Powerslide

Powerslide

Jeff Ross

ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

Copyright ©
2011
Jeff Ross

All rights reserved. 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-
Powerslide [electronic resource] / Jeff Ross.
(Orca sports)

Type of computer file: Electronic monograph in PDF format.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN
978-1-55469-915-5

I. Title. II. Series: Orca sports (Online)
PS
8635.
O
6928
P
69 2011
A
       
JC
813'.6       
C
2011-903344-5

First published in the United States, 2011
Library of Congress Control Number:
2011929397

Summary:
Complications arise when Casey gets hired as a skateboarding double and a competitor challenges him to a series of dangerous tricks.

Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has
printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council
^®
.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Cover photography by
dreamstime.com
Author photo by Simon Bell

ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS
          
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Box 5626, Stn. B                          
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Box 468

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Canada                      Custer,
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www.orcabook.com
Printed and bound in Canada.

14  13  12  11  •  4  3  2  1

For Megan and future skaters,
Luca and Alex.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Acknowledgments

chapter one

You need two things to be a good skateboarder: amazing balance and a complete lack of fear. Which was why I was surprised when Goat landed a 360° heel flip during our game of S.K.A.T.E. Goat had a lack of fear. He had proven that many times, but his balance was always slightly off. When it came to riding half-pipes, he usually landed badly. Yet he managed to land this particular 360° heel flip without a wobble.

I'll be the first to admit he nailed it. Not that I would tell him that. Goat and I had been competing against one another since we were ten years old and first started rolling around on skateboards. But this game of S.K.A.T.E. meant more than any of the others had. S.K.A.T.E. is a simple game. The first skater does a trick of their choice. The second skater then has to do the trick too. If the second skater lands the first skater's trick, the game moves forward and it becomes the second skater's turn to choose the next trick. If either of the contestants cannot land a trick, they get a letter. The first one to spell
skate
loses.

The question wasn't whether I could land the 360° heel, but whether I could pull off the 720° melon I planned to do on the other side. Goat was able to keep up with me on most tricks, but he had consistently been unable to land a 720° melon. Normally I wouldn't have cared, but today Jack Coagen was sitting beside me on the ramp. Jack is one of those big-name teen actors. If he stars in a movie, parents feel safe sending their rug rats off to the theater. He's at my neighborhood half-pipe because he landed the lead role in a feature film that happened to have some skateboarding in it. His agent wanted him to learn some basic skateboarding skills, so after he saw a video of me on YouTube, he contacted me to see if I could train Jack.

It's hard to teach someone to skateboard. Hard enough that, at first, I was just going to say no. But Jack's agent sweetened the deal. First I would train Jack to keep his balance on a board and maybe drop into a half-pipe. Then, once the movie started shooting, I would be his stunt double. There was no way I could say no to that. It was the kind of gig that could launch my career.

I have a handshake contract with Jack's agent, which is, apparently, as good as gold. But I would have taken the job for next to nothing. I'm seventeen, and most of my friends are leaving for college in a few weeks. I'm not sure what I want to do with my life, so I'm taking a year off to think about it. A career in skateboarding would be awesome, and being a stunt double in a feature film would be an incredible start.

But back to Goat. Apparently he'd been looking to challenge me to a S.K.A.T.E. competition since he had found out I was going to work with Jack. I guess he felt he had something to prove. Goat is a good skater, one of the best in the area, but he had never been picked up by a skate crew or offered a sponsorship.

He had also never been a stunt double in a movie.

“Come on, Head Case,” Goat yelled. My name is Casey Finnegan, though Goat has never once called me Casey. It's always Head Case. “Or do you want to bow out now? I mean, that's cool with me. I got plenty of stuff to do with my day.”

There was a bit of a breeze coming in off the ocean, bringing the sea smell with it. It was just after three in the afternoon, and the sky was so blue, I could imagine it wrapping right around the Earth.

