Going Big
by Ben Rubin
Darkness surrounded Nathan as he walked up to the fence. In this part of Berkeley, there were only a few orange lights from abandoned factories. Nathan had stopped carrying a flashlight a long time ago. He pulled an abandoned chair up to the fence. First Nathan threw his skate board up and over the top until he heard a smack on the other side, and then he hopped on top of the chair, sticking his fingers into the narrow holes of the fence and pulled his body over the pointed top of the fence. His feet landed hard on smooth cement.
Nathan gently flipped his skateboard right side up and put his left foot near the front. Its rough deck felt solid and familiar. It had been his best friend for all of his life; he had abandoned it far too long. He began to push. The ground flowed below him like water. He could see the cement a few feet in front of him, but he could skate the park by feel alone. Even before he could see the first rise, he bent his legs and prepared to pump over it. After a second rise, he made a sharp left turn and pushed his wheels over the edge of the bowl and felt himself free falling for a moment before his wheels touched down gently on the curved cement.
He would kill the man. It was his only way out. He felt the switch blade in his pocket as he swooped around the walls of the cement bowl. Now the drugs were coarsing through his veins. He pumped up the vertical section of the bowl and felt his wheels leave the cement. He felt weightless, he felt free like he could fly forever, away from the drugs and from the judging kids at school. He let the skateboard float away from him and now he was coming back down. Down into the night, but not to reality, he never felt his head hit the bottom of the bowl and no one heard the muffled crack it made.
◊◊◊
Nathan had started skating when he was five. His older cousin, Jason, had sent him an old board with splinters of wood sticking out of the ends and scratches everywhere, but Nathan had cherished the gift. He was ten when the Berkeley Skate Park opened, and by then he had mastered a variety of flip tricks. The first time he rolled down one of the dips of the park he was hooked. Everyday after school he would feel the pull of the park, and because is was only three blocks away from his home on Fifth Street, he would invariably leave his school work behind and forget it in the dazzling curves of the skate park.
No one at King Middle School acknowledged Nathan’s fourteenth birthday. His parents set up a small party for him, but only his loud uncles, Mark, and Larry came. Halfway through the meal, he left to go to the bathroom, but instead grabbed his skateboard, and went out. He thought about the birthdays of the popular kids at his school and all the presents and balloons, so many that they could not even carry them, and their friends had to act as escorts to hold brownies and cards. He didn’t envy them—he hated them. He took pleasure in leaving anonymous notes in their lockers and watching them open them and seeing the fear in their faces when they read the messages. He could grab their attention and their fears, through those notes, and it was the only part of school he enjoyed.
Nathan was pulled back into reality by the whine of bearings and clacking of boards. It was 5:30 P.M and the park was crowded. He weaved through the people until he arrived at the rim of the bowl and, seeing its last occupant exiting, Nathan dropped in over the edge. He popped off the opposite rim of the bowl and grabbed his board tightly into his spinning body, spotted his landing and brought the wheels down with a smack. From the side of the bowl he could hear people whistling in appreciation. After a series of grinds he rolled out of the edge of the bowl to lean against the fence, panting. A man Nathan had never seen before approached him. The man had hair slicked back and a face that seemed to have been pumped full of botox. At his feet was not a skateboard, but slick leather dress shoes. His mouth barely opened when he spoke and his voice was monotone devoid of any accenting or variation.
“We have been watching you for a while now,” he said.
Nathen attempted to look unfazed, “Who the hell is we, and why would you want to watch me?”
“We would like to be your agent of sorts.”
“I think you got the wrong person. I don’t need an agent.”
“Oh, but you have already proven you do, letting your talent go to waste, when it could be turned into money.”
“What do you want from me?”
“We only want for you to do what you love.”
“You mean skate?"
“We have brought your first payment.”
The man handed over a tight wad of twenty dollar bills. Nathan knew he had many more questions, but he could not think now. His hand shook as he reached for the money. His hands closed around it.
“Good. It seems that we will be able to work together after all.”
“I…” The man kept talking as if he did not hear Nathan.
“Take our business card. We will meet at the designated location at one o’ clock tonight.”
“But, I’m not agreeing to anything yet. Right?”
The slick leather shoes were already heading down the street. Nathan was more shaken then he’d been in a long time. He stared at the man long after he disappeared down Fifth Street. Reputable sponsors did not meet their clients at one a.m in the morning. As far as Nathan knew, most fourteen year old skaters didn’t need agents, but he had always known he was different; none of the kids at school could get paid to do what they loved. Not even the popular kids with the birthday presents and balloons. The bill fold in his pocket felt good.
