Beckett Stowe didn’t make facial expressions. His face was always kept in a neat, neutral position. We nicknamed it “The Beckett Face,” because no matter what he was feeling - sad, mad, angry - his face was the same. One time I saw him cough, and his face hardly moved at all. Imagine a mouth, opening as if to stretch the jaw, and then close back together as if nothing happened. That was what it looked like. If there was not the distinct coughing sound, I would have thought he was trying to yawn, to no avail.

I sometimes wondered if he didn’t feel anything, or if he just didn’t outwardly show it. For some people, not feeling anything is the usual, so that when they finally do feel something, it is exciting, new, and exhilarating. That was what I thought about Beckett.

I came to know Beckett through the skatepark. It was an indoor place, big, with only two windows and a garage door kept open at all times. The place used to be an auto body shop. There were ramps, rails, bowls… you name it, this skatepark had it. Every day, I would see Beckett across the way, working on tricks with his inscrutable face on. He was talented, and he, among everybody else, knew that he was going to become pro someday. But when he was not on his board, his poker face would make him look like a stuck up loner.

Then one day it happened. I was working on ground tricks, in a flat section of pavement nobody really used. The park was almost deserted; I could count the number of people there on my one hand. Annoyed that I couldn’t stick any of the tricks I was working on, I started staring into space at the broken drinking fountain in the corner. The occasional skater--the high school kid with the cliched dragon tattoo on his forearm and his buddy who came to the park stoned every day-- would take me out of my trance for a couple seconds, but it was none other than Beckett himself that made me really snap out of it.

He and his friends were playing tag, on their boards of course. It intrigued me. Watching them have fun, with each other, made me realize how lonely I was. I came to the park by myself every day because I didn’t have one friend that wanted to spend time at a sketchy, run-down park. Beckett and his friends raced around the park, hiding in corners and then scooting away as fast as possible when anybody came near them. It was funny to watch them, their arms moving fast as their leg rapidly reached out to push off of the hard concrete. It also looked fun; everybody’s face was smiling, eyes crinkled up in delight.

Everybody except for Beckett, that is. His face was in a deadpan, as it always was. He whipped around corners, always keeping a couple paces ahead of those that were ‘it.’ His kick turns were smooth, his transitions effortless. As an outsider, somebody that was clearly not involved, it seemed that he was winning this game. If it was even possible to win at the game of tag on skateboards. He had this aura about him, also. He knew that he was doing fine, that there was no way he was going to be tagged. The way he skated from side to corner and back again around the park, he looked relaxed, fluid, in control.

Some other skaters didn’t look as unclenched as he did. There was a skater directly to my left who was trying to drop in for the first time. I found out later that his name was Kyle. He stood, at the top of the ramp, eyeing the tight angle of it reluctantly. He went to the bottom of the steep incline, to the side, in the back, all to eye it up. I could tell that he was very scared. It seemed like, for him, to know every inch of the ramp would make it less scary. So there he was, staring at that one ramp, for an upwards of twenty minutes. His frightened, anxious persona seemed to roll off of him in waves.

He stood on the back wheels and tail end of his board at the top of the ramp, his left foot floating in the air indecisively. Upon first glance, I decided that he probably wasn’t going to end up going through with it. Then, with a sudden burst of movement, Kyle slammed his left, front foot down. The front wheels of his board slammed to meet the ground in the way that he did not expect.

Even though that’s typical of a drop-in, Kyle obviously didn’t know that. He let out a sound that had to be a cross between a yelp and a squeal as he sped off down ramps, his board wobbling slightly because of his speed. I started to feel a twitch of excitement inside of me. Somehow, I knew that he and Beckett were going to intersect with each other. I started to come out of my daze, instead focusing on scene in front of me.

Beckett, in his own zone, had only just started to turn around the corner of a small bowl when Kyle hit him, full on. I’m not sure who I felt worse for: Kyle, who was scared shitless at this point, or Beckett, who got hit so hard the entire skatepark stopped to see what had happened. Beckett didn’t have time to react before Kyle’s board ran into his and both boys went catapulting away. Beckett was facing Kyle, his hands sandwiched between their bodies. I watched as he didn’t even have time to pull his arms out and under him before he crashed. Kyle had his hands out, his right arm straight towards the floor. I cringed. Kyle landed, his right arm touching the ground first. His arm bent under his weight. He rolled a couple times and crashed into the hard pavement. Beckett was not as lucky. His hands weren’t underneath him, and there was nothing to cushion the fall.

If I was spacing out before, I definitely wasn’t now. With the loud cracking sound following Beckett’s body being thrown to the ground, shivers traveled up my back. If there was a sound that I associated with this new, haunting noise, it would be the sound of somebody cracking their fingers.

In Beckett’s case, it wasn’t his fingers. The point of impact affected the most was his back. The moment seemed to pause, my whole conscious zooming in to the sound of bone hitting pavement loud enough to silence a crying baby.

Nobody moved. Even the kids in the corner wearing goth clothing and listening to rock music stopped everything, leaving the park silent. I was leaning forward, watching the scene with heightened senses. The boy that I was having fun watching was now on the ground, maybe even dead. The only sound was the soft scratch of Kyle and Beckett’s boards lurching away.

After Kyle’s fall, he was laying there, eyes up toward the ceiling, as if he could not believe that he had just crashed. His right arm was bent oddly, but looking at him, he didn’t look in too much pain. It was Beckett that looked bad. He too was looking upwards, but for a different reason. I hadn’t seen him move at all since the initial fall right on his back. Even for his usual, neutral expression, there was a slight grimace of pain. I could see him calculating if it would be worth it to try to stand or not. It seemed unreal to me that the skillful skater I had just been watching dominate the park was now on the ground.

Kyle staggered awkwardly to his knees, then his feet. He put his hands in hair, and I saw him mouth many profanities while assessing the state Beckett was in. If everybody wasn’t so horrified with what had just happened, specifically the noise, it would almost be funny watching him not know what to do. He contemplated the situation, before reaching out his tentative, wavering left arm to Beckett.

There was a second where I thought Beckett wanted to kill him, but he then grabbed Kyle’s open hand and pulled himself up. The two of them stood there, and I was sure that one of them was going to start throwing fists for knocking the other over.

Then Beckett smiled. The instant I saw it, I knew it was genuine. His eyes scrunched up, and all of this teeth showed, even the ones in the back. The sound of him laughing, really laughing, broke the silence in the skatepark. I didn’t understand why he was happy after the fall, and don’t know still to this day. That was the one time I saw Beckett Stowe grin, and I haven’t seem him smile since.