The Less Miserables Learn a Flip (1)

The guidance counselor's office smelled like old coffee and lavender air freshener fighting each other to a draw. Mrs. Patterson sat behind her desk with a folder open—Nova's folder—and the kind of smile that worked harder when it had less to say.

"Your grades are excellent," Mrs. Patterson said. "Top ten percent of your class. Your teachers speak very highly of you."

Nova waited. There was a but coming. There was always a but.

"But I've noticed you've been distracted lately. Spending time at that skate park instead of focusing on extracurriculars that might look better on college applications."

"Skateboarding is an extracurricular," Nova said.

"It's a hobby. A recreational activity." Mrs. Patterson's smile tightened at the corners. "I'm talking about things like student government, debate team, volunteer work. Activities that demonstrate leadership and community involvement."

"I'm involved in a community."

"That's not the kind of community colleges are looking for." Mrs. Patterson leaned forward, folding her hands on the desk. "Nova, I'm going to be direct with you. You have real potential. Academic potential. But you're spending time on something you're simply not built for."

The words hit the same place they always hit—the burnout back in May, leaning against the bowl coping with his Monster tattoo and his certainty. Girls don't got the leg strength for that anyway. Different mouth, same verdict.

"What do you mean," Nova said, "not built for?"

"Skateboarding requires a certain physicality. A kind of coordination." Mrs. Patterson's eyes moved over Nova's frame—small, wiry, glasses that kept sliding down her nose—and something shifted behind them, something that might have been genuine concern if it hadn't also been so sure of itself. "You're a cerebral person. An intellectual. There's no shame in that. It's a real gift. But chasing something that isn't suited to you—I've watched students hurt themselves that way. Physically and otherwise."

Nova opened her mouth and closed it. She had the arguments lined up—she'd been landing ollies consistently since June, she'd learned a shove-it last month, Hector said her pop was cleaner than half the guys at Deadwood—but the words stuck in her throat the way they always did when adults talked to her like they'd already made up their minds.

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

"That's all I ask." Mrs. Patterson closed the folder. "Your mother agrees with me, by the way. We spoke this morning. She's concerned about your priorities."

Nova stood up, grabbed her backpack, and walked out without saying goodbye.

---

Her mom was waiting in the parking lot in her scrubs, still in the pale green ones from the early shift at Cone Health—six to two, CNA work, the kind of job that left your feet aching and your hands smelling like antiseptic no matter how many times you washed them. The Honda was running, AC blasting against September heat that hadn't gotten the message that summer was supposed to be over.

"How'd it go?" her mom asked as Nova climbed in.

"Fine."

"Mrs. Patterson says you're doing well academically."

"I know."

Her mom's hands were on the steering wheel at ten and two, her posture carrying the careful uprightness of someone who'd rehearsed what she wanted to say. That was the tell. When she was improvising, she talked with her hands.

"She also thinks you need to focus more. That the park is taking up time that should go to activities that matter for college."

"Skateboarding matters to me."

"I know it does." Her mom's voice was measured, gentle in a way that meant she was trying not to win an argument so much as close one. "But Mrs. Patterson's right that there's a limit to how much it can give back to you. You're not—" She paused. "It's not something that's ever going to be a real part of your future, baby. And there's nothing wrong with that. It just means you need to know when to step back."

The school was emptying out around them, kids streaming toward buses, toward cars and freedom. Nova could see the edge of the Deadwood parking lot from here, just barely, a smudge of gray concrete beyond the chain-link fence.

"I left my board in my locker," she said. "I need to go get it."

"Nova—"

She was already out of the car.

She went back through the side entrance, past the trophy case, past the water fountain that always ran warm. Her locker was on the second floor. She dialed the combination—2, 17, 34—and pulled out the Powell, the hand-me-down from Marcus with the chips along the nose and the grip tape worn smooth in patches where her feet landed. She'd had it since her birthday in May. Four months. It had been through things.

By the time she came back out the side door, the Honda was gone.

She stood in the emptying parking lot with the board under her arm and tried to figure out why she felt like crying and why, under that, she felt something closer to determined.

She started walking toward Deadwood.

---

The park was quiet when she arrived—mid-afternoon on a Friday, most of the crew still stuck in school or at after-school jobs. Rusty was at his bench, hands moving through some private conversation only he could follow, his shopping cart parked beside him with its cargo of cans and folded newspaper. He didn't look up as she walked past. He rarely did. His attention ran on its own schedule.

The chemical sweetness from the old Cone Mills building drifted across the lot, that particular smell that meant home even though home wasn't a factory. A dog barked somewhere on the next block. Traffic hummed on Spring Garden, distant and steady, the sound of the city going about business that had nothing to do with anyone here.

Just Hector on the flatground, running his usual lines. He was working something technical—a switch heelflip, maybe, or a nollie backside flip—the kind of thing that looked effortless because he'd done it so many times that effort had become invisible. He had a small notebook tucked into the back pocket of his cargo shorts. He always had the notebook now, ever since the contest in August. Fourth place, his Etnies worn through at the toe and held together with Shoe Goo, and he'd come back the next day and kept tracking.

Nova dropped her board and pushed toward the bowl, not planning to skate it, just needing to move. The concrete hummed under her wheels, solid and real, the one thing that felt reliable right now. She'd been chasing the kickflip for two months. The ollie had taken three weeks—that first shaky land back in late May, when Hector had adjusted her foot half an inch and said don't think, just pop, and something had clicked. The shove-it had taken most of June, two hundred attempts before she could land it every third try. The kickflip was different. It kept showing her just enough to know she wasn't there yet.

"You okay?"

Hector had stopped skating, board under his arm, watching her with that patient attention of his that never felt intrusive. He saw things. He just didn't make a production out of seeing them.

