Maybe if I’d have worked out sooner that I was bi, things would’ve been different. He made friends quickly, and though I watched him all the time and caught him watching me, I remained clueless. I never asked him why.īack then the skatepark was full from sunrise till late into the night, and Kim hung around almost as often as I did. He’d moved from another school across town. It took a long time for me to realise that though. Later, I told myself I’d been so transfixed because I didn’t know whether he was a boy or a girl. Too involved in watching him, I forgot what I was doing and nearly killed myself, lost control of my bike in the middle of a turn and crashed face first into the ramp. He was laughing, head thrown back like it is now, pink hair falling away from his narrow face, sharp white teeth flashing, the whole of him vibrating with some wild aliveness I’d never seen in anyone else. I remember the first time I saw him, swinging on the metal railing by the coffee shack near the smaller ramps with a couple of girls from school. Free.įor a moment whatever shadows are haunting him are chased far away. Spinning and spinning, his head flung back, hair flying.
He turns to me, pulls off my massive gloves, hands them to me in my helmet, then holds his arms out, races down to the centre of the second biggest ramp, and starts spinning. The wistfulness in his voice surprises me. He scrambles to the top of the little grassy hill surrounding the park. Spending time with him is just going to hurt, I know it is, and here I am just about offering myself up to it like a masochist.
God, what am I doing? This is such a bad idea. Like the past has a weight, a texture, and it’s all him. I find myself still wanting to feel his arms around me. I’ve popped a tyre before on the glass that’s scattered around here, and my fingers are too frozen to be fiddling around with fixing on a spare.Īs soon as we make it into the skatepark’s tiny car park, Kim hops off the bike.
I take my time cycling down the rough track to the park.
Maybe he needs to let off a bit of steam too. Wherever his life is at, ramming a four-by-four into a warehouse complex and then being arrested has got to build up some serious tension. The sharp-eyed way she watched him as he gave a false name to the police. I think again of the girl with the green braids. It’s almost Christmas Day-surely, he’s got somewhere else to be, other people to be with? People far more important to him than me.
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