Antsy Does Time Read Free Page B

don’t know what that means to a cat. But even Ichabod knew I was distracted, so he went off to watch Christina’s hamsters run endlessly on their wheel. I suppose that’s the feline equivalent of going to the market and watching the rotisserie chicken, which is how my mom entertained me at the market when I was little.
    In the end, I left early, and took a long, wandering path to the restaurant. As I passed our local skate park, I saw one lonely soul sitting outside by the padlocked gate. I knew the kid, but not his name—only his nickname. He used to wear a shirt that said SKATERDUDE, but the E peeled off, and from that moment on he was eternally “Skaterdud.” Like my nickname, he had grown into it, and everyone agreed it suited him to a tee. He was lanky with massively matted red hair, pink spots all over his joints from old peeled scabs, and eyes that you’d swear were looking into alternate dimensions, not all of them sane. God help the poor parents who see Skaterdud waiting at the door for their daughter on prom night.
    â€œHey, Dud,” I said as I approached.
    â€œHey.” He gave me his special eight-part handshake, and wouldn’t continue the conversation until I got it right.
    â€œSo, no turkey?” I asked.
    He smirked. “I ain’t gonna miss not eatin’ no dead bird, am I?”
    Skaterdud had his own language all full of double, triple, and sometimes quadruple negatives, so you never really knew if he meant what he said, or the opposite.
    â€œSo . . . you’re a vegan?” I asked.
    â€œNaah.” He patted his stomach. “Ate the dead bird early. What about you?”
    I shrugged, not wanting to get into it. “This year we’re celebrating Chinese Thanksgiving.”
    He raised his eyebrows knowingly. “Year of the Goat. Gotta love it.”
    â€œSo,” I asked, “isn’t the skate park closed for the winter? What, are you gonna sit here and wait till it reopens in the spring?”
    He shook his head. “Unibrow said he’d come down and open it for me today. But I don’t see no Unibrow, do you?”
    I sat down and leaned against the fence, figuring that chatting with Skaterdud was as good a mental distraction as any. Kind of like playing Minesweeper with a human being. We talked about school, and I was amazed at how the Dud knew more details about his teachers’ personal lives than he did about any given subject. We talked about his lipring, and how he got it to stop him from biting his nails. I nodded like I understood how the two things were related. And then we talked about Gunnar. I told him about Gunnar’s imminent death, and he looked down, picking at a peeling skull sticker on his helmet.
    â€œThat chews the churro, man,” said Skaterdud. “But ya can’t do nothin’ about no bad freakin’ luck, right? Everybody’s got a song on the fat lady’s list.” Then he thought for a second. “Of course I ain’t got no worries, ’cause I know exactly when I’m doing the dirt dance.”
    â€œWhaddaya mean?”
    â€œOh, yeah,” said the Dud. “I know exactly when I’m croaking. A fortune-teller told me. She said I’m dying when I’m forty-nine by falling off the deck of an aircraft carrier.”
    â€œNo way!”
    â€œYeah. That’s how come I’m joining the navy. Because how screwed would it be to fall off an aircraft carrier when you’re not even supposed to be there?”
    Then he stood up and hurled his skateboard over the fence. “Enough of this noise.” He climbed the fence with the skill of a gecko, then looked back to me from the other side. “You wanna come over? I’ll teach you stuff the other kids gotta break bones to learn.”
    â€œMaybe another time. Nice talkin’.”
    â€œYeah,” he says, and heads off. In a moment he disappears over the concrete lip, and I can hear