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 dear to her over the past two months.

She'd been working up to it all week. Four-stair on Monday, consistent enough that she felt ready—eight lands out of ten, clean and controlled. Six-stair attempts on Tuesday morning, bailing three times before she found the right speed, the right angle, the right moment to pop.

The first attempt, she chickened out at the last second—stepped off instead of committing, watched her board clatter down the stairs without her. Her body knew what she needed to do; her mind wasn't ready to let it.

The second attempt, she committed but popped too late, the trick happening mid-air instead of at the top of the stairs. Landed primo on the edge of the board and barely avoided breaking her ankle. The impact jarred through her whole body, her teeth clacking together.

The third attempt was closer—caught it, both feet on the deck, but her back foot slipped off at the last second and she had to bail mid-air. Rolled when she hit the ground, the way Hector had taught her, spreading the impact across her shoulder and hip instead of taking it all on her wrists.

She sat at the top of the stairs after the third bail, breathing hard, staring at the landing. The concrete looked so far away. So hard. So unforgiving.

This is what you've been working toward for two months, she told herself. All those attempts on flat. All those three-stairs and four-stairs. All that tracking and adjusting and showing up even when you didn't want to. This is what it was for.

But another voice—quieter, meaner—whispered something else: What if you can't do it? What if you did all that work and you're still not good enough?

She thought about her notebook. About the success rates that had climbed week by week, the numbers that traced a path from twelve out of fifty to forty out of fifty to eighty percent on the three-stair. About the adjustments she'd made, the patterns she'd discovered, the slow accumulation of skill that the numbers proved even when her feelings said otherwise.

The numbers didn't lie. She was ready. The question was whether she could trust herself to believe it.

The fourth attempt was the one.

She pushed toward the stairs, feeling the familiar buildup of speed. Her wheels hummed on the concrete. The edge of the top stair approached, closer and closer. She bent her knees. Shifted her weight. Hit the edge.

Popped.

The board rotated beneath her—one clean revolution, the grip tape flashing black against the gray sky. The ground dropped away. Six stairs of empty air, her body suspended, weightless for a fraction of a second that felt much longer.

Her feet found the deck. Both of them, at the same time, the catch she'd been practicing for two months happening exactly the way she'd trained it to happen. The board was beneath her, solid and real.

She landed. Hard, the impact jarring through her ankles and knees and up her spine, but clean. The hotdog board held. Her feet stayed planted. She rolled away, wheels humming on concrete, her body remembering what to do even as her mind was still catching up to what had just happened.

She carved to a stop near the chain-link fence, turned around, looked back at the stairs. From down here, they looked different—smaller, less terrifying, just six concrete steps that she'd just flown over.

For a moment, she just stood there, her heart pounding, the cold February air burning in her lungs. Her palms were sweating despite the chill. Her legs felt shaky, the adrenaline still coursing through her system. She'd done it. After all the failed attempts, the broken board, the notebook full of tally marks and adjustments—she'd actually done it.

But the feeling wasn't what she'd expected.

Back in January, she'd imagined this moment as a triumph. Proof that she was just as good as Nova, just as worthy of respect, just as deserving of a place in the crew. She'd expected fireworks, or at least the emotional equivalent—some massive surge of validation that would fill all the empty places inside her.

Instead, what she felt was... quieter. A deep satisfaction, like scratching an itch she'd had for months. Pride, yes, but not the desperate kind. Not the kind that needed an audience to be real.

Because somewhere along the way, she'd stopped needing the validation. The process—the tracking, the adjusting, the slow accumulation of skill—had become its own reward. Landing the trick was just confirmation of something she already knew: she was capable of learning. Of getting better. Of achieving things through work instead of talent or luck.

That was the real prize. Not the trick itself, but the knowledge that she could trust herself to do hard things.

---

"You landed it," Nova said.

It was later that afternoon. The others had shown up, and someone—Tanner, probably—had noticed the fresh scrape on Zara's elbow from one of her morning bails.

