that a little business you got going on the side?” I asked.
“No, I don’t get any money for them. It’s for the environment. To lessen our impact on the environment. Did you know that the United States has one tenth of the world’s population, yet it produces eighty percent of the world’s trash?” I flicked a wheel on my skate and watched it spin. “That sounds about right.” I said.
“Well, please make sure you put your cans in the recycling container next time.”
“Sure Kate. Will do.” I went to my room and shut the door.
8
That Sunday morning I was thinking about what Mr. Bennett said about space. He’d said space was an illusion of time. It was an idea I tried to turn around in my head a few times. Maybe he wasn’t crazy. Everything exists in the present. Maybe he meant space was the present. I felt like there was some big idea just beyond my mental powers. I hoped I hadn’t huffed away the part of my brain that could figure it out.
I thought of the skaters I’d seen the day before. I’d watched them from a distance and could see what was in front of them and behind them and how they moved through space. I could see how they looked in the present, I could guess what their immediate future might hold, based on the direction they were going and the terrain in front of them, and I could remember their past. That was the permanent state of things. The past was a memory in my mind, the present was visible, and the future was a set of probable outcomes. It was like the skaters were human math problems, eating up probabilities and spitting out memories.
My thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing and a few seconds later Kate knocked on my door. “Telephone.” She said.
“I’ll be there in a minute.” I rolled out of bed and went through my backpack for a fresh shirt.
“Hello?” I said picking up the phone in the living room.
“Yo it’s Michael. Sorry to call so early.”
“It’s eleven-thirty. What’s going on?” I asked.
“Nada. You wanna hear about how we’re gonna get rich?”
“Uh, yeah…” I said. Kate was in the kitchen and could hear everything I was saying. “Listen, I’ll come up to your place and we can talk about it there.”
“Oh right. Okay. When can you be here?” He asked.
“It’ll take me like fifteen minutes.” I said
As I skated up the hill I was still thinking about Mr. Bennett. In his science class he’d talked a lot about starlight. He told us it took years for starlight to reach earth, and when you looked up at stars, you were seeing the light that they gave off a long time ago. I’d never forgotten that. Any star that we were looking at might’ve exploded and we wouldn’t know it for years. Looking at stars was like looking into the past. In a sense you couldn’t really see a star, you could only see the light it gave off. I thought it must be the same with everything, even the stop light on the corner. It’s light must take some time to get to me, a very small amount of time, but it certainly wasn’t instantaneous. The trees at the top of the hill were farther away, so their light was a little older than the stop light’s. I couldn’t see anything in exactly the same present as mine. There was a lag time between the world and my perception of it. I wanted to ask Mr. Bennett about it.
Michael’s house looked different than I remembered and I wasn’t sure I had the right place. I knocked anyway and soon a wrinkled black hand moved the lace curtain on the door’s window, and I saw the scrunched face of Michael’s Grandmother looking at me. “Who’s that?” She asked staring right at me.
“I’m Nick. I’m a friend of Michael’s. Is he home?” She let the curtain go and I heard her padding off down the hall. A minute later Michael opened the door.
“It took me longer than I thought to get up here.” I said. “You live at the top of a big ass hill, you know that?”
“Yeah I know, I know. I have to climb the thing twice a day. Come on let’s get out of here.” We walked to the street and began skating toward Lake. “So listen,” he said, matching my leisurely speed, “you and me are gonna sell my Uncle’s car. He’s going to Texas today and he won’t be back till next Saturday, so we have some time to do it.”
I had to laugh. “That’s your great idea? Stealing a car?”
“I know where he keeps the pink-slip and where he leaves his keys. All you have to do is put an ad in the paper and take the first offer that comes along. No one will ever find out about it.” He said.
“What about your uncle? He’s gonna call the cops, they’re gonna pick up whoever buys the car, which will lead them straight to me and I’ll get thrown in jail.” I said.
