After midterms, Meredith and I started sitting in the hall, in front of her locker, and other people we knew would join us. The days when the skater joined us were not frequent or consistent, but nice when they happened – he only sat with us when he was alone, and if he wasn’t he’d only manage a greeting and short conversation before doing what he needed and leaving. We were regular friends now, even though I had a crush on him. I kept thinking of everything Seb told me that day we walked home, but then Connor would make my day and suddenly I wouldn’t be so sure of myself. It’s just that whenever I see him, I get so happy – who can resent or second-guess being happy? I definitely can’t.

“—So I looked at him, and he was looking at me, so I looked away! And when I looked again, he was still looking at me, so this time I didn’t look away!” It was amazing how enthusiastic Meredith was about this story. I didn’t really understand most of it, but I knew (at least) that it was about a “cute, Asian guy” she saw after school the other day. Her expressions were ridiculous – as if she’d discovered Atlantis at the community swimming pool – and when she reached the climax of her story, she’d suck the air in through her braced teeth really quickly, overdramatic. Maybe it was one of those things you had to see to find amusing.

I periodically looked down both ends of the halls, to monitor who approached, and when I saw Con coming by, I moved so he could get to his locker easily. He was alone and slunk down beside me as soon as he put his stuff away. “You free after school?”

I turned to look at him and nodded my head. “Why?”

“Just wanted to know if you wanted to hang out – go to the mall or something.”

“Oh, uh, sure,” I replied with a smile. Okay, I felt really awkward because Meredith wasn’t saying anything and usually she has some sort of interesting story to contribute, but this time was not one. The bell rang, thankfully, and he got up, offering a hand to pull me up. “Alright then, it’s a date.” His devilish grin lit up his face, again, and then he was off down the hall.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited for this. Gorgeous boy asks you to hang out with him outside of school... That’s not exactly something you can just shrug off. All day, I was restless, antsy, and anxious. What would we do at the mall? What did he usually do at the mall? What if he was going to use me to help him commence a bank robbery? I mean, he didn’t look the type but I’m sure most serial killers don’t “look the type” when they’re just infants... Okay, surely he wouldn’t pull something so stupid, but I was worried anyways. For one thing, he was super interesting – which I’m proud to say I’ve learned with the duration of this friendship (God, it feels good to say!). For another, I had never seen him with any other girls – this was peculiar. Does this mean that he had a girlfriend? If he did, that would make things really awkward, really fast. Unless he was gay – then I’d have another gay best friend.

My toes tapped, my mechanical pencil thumped and my stomach was buzzing – theoretically, I was like a human drum kit waiting to be exposed. I couldn’t focus on the work in front of me or the lecture the teacher was giving or the current conversation ongoing between the rowdy kids always taking the piss out of adults – all I could worry about was that it wasn’t the end of the day yet.

Though once it was the end of the day, I was suddenly lost again.

Was I supposed to meet him somewhere? Was I supposed to be punctual? Was I supposed to pretend I hadn’t been excited all day and that I wasn’t looking forward to this very moment for more than he suspected? Okay, I was a bit paranoid, but I’m pretty sure if anyone else was in this given situation, they’d feel the same. I hadn’t planned at all and clearly that was a problem for me. How was I to know what to do?

Thankfully, fate had a strange way of working and while I was at my locker at the day’s end, pondering such paranoid thoughts (expanding into worries of greater issues and higher impossibility) Connor slid up beside me, holding up a pair of bus tickets in his hand. “Please don’t tell me you’ve got some extracurricular activities now, instead of the mall?”

I laughed and shook my head as I set my lock back in place with a swift, well-practiced hand manoeuvre. “Don’t worry; I wouldn’t bail out on you.”

“Hah, good,” he smiled and escorted me down the halls and to the bus stop in quick succession. Things went better than I expected – okay, I got awkward now and again when I didn’t know what to say, or I said something just plain strange and I immediately regretted, but aside from that it was good. Better than offending him, throwing up or coming down with an illness, as I had imagined I would. Then again, I guess people aren’t as awkward as they assume they are.

