Read Online Skate Freak by Lesley Choyce - Free Book Online

sharpest tools in the shed when it came to classroom learning. But he was going to make it, and he’d return. And then we’d be together again as a family. Things hadn’t really worked out yet for my mom. She had a job, but it was an office job. It seemed no one around here was willing to hire a woman to run the big machines. But she said that would change. She wouldn’t give up.
    Over the winter, Hodge and I had become friends, and that changed both of us. We lost the need to compete with each other at the skate park. We became allies of sorts, even though we never really understood each other.
    And he never did pay me the twenty bucks he owed me. But I let that go. Letting things go was one of my lessons.
Hangonto the good stuff. Let the bad stuff go. And don’t hold grudges.
    I promised to bring him to Willis Harbor and show him the Ledges. But that was for later.
    On this bright but cool spring morning, Willis Harbor looked a little dull, a little worn around the edges. The empty houses, the sad streets. But the sea gleamed in the distance. And I always thought that the sea represented hope.
    â€œI want to live by the sea, someday,” Jasmine said.
    â€œYeah, me too,” was my answer as we passed our old house. It looked like it had not been lived in for many years rather than several months.
    My mother surprised me by pulling into our old driveway. She got out and unlocked the front door of the house and walked in. Jasmine and I followed.
    It was again like going back in time. I led Jasmine up to my old bedroom. The furniture was still there. Dust and spiderwebs covered everything. She just walked to the window and looked out.
    â€œYou can see the ocean from your bedroom. And you can see the rocks.”
    â€œThat’s what I woke up to every day.”
    â€œI bet you’d love to move back here right now, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I made this promise about school. And I can’t make it work without you.”
    She nodded. She knew it was true.
    We left my mom alone at the house for a while, even though I could tell it wasn’t easy on her. We grabbed our boards from the car and headed toward the Ledges.
    Some of the rocks were quite wet, so we had to limit ourselves to the higher parts. But the granite felt smoother than ever beneath us. We skated cautiously, but this was somehow more beautiful.
    It was a dance, a dance on granite by a fierce blue sea.
    And then we walked further out to the point, where the rocks were rough, butyou can climb up higher and look further toward the horizon.
    â€œThink you’ll really move back here someday?”
    â€œSomeday,” I said. “But not yet.”
    When we walked back to the house, my mom was taking the For Sale sign down. Dark clouds were approaching with a new sharp wind off the sea. The day was turning cool and damp. There were rough times ahead for all of us. The gravity of things would pull us down. And there would be walls ahead. But the walls wouldn’t stop us. We would use them to blast up into the heights and prepare for the next challenge ahead. Whatever that might be.
    Award-winning author Lesley Choyce has written sixty-eight books and is a year-round surfer at Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia.