The Less Miserables Lose the Day (1)

Quinn showed up too early.

That was the problem with not having anything else to do. His brother Marcus had taken the car to work—the graveyard shift at the fulfillment center, loading trucks until his back seized up, coming home at 7 a.m. smelling like cardboard and exhaustion—and his parents were both asleep after their own night shifts. His mom at the hospital cafeteria, serving lukewarm meatloaf to nurses and orderlies from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. His dad at the textile plant that was supposedly closing next year but kept not closing, kept limping along on reduced hours and broken promises, the workers never knowing which week would be their last.

The duplex was quiet except for the sounds that bled through the thin walls—the neighbors' TV playing something with a laugh track, canned laughter like a ghost of happiness. The Hendersons watched sitcoms all day, every day, reruns of shows Quinn half-recognized from when he was younger. Sometimes he wondered if they were happy or if they just needed the noise.

The fridge had nothing in it except his dad's beer and some lunch meat that had gone gray at the edges, the sell-by date a week past. Quinn's stomach growled but he ignored it. 

So he'd grabbed his board and walked the mile and a half to Deadwood, past the boarded-up furniture factory and the church that was always collecting canned goods and the corner where the older kids sometimes sold things his parents told him not to look at. The morning air was still cool enough to feel good on his face, the sun just starting to climb over the rooflines. He arrived at 9:47 a.m. on what was turning out to be a perfect Saturday.

Perfect for skating, anyway. The sky was that impossible August blue, the kind that looked painted on, not a cloud anywhere. There was actually a breeze coming off somewhere—maybe the storm system the news had been talking about, the one that was supposed to hit tomorrow, the one his mom kept worrying about because the roof leaked and the landlord never fixed anything. For now, though, the air was warm without being brutal, and the concrete had that dry, grippy feel that made wheels hum instead of stick.

Nobody else was here.

Quinn sat on the edge of the bowl, legs dangling into the curved concrete, and looked at the empty park. It felt different without people. Bigger, somehow. Quieter in a way that had weight to it. The snake run stretched out like a scar in the earth, weeds pushing up through the cracks they hadn't gotten around to filling. The DIY ramp they'd built last month—the one Hector had organized, the one Quinn had helped carry plywood for, sweating through his shirt while the older kids did the actual construction—cast a long shadow across the flatground. Even the Quik-Mart across the lot looked lonelier than usual, Vernon's silhouette barely visible through the window, probably reading one of those paperbacks he kept under the counter.

Quinn's stomach made a sound, growling agin. He'd eat later. Maybe.

He should practice.

That's what Hector would say. That's what the notebook said—the one Hector had given him after the contest, the one Quinn had been filling with tally marks and notes for the past week, his handwriting cramped and uncertain next to the pages of Hector's neat documentation. Kickflip attempts: 23. Lands: 0. Notes: Still can't get the flick right. Board doesn't rotate enough. Maybe foot position? Ask Hector.

Twenty-three attempts over three sessions. Zero lands. At this rate, he'd be eighty before he landed one.

Quinn pulled the notebook from his backpack, looked at his own handwriting. It looked like a kid's writing, which made sense because he was a kid—fourteen, the youngest of the regular crew by almost a year—but still. Everyone else seemed so much older. Dusty with his cigarettes and his thousand-yard stare, the way he talked about things like he'd already lived through them once and wasn't impressed the second time around. Even Nova, who'd only been skating a few months longer than Quinn, moved through the park like she belonged there, like the concrete had accepted her in some way it hadn't accepted him.

Quinn still felt like a visitor. Like someone who'd wandered into a party he hadn't been invited to and was waiting for someone to notice and kick him out.

He put the notebook away. Stood up. Set his board down on the flatground and pushed off, not toward any particular obstacle, just... moving. Feeling the wheels roll beneath him, the small vibrations traveling up through his feet. Letting the breeze cool the sweat that was already forming on his forehead.

The park stayed empty. The sun climbed higher. Quinn kept skating.

---

By 11, he'd given up on kickflips.

Not permanently—just for today. His shins were bruised from catching the board wrong, purple marks blooming under the skin, and his ankles ached from the repeated impact of bailing. The notebook was still in his backpack, accusatory, but he wasn't looking at it. Wasn't thinking about tally marks or attempts or the neat method Hector had taught him.

Instead, he was working on something simpler. Shove-its. Just the basic pop shove-it, where you scoop the tail and the board rotates 180 degrees beneath you while you jump, then you land on it facing the same direction. He'd landed maybe a dozen of these in his life, always sketchy, always by accident, always with that feeling of surprise that it had worked at all. Never on purpose. Never clean.

