Smoke and Mirrors Read Free

some of the worst.
    It was a babysitting wonderland until about eleven, and by then I was good and pissed off at my parents for trying so hard to ignore my existence. I don’t know what form of wisdom had kicked in, but they were wise enough not to have a second child. I expect they believed, by this point, that their first one was a bit of a failure or at least a freak (with his fart bombs, his comic books, his interest in the paranormal, and his pitiful grades at school).
    The skateboard was a fantasy tool for me. Ozzie (short for Osmond) was still part of my life in those days and as good as it got when it came to having a loyal but weird friend for a weird kid. My parents never said much to Oz because they didn’t like him. They said he had a funny smell — it was the foreign cheeses he ate with much gusto. They said he was a bad influence — he had introduced me to cracking my knuckles and skateboarding. They said I should get other friends.
    Pretty much all of my friends up to that point had been imaginary. Or as I explained it, they existed on an alternate plane of existence. Which didn’t mean they weren’t real; they just weren’t
here
.
    Oz showed me videos of young, fearless kids not much older than us doing death-defying feats, and Iknew I could do those things. I wanted to fly on my skateboard. It was inconceivable that I could be injured.
    We started out on steep streets racing straight down the white line towards ill-placed stop signs. No slalom, no turns at all, just straight cowabunga-screaming gravity-fed speed. I liked the way the wind felt in my hair and the sound it made in my ears. I used my mental powers (the ones I refused to activate in school) to will traffic to let me slide across the intersection and up the driveway of the house situated there. Sometimes there were car horns heralding my triumph, sometimes skidding tires and shouts of appreciation or rage.
    I always found a lawn or at least a flowerbed to end my spree. I was that good. I was gold.
    By the age of twelve, I had the baggy clothing and an array of scars. I had experienced road rash on nearly every inch of my body. I had a nasty attitude towards anyone who looked at me funny when I was in skater mode. Oz had somehow sobered himself up into being more cautious, but I was an adrenalin junkie who didn’t mind kissing asphalt if that was what it took.
    I was a railing artist. I skidded down metal railings wherever I could find them. I didn’t care what was at the bottom. Usually just concrete. I understood that concrete was hard and flat and unforgiving but I’d made my peace with that. Oz said I understood the physical nature of concrete — up close and personal —more than any other person on this planet or any other planet in the solar system. Oz had taken a backseat in the thrill-and-spill-a-minute world of skateboarding. He had introduced me into the lifestyle and then sat back, nursing his small wounds and watching me go for the glory. He was my number one (and only) fan.
    My mother insisted I get professional help for my “problem” (and this was not the first time for that). But it turned out that the professional help was on my side. “He’s just trying to get your attention,” Dr. Rickbenbacker told my parents. “You need to spend a little more time with your son.” Grumbling and griping the whole way about a golf game missed and potential bond business down the tubes, my father took me fishing. I wasn’t really interested in fishing. “Let’s go to the beach,” I begged. “I want to learn to surf.”
    â€œWe’re going fishing,” he said, gritting his teeth, gripping the steering wheel tightly as he beheld visions of corporate bonds, whole truckloads of them, being sold to unwary investors by his rabid competitor, Hal Gorey.
    Turned out there was a cell phone in the glove compartment, and it rang. It rang often. The fish