the wind blew, rattling loose shutters. He could hear the branches of the lilac tree scratch against the clapboards.
Warren advanced a red checker and he smiled at his companion. ‘Your move, Mona.’
At six-thirty, as she did every weekday morning, five-year-old Isabel Morrison crept into her older sister’s bedroom and climbed under the covers with Mary Rose. There she wriggled like a happy worm in the warm sheets and hummed to herself as she waited for Mary Rose to wake up. There would always be a great deal of sighing and moaning, and Mary Rose would turn from one side to another, her long brown hair tickling Isabel’s face. Isabel thought Mary Rose was the most beautiful girl on earth. She looked like the sleeping Princess Aurora, waiting for her prince to kiss her. Sometimes Isabel would pretend she was Prince Charming, and even though she knew girls weren’t supposed to kiss each other, she would plant her lips on her sister’s mouth and announce: ‘Now you have to wake up!’
One time, Mary Rose had been awake all along, and had sprung up like a giggling monster and tickled Isabel so mercilessly that both girls had fallen off the bed in a duet of happy squeals.
If only Mary Rose would tickle her now. If only Mary Rose would be her normal self.
Isabel leaned close to her sister’s ear and whispered, ‘Aren’t you going to wake up?’
Mary Rose pulled the covers over her head. ‘Go away, pest.’
‘Mommy says it’s time for school. You have to wake up.’
‘Get out of my room!’
‘But it’s time for –’
Mary Rose gave a growl and lashed out with an angry kick.
Isabel slithered to the far side of the bed, where she lay in troubled silence, rubbing her sore shin and trying to understand what had just happened. Mary Rose had never kicked her before. Mary Rose always woke up with a smile and called her Dizzy Izzy and braided her hair before school.
She decided to try again. She crawled on hands and knees to her sister’s pillow, peeled back the sheets, and whispered into Mary Rose’s ear: ‘I know what Mommy and Daddy are getting you for Christmas. You wanna hear?’
Mary Rose’s eyes shot open. She turned to look at Isabel.
With a whimper of fear, Isabel scrambled off the bed and stared at a face she scarcely recognized. A face that frightened her. ‘Mary Rose?’ she whispered.
Then she ran out of the room.
Her mother was downstairs in the kitchen, stirring a pot of oatmeal and trying to hear the radio over the screeches of their parakeet, Rocky. As Isabel came tearing into the kitchen, her mother turned and said, ‘It’s seven o’clock. Isn’t your sister getting up?’
‘Mommy,’ Isabel wailed in despair. ‘That’s not Mary Rose!’
Noah Elliot did a 360 kick-flip, popping the skateboard off the curb, into the air, and landing it neatly on the blacktop. All right! Nailed it! Baggy clothes flapping in the wind, he rode the board all the way down to the teachers’ parking lot, ollied the curb, and came around again, a sweet ride all the way.
It was the only time he felt in control of his life, when he was riding his board, when for once, he determined his own fate, his own course. These days it seemed too many things were decided by other people, that he was being dragged, kicking and screaming, into a future he’d never asked for. But when he was riding his board, with the wind in his face and the pavement streaking by, he owned the moment. He could forget he was trapped in this nowhere town. He could even forget, for one brief and exhilarating ride, that his dad was dead and that nothing could ever be right again.
He felt the freshmen girls watching him. They were standing in a tight group behind the trailer classrooms, glossy heads bent close together as they made giggly girl sounds. All their faces moved in unison as their eyes tracked Noah on his board. He rarely talked to them, and they rarely talked to him, but every lunch period, there they’d be, watching him as he worked through his repertoire.
Noah wasn’t the only skateboarder at Knox High School, but he was definitely the best, and the girls kept their focus on him, ignoring the other boys whizzing around on the blacktop. Those boys were just posers anyway, dudes pretending to be skaters, all dressed up in gear straight out of the CCS catalogue. They had the uniform down right – Birdhouse shirts and Kevlar shoes and pants so big the cuffs dragged on the ground – but they were still posers in a hick town. They hadn’t skated with the big boys in Baltimore.
As Noah circled around to make his return run, he noticed the gleam of blond hair at the edge of the track field. Amelia Reid was watching him. She stood off by herself, cradling a book as usual. Amelia was one of those girls who seemed dipped in honey, she was so perfect, so golden. Nothing at all like her two jerky brothers, who were always hassling him in the cafeteria. Noah had never noticed her watching him before, and the realization that her attention was at this very moment focused on him made his knees go a little wobbly.
He ollied the board and almost lost it on the landing. Focus, dude! Don’t bite it. He zipped down to the faculty parking lot, spun around, and came rumbling up the concrete ramp. There was a handrail on one side, slanted downward. He spun around, and popped up onto the railing. It would’ve been a sweet slide all the way down.
Except for the fact Taylor Darnell chose just that moment to walk in front of him.
Noah yelled, ‘Outta the way!’ but Taylor didn’t react in time.
At the last possible instant, Noah rolled off his board and tumbled to the pavement. The skateboard, its momentum established, slid all the way down the rail and smacked into Taylor’s back.
Taylor whirled, yelling: ‘What the hell, man? Who threw that?’
‘Didn’t throw it, dude,’ said Noah, picking himself up from the ground. His palms were both scraped, and his knee was throbbing. ‘It was an accident. You just got in the way.’ Noah bent down to pick up the skateboard, which had landed wheels up. Taylor was an okay kid, one of the first who’d come up to say hello when Noah first arrived in town eight months ago. Sometimes, they even hung out together in the afternoons, showing each other new skateboard tricks. So Noah was shocked when Taylor suddenly shoved him, hard. ‘Hey! Hey, what’s your problem?’ said Noah.
‘You threw it at me!’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘Everyone saw it!’ Taylor looked around at the bystanders. ‘Didn’t you see it?’
No one said anything.
‘I told you, it was an accident,’ said Noah. ‘I’m really sorry, man.’
There was laughter over by the trailer classrooms. Taylor glanced at the girls and realized they were watching the exchange, and his face turned a furious red. ‘Shut up!’ he yelled at them. ‘Idiot girls!’
‘Geez, Taylor,’ said Noah. ‘What’s your problem?’
The other skaters had popped up their boards and were now standing around, watching. One of them joked,
‘Hey, why did Taylor cross the road?’
‘Why?’