"My guidance counselor told me I'm not built for this," Nova said. "My mom agrees."

"How many kickflip attempts you got so far?"

"I don't know. Maybe two hundred."

"That's not very many."

"It feels like a lot."

"It's not." He glanced toward his backpack leaning against the fence. "Hold on."

He came back with a notebook—not the current one, something older, the cover held together with duct tape and the pages warped from being shoved into his bag after sweaty sessions. He held it out.

Nova took it. It was heavier than it looked, pages dense with small tally marks going down column after column. She found the section labeled KICKFLIP in blocky letters and started counting columns. There were too many to count quickly.

"How many?" she asked.

"Two thousand three hundred and forty-seven attempts. Over about eight months when I first started taking it seriously." His voice was matter-of-fact, like this number was ordinary. "This is from when I was thirteen. I keep it to remind myself what learning actually looks like—so I don't start believing the story that I was always good at things."

"I thought you were just naturally good at this."

"Nobody's naturally good at anything. That's a story people tell themselves so they don't have to try." He took the notebook back, tucked it into his backpack with something like reverence. "You want to land a kickflip? You need about a thousand more attempts. Maybe more. And you need to stop listening to people who've already decided who you are."

Nova looked at the flatground. At the spot she'd been standing on, trying the same trick over and over, falling down, getting back up.

"Two thousand attempts," she said.

"At least."

"That's going to take a while."

"A few months, if you're consistent." Hector picked up his board. "You're already consistent. That's the part most people can't do."

He went back to his lines. Nova set her board down and started trying kickflips.

"They're going to keep saying it," Rusty said, without looking up from his bench.

Nova turned. He was sorting through his cart, both hands working methodically through a bag of aluminum cans. She'd heard him say things before—they all had—but usually it was directed at the air, at someone only he could see.

"What?" she said.

"People who don't know how to get where they want to go." He set a can down carefully, the way you'd set down something valuable. "They'll keep saying it until you stop hearing it."

Then he went back to his sorting, and that was apparently all he had.

Nova turned back to the flatground and tried another kickflip. Bailed. Tried again.

---

The next two weeks were the most painful and methodical thing she'd ever done.

She showed up every day after school—Deadwood, flatground, kickflips until her legs gave out. Then ten minutes of rest, water from the Quik-Mart fountain that always tasted like copper, and back to it. She logged everything in her sketchbook: attempts per session, half-lands, what went wrong when it went wrong.

Session 1. Attempts 1-50. Zero lands. Flick angle wrong. Board barely rotating.

Session 2. Attempts 51-120. Zero lands. Rotation improving. Feet not catching it.

The first hundred attempts taught her nothing she couldn't have predicted. The second hundred taught her what the flick was supposed to feel like—her front foot sliding off the corner of the board at the exact angle needed to make it rotate. Her brain learned it before her body did, which she was starting to understand was how most things worked.

Attempt 47: the board shot sideways into the weeds. She walked over, retrieved it, walked back. Attempt 63: the flick felt right for half a second—the board rotating clean—and she was so surprised she forgot to jump. The board spun beneath her feet and she landed on concrete, scraping her palm.

By the end of the first week, her shins were purple with bruises. New ones layering over old ones, a map of failure written on her body. She started wearing long pants even when it was still warm enough for shorts.

Session four was where she almost stopped.

It was a Tuesday, overcast and humid, everything feeling thick and resistant. She'd done forty attempts and landed nothing. Zara was watching from the bowl's edge, and Nova could feel her eyes.

"You're thinking too much," Zara said.

"I'm thinking about as little as I know how to."

"No—look at your shoulders." Zara hopped down from the bowl and walked over, board swinging at her side. Her and Nova had been skating together since May, long enough that the early wariness had worn down into something closer to direct. "You're locked up. Every attempt, you're planning it before you do it. Your body knows more than your brain does by now. Let it."

"I'm a planner. I can't help it."

"I know. I'm not saying stop tracking it." Zara looked at the sketchbook sticking out of Nova's bag. "I'm saying try one session where you don't track it while you're doing it. Count after. Let your body figure out what your brain can't." She picked up her board. "Or don't. I'm not your coach."

She walked away before Nova could answer.

Nova tried it anyway. For the next twenty minutes she stopped tallying in her head, stopped analyzing each bail, just set up and popped and dealt with whatever happened. She didn't land a kickflip. But she got three half-lands—both feet on the board for a split second before she lost her balance—and one of them was close enough that she could feel the shape of what success would be. She went home and wrote it all down anyway, because that was her method and it was working whether she could see it or not.

Session 4. Attempts 301-350. Three half-lands. One close.

The third hundred was where things started to build. She could feel the rotation now. Her front foot was finding the board more often than not. Her back foot was the problem—arriving late, missing the deck on the catch.

Session 6. Attempts 451-500. 8 half-lands. Starting to understand the timing.

The fourth hundred was where her mom caught her in the bathroom.

She'd rolled up her pant leg to look at a bruise that had gone greenish-yellow at the edges—the interesting color that meant a bruise was almost healed, had been replaced by newer ones below it. Her mom came in without knocking, the way she did when the door wasn't locked, and stopped.

"Nova." The voice that meant she was working not to yell. "How many of those do you have?"

"They're just bruises."

Her mom looked at both her shins. The whole spectrum of healing—purple, green, yellow—multiple layers, multiple sessions.

"Is this worth it?" Her mom's voice had lost the careful rehearsal. This was real. "I don't understand what you're getting out of this. You're hurting yourself every day for—what?"

Nova looked at her shins. Then at her mom.

"I don't know yet," she said. "But I'm going to find out."

Her mom didn't have an answer for that. She turned and walked back down the hall, and the conversation ended without ending.

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