Blaze - Part Eighteen
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
Ralph 🌙 4:39 PM: Hey, just want to let you know that we all got your text, Ripley. We’re on our way.
Ripley 🎶 4:51 PM: You’re responding on behalf of yourself, Aiden, and Noah?
Ralph 🌙 4:53 PM: Yeah, I’m the only one with free hands. Aiden is driving, Noah’s rolling a joint.
Me 4:55 PM: Of course you three were already all together, we should have known
Ripley 🎶 4:55 PM: Okay it’s not an event that requires a joint, Noah, first of all
Noah ⚡ 4:55 PM: Whoa, I’ve never been to an event like that
Noah ⚡ 4:56 PM: Do we need to dress fancy? I still got my suit from the wedding
Ripley 🎶 4:57 PM: Oh my god it’s not an event at all! Just want to show you guys something!
Ralph 🌙 4:58 PM: 🤨
Ralph 🌙 4:58 PM: Sounds like a trap
Noah ⚡ 4:58 PM: Yeah the fuck does that mean, Ripples?
Raj 🔨 4:59 PM: You’ll see when you get here!
Noah ⚡ 5:00 PM: You’re in on this too, Raj? Wtf who keeps secrets from their own husband? You and Ripples and Jamie are all toast when we get there
Me 5:00 PM: Wow okay why am I getting lumped in? I literally have no idea what’s going on??
Raj 🔨 5:00 PM: I’m sure we WILL all be toasted if you really are rolling a jay on the go Noah
Noah ⚡ 5:01 PM: Bruh that’s not the kind of toasted I meant and you know it
Companion Plant 🍃 5:01 PM: Is no one gonna say anything about Noah assuming that any event with no joints involved must be fancy enough that he should wear his wedding suit?
Ralph 🌙 5:01 PM: I was waiting to see how long it would take someone else to say something, tbh
Me 5:01 PM: Aiden!! Are you texting and driving?
Companion Plant 🍃 5:02 PM: No, we’re parked outside waiting for you guys to get here.
Me 5:02 PM: Um? WE’RE parked outside waiting for YOU guys to get here.
Raj 🔨 5:02 PM: Brothers
Noah ⚡ 5:02 PM: Dude it must be a pretty fancy shindig for them to not allow joints is all I’m saying
Ripley 🎶 5:02 PM: I didn’t say they’re not allowed, I just said it wasn’t necessary for what we’re doing!
Raj 🔨 5:03 PM: Brothers
Noah ⚡ 5:03 PM: Wait what’s not necessary? The JOINT? You must be joking bro
Raj 🔨 5:03 PM: Brothers
Raj 🔨 5:03 PM: I think we might be parked in our cars just around the corner from each other, texting even tho we are less than ten feet apart currently
Me 5:03 PM: Oh my god okay SEE YOU ALL IN A SEC!
~~~~
“You guys have something to show us here?” Aiden asks, his baffled blue eyes roving over our surroundings.
We’re in downtown Ketterbridge, for some reason.
Right on the edge of it, in the less busy, less well-kept area. There are a few empty storefronts here, which have been that way for as long as I can remember.
Raj and Ripley have led us to a small, three-story brick building taking up the corner of the steet. It’s so run-down and eternally grimy that I always assumed it was abandoned.
Ralph, Aiden, Noah, and I are staring up at it in total confusion. Ripley and Raj, meanwhile, are looking at it with adoring eyes. Like it’s something truly amazing.
Whatever they’re seeing, it’s lost on me. So far as I can tell, the building looks the same as it always has. The brick is stained, badly patched, and crumbling in places. Some of the windows are boarded up with old, rotting pieces of wood. The others all have broken, dust-heavy glass. Half-dead weeds are growing in the mud by the base of the building, the only plant life around.
The place always struck me as sad. So hollow, empty, forgotten.
In a lot of ways, it is forgotten. I used to walk past it all the time going between the flower shop and my apartment, and I honestly think I just stopped seeing it after a while. No one ever looks twice at this place, except drunk teenagers looking for a window to throw a bottle or a rock through.
