The Less Miserables
By SoulFire77
- 351 reads
The Less Miserables Land a Gap (1)
Nova's wheels caught on a crack she should have seen coming, and the board shot out from under her like it was tired of pretending. She hit the...
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- 1061 reads
The Less Miserables Land a Gap (2)
(Cont.) That night, Nova lay on her bed staring at the water stain on her ceiling. Her whole body ached—muscles she didn't know she had, sore from...
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- 399 reads
The Less Miserables Land a Gap (3)
(Cont.) Day Three Nova stood at the edge of the flatground area, board under her arm, watching Tanner set up something he was calling "The Gauntlet...
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- 572 reads
The Less Miserables Spot a Liar (1)
Garrett counted the money three times before he was satisfied. Forty-seven dollars. Crumpled bills smoothed flat on his desk, sorted by denomination...
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- 350 reads
The Less Miserables Spot a Liar (2)
(Cont.) The silence after she left was worse than the confrontation. Garrett stood there, the heat pressing down on him, his face burning with...
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- 346 reads
The Less Miserables Spot a Liar (3)
(Cont.) At the edge of the parking lot, they could see Dusty and Wesley confronting a small group of burnouts by a rusted-out Camaro. No shouting. No...
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- 470 reads
The Less Miserables Enter a Contest (1)
The flyer was taped to the window of All-City Board Shop, already curling at the edges from the July heat. SUMMER STREET COMP Saturday, August 5th $...
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- 336 reads
The Less Miserables Enter a Contest (2)
(Cont.) For the next two weeks, Hector changed everything. He stopped running lines. Instead, he broke his contest sequence down into components and...
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- 385 reads
The Less Miserables Enter a Contest (3)
(Cont.) He finished fourth. The bleached-hair kid from Winston-Salem took first—no surprise there, his runs had been surgical, every trick landed...
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- 599 reads
The Less Miserables Lose the Day (1)
Quinn showed up too early. That was the problem with not having anything else to do. His brother Marcus had taken the car to work—the graveyard shift...
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- 540 reads
The Less Miserables Lose the Day (2)
(Cont.) "Yo, Q!" Quinn looked up. Blinked. The world came rushing back—color and sound and the weight of his own body, suddenly present again,...
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- 376 reads
The Less Miserables Lose the Day (3)
(Cont.) The Slurpees were cold and too sweet and exactly what Quinn needed. They sat on the curb outside the Quik-Mart, eight kids in a row, cups...
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- 443 reads
The Less Miserables Learn a Flip (1)
The guidance counselor's office smelled like old coffee and lavender air freshener fighting each other to a draw. Mrs. Patterson sat behind her desk...
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- 348 reads
The Less Miserables Learn a Flip (2)
She hit 847 attempts on a Thursday, two weeks and three days after she'd started counting. Still no clean land. Half-lands every session now—one foot...
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- 423 reads
The Less Miserables Cross a Line (1)
The Sharpie was still warm in Tanner's pocket when the cop car rolled past. He watched it go—slow, deliberate, the officer's head turning to scan the...
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- 320 reads
The Less Miserables Cross a Line (2)
Two weeks later, Officer Daniels showed up alone. Not in his cruiser—on foot, walking across the lot in his uniform, hands visible and empty. The...
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- 323 reads
The Less Miserables Lose a Friend (2)
On Christmas Eve, the something that changed was the temperature. The radio had warned about it—winter storm coming, temperatures dropping into the...
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- 296 reads
The Less Miserables Lose a Friend (3)
Christmas Day, Wesley stayed at Dusty's house. He didn't want to at first. Had tried to leave that morning, mumbling something about not wanting to...
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- 345 reads
The Less Miserables Break a Board (2)
She figured it out three days later, sitting in her bedroom, staring at the broken board. The room was small—barely bigger than a closet, really,...
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- 865 reads
The Less Miserables Break a Board (3)
She landed the six-stair on a Tuesday in late February. No fanfare. No audience. Just her and the stairs and the hotdog board that had become weirdly...
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- 252 reads
The Less Miserables Face the Council (2)
The rehearsals started the next day. Garrett had never taught anyone anything before. He'd always been the student, the one absorbing information,...
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- 292 reads
The Less Miserables Lose the Park (1)
The chain-link fence went up on a Monday. Dusty stood in the parking lot, watching the construction crew unroll the temporary fencing around the bowl...
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- 128 reads
The Less Miserables Lose the Park (2)
That night, Dusty made a list. He sat at his desk, the same desk where he'd made lists for the ramp project and Haley's lunches and all the other...
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- 177 reads
The Less Miserables Lose the Park (3)
Three months later. The park reopened on a Saturday in July. Dusty was there at dawn, before the construction crew even arrived, watching the first...
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- 191 reads
The Less Miserables Keep a Secret (1)
The man in the Airwalk shirt was watching again. Hector noticed him the way he noticed everything at the park—peripherally, without looking directly...
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- 87 reads
The Less Miserables Keep a Secret (2)
The next few days, he paid attention to how the others skated. Not the tricks—he'd been watching those for years, could describe everyone's technique...
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- 91 reads