Skate Freak (7 page)

She surprised me. She said, “I'm listening.”

“Your course is over soon, right?”

“Right.”

“And if you came back here with the course completed, you'd get a job, right?”

“I already have a job lined up. Besides the pay is way higher here.”

“But so are the living expenses. You said that.”

“Well, yeah, but we'd adapt.”

“But you could find a job here that you'd be trained for?”

“I think so, yes. But we've already got your father enrolled and in a little while, we'll both have good jobs. It's what we've dreamed of.”

It was what my mom had dreamed of, yes. But my dad, he would have been happier in Willis Harbor, working in the smelly old fish plant. He looked at me now, a curious twinkle in his eye. He did not want to leave at all.

To my mom I said, “What if
you
finish your course and
you
come back? We live together while you work and Dad goes out there to take the course.”

“But then we'd still not all be together,” she said.

“I know, but it would be temporary, right?”

“I guess so. You mean, he'd come back after the course?”

“It's not that long. He'd be back before I was out of school.”

My dad had stopped packing the suitcase. He was smiling now.

My mom was hesitant. “It's not at all what your father and I agreed on. How does he feel about this?”

My father said nothing. He just gave me a thumbs-up. “I think I could persuade him.”

There was silence on the other end. My father's eyes were tearing up.

“And if we did this,” my mom said, “made this sacrifice for you—and it would be a sacrifice—what would you do in return?”

“I'd work my butt off in school. I'd get good grades.” These were perhaps the
most unlikely words to ever come out of my mouth. All my life I'd been getting Ds and Fs. Sometimes the Ds were gifts from teachers. Now I was promising to get Cs. I could do it if Jasmine helped me. I knew I could.

Both of my parents were stunned. I mean, speechless stunned. I had never, ever in my life played the school card. Now it was out there, I'd have to live up to it. But only if they went for
my
plan.

“Put your father on the phone,” my mom said.

I handed Dad the receiver.

“Let's give the boy a chance. Let's do it,” he said.

But I knew my mom was already convinced.

It wasn't until spring that Jasmine and I had a chance to return to Willis Harbor. My mom drove us. She and Jasmine had gotten to know each other when Jasmine came over to tutor me. I felt bad that I was
so slow, that I took up so much of her study time. But I loved being with her.

My father was having a rough time with his course. He was like me. We weren't the sharpest tools in the shed when it came to classroom learning. But he was going to make it, and he'd return. And then we'd be together again as a family. Things hadn't really worked out yet for my mom. She had a job, but it was an office job. It seemed no one around here was willing to hire a woman to run the big machines. But she said that would change. She wouldn't give up.

Over the winter, Hodge and I had become friends, and that changed both of us. We lost the need to compete with each other at the skate park. We became allies of sorts, even though we never really understood each other.

And he never did pay me the twenty bucks he owed me. But I let that go. Letting things go was one of my lessons.
Hang
onto the good stuff. Let the bad stuff go. And don't hold grudges.

I promised to bring him to Willis Harbor and show him the Ledges. But that was for later.

On this bright but cool spring morning, Willis Harbor looked a little dull, a little worn around the edges. The empty houses, the sad streets. But the sea gleamed in the distance. And I always thought that the sea represented hope.

“I want to live by the sea, someday,” Jasmine said.

“Yeah, me too,” was my answer as we passed our old house. It looked like it had not been lived in for many years rather than several months.

My mother surprised me by pulling into our old driveway. She got out and unlocked the front door of the house and walked in. Jasmine and I followed.

It was again like going back in time. I led Jasmine up to my old bedroom. The furniture was still there. Dust and spider
webs covered everything. She just walked to the window and looked out.

“You can see the ocean from your bedroom. And you can see the rocks.”

“That's what I woke up to every day.”

“I bet you'd love to move back here right now, wouldn't you?”

“No,” I said. “I made this promise about school. And I can't make it work without you.”

She nodded. She knew it was true.

We left my mom alone at the house for a while, even though I could tell it wasn't easy on her. We grabbed our boards from the car and headed toward the Ledges.

Some of the rocks were quite wet, so we had to limit ourselves to the higher parts. But the granite felt smoother than ever beneath us. We skated cautiously, but this was somehow more beautiful.

It was a dance, a dance on granite by a fierce blue sea.

And then we walked further out to the point, where the rocks were rough, but
you can climb up higher and look further toward the horizon.

“Think you'll really move back here someday?”

“Someday,” I said. “But not yet.”

When we walked back to the house, my mom was taking the For Sale sign down. Dark clouds were approaching with a new sharp wind off the sea. The day was turning cool and damp. There were rough times ahead for all of us. The gravity of things would pull us down. And there would be walls ahead. But the walls wouldn't stop us. We would use them to blast up into the heights and prepare for the next challenge ahead. Whatever that might be.

Award-winning author Lesley Choyce has written sixty-eight books and is a year-round surfer at Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia.