The Madrona Heroes Register: Echoes of the Past

Chapter 4 - The Girl from Across the Street

Despite the sizable number of chocolate chip banana waffles in her stomach, Binny Jordan came rocketing out of the house ready to attack the day. Skateboard in hand, helmet firmly on her head, the trials of the previous night were forgotten given the promise of a beautiful day, her skateboard, and lots of empty sidewalk.

The skateboarding world had dozens of different tricks to learn. Binny had only been riding for a few months. In that time, Binny’s desire to perform even the most basic of these tricks had only grown. But so far, the only trick she had mastered was how to break a skateboard. 

Binny had tried to learn how to Ollie. This trick would allow her to jump over objects. But weeks of repeated failure tempered her goals. Instead, Binny decided to set her sights on an interim step – the Hippy Jump. It would still let her jump over objects, just not with her skateboard. When executed properly, Binny would jump up and over the obstacle and then land on her skateboard which should have rolled forward to the exact spot of Binny’s landing. Despite Binny’s lack of progress, she pursued mastery of the Hippy Jump just as stubbornly as she pushed her agenda with her parents.

Since the Jordans lived on a steep incline, Binny had to walk a couple of houses uphill to get to a clear expanse of flat sidewalk where she could practice her tricks in relative safety. 

One of the houses had a low slung wall in front of the yard, and more low walls around flower beds out by the curb. Binny placed a long stick from wall to wall to create a “high jump” of sorts. 

Binny grabbed her skateboard, double-checked her helmet strap, and walked a dozen steps to give herself some room to pick up speed. Her right foot still on the ground, her left foot on the front of the board, Binny crouched slightly. Binny steeled herself and pushed hard against the sidewalk with her back foot. 

The skateboard shot forward with Binny along for the ride. When she thought she was going fast enough, she brought her right foot to rest across the back of the board. Her crouch got even more pronounced and her face scrunched up tightly with added focus and intensity.

This was typically where things started to fall apart, and today was no exception. Instead of both feet leaping from the skateboard simultaneously, Binny was only able to lift her front foot from the board. This had the unfortunate effect of tilting the board backwards, causing Binny to lose her balance.

In a desperate attempt not to fall, Binny slammed her front foot back onto the skateboard. Her foot made sloppy contact just in time for the front of the board to hit the stick that was suspended about a foot over the sidewalk. The stick broke and Binny sprawled forward onto the sidewalk. 

While Binny’s proficiency at the Hippy Jump was still a ways off, she was getting pretty good at falling with minimal damage. The wrist guards she asked Jay to get her took the brunt of the fall, but the fire in her knees told her that they’d taken some of it as well. Her skateboard did a couple of spins before sliding out into the street. It couldn’t have looked very impressive. Luckily, no one was watching.

“Nice try.” Came a voice from above.

Oh no, Binny thought. 

Across the street from the Jordan house, and up the hill a bit, a gray house with lots of windows had been sitting empty for several months. The ‘FOR SALE’ sign had sat there so long it had come to feel like a permanent fixture on the front lawn. But one day it was gone.

Like most kids, Binny didn’t notice much about the real estate transactions in her neighborhood, but it did occur to her that the absence of the sign meant that a new family would be moving in to the neighborhood. And maybe that family would have kids. Maybe even someone her own age. To Binny’s surprise, they did. Ten-year-old Penny Yang and her mother had moved in three weeks earlier. Binny hadn’t seen a dad around. But she often saw Penny ‘lurking’ about. To Binny, the girl just seemed weird.