Recently Andie decided to stop using her skateboard as a table an actually take it outside to learn how to use it. Her first couple tries went all right, on the third she let it slide out from under her and wound up skinning her elbow, knee, and pretty much everything in between. It has been two days since the last incident.
In a sudden burst of confidence, she convinced Rylan to learn how to skateboard also. How great of an idea this is is debatable. Andie knows very little about skateboarding, being a beginner and all, and on top of that, they don't have a helmet of any sort.
Oh well. It's their own dumb fault if someone gets hurt.
"So you start off with one foot on the board and you push off with the other one like this" Andie said, gliding forward a few feet.
"Then once you get going, put your other foot on about... this... far apart, uh, perpendicular to the board. See?"
Rylan saw, but her brain immediately went to the "oh gee how will I remember all this what if i cant do this oh no!" place.
Even so, she did her best to follow Andie's instructions, which came at about a mile a minute "put that foot more towards the front, good, kick off! great! now turn that foot, no the other foot, perpendicular remember?, excellent, look where you want to go..."
Trying to shufffle her feet around while the skateboard was moving was scary as heck, so Andie kept her from falling until Rylan got her feet in the right place. By the time that was done, though, she ran out of momentum and thought that trying to to kick again and repeating that whole process would be a frustrating waste of time.
Seeing Rylan's frustration, Andie said "here, just grab my hands and I'll pull you along and we can work on kicking later."
"'k. What happens if we need to turn? Do I need to do that thing where you kick the front up and kinda twist? Is that even a thing you do? I haven't watched people skateboard much."
"Umm, i don't know... at all. I know about as much as you do, right now. I can only do wide turns. You just lean the way you want to go and it'll start to turn."
"Oh."
Andie began to pull her in a large, slow circle, but even that made Rylan feel off balance, causing her to panic a little bit and gasp "ohgodohgodohgod". This skateboarding stuff was freaky, having the ground moving beneath you.
So it was decided that rolling in a straight line would be the best for now, and soon they were whizzing down the sidewalk, giggling.
But coming up the garden path, Andie spotted a someone. An unknown someone. And when you are Andie, unexpected someones are a billion times more scary than having the ground sliding around beneath your feet. She let go of Rylan's hand and dove under the bushed, swearing profusely under her breath.
Andie watched to see what happened from the safely of the bush. Bushes were nice. Bushes didn't sneak up on you, asking for directions or how your summer was.
Rylan kept going on the skateboard, a look of sheer terror on her face, but she managed to put her foot down and stop, stumbling a bit.
The someone, who seemed to be a male, jogged over to Rylan, who had fallen from the stumbling.
"Are you ok?" he asked "did you fall?"
Rylan picked herself up, scowling. "I'm fine. Actually i'm an alien. A magnetic alien. I'm extremely sensitive to the earth's magnetic field. I was betrayed (she said this loudly enough for the bushes to hear) by the force that keeps me from sticking to the earth's crust, or worse, being pulled to the north pole."
The boy looked at her.
Rylan rolled her eyes. "Yes, I fell."
He nodded and stuck out his hand.
"I'm Alex."
"Rylan." They shook hands. "Gwen sent you, I expect?"
From the bushes, Andie remembered when she first met Rylan, and that she had almost stabbed her with a pen. She frowned at that mistake, wishing that she had gone for the handshake like this Alex kid instead of the near miss with her pen sword. Stronger than that wish was the wish she hadn't let Rylan fall off the skateboard. More bad words were muttered at the tree.
"Something like that. I don't know why."
"No one ever does. Big People are weird." Rylan was a lot more comfortable now that both feet were firmly on the ground. "Let's go talk to Lilly. You're probably living with us now."
Rylan led Alex up to the door. She paused, turned around, and said to the bushes, "Come inside, Andie."
"I don't want to get to know someone new." She told the bush.
The bush agreed politely, though silently.
Either that or it told her to get over it.
It's hard to tell with bushes.
*** *** *** ***
Yup.
I bought a doll from Ebay for $50 and cut it's hair, sewed a shirt, and gave it to my little brother. He named it Alex and has been taking pictures of him non stop. Its cute.