“Didn’t we do that?” Noah whispers to Ralph, pointing at one of the smashed windows. “In high school, didn’t we, um-?”
“Shut up, dude,” Ralph hisses back, as Aiden hastily reaches around Noah to press a hand over his mouth.
Just a little too late. Ripley and Raj have both already whipped around to stare at Noah with startled eyes.
Ripley lets out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “You three are responsible for one of these broken windows?”
“Quite an accusation, Ripples,” Ralph says evenly, with a very neutral facial expression. “Hope you’ve got evidence.”
Ripley arches an eyebrow, pointing at the smashed front window. “Oh, so you guys didn’t do that?”
“No, man.” Aiden closes his eyes and shakes his head like he has no idea what Ripley is talking about. “Definitely not.”
“Yeah, no, I actually think it was one of those ones we smashed.” Noah nods to the abandoned storefronts nearby, then pauses, pierced eyebrows furrowed. “Or - hang on, was it both? I don’t even remember, that shit was forever ago.”
“Sounds legit, Aiden and Ralph,” Raj laughs, as Aiden sighs deeply and tips his head back, Ralph pinching the bridge of his nose beside him. “It’s fine. But you guys are fixing that, just so you know.”
“What - the window?” Noah turns to Raj, caught by surprise. “I mean - doesn’t really matter now, dude. Who even owns this building?”
“Ketterbridge City Hall.” Ripley slips a key out of the pocket of his denim jacket and fits it into the door as a soft rain begins to fall on us. “For now, anyway.”
He pauses with his hand on the door and looks back at us over his shoulder, a small, nervous smile on his face, his green curls shifting in the wind. Then he pushes it open and steps inside.
Raj heads in after him, leaving the rest of us exchanging bewildered glances with each other. Aiden catches my eye, but I’m still at a loss, and all I can do is shrug uncertainly at him.
Ralph slips inside, and the rest of us follow him, threading in one by one out of the rain. I’m the last one inside. I close the chipped wooden door and toss my damp hair out of my eyes, then freeze, looking around.
This place is… not what I expected.
On the outside, it’s a broken-down heap. But it was hiding something special on the inside.
The first floor has surprisingly high ceilings, set all the way up above a second floor that opens over half of the ground level. White-painted railings block the second floor from view, but anyone on the second floor could look down on the first floor from above.
The floors are old, concrete, and covered with faded graffiti. The windows are industrial, massive, crisscrossed with a rusted latticework of metal.
All the metal fixtures in here are corroded into unusability, every wall heavy with graffiti, the dust hanging in the air clearly visible in the rainy, late-afternoon sunlight. There are doors in some of the walls, either bashed down or rotted to collapse. The whole place is scattered with debris.
But the place is spacious and airy, the graffiti is kind of cool, the open second floor is a neat, unique feature, and… in some inexplicable way, Ripley looks exactly right in here.
“Fuck me sideways!” Noah stares around at the interior of the building, his grey eyes wide. “Who knew this place was so dope? What were you talking about, Ripples, this looks like the perfect place to burn a joint!”
Ripley breathes out a little laugh, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Glad to hear you say that, man.”
“Oh, yeah?” Noah’s eyes blink over to him in confusion. “Why?”
“Because…”
Ripley trails off and looks at Raj, who leans back against the graffitied wall, a warm smile glowing in his dark brown eyes.
“Tell them,” he murmurs, with an encouraging nod.
Ripley bites the inside of his cheek, that small, secretive smile crooking up his mouth as he turns back to us.
“Raj and I have been talking about buying this building.”
Aiden, Ralph, Noah, and I all stare at Ripley in blank silence for a moment. Then we all turn as one to stare at Raj, who nods in confirmation.
“Are you guys serious?” Aiden shakes his head incredulously. “What-? Who’s gonna sell a building to an eighteen-year-old?”
“First of all, I’m gonna be nineteen by the time I graduate.”
“What?” Aiden’s fast-blinking eyes dart to Ripley. “How’s that work, man?”