When he got home it was dark. His parents had given up on making his birthday “special”, and so he was able to walk up to his room unnoticed. He slumped onto a chair and laid the card out on top of his biology book; there was a test tomorrow, but he wasn’t planning on being a scientist. The card had only a handwritten address, no phone number, no name. He recognized the address, it was only six or seven blocks away, but he knew there were no houses on the street, only old factories. Nathan set his alarm for 12:30 a.m. and laid down on his bed. He knew sleep would not come, but he had nothing else to do.
At 12:25, Nathan turned off his alarm, got out of bed, grabbed his skateboard and a flashlight. The dirty shag rug emitted no sound as he walked down the stairs. When he got to the door, he carefully twisted the lock pressing his body against it to muffle the click; then he slowly turned the door knob and slipped out without relocking the door. The black night seemed impenetrable and endless. His eyes might as well have been closed except for the few orange globes that hovered in the distance. When he had stumbled a block from his house, he turned on his flashlight and jumped onto his skateboard. In three more blocks, there were only factories surrounding him and when he arrived at the building, it had no address. He could only tell that it was the right place because of the addresses of the adjacent buildings.
The factory was made of brick and a pile of debris laide around the base. All of the windows were broken and when Jason shined his light onto them he shivered. There was another brick wall behind the holes in the windows. In front of him was a rusted metal door and through its cracks came a red light. After a moment of staring at it transfixed, Jason pushed open the door with his foot; the door gave a whining creak as it opened. Ahead of him were the long work benches of a factory left behind from the industrial revolution. Nothing had been taken out since its last use and strange tools were laid about everywhere.
“Sit down,” said the flat voice of the man Nathan had met at the skate park. This time, however, the words were commanding and devoid of any softness they may have had earlier. Jason sat on one of the nearby benches.
“Hey,” said Jason thinking about the money and wishing he hadn’t taken it.
“We are arranging sponsors right now, next will come competitions, but first you must prepare.”
“How?”
“There is a dirty secret that the professionals in your field keep, that you must understand in order to be anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Performance enhancers.” Jason could tell the man was trying to soften the word, but instead it came out strained. “In order to perform at the top level; they are absolutely necessary.” Jason wanted to stop the whole misunderstanding now, even give back the money, but the man was picking up speed. “You are lucky that we are experts in this field, we can heighten your ability beyond what you could imagine. All the big skateboarding companies will want a piece of you. Everyone at your school will wish they could be like you; the money we will make would be without limit. You would be different, even special.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Only a few favors, the first of which is to put your arm out and be still.”
The man produced something from his pocket and before Jason could object there was an intense pain in his arm and then a more intense pleasure then he had ever felt before.
The next few weeks were a blur. Jason didn’t skate once. He was busy performing the many favors that the man asked of him. All of them included transporting zip lock bags to people in and around Jason’s school that he had never met. When the exchange was made, Jason brought the all of money back to the man. Some times the bags were filled with plants and sometimes they were filled with white powder. Jason found notes in his locker with the address of an abandoned warehouse where Jason would meet the man, and the man would snatch the money from Jason, and count the bills meticulously, flipping up one after the other.
The man started out giving Jason a twenty or two for the transportation but he soon stopped even that. The favors and the performance enhancers began to phase out everything else in his life, he stopped leaving notes for the popular girls to find and he stopped skate boarding, for the drugs brought intense depression after the hours of euphoria. Nathan began to question whether there were any other members of the man’s organization. After about five of their meetings, the drug began to have less effect, and without Nathan telling the man, the man upped his dosage. That night he looked up the effects of the performance enhancer and found that it was heroin. It didn’t surprise him, but fuelled the anger that he had been growing in him for the last two weeks.
One time after he met with the man, Jason decided to follow him home. It was surprisingly easy. The night was pitch black and Nathan stayed behind until the man crossed through a light and then moved forward. Eventually the man stepped into an apartment. Nathan walked near to the door to find the address, and grabbed the knife that he’d begun to carry in his pocket, but the heroin high was starting to hit him and it was all he could do to find his way back home.
Several days later, when Nathan skateboarded to the address he found it locked. When he looked around he could only find a mail box. He walked up to it and kicked so that its contents rattled. He reached to the bottom and pulled out a syringe and a note. He went over to the nearest orange sphere of light, it read:
“Leave the money in the box, or else.”
Nathan was enraged that the man would still threaten him and swore to himself that he would visit the man’s house tonight. Without the man he could stop the heroin, but first he wanted to do something he hadn’t done in a long time. He threw his skateboard to the ground and began to go in a direction that was no longer familiar to him. When he arrived at the park Nathan sat down on a bench outside. He grabbed the syringe out of its pocket and wound up his arm to throw it, but something happened mid way into the throw and he couldn’t release it. Instead, he brought it to his arm, putting it roughly where he remembered the dealer doing it and pushed. There was a nauseating pain as he pushed the medicine in. He promised himself he would do it, he would kill the man, kill his addiction. He looked out at the skate park, imagining its smooth contours. It was all his.