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
$10 Entry / All Ages
1st Place: Free Shoes (Etnies or DC) + Feature in Shop Video
2nd Place: $50 Store Credit
3rd Place: Deck of Choice

Hector read it three times, standing on the sidewalk with his board under his arm while the afternoon traffic crawled down Spring Garden Street. The sun was directly overhead, pressing down on the back of his neck like a hand that wouldn't let go. His shirt was soaked through from the session at Deadwood, dark patches spreading under his arms and down his spine, and he could feel the grit from the concrete embedded in his palms where he'd caught himself on that last bail. The scrape on his left palm was still fresh, still stinging when he flexed his fingers.

Free shoes.

He looked down at his Etnies—the Sal 23s he'd bought six months ago with three weeks of landscaping money. Twenty-one hours of hauling mulch and pulling weeds in the August heat, sweat stinging his eyes while Mr. Patterson watched from the porch with his lemonade and his newspaper and his air-conditioned house. The toe cap was separating from the sole on his left foot now, held together with Shoe Goo that was starting to yellow and crack. The grip tape had worn through to the rubber in spots, smooth patches where his feet had rubbed the same places a thousand times. Another month, maybe two, and they'd be done. And then he'd have to find another twenty-one hours somewhere, or skate in whatever his mom could find at the Goodwill on Patterson Avenue.

His dad would tell him to make them last. His dad always said that—make things last, we can't afford to replace everything every time it wears out, you think money grows on trees? His dad, who worked the processing line at Pilgrim's Pride for nine dollars and seventy-five cents an hour, coming home at 6 p.m. smelling like chicken blood and industrial cleaner, the smell so deep in his clothes that no amount of washing could get it out. His dad, who'd been doing the same job for twelve years and still drove a truck with 180,000 miles on it, the check engine light permanently lit, the driver's side window stuck halfway down because the motor had given up.

Hector thought about what new shoes would feel like. The grip when you pushed. The cushioning when you landed. The way your feet didn't ache after four hours of skating because the soles weren't worn down to cardboard. He'd tried on a pair of DCs at the mall once, just to see, and the salesman had watched him like he was about to run, like the shoes might disappear if he took his eyes off them for a second.

He hadn't bought them. Couldn't buy them. The price tag said $65, which was six and a half hours of hauling mulch, which was more than he'd made that entire summer.

"You gonna stand there all day or you gonna go in?"

Dusty had appeared beside him, Slurpee in hand, the red syrup already melting down the sides of the cup, collecting in a sticky ring around his fingers. He nodded at the flyer. "Contest, huh? You should enter."

"Maybe."

"Maybe nothing." Dusty took a long slurp, the straw making that hollow sound when it hit the bottom of the ice. "You're the best skater at Deadwood. You'd smoke these fools."

Hector didn't respond. He was still looking at the flyer, still doing the math in his head. Ten dollars entry. That was two hours of hauling mulch for Mr. Patterson, or four hours of helping his mom fold fabric at the piece rate she got from the sewing contractor—three cents a piece, stacking collars and cuffs until your fingers went numb. Ten dollars was the difference between having gas money for his dad's truck next week or walking the two miles to school when it started back up in August. Ten dollars was his brother's birthday present, or new batteries for his sister's Walkman, or the phone bill his mom kept putting off.

But free shoes. And a feature in the shop video—a real video, with actual footage shot on actual equipment, the kind of thing that got passed around and dubbed and watched until the tracking went bad and the picture turned to static. The kind of thing that could lead to other things, maybe. Sponsorship. Recognition. A name that meant something outside of Deadwood Bowl.

A way out of the path that was already laid out for him, visible and unchanging like the route he walked to school every morning: graduate barely, get a job at a warehouse or a factory or a processing plant, work until his back gave out like his dad's was starting to, come home smelling like whatever the job smelled like, do it again the next day and the day after that until the days stopped coming.

"I'll think about it," he said.

Dusty slurped his Slurpee. "Don't think too long. Deadline's next Friday."

---

He thought about it all week.

At the park, running his usual lines—kickflip off the six-stair, boardslide on the ledge, manual across the flatground to the quarterpipe—he found himself paying attention in a way he hadn't before. Noticing the tricks that landed clean and the ones that wobbled. Noticing where his feet were when things worked versus when they didn't. Noticing the gap between what he thought he was doing and what his body actually did.

He'd been skating for four years. Picked it up when he was thirteen, a used board from a garage sale that his abuela had bought him for his birthday, the grip tape already worn smooth by someone else's feet. Four years of showing up at Deadwood almost every day, four years of falling and getting back up, four years of watching videos and trying to copy what the pros did and sometimes landing things and sometimes eating concrete.

He was good. He knew that. Better than most of the kids at Deadwood—better than Dusty, who had the style but not the consistency. Better than Tanner, who had the courage but not the control. Better than Wesley on the days Wesley actually showed up sober, which were fewer and further between now. Maybe even better than Zara, though she'd fight him if he said it out loud.

But being good at Deadwood wasn't the same as being good. The kids in the videos, the ones who got sponsored and got shoe deals and got their names on decks—they weren't just good. They were consistent. They were precise. They landed tricks not sometimes but every time, not lucky but practiced, not hoping but knowing.

