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Boy Wonder (Cont.)


	Sky's the limit: Trampoline action in Roger's backyard (James Smolka)

"WATCH THIS!"

Roger Carver is in his backyard in Placerville, California, climbing a dilapidated skateboard halfpipe with a basketball under his arm. The ramp is ten feet tall, and its plywood skin has peeled away to reveal the dinosaur ribs of its wooden innards. Roger wants to see if he can make a shot—not a regular basketball shot, but a "hekka-far shot." Hekka-far is what you call a really far shot, the kind of shot fans take at the halftimes of NBA games to win a million dollars. Roger, who is 12, has short blond hair and cheeks flushed bright pink. He has spent the last four hours bouncing on a trampoline, climbing a tree, fishing for bass, spinning the basketball on his finger, practicing a new 360 grab move on his skateboard, and hopping around the yard in quick, froggy jumps. He is not tired; Roger is never tired, except at night after he takes his white pill, and sometimes not even then.

He reaches the top and stands in the sunlight. The ball looks large compared with the rest of him. Roger is a shade over four-foot-six and weighs 76 pounds, though he's pretty sure he's gained a little lately and now is up to 79, seriously.

"Don't you go and fall, Roger," his mother, Terrie, warns in a fierce voice.

"Mo-om!" Roger says exasperatedly. "I'm not going to fall."

His voice is the first thing you notice about Roger Carver. It's high and lilting, a voice his parents liken to that of a cartoon chipmunk. Roger does not care for the sound of his voice, but it doesn't stop him from using it all the time: doing impressions, sound effects, and, most of all, singing. Roger has always liked to sing. Up and down the radio dial he goes, producing clear, trilling versions of Creed, Blink-182, Santana, Pat Benatar. Heart-breaker, dream maker, love taker, don't you mess around with me. He likes to sing while he's snowboarding, made-up songs that flow to a fast and unfollowable rhythm—boom a bappa boombamboom bappa boom bappa bop.

No, Roger Carver will not fall, because he was born with hekka-good balance. How good? Well, you can add it up: There's the 19 national snowboarding championships he's won over the past six years in the sport's five events (halfpipe, slopestyle, slalom, giant slalom, and boardercross). There's the fact that he hasn't been beaten in the slalom or giant slalom since he was seven. There are the four snowboarding videos and the movie with Michael Keaton (which was kind of lame but which you might have heard of anyway, called Jack Frost). There are the dozens of boxes of free clothes and equipment, and the photos in Transworld Snowboarding. But the most impressive thing about Roger's balance is that he never seems to fall. If they gave a medal for not falling, Roger would win every time. When people try to describe it, they make comparisons: He is like a rag doll. He is like one of those weeble-wobble toys that always bounces back. They make comparisons because merely telling the story doesn't capture the sheer impossibility of it. Like the time this year at the nationals when he caught an edge and shot 50 feet off the course, then somehow turned, nailed the gate he'd missed, and went on to win. Or the nationals slalom race when he beat all but five of the men in the 30- to 39-year-old division and everybody made a big deal out of it because he'd just turned eight.

There are tons of stories like that.

There are other stories, too, ones that don't have anything to do with snowboarding but with the other stuff Roger does. Because Roger is always doing something. He is always skateboarding or doing tricks on his mountain bike or jumping really high on a trampoline, higher than Jason or Chad or Josh or Ethan or any of the other kids in his sixth-grade class. If you spend any time with Roger, you get the distinct impression that he could never not be doing something. Like right now, for instance, as he stands on top of the broken-down skateboard ramp and throws the basketball at the distant hoop. He watches it fall perfectly through the net and sends that high voice ringing across the yard.

"Did you see that? Did you?"

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