Two years ago, Sam Jones’s life was going well. He was exceling in art classes and planning on applying to art college, his parents’ drawn-out divorce had been finalized, he was improving at skating (skateboarding), and he was almost 16. However, it was also during this time that Sam made what he now considers to be his biggest mistake.

He then goes farther back in time to when he first developed an interest in skating. His mum gifted him a poster of Tony Hawk, the world’s most famous skateboarder. Sam put the poster up on his wall and read Hawk’s autobiography so many times that he memorized it. He began talking to the poster about his skateboarding, imagining Hawk replying to him with quotes from his autobiography. Sam admits that he feels strange about it, but it works well enough that he started talking to his poster about his personal life, too. He feels that Tony Hawk is a better version of himself and who he aspires to be.

Sam’s mother had him when she was 16. He remembers a day he went skating with his friends Rubbish and Rabbit at a vacant concrete pond they call “the Bowl.