The Extraordinaires

Below us was the rocky pavement street drenched in an amber wash from the lights above us. The street went along quite a way, and so did we, pushing with our toes that nearly poked out the deteriorating fabric of our shoes. Our wheels rattled and the sound reverberated between the walls of Main Street businesses, through empty parking lots, down adjacent neighborhood streets shrouded with trees.

The summer breeze was gentle to us. We trailed on aimlessly and let our arms fall to our sides, leaning slowly to the left then slowly to the right, pushing again for a burst of speed and to feel the wind brush against our skin.

Nighttime air was never selfish. The night is when the vehicles retreated to their driveways and when the ordinary presence of the streets became inviting. No bustle. No urgency. From our boards, we could feel the road beneath us and breathe in the town.

We drifted along our little way, passing the final cars of the night. In the distance stood the surrounding hills speckled with yellow spots of people’s homes among the trees, though it seemed they blended into the sky and the stars as everything went to sleep. It was our favorite thing, to make the time the world put to waste into something unexplainably extraordinary.

And we drove ourselves across the town with a destination out of mind. With nowhere to go, we went anywhere with the resolve to take as much life out of the wind as we could, to explore the town in its simplest state. Our words escaped into the outline of the streets, our laughter permeating the air like a drip of color to fill an ocean.

Then from the hills that gazed over our shoulders echoed a thunderous boom. We stamped our feet to the cement and turned our heads in curiosity. We often forgot we were not alone.

We raced against the streets, making short cuts through alley ways, striking rocks and rolling back onto our feet without missing a moment. Dodging potholes and cats, crouching low on the downhills, we traced the sound of inconsistency. They were coming more frequently now, the booming, and booming, as was the pounding drum of our beating hearts. There was a single place to which we knew the sound would bring us, and we drove ourselves along that path for the sake of it.

As we climbed the hill with our boards in hand, we heard another and saw between the leaves a flashing of colored lights above us. They were accompanied by the sound of crackling, then suddenly another pounding boom, then another, then more. We reached the peak of the hill and gazed out at the twinkling lights that made our town at night until suddenly, above them were a thousand more, exploding and expanding in vibrant hues.

The night was not a holiday, but it was a celebration. Tonight we owned the sky.