"Yo, Hector." Tanner dropped in beside him on the bowl coping, legs dangling, his board balanced across his thighs. "You've been doing the same line for like an hour. You good?"

"I'm practicing."

"Yeah, but like... the same thing? Over and over?" Tanner made a face, the kind of exaggerated disgust he brought to anything that bored him. "That's boring, man. Let's session. Try something new. I bet you can't backside flip the hip."

"I'm not trying to backside flip the hip. I'm trying to clean up my kickflip."

"Your kickflip's fine."

"It's not." Hector stood up, positioned his board at the top of the run-up he'd been using. "Watch."

He pushed off, built speed, and popped the kickflip at the spot he'd been drilling. The board rotated beneath him—one full flip, the grip tape coming around—and he caught it, landed. But his back foot was too far forward, and he had to step off to keep from shooting out, one hand touching the concrete to catch his balance.

"See?" He picked up his board, walked back to the start. "That's not clean. That's sketchy. In a contest, sketchy doesn't count."

Tanner shrugged. "Looked fine to me."

"That's because you don't know what you're looking at."

It came out sharper than Hector intended, an edge in his voice he hadn't meant to put there. Tanner's face flickered—hurt, maybe, or just confused—before settling into his usual whatever-man expression, the one he wore when he didn't want to show that something had landed.

"Alright," Tanner said. "Have fun being boring, I guess."

He dropped into the bowl and was gone, his wheels screaming on the rough concrete, his body throwing itself at the wall like he was trying to punish it for something. Hector watched him go, felt a flicker of something that might have been guilt, then turned back to his run-up.

Again.

---

The next day, something changed.

Hector was drilling his line—he'd decided on three tricks for the contest: kickflip off the six-stair, frontside boardslide on the ledge, and a nollie shove-it to finish—when a van pulled into the parking lot. White, unmarked except for a dent in the rear fender, the kind of van that looked like it belonged to a church youth group or a plumber. Four kids got out, all of them carrying boards, all of them wearing matching black shirts with "GATE CITY SKATE" printed on the back in white block letters.

Winston-Salem. Hector had heard about them from the guys at All-City—a crew from the other side of the Triad who showed up to contests and usually placed. They had a real skate park over there, not just abandoned concrete and DIY ramps held together with prayer and stolen plywood. They had a sponsor. They had matching shirts.

He watched them unload their gear. Watched them stretch—actually stretch, like athletes, like people who took this seriously—before they even touched their boards. Watched one of them, a tall kid with bleached hair and an éS logo on his deck, set up at the flatground area and run the exact same kickflip Hector had been drilling.

Over and over. The exact same approach, the exact same spot, the exact same trick. No variation. No creativity. No trying something new when he landed it once.

The kid landed it maybe seven times out of ten. Every time he bailed—caught the board wrong, stepped off too early, wobbled on the landing—he stopped. Reset. Stood there for a moment like he was replaying the attempt in his head, analyzing what went wrong. Then he walked back to his starting point and tried again.

No frustration. No skating off to try something else. Just the same motion, repeated, methodical, patient.

Hector watched for twenty minutes. In that time, the bleached-hair kid did maybe thirty kickflips. The same kickflip. By the end, his landing had tightened up—less wobble, more center over the bolts, cleaner rollaway.

"The f*** are they doing?" Zara had appeared beside Hector, her board tucked under her arm, her beanie pulled low despite the heat. "That's not skating, that's like... I don't know. Math homework."

"It's practice," Hector said.

"It's boring."

"Yeah." He watched the bleached-hair kid land another one, his feet catching the board at exactly the same angle as the last, the motion looking more automatic with each repetition. "But it's working."

Zara snorted and wandered off toward the bowl, where Tanner was attempting a rock-to-fakie that he'd never landed in his life. Hector stayed where he was. Watching. Learning.

After about thirty minutes, the Winston-Salem crew moved on to a different spot—a handrail near the old loading dock that nobody at Deadwood really used because the run-up was rough and the landing was sketchy. The bleached-hair kid started grinding it, the same 50-50 over and over, adjusting his approach by inches each time. First attempt: too fast, shot off the end. Second attempt: too slow, didn't lock in. Third attempt: closer. Fourth attempt: locked in but wobbled at the dismount.

He didn't try a different trick. Didn't get bored and move on. Just kept adjusting, kept refining, kept drilling until the 50-50 looked like he'd been doing it his whole life.

Hector thought about his own practice sessions. The way he ran lines instead of tricks, stringing together whatever felt good in the moment. The way he moved on to something new whenever he landed something once, like landing it once proved he could land it anytime. The way he confused messing around with getting better, confused time spent at the park with actual improvement.

He'd been skating for four years. Four years of showing up. Four years of feeling like he was stuck at the same level, hitting some invisible ceiling he couldn't name.

The ceiling was the difference between landing a trick sometimes and landing it every time. Between casual and deliberate. Between hoping and knowing.

He picked up his board and walked to the six-stair.

(Cont.)