Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

“I asked Ritchie, and he doesn’t know anything. And Gideon said the Belcourt Twins dropped out of school and went north,” said Jonah. “So we’re out of luck there. But he did say the word is the Butler is offering a drum of Neverclear to anyone who finds Marcus, which might mean they don’t have him yet.”

“What’s that?” asked Will.

“Neverclear? The Butler’s newest gift to Thunder Bay. Gideon said it’s a blend of high-test grain alcohol he mixes some kind of solvent into,” said Jonah. “Apparently it presses the reset button on your head, wipes you clean as a blackboard, something all the old wastoids here are looking for, believe me. Maybe Neverclear is what Marcus interfered with somehow. Tell me again about that sheet you gave Angela?”

“Like I said, it was just a bunch of X s on an empty grid, like a big game of tic-tac-toe with only one person playing. And there’s no hope of getting it back with Angela still in real Toronto.”

“Looks like a dead end,” said Jonah. “Oh well,” he sighed cheerily, lacing his hands behind his head while examining Will’s art supplies, “there’re worse places to be. And why do you always say real Toronto , anyway? Of course it’s real.”

When the spring rain came, Jonah’s basement filled with water the color of chamomile tea, and the creek behind Will’s roared wrathfully. Unable to skateboard, they whiled away their weekends at Will’s house.

“No wonder you never left,” Jonah said through a mouthful of grilled cheese they’d made themselves (Jonah had removed the heavy architecture books his mother had stored in the oven, plugged in the stove, and instructed Will on how to turn it on). “This place is unbelievable.” They sat on the couch in Cairo, watching an old Buster Keaton film called Sherlock Jr .

“It’ll get to you,” Will said pulling a cheese thread from his chin, “like anywhere, believe me.”

“You know what?” Jonah said later, as Buster Keaton was being pitched around by a hurricane and slammed into walls. “You look like this dude when you skate. I’m serious. You’re like crazy and careful at the same time. You even fall like him. It’s funny.”

“It doesn’t feel funny,” Will said, struggling to unclench his teeth.

“Whoa, don’t get mad. It’s a good thing,” he said. “You look invincible. Even when you’re falling. It never looks that bad.”

Inside, the boys gorged themselves on skateboard magazines and lore, poring over arcane details, savoring every square inch of photography. They memorized Jonah’s skateboard videos, Streets of Fire, Hocus Pokus, Video Days , the way the academics and inmates had memorized his mother’s films. They picked their skate gods— Will’s was Natas Kaupas, and Jonah’s Mark Gonzales, or “The Gonz,” as he was known — and tried to mimic their styles. They learned skateboards were constructed of 7-plys of rock-hard Canadian maple, which left them proud. To think Thunder Bay’s boring trees were trucked off to California to be shaped and screen-printed and returned as magic totems, as myth. The boys painted and drew in New York, covering Will’s walls with renderings of skateboarders and skulls. “You think I could have a go at one of those canvases?” Jonah asked. “I feel a masterpiece coming on.”

They played the rap and heavy-metal tapes Jonah borrowed from his brothers, which well-articulated the Outside’s menaces, much more than the saccharine Inside songs his mother had sung with her guitar in Cairo. Slayer, N.W.A, and Dinosaur Jr. made The Rite of Spring sound like a lullaby.

In New York, Jonah talked incessantly, with an almost automatic exuberance. But he again fell dead silent when Will’s mother entered with lunch, watching her with transparent awe. She would clatter forks on Will’s desk and say the same old thing she always did: “Gentlemen, draw your swords.”

Lately his mother was washing her hair and wearing actual clothes, perhaps because Jonah was around, and seemed insulated from the Black Lagoon. Once she touched Jonah on the back in a half-hug, and he grimaced like she’d sandpapered his sunburn. Will had never seen his friend touch anyone before. Occasionally Will would still break down and indulge in a prolonged before-bed cuddle with his mother, and he envied Jonah his fortitude.

Before long, spring leapt into summer, liberating the boys from school. After months of daily flagellation, skateboarding grew kinder to Will. Though the pavement still regularly hurtled upward for reasons he couldn’t decode, he was inching toward stability. He could roll without tenseness in his legs, without winging his arms in big hysteric circles.

In the convection of July, a heat that reminded Will of the Destructivity Experiment where he pointed a blowdryer at his face for as long as he could stand, Will and Jonah patrolled the neighborhood, half-searching for Marcus, half not wanting to go home. They memorized every street, parking lot, staircase, curb, storm drain, fire hydrant, and sidewalk square in Grandview Gardens and County Park. They scoured the backyards along the creek for empty swimming pools, like in Thrasher , but those they found were squared with no transition, just abrupt walls lining a deep pit. It was another example of California’s overwhelming superiority — they had the sense to properly construct a swimming pool.

At first Will was distraught when the pumpkin-head design on his board became scratched. He’d seen advertisements for plastic guards that protected the precious graphics and was preparing to order them when Jonah told him, “You don’t need any of that stuff.”

“But I’ll lose the picture,” said Will.

“That’s what it’s for .”

“For what?”

“Getting ruined.”

Nightly, Will drew himself hot baths in Venice to ease his tenderized muscles. By now his skin, especially at the apexes, was crammed with scabs, welts, rainbows of bruises, and the cursive of scars, like collages made from the pages of Jonah’s medical textbooks. Beneath these floated tiny chips of bone that prickled in his flesh.

There’d been other changes too. Maybe it was the effect of the sultry Outside air, but Will’s voice had burst like an engine run without oil, leaving a warbling parody of a young deliveryman. He’d also begun to notice certain emerging roundnesses evidenced by girls his age, especially Angela, his memory of her anyway, who, he realized with shock, he missed terribly.

There in the steam of his bath, to keep from tumbling into black, gut-churning thoughts of the Butler’s wolves with their snouts buried in his Helmet, memorizing its vinegary scent, or the Butler finding the name Cardiel markered in it and then dropping by for a visit, Will reread the Thrasher magazines that Jonah had loaned him. He especially liked the interviews with skateboarders, who were always irreverent and brave and strange and always reminded him of Marcus.

Now the door in Venice came open. “Just a sec,” Will hissed, hurriedly reaching for the bubble bath, squeezing a long ribbon into the water. “Sorry,” he heard her say, shutting the door again, as he swished the water frantically, kicking up a thick flotilla of bubbles that stung his scrapes. “Okay, you can come in,” he said, sinking to his chin to hide his abrasions under the foam. He could only imagine how she’d inspect him like a piece of fruit, her tongue clucking at the roof of her mouth.

“I’m always going to knock from now on,” she said entering meekly. “You’re older now. You deserve privacy.”

“Sure,” Will said, with no idea what she was talking about.

She sat at the edge of the bath. “Jonah go home?”

Will nodded, blowing bubbles from his bottom lip.