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, with a mattress on the floor and a dresser that didn't close all the way and a window that looked out onto the parking lot of the apartment complex. The walls were thin; she could hear Rick watching TV in the living room, the canned laughter of some sitcom bleeding through like background radiation.

The reason she wanted the kickflip wasn't about the trick. It was about Nova. About watching someone else achieve something and feeling left behind. About the fear that if she didn't keep up, she'd lose her place—in the crew, in the park, in the only part of her life that felt like it belonged to her.

She wanted the kickflip because she was scared of being forgotten. Scared of being surpassed. Scared of being the one who couldn't do what everyone else could do, the one who got left behind while everyone else moved forward.

The realization hit her like a physical thing, a weight settling on her chest. She'd been chasing an outcome—landing the trick, getting the recognition, proving she mattered—instead of focusing on the process. And the outcome had broken her board and left her with nothing.

She thought about what Hector had said. About efficiency. About tracking attempts and writing down adjustments. About the middle part where learning actually happened.

She thought about Nova's sketchbook, full of diagrams and notes and the obsessive detail that had seemed ridiculous and now seemed smart. About Dusty's lists taped to his bedroom wall, the systems he'd built to catch his own failures. About Quinn's notebook, still being filled with tally marks and observations.

Maybe the secret wasn't about being naturally talented. Maybe it wasn't about wanting it badly enough, or being angry enough, or throwing yourself at things until something gave. Maybe it was about having a system.

Zara pulled out a spiral notebook she'd been using for school—mostly empty, because school wasn't exactly her priority. The cover was battered, the spine cracked, pages falling out. But there was blank paper inside.

She flipped to a clean page. Wrote at the top:

Goals.

Below it, she wrote:

1. Get a new board.
2. Land the six-stair kickflip.

She looked at what she'd written. It felt incomplete somehow. Like she was missing something important. Like she was still thinking about it wrong—still focused on destinations instead of directions, on outcomes instead of processes.

She crossed out the second goal and wrote instead:

2. Learn kickflips properly. On flat first. Then small drops. Then bigger.

Better. But still not quite right. Still focused on the outcome instead of the process.

She added:

3. Figure out why I care so much about being better than everyone else.

That one hurt to write. But it felt true.

---

The board problem solved itself in an unexpected way.

She'd been planning to ask Garrett for a loan—not charity, a loan, which felt slightly less humiliating—when Dusty showed up at the park with a deck under his arm.

"Found this at Goodwill," he said, handing it to her. "Three dollars. The graphic's ugly as sin, but the wood's solid."

Zara looked at it. The graphic was a cartoon hotdog doing a kickflip—yellow mustard dripping from the bun, a face on the sausage that looked somewhere between determined and constipated. It was possibly the ugliest thing she'd ever seen on a skateboard. Something a six-year-old would think was hilarious.

But when she flexed the deck, pressing down on the nose and tail, it felt sturdy. No delamination. No soft spots. Good pop.

"You bought me a board?"

"I bought a board I knew you'd need." Dusty shrugged. "There's a difference."

She could see the logic in it, the Dusty-ness of it. He'd built a system for himself—for remembering things, for taking care of his sister, for fixing the ramp. And now he was building systems for the people around him too. Anticipating needs. Solving problems before they became crises.

"I can pay you back."

"Three dollars? Don't insult me." But he was smiling, that quiet smile he had when he'd done something kind and didn't want credit for it. "Just land something cool on it and we're even."

"The graphic is hideous."

"The graphic is iconic. That hotdog has more personality than half the people I know." Dusty crossed his arms. "Besides, ugly boards skate better. Everyone knows that."

"That's not a real thing."

"It's definitely a real thing. Look it up."

Zara looked at the hotdog graphic. Looked at Dusty. Felt something loosen in her chest that had been tight for weeks—the knot of shame and jealousy and fear that had been choking her since Nova's moment on the stairs.

"Thanks," she said. "Seriously."

"Don't mention it. And I mean that literally—don't mention it. If Tanner finds out I spent three dollars on a hotdog board, he'll never let me hear the end of it."

---

She started over.

Not from zero—she still knew how to skateboard, still had the muscle memory from months of practice. But she started over with the kickflip, going back to basics the way Hector had suggested.

Day one: fifty attempts on flat. Landed twelve. Wrote it down in her notebook, in handwriting that looked nothing like Hector's neat columns. Just a number and a date and a note: Flick too weak. Board not rotating enough.

Day two: fifty attempts on flat. Landed nineteen. The flick was getting more consistent, her foot sliding off the corner of the board the way it was supposed to. Better. Still catching late.

Day three: fifty attempts on flat. Landed twenty-three. Still catching the board slightly late, her feet finding the deck after it had already started descending. Adjustment: pop earlier, watch the board longer before committing to the catch. Wrote it down.

Day four: fifty attempts on flat. Landed twenty-seven. The adjustment was working. Pop timing is better. Need to work on landing centered.

It was boring. She'd been right about that. The same trick, over and over, on the same flat ground, with no audience and no glory and nothing to show for it except a slowly filling notebook. No one was watching. No one was cheering. Just her and the hotdog board and the concrete.

But something was different this time. Without the pressure of the six-stair, without the competition with Nova, without the desperate need to prove herself, she could actually focus on what she was doing. Could feel the small improvements, the tiny adjustments, the way her body was learning something new.

