doing work large and small on motorcycles at a fair price
Chapter 5, The Girl Across the Street. Greg Kenton had always lived on Maple Avenue. As a very young boy, Greg had sometimes noticed the girl across the street who helped her dad break leaves, and sometimes he had seen her riding a tricycle around and around on their driveway. She looked Greg's world was small back then, and that little blonde girl wasn't part of it. Greg noticed the girl the way he noticed the neighborhood dogs, or the colors of the flowers growing next to the front block, or the blinking yellow light at the corner. Even when they both started kindergarten at the same school, Greg went in the morning and the girl went in the afternoon. It was The concrete ocean between them was only 35 feet wide, but the young children never crossed it alone. For his fifth birthday, Greg got a big wheel, all blue and red and yellow with fat black tires. The hard plastic wheels made a huge r The first day he had it, Greg rode his big wheel for at least two hours. Over and over, he rocketed down his driveway, yanked the handlebars to the right, and then roared along the sidewalk. His curly hair swept back from his high forehead, and when he noticed the girl across the street sitting on her front steps watching him, Greg poured on an extra burst of speed, and he smiled and waved as he went grinding by. The girl waved back, but she didn't smile. Then, late one afternoon, about a week later, the little girl wasn't sitting on her steps when Greg went outside to ride. She was thundering around and around her driveway on a big wheel of her own, except hers was pink and green and white. And when Greg went speeding out of his driveway and zipping along the sidewalk, she did the same thing, a mirror image. And when Greg stopped at the corner of 10th Street and headed back towards his driveway, so did the girl across the street. When he sped up, so did she. When he jammed his feet to the ground and slammed to a stop, she did too. Greg was annoyed, but he pretended to ignore her. He turned and slowly pedaled up toward the corner of 10th Street again. He didn't look, but he could tell by the sounds that the girl was doing the same thing over on her sidewalk. Greg turned his big wheel around and put his feet on the pedals. And then he looked across the street. The girl had turned her big wheel around too. And she had looked back at him smiling. And when Greg nodded, they both took off. In seconds, Greg was zooming along at top speed, legs p The sidewalk slope slightly downhill as he neared his house. Greg started to ease up. He'd never gone down the block past his driveway before, but he glanced over and he could see that the girl wasn't slowing down. So Greg kept going, flying toward the corner where the tall blue mailbox stood. In the place where the tree roots had lifted the sidewalk, Greg bounced up off his seat, barely able to keep control. At this speed, if he tried to turn the corner at 9th Street, he'd flip over for sure. So at the last possible second, Greg dug his sneakers into the sidewalk and skidded to a full stop, his front wheels inches from the curb. Looking quickly to the other side of Maple Avenue, Greg saw that the girl was stopped too. Also at the edge of the curb and still smiling. Greg is shouted across the street, it's a tie. The girl shook her head and shouted back, almost a tie. Greg frowned, want to race again? Maybe tomorrow. Because you're scared, Greg shouted. The girl didn't answer him. She just kept smiling, turned her big wheel around and started pedaling slowly up the street toward her driveway. That was the first of many big wheel races, with each of them ending as a tie or almost a tie. And soon Greg had learned the name of the girl across the street, Mora Shaw.