“I got held back a grade in middle school.” Ripley tries to make an innocent face, but ends up cracking a tiny grin. “Apparently I have behavioral problems.”
“Yeah, bro, we’ve noticed!” Noah sputters, and Ripley lets out a laugh. “Still, though - how-?”
“The building is owned by Ketterbridge City Hall, right now,” Raj explains. “It was abandoned by the owner, but it was paid off, so there was no bank to foreclose on it. So Ketterbridge took it back, and it’s been trying to sell the place off ever since. For ages. The price drops have been steep, bruh. They’re ready to sell it for the land value, and we think we could negotiate the price even lower than that.”
Raj waves a hand around at all the damage and decay.
“No one wants it but us, ‘cause it’s a disaster. Ketterbridge City Hall doesn’t need it, and can’t use it. They would have to get the building inspected, then fixed up, brought up to date with all the required features of government buildings. It’s a money-sink for them. Not so much for us. I’ve already had it inspected, and the repairs it needs…” Raj shrugs his shoulders, smiling brightly. “We could do them without hiring anyone.”
Ripley nods, fidgeting with the stud in his ear.
“Plan is, Raj is gonna buy the building, then sell me half of it, so we’ve got an even share. I’ve been saving up for a long time, so…”
Ripley trails off, nervously messing with his snapback, the brim up high over his green curls. He’s looking at all of us searchingly, waiting for some kind of reaction.
Met with only more blank silence, he looks to Raj, who straightens up and beckons with a nod of his head.
“Should we give ‘em the tour, Ripples?”
“Yeah, go for it,” Ripley says quietly, his eyes scanning over our faces.
“So, this downstairs space,” Raj begins, walking further into it, “This could be a bunch of different things, depending on what we need it for that day. Right now we’re calling it the showroom.”
Without slowing down, Raj leads the way upstairs to the open second-floor loft. We all follow him in silence, staring around.
There’s a surprising amount of room up here. Solid floors. Massive rusty windows with a thick blanket of dust make up one wall.
“This would be our workspace,” Raj explains, gesturing to it. “Pretty cool, because now I don’t have to rent my woodshop space, and Ripples will have studio space, too. We can also take care of the business stuff up here.”
Ralph finally breaks the collective silence that he, Aiden, Noah, and I have been locked in.
“What business?”
Raj grins excitedly at Ralph, then slaps Ripley’s shoulder. “You wanna take this one, man?”
Ripley hesitates as we all turn to look at him. He takes a deep breath, twisting the stud in his ear.
“So - you know that custom surfboard with the snow leopard that Raj and I made for Noah? How Raj made the board, and I made the art for it?”
“Sickest thing I own,” Noah says in confirmation.
Ripley breaks into a small smile, a spark of something lighting up in his eyes.
“Well, Raj and I realized that we make a good team,” he says slowly, scuffing his shoe on the concrete floor. “Making surfboards. Raj can make decks for skateboards, too, and I could do the art for those… we could make our own designs to sell, and also do custom commissions. Could be sort of like a - combined surf and skate operation.”
“Which’ll be great,” Raj says brightly, “Because then Noah and I don’t have to take as many jobs running from house to house. Means sometimes we could be working here, and have Nik here, too.”
“Alix and Mel said they’d help us with the promotional stuff,” Ripley goes on, as we all stare at him blankly. “And I was thinking Calla might be able to hook us up with people who run the surf shops in Port Sitka, help us start getting the word out.”
Still, nobody says anything. Ripley’s words are met with complete silence.
He shifts from foot to foot, then swiftly heads back towards the stairs. “C’mon, there’s one more floor.”
We follow him up the last set of stairs, which leads to a closed door at the top. Ripley takes out a second key and unlocks it, pushes it open.
We step into a tiny loft, a - studio apartment.
It’s empty right now, but there’s a kitchen set-up in the corner with a small square counter, a sink, and a square stove with two burners. There are closed doors that must be bathrooms and closets. Slanted ceilings, with slanted windows.