By the end of the first week, she was landing thirty out of fifty. By the end of the second week, it was closer to forty. The numbers in her notebook traced a curve that went up and to the right, proof of progress that she couldn't deny even when she felt like she wasn't getting anywhere.

"You're getting consistent," Hector observed, watching her nail three in a row.

"Still not ready for the six-stair."

"No. But you're closer than you were."

"How much closer?"

He considered. "Maybe another month. If you keep tracking, keep adjusting, keep showing up even when it feels pointless."

A month. It sounded like forever. But it also sounded achievable. Like a destination she could actually reach, instead of a cliff she kept throwing herself off.

"Okay," she said. "A month."

---

The month passed faster than she expected.

January turned to February, the cold deepening and then slowly retreating. The ice that had crusted the bowl's edges melted away. The days started getting longer, sunset pushing past five o'clock, giving her more time to practice before the light failed.

The six-month deadline from the city council loomed closer—three months left, then two and a half, the threat of demolition hanging over everything like a storm cloud that never quite broke. The others talked about it sometimes, in worried voices, making plans for what to do if the worst happened. But Zara didn't let herself think about it. The park was the one good thing in her life; imagining it gone felt like imagining herself gone.

She poured that fear into her practice. Fifty attempts a day, minimum. Sometimes more when she had the energy, less when she didn't. She tracked everything—success rates, common mistakes, adjustments that helped and adjustments that didn't. The notebook became her companion, her confessor, the record of her transformation from angry thrashing to deliberate progress.

She started noticing patterns. Her kickflips were cleaner in the afternoon than the morning—something about being warmed up, maybe, or just more awake. She landed better when she wasn't angry, which was frustrating because she was angry a lot of the time. She struggled on days when she hadn't eaten enough, which was also a lot of the time.

The anger thing was the hardest to deal with. Zara had always skated angry—it was her fuel, her motivation, the thing that kept her pushing when everything hurt and nothing was working. But the tracking showed a clear pattern: on days when she arrived at the park already pissed off about something (her mom's boyfriend, school, life in general), her success rate dropped by almost twenty percent.

"Why do you think that is?" Hector asked, when she mentioned it to him.

"I don't know. Maybe anger makes me sloppy?"

"Or maybe it makes you impatient. You skip steps. Rush the setup. Don't commit fully to the catch because you're already thinking about the next attempt."

Zara thought about it. He was probably right. When she was angry, she wanted results now, wanted the satisfaction of landing something to prove that she wasn't worthless, that she was capable, that she mattered. The wanting got in the way of the doing.

"So what am I supposed to do? Just... stop being angry?"

"You can't stop being angry. Anger's not a choice. But you can learn to set it aside while you practice. Treat the session like its own space, separate from everything else." Hector shrugged. "Some people meditate. Some people listen to music. I just take five minutes before I start and focus on my breathing until my head's clear."

"That sounds like hippie bulls***."

"It works. The data doesn't lie."

Zara didn't try the breathing thing—that really did feel too hippie for her, too soft, too much like admitting weakness. But she started doing something else.

Before each session, she'd sit on the bowl's edge for a few minutes and write in her notebook. Not practice notes, but whatever was bugging her that day. The fight with her mom. The thing her teacher said. The way the landlord had looked at her in the hallway like she was a roach he wanted to stomp. The way Rick had laughed at some show on TV last night, like he lived in a world where things were funny, while Zara sat in her room doing homework she didn't understand.

She wrote it down, closed the notebook, and then started practicing. The writing became a kind of ritual—a way of emptying out the garbage so there was room for something else.

It helped. Not perfectly, not every time, but enough that she could feel the difference. Her success rate climbed another five percent on the days she wrote first. The numbers didn't lie.

The notebook filled up. Pages of tally marks and observations, a record of slow, grinding progress. Not as neat as Hector's, not as artistic as Nova's, but hers.

Week 3: 40/50 on flat. Ready to try the three-stair?

The three-stair was behind the loading dock at the back of the park, a set of concrete steps that nobody used for anything except skating. The drops were shallow—maybe four inches each—but they felt huge the first time she approached them with intent.

Week 4: Three-stair attempt. 15 tries, 3 lands. Back foot keeps slipping. Adjustment: more wax on tail, consciously grip with toes.

The first land was ugly—one foot on, one foot half off, rolling away wobbly and off-balance. But it was a land. She wrote it down. Attempt 847. Three months after Nova's attempt 848.

Week 5: Three-stair getting consistent. 20 tries, 11 lands. Ready for the four?

The four-stair was across the street, behind the abandoned furniture warehouse. She'd skated past it a hundred times without really seeing it. Now she saw it everywhere—in her dreams, in the moments before she fell asleep, in the calculations she ran while sitting in class pretending to pay attention.

Week 6: Four-stair is scary. Why is one more stair so much scarier? Landed 2 out of 12. Both sketchy. Need more speed on approach.

The four-stair took another week to feel comfortable. Another week of showing up, of tracking, of writing down adjustments and then trying them. Her notebook filled with observations: Pop at the edge, not before. Watch the board through the rotation. Trust the catch.

She'd stopped comparing herself to Nova somewhere around week four. Not because she'd stopped caring—she still wanted to be good, still wanted recognition, still wanted all the things she'd wanted before. But the wanting had shifted somehow. It was less about beating someone else and more about beating herself. About being better today than she'd been yesterday.

It was a subtle difference. But it changed everything.

 

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