helmet strap, I was off again, on a flat, solid path, without any dips or jumps.
My eyes were coated in golden, seeing the path through a lens of hope and opportunity. I pushed my foot to guide my board up the steady incline of the path. Slow and steady.