The Less Miserables Face the Council (3)

The vote was four to three in favor of renovation.

For a moment, Garrett wasn't sure he'd heard correctly. The words didn't make sense—after months of uncertainty, after weeks of preparation, after years of the park being neglected and abandoned, it seemed impossible that they'd actually won.

Not demolition. Renovation. The city would allocate $15,000 for repairs—more than the minimum estimate, enough to actually fix the major problems. New coping. New concrete in the worst areas. Even new lighting, so they could skate after dark without relying on the streetlights from the parking lot.

The park would stay open.

The chamber erupted. The Less Miserables were hugging each other, laughing, crying, making enough noise that the mayor had to bang her gavel three times to restore order. Vernon was pumping his fist in the air. Officer Daniels was grinning, his usual stern expression completely gone. Even some of the parents were wiping their eyes.

The developer in the three-piece suit gathered his papers and left without speaking to anyone. His face was blank, professionally neutral, but Garrett could see the tension in his shoulders, the clip of his stride. He'd expected to win. He'd probably had plans already, blueprints drawn up, investors lined up. And a bunch of teenagers had beaten him.

Garrett watched him go and felt nothing but satisfaction.

Outside, in the cool March night, they stood in a circle in the parking lot and tried to process what had happened.

"We did it," Nova said. "We actually did it."

"The data helped," Hector said. "You could see them paying attention when Nova showed the cost comparison. The lady with the glasses was nodding."

"And Zara's closer," Dusty added. "That line about not being able to build another place—I saw the gray-haired woman write it down."

They were analyzing, Garrett realized. Breaking down what had worked and why. The same way they analyzed skating—what made a trick land, what adjustments helped, what to do differently next time.

They'd learned how to learn. And they'd applied it to something that mattered.

"You know what's weird?" Tanner said. "I'm not even that hyped about the park staying open. I mean, I am, but—" He struggled to find the words. "I'm more hyped about the fact that we did this. That we figured out how to convince a bunch of adults to listen to us."

"That's not weird," Garrett said. "That's the whole point."

"What do you mean?"

"The park was the goal. But the skills we learned getting here—research, presentation, advocacy—those are ours forever. Even if we'd lost, we'd still have those."

Zara snorted. "That sounds like something your dad would say."

"Maybe." Garrett smiled. "But that doesn't make it wrong."

---

They went to the park that night.

It was too dark to skate—the lights had never worked, another thing the renovation would hopefully fix—but they went anyway. The concrete was cold and damp with dew, but nobody cared. They sat on the bowl's edge, eight kids in a row, their legs dangling over the concrete, looking at the park they'd fought to save.

The moon was up, half-full, casting silver light across the transitions. The snake run was a darker shadow in the darkness. The ramp Dusty had built stood at the far end, solid and patient, waiting for wheels to roll across it again.

Wesley had picked up a six-pack of Coke from the gas station on his way, and they passed the cans around, the aluminum cold in their hands, the carbonation fizzing against their lips. A toast to the victory. A toast to themselves.

"To Deadwood," Dusty said.

"To Deadwood," they echoed.

The sound of their voices carried across the empty park, bounced off the Cone Mills building, faded into the night. Somewhere a dog barked. Traffic hummed on the highway. The world went on, indifferent to what they'd accomplished—but they knew. They'd remember.

Garrett sat between Nova and Zara, feeling the cold concrete through his jeans, listening to his friends joke and laugh and replay their favorite moments from the meeting. Quinn was doing an impression of the developer, pretending to check an imaginary watch while looking extremely put-out. Tanner was dramatically recreating his own speech, adding flourishes he definitely hadn't included in the actual version.

This was what he'd been looking for, Garrett realized. When he'd first started coming to Deadwood, he'd thought he wanted to learn to skate. And he did—he'd gotten better, learned tricks, improved his technique. But that wasn't really why he kept coming back.

He came back because of this. The people. The belonging. The sense that he was part of something that mattered, something that wasn't about money or status or which neighborhood you lived in.

His dad had taught him a lot, through all those years of watching and learning. How to research. How to present. How to read a room and know what people wanted to hear. How to build a case and deliver it with confidence. Those were valuable skills—skills that had helped them win tonight.

But the Less Miserables had taught him something his dad never could: how to be part of a group that wasn't held together by money or status, but by shared struggle and mutual support. How to belong somewhere because you'd earned it, not because you'd bought your way in. How to care about something enough to fight for it, even when the odds seemed impossible.

His dad would have been proud of the presentation. The research, the structure, the delivery—all of it met the standard he'd set through years of example. But his dad wouldn't have understood why it mattered. Wouldn't have understood what Deadwood meant, what these people meant, what it felt like to sit on cold concrete in the dark with friends who'd become family.

That was the difference between watching and belonging. And tonight, for the first time, Garrett felt like he truly belonged.

"Hey, Garrett." Zara's voice, cutting through his thoughts. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For the coaching thing. The presentation stuff." She wasn't looking at him, was staring out at the dark park instead. "I didn't want to admit it, but it helped. Made me feel like we actually had a chance."

"We did have a chance. We had a good case."

"Yeah, but I didn't know that. I thought we were going to lose. I thought all the data in the world wouldn't make those suits listen to a bunch of skate rats from the wrong side of town." She finally looked at him. "You made me believe we could win. That's not nothing."

Garrett didn't know what to say. So he just nodded, and they sat there together, watching the dark, waiting for whatever came next.

---

Three weeks later.

The construction crews arrived on a Monday morning.

Garrett was there to watch them—had been at the park since dawn, unable to stay away. The workers moved with efficient purpose, unloading tools and materials from trucks with the city seal on their doors, setting up barriers around the areas that needed the most work.

The renovation would take about a month, they said. During that time, the park would be closed. No skating allowed.

A month without Deadwood. It seemed like forever.

But as Garrett watched the workers start to jackhammer out the worst of the cracked concrete, breaking apart the old to make way for the new, he felt something unexpected: hope. Not just for the park, but for himself. For all of them.

They'd done something impossible. They'd convinced a city council to change its mind—seven adults who'd probably never skateboarded in their lives, who probably thought of kids like them as nuisances at best and delinquents at worst. They'd learned skills they never knew they needed and applied them to a problem that had seemed unsolvable.

If they could do that, what else could they do?

The question felt less like pressure and more like possibility. A door opening onto a room full of things he hadn't known he could want.

One of the workers waved him over. "You one of the kids who saved this place?"

"One of them, yeah."

"Good work." The man grinned, his face weathered from years of outdoor labor. "My nephew skates here. He wouldn't shut up about you guys for a week. Said you all gave speeches like lawyers or something."

"We practiced a lot."

"It showed. Tell your friends they did good."

"I will."

Garrett watched the construction for another hour, his hands in his pockets, the March morning warming around him as the sun climbed higher. The jackhammer bit into concrete. Workers measured and marked. The old coping came off in sections, rust-brown and crumbling, the metal that had held together under thousands of grinds finally giving way. New materials waited in neat stacks—fresh lumber, bags of cement, coils of rebar.

It would be different when it reopened. Better, probably. Smoother concrete, sturdier coping, lights that actually worked. But something would be lost too—the character of a place that had survived through neglect, that had been held together by duct tape and DIY repairs and the stubborn love of kids who refused to let it die.

Then he walked home, already thinking about what came next.

The park was saved. The renovation was happening. And somewhere in the back of his mind, a new question was forming—not what they could do for Deadwood, but what Deadwood had taught them to do for themselves.

The answer, he suspected, was anything they wanted.

 

~End~