Sk8er Boi (Logan Reese)

thirteen: losing a piece of my soul

The sound of the wheels on my skateboard riding over the pavement in the student parking lot centered my soul. There was nothing better than allowing the wind to blow through my braided hair. Also, with skateboarding, I really didn't have to think about anything as I weaved my way through the few cars and cement blocks that were scattered around the parking lot. 

But, there were things that just couldn't stay out of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to push the thoughts away. 

Images of my parents moved through my mind, of them together and of them apart. The reason why I knew how to skateboard was because of them, even if I really didn't want that to be true. My dad was the sporty kind of person, so he taught me multiple things relating to sports, like, how to swim in our pool, how to throw a basketball hard enough to get it in the hoop, things like that. Mom wasn't very sporty, but she did know how to skateboard, and so did my dad. They made sure that I knew how, too, and soon enough, I was a pro. 

Those were the good days, when my parents were still together and participated in my life. Then, Dad decided to leave us because of Mom. When I was old enough to realize why he left us, I blamed my mother for driving him away. A teensy, tiny part of me still did, but I knew why Dad had to leave. Mom wasn't taking her medicine, and she was a menace to everyone when she didn't take her medicine. He grew tired of dealing with her, so he left. I so wished he took me with him, but he wasn't that kind of man. 

I was left with my mother, and for a bit there, she took her medicine like she was supposed to. She was still mean, but she was better than without the medicine, so I took it. We had fun, but the fun had to end sometime, and that was when she stopped taking her medicine. She was always paranoid and angry and ready to fight me if I did something wrong. I managed to stay away from her during that time by joining clubs at school, but then I messed up at that school and had to get shipped off to another school. Maybe Mom was the reason why I couldn't stay at one school; she always was disappointed in me, so I didn't care if I was bad. Lately, Mom started taking her medicine again, and I hoped that she would stay on it long enough to see that it does her some good. I've been down this road before, though, so I doubted it. 

That was when I started coming here. It was the second semester of the school year, which meant that everyone already had friends and didn't want to include me in anything. Besides Zoey. She was the exception since she always tried to get me to join her and her friends whenever they did things. I didn't join them, though, because of Lola. Her words came rushing back to me, about how I didn't belong here. Lola's voice meshed with my mother's, cutting me deeply. 

There was one -- well, two -- good things that had happened to me. Quinn and I sort of became friends, though she was still wary of me. We talked at night when we couldn't go to sleep, and sometimes I helped her with her scientific inventions. And then there was Logan, the person I wanted to hate but I don't. His annoyingly cute face appeared in my mind's eye as I thought about him. He saw the true me, so why was I stopping myself from telling him how I felt? It was too early to tell him, I decided, since I only just figured out that I liked him. Plus, I was still his personal assistant, and that annoyed me.

A strong breeze hit my body as I hopped up onto one of the cement blocks that dotted the small student's parking lot. Unfortunately for me, the breeze was so strong and so heavy that I was pushed off my skateboard. Even though I had been skating for basically my entire life, I wasn't the best at doing tricks with my skateboard, so I had practice at landing directly on my feet. The soles of my shoes hit the concrete, pain traveling up my shins and into my knees. Ignoring the pain coursing through the bottom half of my body, I glanced around the area I was at, trying to find my skateboard. 

The old skateboard was sitting in the between both sides of the parking spots. It look lonely and rejected, reflecting my own emotions that was sitting in the deepest part of my soul. I never thought that I could be this lonely, but this year at PCA was proving me wrong. Even if I was surrounded by hundreds of people and had a sort of friend in Logan and Quinn, I was lonely. No one wanted to be around me because of many different reasons, like my air of uncaring attitude. I was brought up to act like that to make sure I didn't get let down in the process of caring for someone, and yet here I was, probably hurting even more than if I had people that cared for me, and in turn, people that I cared for.

Shaking my head, I tried to banish the thoughts from my mind, but they stayed there, sitting in the front of my brain. Maybe it was better to be reminded of my own tortured life then to try to push it down until it blew up at the wrong time, or blew up at the wrong person -- a person named Lola. I was already in big trouble with the Dean because of her (what strike was I on again?), so it was better to let my emotions out now instead of later. 

I sucked in a deep breath of the sweet air around me, my eyes fluttering shut. Imagining my bad feelings as a small -- well, pretty large -- butterfly, I set it free from me. The imaginary butterfly floated away away into the darkness of the world around me, and a smile worked its way onto my face. For the first time in my life, my soul felt light. 

Then, an engine revved very close to me. Tires squealed against the pavement, and my eyes flashed open. A car was hurtling towards my skateboard, and there were two kids -- a girl and a boy -- in the front seats of the car, each with matching ugly grins. The girl sat behind the wheel, and she slammed her hand on the horn even though I wasn't in the way of their grimy car. 

A crunch hit the air as the car passed over my skateboard, and my heart physically dropped in my chest cavity. The smell of exhaust permeated through the parking lot, making my stomach flip in my abdomen. My feet moved on their own, and then I crashed to the ground beside my broken skateboard body, my hands trailing along the split in the middle of it. The wheels were nowhere to be found, like they had popped right off and rolled away from it. Breaking my skateboard was bound to happen sometime, but I didn't think it would happen now. 

A little piece of my soul crumbed at the sight of my broken skateboard. This very one was the skateboard that I bought with my own money a few years back. It was just a simple skateboard, with the basic black body. Over the course of a few days, though, I made it more for me. All along the top of the skateboard were lyrics to all my favorite songs, and in the middle of the body was a painting of me. The lyrics were pouring out of the painted silhouette of me, but now, the me on the skateboard was split in half. There was no saving this board, I just knew it. 

Anger coursed through my body at the people who destroyed my board. If they saw me standing to the side, couldn't they see my skateboard sitting on the ground in front of their car? There was a small part of me that blamed myself for the destruction of my precious board. I stood there before it happened, letting the bad emotions float out of my body when I could have picked the board up and shoved the emotions deeper into my soul. 

An idea struck my brain like a bolt of lightning. I still was volunteering at the local museum, and Caroline wanted me to start working on a project there, highlighting something that I loved. Maybe I could research about the beginnings of skateboarding and things related to it, and include my trusty skateboard as part of the exhibit. I guessed there was a silver lining to this tragedy.