“So, this would be me,” Ripley says quietly. “After graduation.”
My gaze snaps right to Ripley, my eyes even wider than they were before.
“We’re hoping to make it livable by the end of summer,” he forges on, “But I can crash with my parents a little longer if we’re not done by then. Sound-proofing’s pretty good, so I won’t hear Raj if he’s running a table saw, and he won’t have to listen to the entire discography of every band I like several times a day.”
“That would’ve been a deal-breaker,” Raj laughs, then falls quiet.
He and Ripley peer into faces, waiting for a response of any kind. But again, there’s only total silence from all of us.
Aiden, Noah, Ralph, and I are staring at Ripley with enormous eyes, and he stares back at us, nervously picking at the strings of his hoodie.
“Wait,” Noah says slowly. “So you’re - you’re staying? In Ketterbridge?”
“Ah…” Ripley shrugs his shoulders, stuffing his hands deep into his pockets. “Yeah.”
“What about college, or - or whatever?”
“I mean, I thought about it, and…” Ripley nibbles his lip, then lets it all out in a sudden, breathless rush. “That shit’s just - not for me, man. I realized that I was only gonna do it ‘cause I felt like I was already on this conveyor belt towards it. Why the fuck should I do something just because of that? It’s so expensive, for something I don’t even really want to do, and - I honestly think I’d miss my family too much. Not just my parents, I… I don’t know. You - you guys are my family, too, more than family, like - you guys are - this is what I actually want to do, okay? And this is where I want to be, so. Yeah.”
Ripley falls silent, his cheeks burning, his eyes determinedly fixed over our heads instead of on any of our faces.
There’s another long, disbelieving silence, and then all of us start shouting at once, rushing towards Ripley.
“Ripples!” Noah hollers, as Ralph presses his hands over his smiling mouth. “Fuck yes, that’s - holy shit!”
“Oh, yes!” I groan, bending almost in half, leaning my hands against my knees. “Yay, oh my god - oh, Ripples, you have no idea, I was way underselling how sad we all were about you going-”
“Thank fucking god!” Aiden winds his huge arms around Ripley’s shoulders from behind, the smile lines at the corners of his eyes deepening, his cheeks rounding out. “Best gym buddy I ever had, man, and now I get to keep him!”
Ripley collapses into relieved, wide-eyed laughter as Aiden squeezes him happily.
“Oh, shit - you - you guys were giving me some wicked anxiety! You’re really all on board with-?”
“Yes!” Noah shouts, so loudly that it startles a laugh from Ripley. “We just fucking can’t believe it - Ripples! Oh my god, I just went from so sad to so fucking stoked, I’m so goddamn pumped right now - I’ve gotta break something.”
“No!” Ripley laughs, breaking free from Aiden to catch Noah’s arm as he excitedly bends down to pick up a stray brick. “Dude! This is gonna be my place!”
“Fuck yeah, it is!” Noah shouts. He straightens up with a giant grin and messes up Ripley’s green curls, sending his snapback tumbling to the ground. “Man, what a spot for you guys to unleash your sick designs - Raj! You were gonna buy a fucking building and start a business without saying shit to me?”
“I wasn’t gonna pull the trigger until we talked about it, but Ripples asked me to keep it to myself!”
“I thought you guys would try to change my mind.” Ripley rubs his arm, wincing apologetically. “I didn’t realize you’d all-”
“Oh,” Noah cuts in, eyeing a tangle of electrical wires hanging from one wall. “You guys are gonna need my help.”
“And mine!” I jump in, thinking of the barren, weedy earth surrounding the building.
“And you guys know you’re not getting anything up those stairs without my help,” Aiden pins on.
Ripley hesitates, then blurts out -
“Actually, Aiden - Raj and I were talking about doing small art exhibitions in the showroom downstairs sometimes. We thought you could curate them.”
Aiden jerks his head back in obvious delight and surprise, his blue eyes shining radiantly.
