Dunc Gets Tweaked (2 page)

Dunc was at Amos’s house the next morning. Amos was stretched across an easy chair, and Dunc was sitting on the couch.

“I don’t know if I can make it, Dunc.” Amos groaned and held the four-inch-wide bruise from the branch. It went all the way across his stomach.

“You don’t have to compete. They disqualified you for tearing down the power lines.”

“Then why do I have to go at all?”

“Because it’s your duty. The tournament had to be postponed a day because of the
power loss. You have to go. You owe them at least that much.”

“That’s not a good enough reason.”

“Then go because Lash is making his run today.”

“That’s not a good enough reason, either.”

“I don’t know what to say, then.” He sat watching Amos.

“Amos?” Amos’s mother called from the kitchen. She had a high voice that sometimes set Amos’s back teeth on edge.

“What?”

“You can’t sit in that chair all day. Your uncle Alfred is coming over to watch a football game with your father, and you know how he likes to sit in that chair.”

“Uncle Alfred, Mom? Does he have to? He picks his feet.”

“Everyone has little faults, son.”

“It’s not a little fault. His feet smell terrible.”

“Well, at least he leaves his socks on. He doesn’t get it all over the chair.”

Amos sighed and stood slowly. “Let’s go to the skateboard park.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“I’m up to anything if it means avoiding Uncle Alfred.” He stretched out his stomach and winced.

When Dunc stood up, a growl-whimper came from behind the couch.

“What’s that?”

“That’s Scruff.” Scruff was the family collie.

“What’s he doing behind the couch?”

“I was in the bathroom this morning practicing shaving—”

“Practicing shaving?”

“You know, for when I get older. My face was all lathered up, and I had just turned on Dad’s portable electric razor when I heard Melissa’s ring.”

“How did you know it was her?”

“I figured she’d be calling since she couldn’t get me yesterday at the tournament. She has a very distinctive ring. So my older sister was sitting at the dining-room table studying infectious diseases for health class. She saw me running out of the bathroom and thought I was foaming at the
mouth with rabies. She told Scruff to attack me.”

“Your own dog attacks you?” Dunc stared at Amos.

“Not usually. Most of the time whenever he’s near me, he just pulls his lip back and growls a little.”

“He never has liked you too much, has he?”

“Not since you made me try to screw antlers on his head for that most-unusual-pet contest when we were kids.”

“That almost worked. We would have won if he hadn’t lifted his leg on that poodle. Reindeer don’t lift their legs.”

Amos smiled, remembering, then shook his head. “Anyway, just as he jumped, I backed up and tripped and the razor caught his muzzle and shaved him all the way down the belly.”

“So why is he hiding?”

“He’s embarrassed—he think’s he’s ugly. Whenever I’m in the house, he growls from behind the couch and won’t come out. And I never did get to the phone. My sister answered
it, but she said it was just a magazine salesperson. She’s lying.”

“How do you know that?”

“She lies all the time. And besides, like I said, I know Melissa’s ring.”

They went out the door to their bikes.

The power line was repaired at the track, and a large crowd had gathered to watch the professional competition. The bleachers were already full, so Dunc and Amos stood by the judges’ table to watch. They saw Lash by the starting gate and waved. He waved back.

As they waited, two big men in long black raincoats and brimmed hats pushed through the crowd and stood next to them.

Both men had sallow faces and double chins, and one had a black pencil moustache sitting on his upper lip. It looked as if he
had just drunk a cup of ink. Amos and Dunc looked at each other with grimaces on their faces.

“They look terrible,” Amos whispered.

They moved away from the two men as far as possible. It wasn’t too difficult since the rest of the crowd was shying away too. Nobody wanted to stand close to them.

The announcer said Lash’s name over the loudspeaker, and Lash stepped behind the gate. The crowd grew quiet, except the men in dark coats. They grumbled something to each other that neither Dunc or Amos could hear.

The starter blew a whistle, and Lash disappeared in a blur, racing down the track. He flipped his board up one side at least fifteen feet in the air, held it above his head with both hands, did a somersault, and landed on his board again.

He did it once more right at the finish line, and instead of landing on his board, he landed on his feet with the board raised over his head.

The crowd went wild.

“That’s incredible,” Dunc said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“That’s because it’s never been done before. Lash told me he was going to try it for the first time here—at least, that’s what I think he was trying to tell me.”

“What’s he call it?”

“The Maggie tubular sky-high inverse sub-sub-shakysault.”

Dunc frowned. “The only thing I understand is the name of his board—that’s Maggie, right?”

“Right. Come on, let’s go talk to him.”

Lash was standing by the judges’ table. He was still wearing his helmet but had taken off his glasses. The skateboard was tucked under his arm. He was being interviewed by Dirk Cordoba, a local television sports announcer. Dunc and Amos stopped and waited for the interview to end.

“Another incredible display of aerial acrobatics,” Dirk said. “Lash Malesky, how do you do it?” Dirk wasn’t looking at Lash. He was watching the camera. He had a big plastic smile on his face. The microphone was in one hand, and with a finger he
flicked a gob of makeup out of the cleft in his chin.

“Awesome, Dirk,” Lash said. “It’s stoked, smoking to the wall—”

“Isn’t that a new board, Lash?” Dirk interrupted. He pointed at the board without taking his eyes off of the camera. “It isn’t the same one you used at the Nationals last year, is it?”

