The Extreme Team: Day of the Dragon

Text copyright © 2004 by Matt Christopher Royalties, Inc. Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Michael Koelsch

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First eBook Edition: September 2008

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ISBN: 978-0-316-02998-8

CHAPTER ONE

Mark Goldstein took off his glasses, wiped them clean, and put them back on again. I'll never be able to do this, he thought. Alison Lee, the teenager who kept watch over the town skatepark, was demonstrating a skateboard move called the kickflip. Mark and his friends, Savannah Smith and Belicia "Bizz" Juarez, were about to try it for the first time.

"You guys can do ollies, right?" Alison asked. Mark and the girls nodded. "Well, the kickflip is like an ollie. Except when the board is in the air, it flips around, like a barrel rolling. Here, let me show you."

She put her left foot on the board's kicktail. Her right foot went between the front and back trucks. "With an ollie, your front foot is sideways. With the kickflip, it's at an angle." She turned her right foot. "Think of the board as a clock face. The nose is at twelve o'clock. Point your foot between ten and eleven.

"This next stuff happens fast," she continued. "Stomp your back foot to make the board pop up, just like an ollie. At the same time, drag your front foot forward and off the side. Flick your toe just enough to make the board flip toward you. After the board flips all the way around, it falls to the ground and you land on it. Like this."

One moment, she was standing on her board. The next, she was high in the air, legs tucked up and her board a blur of motion beneath her. Then the board landed on its wheels and she landed on the board.

"Easy, huh?" she said with a grin. "So, you wanna try?"