“We’ve already got interested artists,” Ripley goes on, unlocking his phone, his words picking up speed. “Remember Nathan, the artist who came in from out of town to show his work in Bright Future? He’s really cool, we’ve been talking, and he said he’d definitely want to show here. We could have guest artists design custom decks, too - Nathan’s got a friend who does these really tight, um-”
He turns his phone around to show us some stylized, spraypainted artwork of two grizzly bears in Luchador masks leaping at each other, running on flames.
“Holy shit!” Noah shouts, and Ralph nods in agreement, a big grin rising on his face as he takes it in. “Oh, dude, this is so good-”
“We’ve got a lot more ideas,” Ripley says eagerly, heading back to the stairs. “We’ll show you!”
The second version of the tour, now that Ripley knows we’re all on board with the plan, is far more detailed and thorough. He walks us through the first floor again with a huge, infectious smile on his face.
“Raj and I are hoping this space will be a spot where people can come and hang. I’d love it if we had other artists and skate rats come to practice and work, and check out the boards. S’too small for anyone to really shred, obviously, but Raj said he could make a launch ramp to keep in here. Kinda keep that skate park energy, type of shit where you finally land a trick and everyone smacks their tail on the ground or yells, just making noise ‘cause they’re excited for you.”
“I love that,” I laugh, and Ripley beams at me.
“Maybe we can do really small shows with local bands in here, too.”
“Figured you could be the sound guy,” Raj says, slapping Noah’s shoulder.
“Fuck yes! Mel would love to plan shit like that, by the way!”
Raj grins happily. “I know. She’s already excited.”
“I’m gonna do some really big artwork on that wall,” Ripley says, pointing to it. “Probably also put up a John Cardiel quote. I was thinking - Nobody can’t hang.”
We all match the grin on Ripley’s face.
“Getting into business with a teenager, Raj?” Ralph asks, casting a skeptical look at Ripley. “This teenager? Sure you wanna do that?”
Ripley sticks his tongue out at Ralph, but Raj shrugs, unconcerned.
“Yes, man, because it’s this teenager. I gotta think he’s responsible and organized enough to handle it. Given that he’s successfully been the intern of the one and only Gabrielle Soto for almost a year.”
Ralph lets out a laugh. “Yeah, I’ve only met her once, but that was enough for me to say fair enough.”
“And I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Raj finishes, his dark, smiling eyes roving over the space.
“That’s a real good sign, man,” Noah tells Ripley earnestly. “When Raj has a good feeling about something.”
Raj clasps Ralph’s shoulder. “Besides, we thought you’d probably warn me and Ripples if we’re about to do something too stupid.”
Ralph does a double-take, looking at Raj with his eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
“You’re the master at this business-running shit, Warlord. We need your help, if you’re down.”
Ralph blinks in surprise, then breaks into a slow, small smile.
“Happy to, man,” he answers, and then, beneath his breath, “I owe you one, anyway.”
“Me?” Raj tilts his head to the side, staring at Ralph in obvious confusion. “For what?”
“Actually, Ralph,” Ripley jumps in, “If you could tell us step one, that would be great.”
“Ah, well…” Ralph considers for a moment. “In your case… step one is probably to pick a name for the business.”
“We’ve been waiting on that,” Ripley explains. “We wanted to tell you guys about this before we chose one. Thought we’d come up with better names if everyone was contributing to the - no, Noah, don’t throw that!”
“I’m excited!” Noah groans helplessly, dropping the brick back to the ground.
“I know, I know, we’ve got a lot of big plans-”
“Not about the plans, bro - I mean, yes definitely about that, but - just - just-”
“We’re just so happy you’re staying!” I blurt out, flinging my arms around Ripley.
Ripley lets out a startled laugh, then laughs again when Raj immediately joins in on the hug. Aiden spreads his arms wide, wide enough to catch Noah and Ralph, bringing them in with him.
“Seriously?” Ripley laughs.
He’s struggling to free himself, and his voice is muffled from within the group hug he’s trapped in.
But I can hear the happiness ignited in it, blazing brightly through his laughter.
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