“Rad. Barrelling—”

“I noticed it says ‘Maggie’ across the top.” Amos was amazed that Dirk could notice so much without ever taking his eyes off the camera.

“Tweak—”

“Well, thank you very much for your time, Lash,” Dirk said. “I wish you the best for the rest of the day and the finals tomorrow.”

“Boned—”

“This is Dirk Cordoba with skateboarding ace Lash Malesky. Back to you in the booth, George.” He kept smiling until the red light on the top of the camera turned off. The smile went off with the light.

Lash held out his hand to Dirk. “Greased, man … too much—”

“Where’s the makeup man?” Dirk shouted. He started pacing back and forth in front of the camera. “Did you see that gob of makeup? It left my chin undefined. Where is he?” He hurried off toward the van that was serving as his dressing room while the skateboard championships were going on.

“Nice run, Lash,” Amos said.

“A real jam,” Lash said. “Like jelly.”

“I didn’t know boning out would be so painful.” Amos shook his head. “I broke a tree with my body.”

“Ecological.” Lash smiled and patted him on the back.

“So how do you do stunts like that?” Dunc asked. “I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

“Bone out, tweak, and ride the high five.”

“What did he say?”

“He said Maggie’s a new prototype made by Slapjack Skateboards.”

“How did you know that?”

“I don’t know. Ever since I hit that tree branch, he’s started to make sense to me.”

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

“It terrifies me.”

Lash took his helmet off and shook his hair free. “Next jam.”

“What?” Dunc asked.

“He said he’ll see us later.”

“Oh.”

“Later, dude.”

“Tomorrow night”—Amos nodded—“after you win the championship. That’s all Mom’s been able to talk about. She’s had me cleaning the house all day. I have to defumigate the chair where Uncle Alfred sits.”

Lash laughed.

“It’s not funny,” Amos said.

“Too radical …”

As they watched Lash, the two ugly men pushed their way through the crowd in the direction of the gate. They followed him. The breeze rushed past them right into Amos’s and Dunc’s faces. They looked at each other and wrinkled their noses.

“Who do you suppose they are?” Amos asked.

“They look like thugs out of an old black and white movie. Something out of the forties.”

“Yeah, maybe a horror movie.”

“The Stench That Strangled Detroit.”

“Exactly.”

The men disappeared behind a building.

Amos and Dunc hadn’t taken two steps when Lash came running over to them. His eyes were wide and wild. He was panting, too out of breath to say anything.

“What happened?” Dunc asked.

“Crash and burn, crash and burn!”

Amos’s eyes popped wide open. “Someone just stole Maggie!”

They stared at Lash.

“Relax,” Dunc said. “We’ll find her.” He wasn’t as sure of himself as he tried to sound.

“Copped,
copped
.”

Dunc looked at Amos. “He means stolen,” Amos said. “Not lost.”

“We’ll still find her. You said she disappeared in the bathroom?”

Lash nodded.

“Then let’s go check out the bathroom.” Dunc led Amos and Lash through the crowd over to a small white brick building. They
went in the door marked
MEN
. There was no one else inside.

“What happened?” Dunc asked. The air was stiff and stale and caught in his nose.

“Like, toilet.”

“He says he was using the toilet and a hand came under the door and grabbed the board and it was gone.”

“Did they take anything else?”

“That’s all he’s got,” Amos said. “The board and the helmet and his glasses.”

“Did you see or hear anything else?”

Lash shook his head.

“What do you suppose happened?” Amos asked. He walked over to the closed door next to the stall Lash had been in. “Could she be in one of the toilets? Does Maggie float, Lash?”

“Be serious, Amos,” Dunc said.

“I am serious. Stranger things have happened to us.”

“The board didn’t fly into a toilet.”

“Total—you think—right?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dunc said.

“Have thoughts,” Amos said. “Like you think—have thoughts. That’s cool, man.”

Dunc stared at Amos. “Amos, aren’t you getting a little … loose?”

Amos had turned to wash his hands. He cut the water off and wiped his hands on his pants. “Places like this make me want to wash over and over. Kind of like bus depot bathrooms.”

Dunc walked over to the door. “Let’s look for something out here.” The fresh wind cleared their nostrils. They couldn’t find anyone with a skateboard.

“Now what?” Amos asked.

“I guess we look for clues,” Dunc said. “If there was a crime, there must be clues. Amos, you look back in the bathroom. Lash and I will check out the park.”

“As long as I don’t have to touch that floor. If finding clues means touching that floor, forget it. I’ll look for clues on the walls. Maybe there’s a few on the ceiling.”

“All right. If you find any clues on the floor, leave them. I’ll get them later.”

Just as Amos reached the bathroom door, a chubby man in a long gray
trenchcoat scuttled around the corner. He saw Lash and made a little whistling squeak like the sound of a frightened mouse.

“Where’s the skateboard?” he asked.

“Who are you?” Dunc asked.

“I’m Sherman,” he said. “Sherman Hemlock—the skateboard company hired me to protect the board.” He looked at Lash’s empty hands, then around on the ground next to them. “Where’s the skateboard?” he repeated.

Lash shrugged his shoulders and sighed and shook his head. “Bummer.”

“She’s gone,” Amos said. “Somebody copped her.”

Sherman’s face was small and pudgy, and every time he breathed the nostrils on his pug nose flared in and out. “Oh dear, oh dear.” He rubbed his hands together and paced back and forth. When he turned around to look at them, his face was redder.