Slam

CHAPTER 1

So things were ticking along quite nicely. In fact, I’d say that good stuff had been happening pretty solidly for about six months.

For example: Mum got rid of Steve, her rubbish boyfriend.

For example: Mrs. Gillett, my Art and Design teacher, took me to one side after a lesson and asked whether I’d thought of doing art at college.

For example: I’d learned two new skating tricks, suddenly, after weeks of making an idiot of myself in public. (I’m guessing that not all of you are skaters, so I should say something straightaway, just so there are no terrible misunderstandings. Skating=skateboarding. We never say skateboarding, usually, so this is the only time I’ll use the word in this whole story. And if you keep thinking of me messing around on ice, then it’s your own stupid fault.) All that, and I’d met Alicia too.

I was going to say that maybe you should know something about me before I go off on one about my mum and Alicia and all that. If you knew something about me, you might actually care about some of those things. But then, looking at what I just wrote, you know quite a lot already, or at least you could have guessed a lot of it. You could have guessed that my mum and dad don’t live together, for a start, unless you thought that my dad was the sort of person who wouldn’t mind his wife having boyfriends. Well, he’s not. You could have guessed that I skate, and you could have guessed that my best subject at school was Art and Design, unless you thought I might be the sort of person who’s always being taken to one side and told to apply for college by all the teachers in every subject. You know, and the teachers actually fight over me. No, Sam! Forget art! Do physics! Forget physics! It would be a tragedy for the human race if you gave up French! And then they all start punching each other.

Yeah, well. That sort of thing really, really doesn’t happen to me. I can promise you, I have never, ever caused a fight between teachers.

And you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes or whatever to work out that Alicia was a girl who meant something to me. I’m glad there are things you don’t know and can’t guess, weird things, things that have only ever happened to me in the whole history of the world, as far as I know. If you were able to guess it all from that first little paragraph, I’d start to worry that I wasn’t an incredibly complicated and interesting person, ha ha.

This was a couple of years ago, this time when things were ticking along OK, when I was fifteen, nearly sixteen. And I don’t want to sound pathetic, and I really don’t want you to feel sorry for me, but this feeling that my life was OK was new to me. I’d never had the feeling before, and I haven’t really had it since. I don’t mean to say that I’d been unhappy. It was more that there had always been something wrong before, somewhere—something to worry about. (And, as you’ll see, there’s been a fair bit to worry about since, but we’ll get to that.) For instance, my parents were getting divorced, and they were fighting. Or they’d finished getting divorced, but they were still fighting anyway, because they carried on fighting long after they got divorced. Or maths wasn’t going very well—I hate maths—or I wanted to go out with someone who didn’t want to go out with me…. All of this had just sort of cleared up, suddenly, without me noticing, really, the way the weather does sometimes. And that summer, there seemed to be more money around. My mum was working, and my dad wasn’t as angry with her, which meant he was giving us what he ought to have been giving us all the time. So, you know. That helped.

If I’m going to tell this story properly, without trying to hide anything, then there’s something I should own up to, because it’s important. Here’s the thing. I know it sounds stupid, and I’m not this sort of person usually, honest. I mean, I don’t believe in, you know, ghosts or reincarnation or any weird stuff at all. But this, it was just something that started happening, and…Anyway. I’ll just say it, and you can think what you want.

I talk to Tony Hawk, and Tony Hawk talks back.

Some of you, probably the same people who thought I spend my time twirling around on ice skates, won’t have heard of Tony Hawk. Well, I’ll tell you, but I have to say that you should know already. Not knowing Tony Hawk is like not knowing Robbie Williams, or maybe even Tony Blair. It’s worse than that, if you think about it. Because there are loads of politicians, and loads of singers, hundreds of TV programs. George Bush is probably even more famous than Tony Blair, and Britney Spears or Kylie are as famous as Robbie Williams. But there’s only one skater, really, and his name’s Tony Hawk. Well, there’s not only one. But he’s definitely the Big One. He’s the J. K. Rowling of skaters, the Big Mac, the iPod, the Xbox. The only excuse I’ll accept for not knowing TH is that you’re not interested in skating.