Connor skated slowly, from the bus stop just beyond the car park to the nearest mall entrance (I anticipated there to be at least seven, but who went about counting the exits of a mall? It’s been years and I still can’t properly direct myself to the food court without walking in circles first!), to keep in pace with me. The sound of the little tires rolling over the pavements and kicking up rocks made me cringe; if I was set on a board like that, I’d be frightened to death. I couldn’t even rollerblade properly – the thought that a single pebble could cause me to swerve and have a terrible accident just made me lose my balance more. But he moved smoothly as if he’d been doing this all his life – I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was shredding shortly after he could walk.

Kicking up his board (I don’t know proper skater lingo, sorry; you’ll have to deal with my makeshift terminology), he held the door open for me and waited for me, obviously causing me to speed up. It’s a common fact that if you held a door open for someone behind you, they’d rush through so as not to abuse your mannerisms – seriously, it’s the most fun to go to a large centre like this and just hold the door open for people behind you.

I murmured thanks and we started walking. I wasn’t quite sure where we were headed, but at the same time I didn’t want to ask him. If I asked, he might think that I was impatient and demanding – I kept quiet. We entered a skate shop I’d only been to once, since the people intimidated me with their willingness to help in contrast to their sarcastic tones, piercings and tattoos. They were all so laidback, I couldn’t help but wonder if they could sense my insecurity. When Connor went in, though, they greeted him with such casualty. Expertly, he guided me through the shelves and displays of what was probably ideal, skate apparel to the back. I was suddenly very conscious of my backpack and deathly worried I’d end up knocking something over and give him a bad reputation as “The Guy Who Brought the Clumsy Girl In” and ruin his cool persona forever.

The thing about most skate shops (when set in a small mall in a boutique more suitably sized for a quick travel agency) was that they were crowded with merchandise and gave off the same aura as the bedroom of a young anarchist: posters clogged the walls (though most were promotional, the designs were still very reminiscent of a good majority of band art I’ve seen); colourful zip-up sweaters and jeans were hung on racks both along the walls and standing alone; and a display of skate shoes were set up in the back corner with a bench (like a slice of any shoe store in the little room) just adjacent to the corner of the store that actually offered materials and such to tend to skateboards. We went to the latter section and Connor got into a conversation with the expert behind the counter about X-Games, trucks and sandpaper – I just took this advantage to properly look at this bit of his world with the proper authority to.

I let it all sink in – the black ceilings and walls, the exposed brickwork here and there, the neon paint splashes everywhere, and the guy with the facial hair behind the counter who looked at me like I was insane – but I probably did look at least a tad insane, or at least intoxicated, because I was seeing this store in some strange new light. All the other shops in the mall were tidy and designed, while this felt real; it reminded me of Toronto. In the city, you had the concrete jungle everyone knew, filled with businessmen and translating to the Canadian New York, but that was just the commerce part of the city – if you really wanted to know it, you had to visit every nook and cranny of the place, from Bathurst to Sherbourne, in order to have something real to remember. If you didn’t, then it was all just a fictitious rendition of the truth.

With his purchases in a bag, held in the same hand as his board, he tapped me on the elbow, causing me to slip out of my momentary daze. “C’mon,” he laughed and brought me to a wall of posters at eye level. “The Anatomy of the Skateboard” was right next to a poster that displayed a skateboarder demonstrating different moves. As simply as he could, Con described to me how each trick was done and I did my best to follow along – but I was probably as transparent as water because he stopped in the middle of his lecture on what a kickflip was and laughed.

“It’ll probably be easier for you to understand if you saw it in real life.”

“Yeah, I’m sort of betting on it...”

“Don’t worry, I’ll show you after,” he smiled and took a backward step towards the entrance of the shop. “Let’s go get some ice cream, or something.”

I nodded and followed him, slowly directing us to the frozen yogurt stand because it was cheaper than the other ice cream stops in the mall. When you were an unemployed teen, your only “income” being the ten bucks your parents gave you every week, saving money was a big deal and you didn’t want to waste it. To pay at least five bucks for a single cone of ice cream was like selling your soul for a plasma screen TV. We stared up at the menu above the worker’s head – I knew already what I was getting, because I didn’t have the ability to constantly try new things (like I said, wasting money was a huge no-no) but Connor had never been here, he told me as we walked up.

