Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks

The third-person omniscient narrator details a list of things Pia Foster and Stevie Munson might have done differently if they knew that their journeys home from school would be different. Quiet Pia Foster hurries home on her skateboard after a day of classes at Latimer Middle School. Pia has named her skateboard Skitter “and called it ‘she’” (46). She has a sister named Santi. The narrator reveals only that something has happened to Santi. Pia contemplates befriending Fawn Samms, “the only other skater she knew. The only other skater who was a girl. The only other skater she respected” (46).

At a neighboring private school named Brookshire Boys Academy, Stevie Munson struggles with the bullying he endures by Marcus Bradford, “a box-faced baseball player who wrote stuff on the back of Stevie’s shirt almost every day” (47). Stevie’s mother sacrifices to pay for his private school education. Because of this, Stevie does not divulge the relentless bullying he faces each day.

To Pia, “skating meant freedom” (49). She ignores the chastisement of her teachers and “spent most days daydreaming about frontside 180s, while scribbling her sister’s name on the desk” (49). While Pia loves rushing off from school to “roll toward home,” Stevie fears leaving school because he knows that Marcus and his friends lurk and wait to bully him.

Pia passes by Stevie, Marcus, and Marcus’s friends on her way home. She knows Marcus as “Marcus’s mother owned the salon Pia went to whenever her mom made her get her hair done” (51). One time at the salon, Pia skated outside in the parking lot as she waited for her mother to finish at the salon. Marcus asked to try Pia’s skateboard. Marcus slipped and fell to the ground “only to find that his pants had split up the middle and his superhero briefs were on blast” (52). Pia attempted to help Marcus up. He never joined Pia outside again until years later, on “the day she was getting her hair done for her sister’s funeral” (53).

In present day, Pia sees Marcus and the boys in the park on her way home. She recalls Marcus’s mother’s “swollen jaws and forehead lumps” (53). She remembers overhearing her mother asking Marcus’s mom when she was going to leave Marcus’s father for his abuse. Stevie sees Pia approaching on her skateboard. Marcus demands Stevie steal Pia’s skateboard in exchange for freedom from his bullying.

The boys create a wall to block Pia’s way. Pia stops and confronts the boys while she “never looked down. Looked each boy in the face” (54). Stevie cannot meet Pia’s eyes. Marcus attempts to grab Pia’s skateboard, “but Pia wouldn’t release it” (55). He pushes Pia to the ground, which results in the skateboard flying from her hands and into the street “where a car, horn blaring, rolled over it” (55). Distraught, Pia runs off and Stevie begins to follow her. She remembers her sister Santi and how she also was pushed off of her board by a boy who “was just mad Santi was a better skater than he was” (56). That boy pushed Santi into oncoming traffic.

Stevie returns to the scene of the incident and gathers the pieces of Pia’s broken skateboard. He asks himself, “Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he stop?” (56). Stevie returns home and finally shares with his mother about all the bullying he has endured at his private school and about what happened to Pia’s skateboard. The next day, his mother pulls Stevie out of school early and drives him to Pia’s middle school to apologize to her for not speaking up. However, the two never connect as Pia befriends Fawn finally and leaves the school through the back door to visit her sister at the cemetery.