A Dark Truth , livre ebook

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A Dark Truth
Jeff Ross
Copyright © 2016 Jeff Ross
All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training and similar technologies. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Ross, Jeff, 1973–, author A dark truth / Jeff Ross. (Orca soundings) Issued in print and electronic formats. isbn 978-1-4598-1327-4 (paperback).— isbn 978-1-4598-1328-1 (pdf) .— isbn 978-1-4598-1329-8 (epub) I. Title. II. Series: Orca soundings ps8635.o6928d37 2016 jc813'.6 c2016-900782-0 c2016-900783-9
First published in the United States, 2016 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016931892
Summary: In this high-interest novel for teens, Riley learns that the color of your skin does affect how you are treated. A free teacher guide for this title is available at orcabook.com .
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Cover image by iStock.com
Orca Book Publishers orcabook.com
For Luca & Alex, who got me back into skateboarding, the SMC for enabling and encouraging, and Megan for tolerating this madness.
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 bmx 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, then cut back down a ramp without a care in the world.
“There’s your ledge,” Dashawn said. He rolled to the ledge and ollied on, then immediately off.
We were there that day to shoot some clips for our Sponsor Me videos. A lot of people had gone straight to Instagram in an attempt to be seen, but Dashawn and I were old school. We wanted something that you could actually hand out.
The ledge was fairly high. I had an idea for a trick on it, one I totally thought I could get and which would look kick-ass filmed. I needed to practice, though, before anyone filmed me.
I popped an ollie, then rolled around the space, going through my trick list. Shove-it, heelflip, kickflip, hardflip, 180, 360. I did this every time I got to the park. If I could get all those tricks in a row, I knew I was ready to hit something bigger.
By the time I was done, I was wiping sweat from my eyes and breathing heavily.
Dashawn rolled over to me, then dropped his right foot to come to a stop. “I’m going to mess around on the bank,” he said.
“I’m getting this ledge.”
Dashawn beamed his giant smile at me. “Yeah, you are.” He put his fist out before him, and I gave it a bump. “Keep it smooth.”
Smooth, I thought as he rolled away. That was Dashawn. Everything he did had a flow to it. Even when he fell, it was with a certain kind of grace.
There were some scooter kids near the end of the ledge. I decided I’d hit it once, just do a 5-0 and pop off, then turn and come right back up to give them the chance to get an idea of the space I was about to take.
Dashawn was on the other side of the park, fist-bumping the only other black skater in the park. He turned just as I was about to push and yelled, “That ledge is yours, bro. Crush it.”
I squinted into the sun, waited for a scooter kid to roll away and pushed hard.
Chapter Two
I decided to try the 5-0 without the kickflip first. A 5-0 is like a manual, only on a ledge, so you have to land with the front of your board in the air and lock into whatever you’re sliding on with your back trucks. It’s difficult to land this way after doing a kickflip because you have to quickly spot where you need to lock in and then keep the board perfectly balanced beneath you.
I failed the first five attempts. The first four, I just spun off and jumped to the ground. But on the final one I did a full-out Superman onto the concrete and slid a good six feet on my elbows. My head almost cracked against the ground, and I left a wet spot from the massive amount of sweat my shirt was holding. A scooter kid rolled over and asked me if I was all right. I slowly got up, ignoring him.
“Bro, that was a slam,” Dashawn said, sliding to a stop beside me. “You aight?”
“That wasn’t even with the kickflip,” I said. I tested my body to make certain nothing ached in a broken way. Cuts and bruises I could deal with. Hell, adrenaline did a pretty good job of nulling that. But if something was broken, I needed to lay off right away. You would think a broken bone would be instantly noticeable, but if it’s a small fracture of your wrist, say, you might not even know it until the next day when it swells to eight times its normal size, and bright lines of pain flow up your arm.
“You got it this time,” Dashawn said. He was always super encouraging. It seemed as though I skated better with him around. When I came to the park on my own, I pretty much endlessly slammed and grumbled about scooter kids under my breath.
“I don’t know,” I said. The scooter kids seemed to have tripled in number. Six of them were circling the manual pad