The Fourth Summer. Kathleen Gilles Seidel

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      Although there was snow on Oregon’s Mt. Hood year-round, his parents drew the line at the summer programs. Seth’s two older sisters needed their mother too. So starting in April, Seth was back in North Carolina, attending regular school, trying to keep up his skills by skateboarding, while his mother turned her attention to the girls.

      Each year it was harder to connect with other guys at school. Seth wasn’t interested in ball sports, and this was a ball-sports kind of town. Of course he was better than the chumples, the slow, fat kids in glasses, but Seth wasn’t used to being in the middle of the pack. He liked being the best, and although his mom kept preaching about this to him, he just didn’t have as much fun when he was ordinary. What was so wrong with that?

      The county had built a little skateboarding park back when skateboarding was a hotter fad. In the summer Seth was there all day every day, riding his bike over, often providing free unplanned entertainment for the little-kid birthday parties that were the main source of the park’s revenue.

      One day he noticed a kid, maybe eleven or twelve, on the other side of the fence. The kid was perched on his bike, with one foot on the ground and his helmet still on. Seth showed off for a bit—so what if this was an eleven-year-old kid, it was still an audience—then glanced over his shoulder to be sure that the kid was watching. The kid still was there, but he had taken his helmet off.

      And he wasn’t a he. He was a girl, slight in build but much closer to Seth’s age than Seth had first thought. Okay. That was a better audience. Seth showed off even more, finishing a trick close to the edge of the skate park.

      “Hi, I’m Seth,” he said through the fence.

      “Caitlin.”

      She was pretty with these really dark eyes. Seth wasn’t sure what to say next. It was kind of awkward for a moment, but she spoke. “That’s pretty amazing what you do. I suppose you’ve been doing it for a long time.”

      “Yeah, but some things aren’t that hard to pick up. Do you want to try? I am happy to show you how.”

      “I don’t have any of the stuff.”

      “That helmet will work. I’ll bring a board and pads for you if you want to come tomorrow. And you need to grab a waiver from the front desk. Your folks will have to sign it.”

      “I’m spending the summer with my grandmother, but I don’t suppose they’ll care if she signs it.”

      “They won’t notice.”

      They agreed to meet the next day. That night Seth started to have second thoughts. What if she were a major biff, a total Betty who couldn’t learn anything? And what if she kept coming back to the park day after day anyway? What then?

      He hoped it would rain, and the whole thing would fall apart. But it didn’t. She showed up right on time wearing the same sort of cutoffs and T-shirt that she had had on the day before. Then she took off her helmet.

      Oh. He had forgotten how pretty she was. Maybe this would be okay.

      She handed the waiver to the kid at the counter and then took some dollar bills out of her pocket. Behind her head Seth waved a hand, and the attendant told her to go on in.

      “How come I didn’t have to pay?”

      “Because you’re with me. I don’t pay.”

      “You don’t? Why not?”

      “They know me. I started here when I was four.”

      “Okay.” She clearly didn’t see how that added up. So she reached for the pads. “How do I put these on?”

      She was a quick learner. She had strong legs and a good sense of balance, and since his mom was also nagging him to praise other people more, he told her.

      She shrugged. “I’ve taken a lot of ballet.”

      “Really? Ballet?” She didn’t seem like the type.

      “My mom thought it would turn me into a lady.”

      “So how’s that working?”

      “Incredibly well. Can’t you tell?”

      He laughed and then showed her how to make a turn sharper. An hour later the park manager—an older man, a regular city employee—arrived, and he called them over to ask why “Mrs. Thurmont” had signed Caitlin’s waiver. He seemed to know who Mrs. Thurmont was.

      “She’s my grandmother, but my parents signed a bunch of forms so that she can take me to the hospital or whatever.”

      The man smiled. “Let’s not have any hospital trips from here, okay?”

      A while later he came out again. “Seth, she’s getting tired.”

      “No, I’m not,” Caitlin protested.

      Seth hadn’t noticed, but now that Mr. Kendrick mentioned it, yes, he could see that her ankles were wobbling and they hadn’t before. “Then we need to stop. Doing stuff when you are tired is the way to get injured.”

      How many times had he heard people say that to him? His coaches, his mom, they were constantly on him to stop practicing.

      “I’m fine,” she said. “Really I am.”

      “No you aren’t.” How wack for him to be acting like the grown-up. “We’re stopping.”

      They met up every day for the rest of the week. He learned that her last name was McGraw and that her family lived in Norfolk, Virginia, but they had moved all the time because her dad was in the navy. He was a lawyer, a judge. Seth hadn’t known that the navy had judges. Caitlin had an older sister who also took ballet. She was a million times better than Caitlin, but no—and suddenly Caitlin had gotten a little awkward, sending out all kinds of “I don’t want to talk about this” signals—she didn’t think her sister would try skateboarding.

      She continued to improve, but it clearly bugged her that Seth was so much better than she was. She was pushing herself, and Seth didn’t need Mr. Kendrick to tell him that she was trying too much too fast. She was going to hurt herself. “You’re not ready for this kind of thing, not without a foam pit.”

      “Are you saying that because I’m a girl?” She looked pissed off.

      “No,” he lied. “I’m saying that I first got on a skateboard when I was four. And now snowboarding is, like, what I do. I am sponsored. That’s why I don’t go to school and shit.” So how can you think you could be as good as me? He didn’t say that last part.

      She glared at him for a moment. Then she stepped up on her board and started again.

      A second later he shouted at her. She was going too slow.

      But she wasn’t. She was so light that she didn’t need tons of speed, and when she took off in the air, she didn’t get much height, less than she had been getting, but she did something with her arm, letting it trail around her body, her eyes following her hand. Her fingers were gently curved, and halfway through she flipped СКАЧАТЬ