When I got into skating, my mum bought me a Tony Hawk poster off the Internet. It’s the coolest present I’ve ever had, and it wasn’t even the most expensive. And it went straight up onto my bedroom wall, and I just got into the habit of telling it things. At first, I only told Tony about skating—I’d talk about the problems I was having, or the tricks I’d pulled off. I pretty much ran to my room to tell him about the first rock-n-roll I managed, because I knew it would mean much more to a picture of Tony Hawk than it would to a real-life Mum. I’m not dissing my mum, but she hasn’t got a clue, really. So when I told her about things like that, she’d try to look all enthusiastic, but there was nothing really going on in her eyes. She was all, Oh, that’s great. But if I’d asked her what a rock’n’roll was, she wouldn’t have been able to tell me. So what was the point? Tony knew, though. Maybe that was why my mum bought me the poster, so that I’d have somebody else to talk to.

The talking back started soon after I’d read his book Hawk—Occupation: Skateboarder. I sort of knew what he sounded like then, and some of the things he’d say. To be honest, I sort of knew all of the things he’d say when he talked to me, because they came out of his book. I’d read it forty or fifty times when we started talking, and I’ve read it a few more times since. In my opinion it’s the best book ever written, and not just if you’re a skater. Everyone should read it, because even if you don’t like skating, there’s something in there that could teach you something. Tony Hawk has been up, and down, and gone through things, just like any politician or musician or soap star. Anyway, because I’d read it forty or fifty times, I could remember pretty much all of it off by heart. So for example, when I told him about the rock-n-rolls, he said, They aren’t too hard. But they’re a foundation for learning balance and control of your board on a ramp. Well done, man!

The Well done, man! part was actual conversation, if you see what I mean. That was new. I made that up. But the rest, those were words he’d used before, more or less. OK, not more or less. Exactly. I wished in a way that I didn’t know the book so well, because then I could have left out the bit where he says, They aren’t too hard. I didn’t need to hear that when I’d spent like six months trying to get them right. I wished he’d just said, you know, Hey! They’re a foundation for learning balance and control of your board! But leaving out They aren’t too hard wouldn’t have been honest. When you think of Tony Hawk talking about rock-n-rolls, you hear him say, They aren’t too hard. I do, anyway. That’s just how it is. You can’t rewrite history, or leave bits of it out just because it suits you.

After a while, I started talking to Tony Hawk about other things—about school, Mum, Alicia, whatever, and I found that he had something to say about those things too. His words still came from his book, but the book is about his life, not just skating, so not everything he says is about sacktaps and shove-its.

For example, if I told him about how I’d lost my temper with Mum for no reason, he’d say, I was ridiculous. I can’t believe my parents didn’t duct-tape me up, stuff a sock in my mouth and throw me in a corner. And when I told him about some big fight at school, he said, I didn’t get into any trouble, because I was happy with Cindy. Cindy was his girlfriend of the time. Not everything Tony Hawk said was that helpful, to tell you the truth, but it wasn’t his fault. If there was nothing in the book that was exactly right, then I had to make some of the sentences fit as best I could. And the amazing thing was that once you made them fit, then they always made sense, if you thought about what he said hard enough.

From now on, by the way, Tony Hawk is TH, which is what I call him. Most people call him The Birdman, what with him being a Hawk and everything, but that sounds a bit American to me. And also, people round my way are like sheep and they think that Thierry Henry is the only sportsman whose initials are TH. Well, he’s not, and I like winding them up. The letters TH feel like my personal secret code.

Why I’m mentioning my TH conversations here, though, is because I remember telling him that things were ticking along nicely. It was sunny, and I’d spent most of the day down at Grind City, which as you may or may not know is a skate park a short bus ride from my house. I mean, you probably wouldn’t know that it’s a short bus ride from my house, because you don’t know where I live, but you might have heard of the skate park, if you’re cool, or if you know somebody who’s cool. Anyway, Alicia and I went to the cinema that evening, and it was maybe the third or fourth time we’d been out, and I was really, really into her. And when I came in, Mum was watching a DVD with her friend Paula, and she seemed happy to me, although maybe that was in my imagination. Maybe I was the happy one, because she was watching a DVD with Paula and not with Steve the rubbish boyfriend.

How was the film? Mum asked me.

Yeah, good, I said.

Did you watch any of it? said Paula, and I just went to my room, because I didn’t want that sort of conversation with her. And I sat down on the bed, and I looked at TH, and I said, Things really aren’t so bad.

And he said, Life is good. We moved into a new, larger house on a lagoon, close to the beach and, more importantly, with a gate.

