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Chapter 1 continued...

"Great," said XL. "So, I'll start with the advantages of skating."

"Firstly, it is a lovely winter day, just a few degrees below freezing, with no wind, and a sunny sky. It's just perfect for skating, and that doesn't happen every weekend in the winter, you know."

"Secondly, we had fun skating before, so I know you like it."

"Thirdly, to stay healthy everyone needs some exercise. You, my friend, would be a little less rotund if you exercised more!"

"I am not rotund!" exclaimed Beeba. "What does rotund mean?"

"It means you are a little bit wider than you would like to be," answered XL.

"It is better than being a toothpick!" retorted Beeba. "You could use a bit of body building yourself!"

"True enough," answered XL, "which is why I suggested it! So, now you tell me the advantages of playing the game."

"The main thing," answered Beeba, "is that a game cannot be played alone. We can only play it when we are together, and we are together now. Whereas, each of us could go skating by ourselves, some other time."

"That's true," said XL, but skating is so much more fun to do with a friend. So if we skate together now we get two advantages: friendly fun and fitness.

"O.K." said Beeba, but next time let's do the fitness activity first while we are still fresh, and leave time to relax with a nice board game afterward.

"Deal!" said XL.

So, they grabbed their skates and put on their coats, and departed for the nearby skating rink.

XL and Beeba arrived at the outdoor skating rink about 3:30 PM in the afternoon. It was the warmest part of the mid-January day, and much warmer than usual for that time of year.

Calling it a rink was a bit of a misnomer, because traditionally a rink is surrounded by boards, to make it suitable for hockey. This ice, however, was the edge of a pond, and although there was a fence along one side, it wasn't a regulation rink. Indeed, it was at least five times as large as a hockey rink, allowing lots of room for skating. There were evergreen trees all around, plus a couple of trees sticking out of the ice near one end.

On one side was the warm-up shack. XL and Beeba entered and put on their skates. Leaving their boots inside, they came out onto the ice.

There were many people skating that afternoon. XL recognized a family who lived near him. The dad was a police man. He was there with his wife and two children. Also there were several other kids he knew from his own school, as well as at least two dozen other children and adults whom he didn't recognize.

XL zoomed around the perimeter of the pond, in order to warm up his muscles in the crisp air. Beeba followed, but a little slower and not quite as steady. XL had skated since he was a toddler, but Beeba got his first skates only last year, so he wasn't as well practiced.

To help, XL took off his scarf. He held one end, and when Beeba grabbed the other, XL towed Beeba around the ice. That gave a nice easy ride to Beeba, who merely needed to stand still, crouch a bit, and take care to keep his balance. Then as they approached the edge of the ice, XL turned, causing Beeba to zoom faster at the end of the scarf, as in the game of crack-the-whip. As Beeba swung through the end of the turn, he let go of the scarf and continued coasting the whole length of the pond before coming to a stop.

That was fun, and they took turns pulling each other. For a while, a couple of other school friends joined them, and they all skated holding hands, and at the turns they did the "cracking the whip" maneuver, that send the outermost child zooming across the ice.

They also tried stopping and skating backwards, which were not very easy! XL demonstrated his newest trick, which is to skate on one foot, while he leaned forward with his arms outstretched and his other leg straight back. Apart from the one leg that held him up, his body, arms and legs were all horizontal. That was his best trick that he learned himself, having never taken any figure skating lessons (nor any other skating lessons, for that matter).

They continued skating for at least an hour. By the time they were done, most of the other people who had been skating that afternoon had already departed. The sun was low in the sky, and it would soon set. XL figured it would soon be 5 PM: time for Beeba to return home, and for XL to go home for supper.

XL and Beeba returned to the shack to take off their skates and put on their boots. With the heavy wooden door closed behind them, there was only dim light in the shack, streaming in from two small windows on the side of the shack. There was an electric heater in the shack, but the single light inside was on a timer, awaiting evening before it would turn on.

After a couple of minutes, when their eyes had adjusted to the dim light, XL noticed that a cell phone had been left sitting on one of the wooden benches that were around the perimeter of the shack. There were no boots under the bench below the place where the phone laid. XL guessed that the owner of the phone had left already, but just to check he opened the shack door and yelled out over the pond, "Hey, has anybody lost a cell phone?" There were only half a dozen skaters still on the ice. They looked at him as they passed, so apparently they heard, but they just continued on.

XL closed the door and turned to Beeba, who was still taking off his second skate. "We need to figure out who owns this phone," said XL to Beeba, "and return it to them."

"Check the contact list on the phone," said Beeba. Maybe we will recognize some of the names, and then we can figure out who owns it."

"No luck," said XL. "The phone is password protected."

"Take it home with you," said Beeba, "and maybe your mom or dad will know what to do. You can't leave it here. Somebody might steal it."

"Maybe the owner will come back," said XL.

"They might not come back until tomorrow. And if it is left here it will freeze overnight. I don't think that is good for a phone."

"O.K.," said XL. "I'll take it back home with me."

"I have to go home now," said Beeba.

"I'll walk with you as far as your house," said XL, "and then I'll go home myself."

Copyright Arthur de Leyssac, 2017. All rights reserved.