“Hold on, Goat,” I said. I decided to forget about the 720° for the time being and do the 360° heel flip, then throw something down Goat might embarrass himself with.

I dropped in and got as much speed on the down slope as possible. I pumped once across the bottom of the ramp and dug in to launch myself on the other side. I didn't need much air to do the 360° heel flip, but I wanted to show Goat up a little, so I launched as high as I could.

When you're in the air, the board spinning beneath you, it is both awesome and terrifying. You feel as if anything is possible. You also fear you're about to fall and break something. But that's part of the thrill. Tricks happen in an instant, so there's not much time to think about what you're doing. In fact, thinking usually only gets you into trouble.

I landed on the vertical part of the ramp, leaning far enough forward to get the speed I would need for my next trick. I was tightly coiled, ready to explode, when I hit the other side. As my front wheels came up to the coping, I pushed on my back foot, brought the board up, then launched. I grabbed the nose of my board, took my feet off and managed to get three full swipes in the air to perform an airwalk. After the airwalk, I put the board back under my feet and landed fakie on the vert. As I came up the other side, I did a fakie backside grab, before finally shooting up and hopping off onto the deck.

There were some claps and hoots from the crowd. More people were hanging around today than normal. Word of Jack Coagen's presence must have spread beyond the skate community. Goat stared at me from the other side of the ramp, his long dreads whipping around in the wind. A hush descended on the crowd, and I could hear a camera shutter clicking. Down beside the ramp a tall older guy was taking pictures with the longest camera lens I had ever seen. At first it seemed as if he was taking pictures of me. But then he leaned to one side, and I looked behind me to see Jack slumped against the railing. Jack didn't even seem to notice the guy. I guess he was used to the attention.

“Your go,” I yelled at Goat.

Goat tapped his board on the coping. “My go,” he said. “All right, Head Case. All right. If you want to play it like that.”

chapter two

Goat planted his back foot down hard on the tail of his board and dropped in. He pumped once across the flat and launched himself three feet above the coping. He only did one kick, which, I guess, is enough to call it an airwalk. He landed with a little tap on the coping that sent him wobbling. But he managed to right himself, launch off the other side and kick out a nice fakie pop shove-it.

“Whoa, Head Case,” he said once he had landed on the deck beside me. “Did you see that? Old Goat's learned a new trick.”

“Amazing, Goat. I guess what they say about practice is true.” I figured it was time for the 720° melon because, even if he had been working on it, I knew Goat couldn't pull it off with ease.

Somebody switched on the big boom box. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' “Higher Ground” bounced off the ramp. I dropped in, pumped across the flat and launched off the coping, floating just high enough to pull off a sketchy pop shove-it. I didn't land quite right and lost all my speed. I had to think fast. The 720° wasn't going to happen. I no longer had the speed or the correct angle. I hit the coping on the other side and launched into a 360° cannonball. A 360° cannonball is a full rotation in the air while holding the front and back of the board. I was fully around the 180° when I thought of something I shouldn't have.

What if I didn't land this?

What if I caught my front trucks on the coping, fell and broke something? I would lose the stunt-double job. And I would lose my shot at making it. For what? To show up a local I had skated with dozens of times?

So I bailed, sliding to the bottom of the ramp with my board spinning and tumbling behind me.

A collective
oooohhhhh
sprang from the deck and the area around the ramp.

Goat didn't even wait until I was off the ramp before he dropped in and threw down a perfect pop shove-it. “T!” he yelled. “Give the man a T!”

The small crew that had come across town with him banged their boards against the coping. The Chili Peppers' “Knock Me Down” belted out as I ran up the ramp. We had decided earlier that whenever someone got a letter, it was the other guy's opportunity to start again with whatever trick he wanted.

Goat was standing on the deck, rubbing his chin as though he was about to come up with a solution to tackle global warming or cure cancer. He raised a finger to the sky and shook it a few times. “Watch this, Jack Coagen,” he said, and dropped in.