Stealth

We finished class tonight at 8:45, an hour earlier than usual, so the parking lot was still full of cars. This meant: no skaters. Most nights, when I get there, around 10:00, the lot—six levels of cement, on an incline—has already become a game of Brio Labyrinth for the tall, cool, silent kids on their extra-long skateboards.

The only sounds are the friction of hard plastic wheels on cement as they fly by, and the cautious beeping of my car as I, timid as a novice on a double-black diamond.

Tonight, as I was pulling out of the parking lot, I saw a figure, holding a skateboard, backed up against the green hedge that marks the edge of campus. Then more, stealthily making their way toward the lot: a white jock with a long board; a dark-skinned woman in a hoodie, looking furtively, reflexively over her right shoulder at the freshly abandoned guard station. It was intimate, seeing them this way, on this end of their journey. I felt an affinity, and wanted them to feel it, too.

I got on the freeway and drove, listening to Beginner's Spanish: Ella tiene un nino grande. I was halfway home before I realized I had forgotten to turn on my lights.