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 the repetition, from the falling, from the getting back up. Her mom had asked why she was limping and she'd said gym class, which wasn't technically a lie because she hadn't technically been in school today.

Her sketchbook was open on her lap. She'd drawn the bowl from memory, the kidney shape, the rusted coping, the graffiti that said "RIP Trey's Leg '89" in faded pink spray paint. She'd drawn Hector's hands adjusting her foot position. She'd drawn the crack she'd cleared, with little motion lines to show the ollie.

At the bottom of the page, she wrote:

May 23, 1995

Landed an ollie. Multiple times. Cleared a crack.

Hector says: don't think. Just pop.

Zara says: commit.

Tanner says: pressure makes diamonds.

Tomorrow: fifty attempts minimum.

She could still feel it in her legs—that moment when the board had risen, when her feet had stayed connected, when she'd hung in the air for half a second before gravity remembered she existed. It wasn't magic. It was just repetition, plus someone showing her what she'd been doing wrong. Nothing mystical about it.

But it felt like something had shifted. Like a door she'd thought was locked had turned out to be just stuck, and now it was open a crack, and she could see light coming through.

She fell asleep with her sketchbook on her chest, still wearing her scraped-up jeans.

---

Day Two

The Quik-Mart's ice machine hummed in the morning heat. Nova stood outside with eighty-nine cents in her pocket, debating whether a Slurpee was worth skipping the bus fare home. The sign above her head was missing letters—"Q IK MART" now, the U and second I burnt out or fallen off—and the clerk inside was watching her through the window like she might steal something.

She'd been at the park since 8 a.m. Two hours of ollies. Her legs felt like rubber and her palms had new scrapes layered over yesterday's scrapes. But she'd done sixty-three attempts and landed forty-one of them. She was keeping count in her sketchbook, little tally marks in the margin, because Hector had said something about tracking progress and she figured it couldn't hurt.

Hector wasn't here today. Neither was anyone else from yesterday. Just her and Rusty and the empty bowl and the heat coming up off the concrete in waves.

She'd almost not come. Her mom had needed help with laundry before her shift at the hospital, and Marcus had made a comment about how she was "spending too much time at that park with those kids," and for a minute she'd thought about staying home, watching TV, being normal. But her body had remembered the feeling from yesterday—the board rising, her feet staying connected—and she couldn't not try to feel it again.

The Quik-Mart door opened and Zara walked out with a Slurpee the color of a bruise, purple and red swirled together. She stopped when she saw Nova.

"You're here early."

"So are you."

Zara shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. Mom's boyfriend snores like a chainsaw." She sucked on her Slurpee, looking Nova up and down. "You've been practicing."

"How can you tell?"

"Your hands." Zara nodded at Nova's palms, scraped and raw. "That's not three weeks of falling. That's someone who's been going hard."

Nova didn't know what to say to that. Compliments made her nervous, like there was a catch coming.

"Your wheels are trash," Zara said.

"What?"

"Your wheels." She pointed at Nova's board with her Slurpee. "They're hard. Like, rock hard. Good for smooth concrete, but this park's rough as hell. You're fighting the surface every time you push."

Nova looked at her wheels. She'd never thought about wheels. The board had come with wheels and she'd just assumed wheels were wheels.

"How much money you got?"

"Eighty-nine cents."

Zara laughed—not mean, just surprised. "Okay, broke. Come on." She started walking toward the park entrance. "I got something at home that'll work. Softer durometer. My old wheels from before I switched setups."

"You don't have to—"

"I know I don't have to. But you can't learn on wheels that fight you. It's like trying to run in shoes that don't fit." She looked back over her shoulder. "You coming or not?"

Nova followed.

---

Zara's apartment was above a laundromat on Spring Garden Street, up a metal staircase that rattled with every step. The inside smelled like industrial detergent and cigarette smoke, competing for dominance. A woman's voice came from somewhere in the back—Zara's mom, maybe, on the phone, laughing about something.