“So many choices, damn,” he said in awe. One of the good things about these stands – pretzel, popcorn, or ice cream, all scattered between retail shops so you didn’t die on your way to the food court – was that the line-up was small, if existent at all. At the moment, there weren’t any impatient businessmen or soccer moms behind us, so basically we could have taken all day.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” When ordering frozen yogurt, you had to build it – like a sub sandwich. They had instructions much like the ones at Subway. First, you chose a size, then either chocolate or vanilla ice cream, then a fruit or flavour for it to be mixed with, and a fifty-cent additional topping. “I just get the same thing every time.”

“Which is?”

I turned to the Asian guy behind the counter with a smile and he got up from leaning against the back counter. “Hi, can I get a small, chocolate with raspberries and dark chocolate curls, please?” He nodded and started mixing things together and I turned back to my dark haired companion. “Simple.”

“Huh. When I go to the ice cream shop – well, my cousin works there so I just tell her to give me whatever.” He watched as my picture-perfect order was placed before me and I paid for it. “You should work here, you’re pretty familiar.”

The guy behind the counter nodded his head to a laminated poster on the wall that said, “NOW HIRING” with a list of open positions and a list of requirements. “It’s not hard work, and you get discounts after a few weeks.”

I mulled the idea over in my head; of course, my ideal job would have been a book store or a coffee shop, something mellow and classy. A job at a fro-yo place didn’t seem too bad, though. Connor gave me a minute to think before turning to place his order. “I’ll try ... Uh, small, vanilla, coffee, please?” he turned to me with a shrug. “I think you should go for it.”

When the guy came back, he pulled a sheet of paper and a pencil from beneath the counter. “We don’t have a website, so just give me your name and number and I’ll have my boss ring you up.”

I gave it to him and then we left, wandering around the mall for a few minutes before throwing out our empty bowls and heading for the exit. Trips to the mall were never for the attraction of shopping, usually; whenever I went, it was to spend time with Meredith or Sebastian, and we rarely bought anything important – at the most, I’d buy a nice shirt, if I really felt the need to, but that was about it. I couldn’t imagine really going to the mall just the shop. If I ever did, it would probably be for a birthday gift, or something. Or else, I’d feel like a parent, going to the mall just to pick up a small appliance or tissue boxes on sale.

On our way out of the mall, he dropped his board and started to skate, the harsh sound of the sturdy little tires meeting with the concrete so abruptly made me jump, but he didn’t notice. I followed him as he skirted down, around cars and to the empty part of the parking lot, so he could show me all the kick flips and heel flips and ollies he could do (and yes, when I heard the name of the last trick, I did get a little uncomfortable). Watching him put me at ease, though – he fell once, leaving a pretty nasty gash on his hand, but other than that, I didn’t worry. I mean, even when he messed up, he’d just get back up and do it again. It amazed me how much determination went into skateboarding.

I was marvelling at the smooth action put into one move, where he flipped his board over with his hand while he was in the air, when I heard more skateboards and a shout. I was clearly startled, just sitting there with my arms around my knees, and that didn’t change when I saw it was the group of guys he was friends with. Aside from occasionally walking him to his locker, I could see them all together, some days, just hanging out at the skatepark. I quickly felt like an outsider, the only one there who didn’t know where the tail and nose of the skateboard were.

At first, they didn’t notice me which gave me time to analyze them. There were four of them, pretty uniform – aside from one blonde boy, they all had some shade between brown and dark brown hair. They were all roughly the same height, except the thin boy with the spiked blonde hair who I previously assumed was in the ninth grade. From my distance, I could just barely hear their conversations, and certainly couldn’t make out their words or see their facial features. Soon enough, they made their way over to me and I stood up straight.

“Hey, Charlie, I don’t think you’ve ever met my buds,” Connor said, warmly. “This is Damian –” he gestured to a quiet looking boy with a square jaw and eyes the colour of beach glass, who nodded with a facial twitch that was almost a smile. “—and Luke –” the weedy blonde boy with hazel eyes, who shrugged. “— Jeff – ” a guy on a BMX with a video camera in his hand, who actually gave me a warm smile and a hey. “—and Matt.” the last guy nodded with a pleasant smile and deep dimples, brown eyes matching curly brown hair.

