Dollar Stories are short works of fiction that sell for $1 a piece. In this excerpt from Dollar Story #11, "R.I.P.," Galen DeKemper writes about boyhood around the skate park, in all its accident-prone glory. Shop more Dollar Stories HERE!
My age 13 Halloween was on Tuesday, and I saved my costume for after school. I screwed a set of Tail Devils onto my skateboard and dressed up in red, with a cape, plastic pitchfork, and devil horns. On her face, my mother had face painted one hundred eyes that covered her face so it was hard to tell her real ones. I said she would scare the trick-or-treaters. She said good, more leftover candy for her, and I better share my stash too. Dad shot the Polaroid of the two of us, then I was out the door, to the skate park, where the rest of my team assembled. Quentin was a cowboy, and Timmy was a taco. Eric Estrich dressed as Black, the color black, with all black clothes, black shoes, black gloves, black ski mask, and blackout contacts. His mom was making him wear a helmet until he was 14, even though he was the best out of all of us, doing the next-level tricks like back tail, as most of us were learning 5-0s and heelflips, so he wore a black helmet too. His wheels, trucks, board, griptape, hardware, bushings, and bearings were all black everything. “I even got that giraffe’s tongue,” which he stuck out for us to see.
“Where’d you get that from, licking Carl’s mom’s pussy?” Timmy said the slander. I pushed him so he fell and dented his foam approximation of a hard tortilla shell. According to racism, my mom was black, dad white, so I was half black. My friends reminded me of my heritage with such innuendo, mostly because my mother was beautiful and exotic to the pasty boys in this farm town.
“Nah, dogs,” Eric said. “It’s all pink on the inside.”
The boys could dwell on such topics if I let them, so I pushed my pitchfork to Eric’s chest. “Shut the fuck up, hand over the goods, and I’ll let you escape with your soul.” I could smell fruit on Eric’s breath. My parents’ Halloween basket had been entirely chocolate bars, and I was desperate for fruity hard candy.
Eric dipped into his black bag and passed me a flush handful, then went back for more: “Sour blackberry suckers, suckers. Have one or two, you all. These are way better than the piddly shit you’ve been putting into your mouths so far today.” We untwisted the wrappers and began to enjoy our suckers. They were dope, with sour in immediate effect then, below, the real full blackberry flavor. “Don’t bust the nut too early boys, though there is chewing gum in the middle.” In the spirit of holiday excess, I took one sucker in each cheek so the sticks crisscrossed from my mouth. But then I thought of a good one so I took the suckers out of my mouth to speak to Eric. "You should do a dark slide since you're push
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