A Dark Truth

By Jeff Ross

Riley and Dashawn have been friends since they were three. They got into skateboarding together and have advanced to the point where it's time to create a Sponsor Me tape. They bring a third skater along, Natasha, and try to get some good clips around a new office development. Then the police storm into the lot. The three skaters quickly scatter, trying their best not to get busted. Riley and Natasha arrive at the meet-up spot. They wait and wait, but Dashawn never shows.

The next day Riley visits Dashawn, only to discover that the police have given him a “beat-down.” Nothing like this has ever happened before, and for Riley it is a wake-up call that whether they know it or not, not everyone lives in the same world he does.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
• Release date: Oct 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781459813298

Jeff Ross

Jeff Ross is the author of several novels for young adults including several titles in the Orca Soundings and Orca Sports series. He teaches scriptwriting and English at Algonquin College in Ottawa.

Book preview

Twelve

Chapter One

You have to think about where your shoulders are all the time, Dashawn said. The sun was right above us, glaring straight down, hot and bright. We were two blocks from the skate park and I was already beginning to sweat. I could feel my underwear binding to my skin. The cascade of water building beneath the brim of my hat.

I know, I said.

Well, if you know, Riley, then start doing it.

Shut up, I replied. We bumped into one another, arm against arm, then kept moving. Dashawn and I had been best friends since kindergarten. Our mothers used to take us to the same playground to roll around in the sand, but the second they were distracted, we’d be up the play structure and dangling from one of the high bars, laughing our asses off. Four years old and already we required the world to be filled with adventure or boredom settled in.

It was the same need for an adrenaline boost that had us skateboarding when we were ten. We’d tried other things, like or jumping off cliffs into the deep waters of the bay, but those things didn’t require the same skill. At least, not the way we were doing them. Skateboarding gave us something different, something we could get better at every day but which, at any time, we could totally ruin ourselves doing.

We bumped into one another again as we turned the corner to the park.

Ah, shit, Dashawn said. "That is a lot of scooter kids." I exhaled slowly. There had to be twenty of them in there. The youngest ones were on those little three-wheeled scooters. The older ones were fourteen or fifteen and were trying to whip the scooters around above their heads after they popped out of the bowl. Everything about scooters depressed me. The handlebars. The whistling noise they made. And the fact that they were in the skate park at all. I mean, they’re called skate parks for a reason. Anywhere skaters go, we get bothered by security guards or, even worse, the police. No one else has this issue. These kids could ride in the middle of a parking lot and people would think they’re cute. There was no reason for them to be here at all. And the worst of it was they didn’t understand skate-park etiquette. They’d do circles for twenty minutes in the middle of the space, making it impossible for anyone to set up for a trick or create a line.

Man, I said. There’s even some of those strider bikes in there.

That dude’s on a mountain bike. Dashawn dropped his board, then popped it back into his hand. This was what he did when he was anxious.

It is going to be impossible to hit that ledge, I said.

You give up too easy, bro. He dropped his board again and rolled forward. I did the same, coming up close to him. The space is there—you just have to make it or take it.

Make it or take it, I said. "All right. Or we could just crash one of them."

They’re little kids, man, Dashawn said. You’re gonna go running over little kids?

I’d had a hate-on for scooter kids since one of them had cut me off at the last second and I’d seriously sprained my ankle. It had put me out for two weeks. That doesn’t sound like much, but it took me another two weeks to get back to where I was actually progressing. I spent that time playing Skate 3 on my Xbox or watching videos online and just dying to get back out again, and all I could see was this little kid on a bright-blue scooter with a stupid grin on his face as he slowly turned into me.

I knew I shouldn’t hate all scooter kids because of that one, but it was hard. It didn’t seem like any of them really looked out for anyone but themselves. The skate park was nothing more than a place for them to go mess around, whereas kids like Dashawn and me were there to make skateboarding a career.

Yeah yeah. They’re erratic pylons, I said.

You gotta be kind, bro, Dashawn said. He ollied the curb and rolled into the park. One of the scooter kids wove around him,