"Don't touch anything," Zara said, leading Nova through a small living room crowded with mismatched furniture. "And don't talk to my mom if she comes out. She's in a mood."

Zara's room was barely bigger than a closet. A mattress on the floor, clothes piled in corners, posters taped to the walls—Rancid, Hole, L7. A milk crate full of skateboard parts sat by the window.

"Here." Zara dug through the crate, pulled out a set of wheels—orange, softer-looking than Nova's. "Fifty-three millimeter, 87a durometer. Way softer than what you've got. They'll roll smoother on rough concrete."

"How much?"

"Five bucks."

Nova's stomach dropped. "I don't—"

"I know you don't have it. Pay me back when you can." Zara tossed her the wheels. "Or don't. I don't care. They're just sitting here."

Nova turned the wheels over in her hands. They felt different—heavier, more substantial. Five dollars was a lot. Five dollars was lunch for two days, or bus fare for a week, or half a deck of blank paper for her sketchbook.

"Why?" she asked.

Zara was already digging through the crate again, not looking at her. "Why what?"

"Why are you helping me? You don't even know me."

Zara stopped digging. For a second she didn't say anything. Then: "Because when I started, some girl at the park gave me her old trucks for free. Said pay it forward or whatever." She shrugged. "Also, that burnout who was giving you s*** yesterday? I've heard him before. He does it to every girl who shows up. I want you to land something in front of him just so I can see his face."

Nova almost smiled. "That's petty."

"That's motivation." Zara found what she was looking for—a skate tool, T-shaped, worn smooth from use. "Come on. I'll show you how to change them."

---

They sat in the parking lot of the Quik-Mart with Nova's board between them. Zara showed her how to use the skate tool—loosen the axle nut, slide off the old wheel, slide on the new one, tighten without over-tightening. Nova's hands were clumsy at first but she got the hang of it, the same way she'd gotten the hang of the ollie: repetition, adjustment, repetition.

"Your bearings are fine," Zara said, inspecting them. "Dirty, but fine. Don't let anyone tell you to buy new bearings unless they're actually grinding. It's a scam."

"Noted."

"And your trucks are loose. Too loose. You're probably wobbling at speed."

"I don't really go fast."

"You will." Zara tightened something, tested it, tightened it a little more. "There. Try that."

Nova set the board down, put one foot on, pushed off. The difference was immediate—smoother, more forgiving, the wheels rolling over cracks that would have caught her before. She pushed again, faster, and the board didn't wobble, didn't fight her.

"Better?"

"Way better."

"Good." Zara stood up, brushed off her jeans. "Now go do fifty more ollies. I've got somewhere to be."

She was gone before Nova could say thank you.

---

The rest of the day blurred together. Fifty ollies became sixty, became seventy. Nova lost count somewhere in the eighties, her tally marks smudging together in the heat. The new wheels made everything easier—or not easier, exactly, but less frustrating. She could feel the board responding, could feel the difference between a good pop and a bad one.

Around 2 p.m., Hector showed up. He watched her for a few minutes without saying anything, then nodded.

"Better."

"Zara gave me new wheels."

"I can tell. Your feet are quieter." He set his board down, started running his own lines. "Keep going. I'll count."

She kept going. By 4 p.m. she'd landed over a hundred ollies. Her legs were screaming. Her hands were raw. But something had settled into her muscles, some memory that hadn't been there before.

Hector stopped skating, walked over. "You should go home. Rest. Come back tomorrow."

"I can keep going."

"You can. But you'll be too sore to skate tomorrow if you do." He was already packing up, clipping his Discman back to his shorts. "Growth happens when you rest. Not when you grind yourself down."

She wanted to argue. Wanted to prove she could push through, could outwork the burnout's voice still echoing in her head. But her legs were shaking and Hector was already walking away, and she remembered what he'd said yesterday: trust your body.

She went home.

(Cont.)