“Uh – hey... I’m Charlotte,” I said, hands fiddling.

“We don’t bite,” Jeff winked. “At least, not on the first date.”

Luke and Damian smirked at each other and I couldn’t help but laugh uncomfortably. “Oh, God.”

“Don’t mind him – he’s sexually frustrated,” Matt laughed, causing Jeff to glare at him and mutter more than a few swears. “We were just taping some more tricks.”

Jeff tossed the cam to Connor who passed it to me in a safer fashion. I watched in awe as the shots expertly went from the pavement to the board and up. “You always need a sturdy camera when videotaping,” Jeff said, leaning on his handlebars. “You have to skate or bike in time with the main target.” I nodded my head, watching again. The sound wasn’t too loud but it echoed with that same sort of noise that you could hear when you cupped a glass around your ear.

Luke came around and watched with me, “It’s really awesome, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I grinned before the footage ceased and I passed it back to Jeff. Upon looking up, I noticed how the bright blue sky had turned to twilight and I was due home. “Shit, I’ve got to go now, though,” I told them, swinging my backpack over my shoulder. “It was great meeting you.”

“You too,” Matt said, on behalf of the others who nodded in my direction. They didn’t seem bad – they were actually really cool.

“I’ll meet you guys later,” Connor told the rest and walked with me to the bus stop.

“Your friends are cool,” I told him, but he shrugged.

“Nah, they’re assholes – and Luke’s a prick,” he laughed. “Honestly, that kid praises us so much, but he messes up a lot; does weed to look cool, too. I think that’s the primary reason he hangs out with us, to get kids his grade to notice he shreds with older kids.”

“Then why do you let him tag along with you?”

“Well, he’s Matt’s younger brother.”

“I saw no resemblance at all,” aside from the different hair colours, Luke was spotted in blemishes while Matt had a pretty clean complexion.

“Yeah, neither do I. Matt’s been my friend since I first came here – the rest are just mutual companions,” he said.

My bus came and he gave me a hug and a peck on the cheek. “I’ve gotta stay with the guys now, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I wasn’t expecting a kiss, even if it was as small as that, but I managed to brush it off casually (an achievement on my part!) and get on the bus without fainting on my way up. This was definitely a great day. After I showed the driver my transfer, I lay along the very back five seats and stared up at the adverts above me in bliss.

I got my phonecall from the frozen yogurt manager when I got home the next day, to which I replied and scheduled an interview time. It went exceedingly well, despite my inexperience, and I got the job. I worked every Monday, Wednesday and Friday after school for two hours and could be getting a pay of eleven dollars and fifty cents an hour, which was a pretty good rate in my circumstance. My first day just consisted of training, but my frequent visits to the shop was certainly an asset because I picked up all his tips pretty quickly and was set to actually serve on my next day.

The guy who had served me the other day was the owner’s son, who had graduated the year before and was now helping out – a boring, tedious task but one that allowed him to procrastinate a lot and, in my case, suck people into his place of specialty. His name was Kenneth and he was at least two inches taller than me with messy black hair and that Oriental skin colour that isn’t pale but isn’t tanned. He was Filipino, like Meredith was, and extremely friendly. When there weren’t any customers, we’d talk for ages about ourselves and asked questions about each other.

There’s something really great about meeting new people that nobody else knew. You could talk about your life and your problems with a degree of anonymity that just wasn’t available if you were talking to someone you saw at school every day. Not to mention, I felt a little proud now, having this friend that was exclusively my friend, seeing as Connor had his little groupie and Oliver had friends in Quebec and Sebastian had the Robotics club and Band kids and Meredith had about a million family friends at the school. But Kenneth had only friends that had graduatated with him. He also shared his school experience with me and gave me tips about how he survived school. If I showed up with too much homework, he’d help me do, like, half of it since he had nothing better to do.

I felt like I just discovered Google.ca before everyone else at school.

He actually became a really good friend of mine, since after the first day we were already completely comfortable together. I mean, I’m not hinting to you that we might fall in love or something (we won’t, trust me) but he’s really cool. He’s like the male Meredith and one can never have too many Merediths.

Labels: nanowrimo