Like I said, not everything that TH comes up with is exactly right. It’s not his fault. It’s just that his book isn’t long enough. I wish it were a million pages long, a) because then I probably wouldn’t have finished it yet and b) because then he’d have something to tell me about everything.

And I told him about the day at Grind City, and the tricks I’d been working on, and then I told him about stuff I don’t normally bother with in my talks with TH. I told him a little bit about Alicia, and about what was going on with Mum, and how Paula was sitting where Steve used to sit. He didn’t have so much to say about that, but for some reason I got the impression that he was interested.

Does this sound mad to you? It probably does, but I don’t care, really. Who doesn’t talk to someone in their heads? Who doesn’t talk to God, or a pet, or someone they love who has died, or maybe just to themselves? TH…he wasn’t me. But he was who I wanted to be, so that makes him the best version of myself, and that can’t be a bad thing, to have the best version of yourself standing there on a bedroom wall and watching you. It makes you feel as though you mustn’t let yourself down.

Anyway, all I’m saying is that there was this time—maybe it was a day, maybe a few days, I can’t remember now—when everything seemed to have come together. And so obviously it was time to go and screw it all up.

CHAPTER 2

A couple of other things, before we go on. First of all, my mum was thirty-two years old at the time I’m talking about. She’s three years older than David Beckham, a year older than Robbie Williams, four years younger than Jennifer Aniston. She knows all the dates. If you want, she can supply a much longer list. The list hasn’t got any really young people on it, though. She never says, I’m thirteen years older than Joss Stone or anything like that. She only knows about people round about her age who look good.

For a while, it didn’t really register that she wasn’t old enough to be the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy, but this last year especially, it’s started to seem a little bit weird. First of all, I grew about four inches, so more and more people think she’s my aunt, or even my sister. And on top of that…There isn’t a good way of saying this. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll repeat a conversation I had with Rabbit, who’s this guy I know from skating. He’s like two years older than me, and he goes to Grind City too, and we meet from time to time at the bus stop with our boards, or at The Bowl, which is the other place we skate at when we can’t be bothered to go to Grind City. It’s not really a bowl. It’s a kind of concrete pond thing that was supposed to cheer up the flats around the corner, but it hasn’t got any water in it anymore, because they started to worry about kids drowning. They should have worried about kids drinking it, if you ask me, because people used to piss in it on the way back from the pub and all sorts. It’s dry now, so if you’re looking for somewhere to skate when you’ve only got half an hour or so, then it’s perfect. There are three of us who use it all the time—me, Rabbit and Rubbish, who can’t really skate, which is why he’s called Rubbish, but who at least talks sense. If you want to learn something about skating, watch Rabbit. If you want a conversation that isn’t completely insane, talk to Rubbish. In a perfect world, there’d be somebody who had Rabbit’s skills and Rubbish’s brain, but as you know, we don’t live in a perfect world.

So this one evening, I was messing around down at the Bowl, and Rabbit was there, and…Like I said, Rabbit isn’t the most incredible brainbox, but even so. This is what he said.

Yo, Sam, he said.

Did I tell you that my name is Sam? Well, now you know.

All right?

How’s it going, man?

OK.

Right. Hey, Sam. I know what I was gonna ask you. You know your mum?

See what I mean about Rabbit being thick? Yes, I told him. I knew my mum.

Is she going out with anyone at the moment?

My mum?

Yeah.

Why do you want to know whether my mum’s going out with anyone at the moment? I asked him.

Mind your own business, he said. And he was blushing.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Rabbit wanted to go out with my mum! I suddenly had this picture of coming in to the flat and seeing the two of them curled up on the sofa, watching a DVD, and I couldn’t help but smile. My mum wasn’t the best judge of boyfriends, but she wasn’t that stupid.

What’s funny? said Rabbit.

No, no, nothing. But…How old do you think my mum is?

How old? I don’t know.

Guess.

He looked into space, as if he were trying to see her up there.

Twenty-three? Twenty-four?

This time I didn’t laugh. Rabbit was such a moron that it sort of went beyond laughing.

Well, I said. I’ll give you a hand. How old am I?

You?

He couldn’t see the connection.

Yeah, me.

I dunno.

OK. I’m fifteen.

Right. So what?

So. Say she was twenty when she had me. I wasn’t going to say how old she really was. It might not have been old enough to put him off.