“That’s the most beautiful thing about the plan. There’s no way my Uncle’s gonna call the cops. He’s fucking wanted by the police. There’s warrants out for his arrest. He won’t be able to do shit about it.” He said. “He’d call the Ku Klux Klan before he’d call the cops.” We skated along in silence for awhile.
“Why do you need me?” I asked. “Why not just sell the thing yourself?”
“First off, take a look at me. I don’t even look old enough to drive. I don’t want to raise any suspicion.” He had a point there, he looked much younger than his sixteen years. “Secondly, if something freaky happens and my Uncle runs into the guy who bought his car, I don’t want the guy to describe me. I’ll be suspect number one anyway. Plus some of his neighbors know me. If they see me driving his car around they might say something. No one’s gonna ask you any questions.”
We reached Lake and crossed it as I thought this over. “So you want me to be a cut-out.” I said, summing up my role. “And how much would my cut be for this high risk service?”
“I’ll give you thirty percent.” He said popping off a nice kick flip. I never could do a proper kick flip.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You want me to commit grand theft auto and only get thirty percent? No. No way.” I said.
“I’m providing the car, and it’s my Uncle, so I’m more in danger of getting caught than you. Your risk is limited to the day you sell the car.” He said.
“My phone number is appearing in the newspaper connected to the thing.” I said. “Fifty percent. We split it down the middle, or you can find another cut-out.”
“Alright man, deal. Fifty-fifty. It’s a nice ‘84 Chevy, I got all the info written down so you can put the ad in the paper. We oughta be able to get two thousand dollars for the motherfucker. We’re gonna be rich.” He said.
We stopped at the top of Holliston Avenue. It wasn’t a busy street and there was only one light, about three long blocks from where we were. “You wanna bomb this thing?” He asked.
“Yeah, alright.” I said. “It’s been a while, I forget what the timing is on the light. We used to have it down to a science.”
“When the light turns green you wait for about fifteen seconds and then push off. On your way down it’ll turn red and then green again right as you hit the intersection.” He said.
Michael started counting when the light turned green and I sat on my board with my feet on either side. He reached fifteen and we both pushed off. I kept my wheels swimming in WD40 so I immediately went out in front. I had my hands gripping the sides of my board under my ass and my feet in front of me with my heels resting on the nose. I was halfway down the block when the light turned red. Holliston has no stop signs but you still had to watch out. In that low position, drivers couldn’t see you. I stayed in what I thought was the safest place, the left side of the street so I wouldn’t be surprised by a car coming up behind me, and near the curb so I could bail quickly if a hairy situation came up. I had half a block on Michael already, so I was worried about the timing with the light. When I was on the last block before the intersection, a truck sped through. I considered putting my feet down but I saw the light across from me turn orange. I hit the intersection just as the light turned green. When I was safely through I looked back and saw Michael closing the distance between us. At this point we reached the speed where you had to keep tucked nice
and tight and go straight. Any slight shift in weight could result in uncontrollable speed wobbles. We were flying.
When we were a couple blocks from Washington, where the hill flattens out, I started slowing myself with my feet. Michael flew by me and at the last block, shoved his board into a shrieking skid. He stopped clean. “I never saw anyone do that on their ass before.” I said. “I gotta work on that one.”
“I bomb this thing to get to school five days a week.” He said, standing up. “You feel like going over to Don’s place with me? He’s got a fat sack and he said he’d smoke us out when I talked to him this morning.”
“You guys gonna be there for awhile? I was gonna head to the mall to see a friend of mine. They’re open on Sundays right?”
He looked at me skeptically. “The mall? Yeah they’re open. Sunday’s like their busiest day.” He said. “I’ll probably be hanging out at Don’s till late. His band practices in the basement every Sunday. You should come by later, Don wants to see you.”
“Alright, I’ll be there.”
“Hey, before you go, take this information about the car in case you don’t make it tonight. I want to get it in the paper as soon as possible.” He handed me a folded piece of notebook paper. “If you call tomorrow they should print it on Tuesday.”
“Alright man, but before we do this, I gotta ask you, why do you want to