"This morning," Zara confirmed. "Took me about two months."

"That's faster than me. I think mine was closer to three."

"You were learning the kickflip from scratch. I already knew the flat version." Zara shrugged. "Different starting points."

Nova was quiet for a moment. Then: "Can I see your notebook?"

Zara hesitated. The notebook felt private somehow—a record of her failures as much as her successes, all the days when she'd wanted to quit and hadn't. The anger entries, the days when her success rate had dropped because she'd arrived at the park too pissed off to focus. The whole messy, ugly process of becoming better.

But she pulled it out anyway. Handed it over.

Nova flipped through the pages. Her expression shifted as she read—from curiosity to recognition to something that looked almost like respect.

"This is really detailed," she said. "The adjustment notes, especially. 'More wax on tail.' 'Consciously grip with toes.' 'Pop earlier on stairs, watch the board longer.' This is exactly what Hector talks about."

"I listened. Eventually."

"You did more than listen. You made it your own." Nova handed the notebook back, her expression thoughtful. "The anger notes especially. 'Session better when I write first.' 'Success rate drops when I arrive already pissed.' That's self-awareness. That's hard to develop."

"I had to. The data made it obvious."

"The data made it visible. You still had to do something about it." Nova tucked her board under her arm. "I'm proud of you."

The words hit Zara harder than she expected. She'd spent so long being jealous of Nova, comparing herself, feeling like she was falling behind. She hadn't considered that Nova might be proud of her. That they might not be in competition at all. That maybe—just maybe—there was room for both of them to be good at things.

"Thanks," she said. "That means... yeah. Thanks."

"You want to session the six-stair together? I've been working on heelflips. Could use a spotter."

Zara looked at the stairs. At Nova. At the hotdog board that had carried her through two months of practice—the stupid, ugly, weirdly beloved hotdog board that she would defend with her life if anyone talked trash about it now.

"Yeah," she said. "Let's do it."

---

That night, she added a new section to her notebook:

What I learned:

1. Outcome goals are traps. Process goals are the real thing.

2. Tracking matters. You can't improve what you don't measure.

3. Comparison is poison. The only person I need to beat is yesterday's version of me.

4. It's okay to want recognition. It's not okay to need it.

5. The hotdog graphic is still ugly, but I kind of love it now.

She looked at what she'd written. It wasn't a comprehensive philosophy of life. It wasn't going to solve all her problems—the mom's boyfriend, the money struggles, the constant low-grade chaos of being fifteen and poor and angry at the world.

But it was something. A framework. A way of thinking about goals that didn't leave her broken at the bottom of a staircase.

She closed the notebook, set it on her nightstand next to the broken pieces of her old board. She'd kept them, for some reason. A reminder of where she'd been. Of what happened when you chased outcomes without understanding the process.

The skull-and-roses graphic stared up at her from the broken half, faded and worn but still visible. She'd hated that graphic once. Now she felt something almost like fondness for it. Like it belonged to a different person—the angry girl who'd thrown herself at a trick she wasn't ready for because she couldn't stand to be second-best.

That girl was still in there somewhere. Still angry, still competitive, still hungry for recognition. But she was learning to manage it now. Learning to channel it into something productive instead of destructive.

Tomorrow she'd go back to the park. Start working on the next thing—heelflips, maybe, or boardslides on the new rail Dusty had been building. The six-stair was done, but there was always another goal to chase.

That was the thing about skating. About life, probably. You never really arrived. You just kept moving, kept learning, kept finding new things to work toward. The destination was an illusion—there was only the journey, and how you chose to walk it.

The trick was making sure you enjoyed the journey. Making sure you learned from the process instead of just suffering through it. Making sure you measured your progress against yourself instead of everyone else around you.

Zara turned off her light and went to sleep, dreaming of stairs and kickflips and the strange, quiet satisfaction of doing hard things well.

 

~End~