Yeah. Suddenly he got it. Oh, man. She’s your mum. I never twigged. I mean, I knew she was your mum, but I never did, like, the sums…. Shit. Listen, don’t tell her I was asking, OK?

Why not? She’d be flattered.

Yeah, but, you know. Thirty-five. She’s probably a bit desperate. And I don’t want a thirty-five-year-old girlfriend.

I shrugged. If you’re sure.

And that was it. But you can see what I’m saying, can’t you? Rabbit’s not the only one. My other friends would never say anything, but I can tell from how they talk to her that they think she’s OK. I can’t see it, but then, you never can if someone’s related to you, can you? It doesn’t matter what I think, though. The point is that I’ve got a thirty-two-year-old mother that people—people of my age—fancy.

Here’s the other thing I wanted to say. The story of my family, as far as I can tell, is always the same story, over and over again. Someone—my mum, my dad, my grandad—starts off thinking that they’re going to do well in school, and then go to college, maybe, and then make pots of money. But instead, they do something stupid, and they spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for the mistake they made. Sometimes it can seem as though kids always do better than their parents. You know—someone’s dad was a coal miner, or whatever, but his son goes on to play for a Premiership team, or wins Pop Idol, or invents the Internet. Those stories make you feel as though the whole world is on its way up. But in our family, people always slip up on the first step. In fact, most of the time they don’t even find the stairs.

There are no prizes for guessing the mistake my thirty-two-year-old mother made, and the same goes for my thirty-three-year-old father. My mum’s dad made the mistake of thinking he was going to be a footballer. That was how he was going to make pots of money. He was offered a youth-team place at Queen’s Park Rangers, back in the days when the Rangers were good. So he packed up school and signed on, and he lasted a couple of years. Nowadays they make kids do exams, he says, so that they’ve got something to fall back on if they don’t make it. They didn’t make him do anything, and at eighteen he was out, with no skills and no training. My mum reckons she could have gone to university, but instead she was married just before her seventeenth birthday.

Everyone thought I was going to do something stupid with skating, and I kept trying to tell them there wasn’t anything stupid I could do. Tony Hawk turned pro when he was fourteen, but even in California he couldn’t make any money out of it for a while. How was I going to turn pro in Islington? Who was going to pay me? And why? So they stopped worrying about that, and started worrying about school instead. I knew how much it meant to them. It meant a lot to me too. I wanted to be the first person in the history of our family to get a qualification in something while they were still at school. (My mum got a qualification after she’d left, but that’s because she messed up school by having me.) I’d be the one to break the pattern. Mrs. Gillett asking me whether I’d thought of doing art and design at college…that was a big thing. I went straight home and told Mum. I wish I’d kept it to myself now.

Alicia didn’t go to my school. I liked that. I’ve been out with people from school before, and sometimes it seems childish. They write you notes, and even if they’re not in your class, you bump into them like fifty times a day. You get sick of them before you’ve even been anywhere, just about. Alicia went to St. Mary and St. Michael, and I liked hearing about teachers I didn’t know and kids I would never meet. There seemed more to talk about. You get bored being with someone who knows every zit on Darren Holmes’ face.

Alicia’s mum knew my mum from the council. My mum works for the council, and Alicia’s mum is a councillor, which is like being the prime minister, except you don’t rule over the whole country. You just rule over a tiny bit of Islington. Or Hackney, or wherever. It’s a bit of a waste of time, to be honest. It’s not like you get to drop bombs on Osama bin Laden or anything like that. You just talk about how to get more teenagers to use the libraries, which is how Mum met Alicia’s mum.

Anyway, it was Alicia’s mum’s birthday, and she was having a party, and she asked my mum. And she also asked my mum to bring me along. According to my mum, Alicia had said she’d like to meet me. I didn’t believe it. Who says stuff like that? Not me. And now I know Alicia, not her either. I’d like to meet TH, and Alicia would like to meet, I don’t know, Kate Moss or Kate Winslet or any famous girl who has nice clothes. But you don’t go round saying you’d like to meet the son of somebody your mum knows from council meetings. Alicia’s mum was trying to find some friends for her, if you ask me. Or at least, she was trying to find some friends, maybe even a boyfriend, that she approved of. Well, that all went wrong, didn’t it?

I don’t really know why I went, thinking about it. Actually, that’s not quite true. I went because I said to my mum that I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t want to meet any girl that she liked. And my mum said, Believe me, you do.

And she was dead serious when she said it, which surprised me. I