Three Pool Rhumba

3 Punk Rock Endings - 1

Lance turned and walked toward the fence carrying my board.

I looked at Tim and smiled. He was grinning big. “Nice board,” he said.

Lance hopped the fence and walked slowly away. His friends were gone.

Some friends, I remember thinking. Some friends.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said and was about to hang that Vermillion on the fence, climb over, when I decided I wanted to try my new board.

I put it on the top of the ditch, pushed off and began rolling into the drop, feeling the push of gravity, gaining speed when the concrete rushed up to meet my face and the murmuring started.

I heard Tim.

I heard Lance.

I heard you.

And I heard every skater that had ever ridden that ditch, the workers that had poured the concrete, the Indians that had lived there in the orchards hundreds of years before us. Their voices distant, unclear. Their voices seeping through the cracks and the crumbling wet concrete, calling me, calling my name, whispering secrets to me, whispering, whispering.

The ditch’s walls echoed with your sweet voice and Tim’s screams.

I felt my way along the flat concrete bottom, hands wet from thin stream of run-off water from the lemon orchards nearby. As I crawled, the walls on both sides of me steepened and lengthened forever up high into the sky.

How did I ever think I’d be able to skate this ditch? Carve a line from one side to the other? I’d never be able to crawl out.

“You’ll never crawl out of that ditch,” I heard Lance’s voice say but when I turned, he wasn’t there.

I rolled over looking for him found myself staring up into the blue sky, thinking, I'll never crawl out. I’m in the middle where the water flows downhill toward the drop where it goes underground and to the Pacific. What I wouldn’t give to be in the water on my board waiting to catch a wave. The ocean sky clear, the water clean. No voices to follow me. No voices to keep me company. No voices.

I turned back over and crawled slowly, moving one hand in front of the other, knees scraping the concrete trying to escape that ditch, escape those voices but they grew louder.

I could hear you telling me to turn back. I knew you wanted me to turn back. You wanted to keep me safe, make sure that I didn’t crawl down the ditch, toward the drop, fall in, plunge forty feet. But I knew you weren’t really talking to me, you didn’t care.

I'd seen you against the locker, making out with some kid I didn't know, some ninth grader I'd seen in the water once or twice. You were kissing him and I realized then it was over between us and I was terrified. My skin covered with goosebumps. My hands scraped up bloody.

“You OK?” Tim was saying but I couldn’t see him.

“You OK?” Lance was saying, standing right in front of me.

“Shouldn’t have taken your board,” I whispered. “Shouldn’t have taken your board.”

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This is one alternate ending to "I Didn't Say Run." I didn't expect it to end like that. Especially when he starts thinking about an old girlfriend. What do you think?