He set up in the middle of the flatground, positioned his feet the way Hector had shown him—back foot on the tail, toes hanging off slightly for the scoop, front foot behind the bolts for balance. Bent his knees. Scooped.

The board rotated. His feet came off, lost in the air, and he landed on concrete while the board spun away into the weeds by the fence.

He walked over, retrieved it, walked back to his spot.

Again.

This time, the board didn't rotate enough—maybe 90 degrees, maybe 120. He stepped off early, frustrated, the board shooting out from under his attempted catch.

Again.

Too much rotation. The board spun 270 instead of 180, kept going past where his feet needed to catch it, and he had to jump off to avoid catching his ankle on the spinning edge.

Again.

Again.

Again.

He lost count somewhere around attempt fifteen. The sun was directly overhead now, beating down on the back of his neck, turning his skin pink where the sunscreen had sweated off. But he barely noticed. His body was moving through the same motion over and over—set up, bend, scoop, jump, land or bail, reset. There was a rhythm to it. A pattern.

Attempt sixteen: too much scoop, the board spun past 180 and kept going. He stepped off, retrieved it.

Attempt seventeen: not enough scoop. The board barely rotated, and he came down on it sideways, had to jump off before his ankle twisted.

Attempt eighteen: better. The rotation was close, maybe 170 degrees. His front foot touched the grip tape before he lost it.

Attempt nineteen: the same. Close but not there.

Attempt twenty: he stopped thinking about the number. Stopped thinking about anything. Just scooped.

The board rotated. His body jumped. Somewhere in the middle, the two things found each other—the board arriving where his feet were going, his feet arriving where the board would be. He didn't decide to catch it. His body just did.

The world got smaller. The park shrank down to just the patch of concrete he was standing on, just the board beneath his feet, just the motion his body was trying to learn. The Quik-Mart disappeared. The bowl disappeared. His bruised shins and his empty stomach and his tired parents and his brother's bad back and the neighbor's laugh-track TV—all of it faded into background noise, then faded further, then disappeared entirely.

There was just the trick. Just the attempt. Just the next one.

He kept going. Lost in it now, the way you get lost in a good dream, not aware of being asleep, not aware of anything except the dream itself. His body was learning something his brain couldn't name, making adjustments he didn't consciously choose, finding a path through repetition that no amount of thinking could have mapped.

Attempt... something. Thirty? Forty? The numbers had stopped meaning anything. He'd stopped counting, stopped caring about counting, stopped doing anything except the motion itself.

He set up. Bent. Scooped.

The board rotated—a clean 180, the grip tape flashing black in the sun—and his feet found it. Both feet, at the same time, landing on the bolts like they were supposed to, like they belonged there. He rolled forward, wobbled slightly, caught his balance.

Landed.

He stood there for a second, breathing hard, not quite believing it. The world rushed back in—the heat, the empty park, the distant sound of traffic on Spring Garden, a dog barking somewhere on the next block, the hum of the AC unit on the Quik-Mart. He was sweating through his shirt, dark patches under his arms and down his spine. His legs were shaking from the repetition. His throat was dry—he hadn't drunk anything in hours, hadn't even thought about water.

He had no idea how long he'd been standing here. The sun said it was past noon, but that didn't feel right. He'd arrived at 9:47. It couldn't have been more than an hour or two.

Could it?

He looked at his board, at the grip tape that had just been under his feet, at the wheels that had just rolled him forward. He'd done it. He'd actually done it—not by accident, not by luck, but by doing the same thing over and over until his body figured out how to do it right.

Then he kicked the board up into his hands and walked back to his starting spot.

Again.

---

The next one bailed. So did the one after that. But the third one landed, and so did the fifth, and by the time he'd done another twenty attempts—or what felt like twenty, he wasn't counting anymore—he was landing maybe one out of four.

Not great. But infinitely better than zero. Infinitely better than yesterday, and the day before, and all the days before that when he'd tried kickflips and gotten nothing but bruises.

Quinn wasn't thinking about the notebook anymore. Wasn't thinking about Hector's method or the tally marks or any of it. Wasn't thinking about Mrs. Patterson's guidance counselor office or his parents' night shifts or the gray lunch meat in the fridge. His mind had gone quiet in a way he'd never experienced before, like someone had turned down the volume on all the noise that usually filled his head—the worrying, the comparing, the constant assessment of whether he was good enough, whether he belonged, whether anyone actually wanted him here.

He was just... doing. His body moving through the motion, adjusting automatically, learning without his brain getting in the way. Each attempt informed the next one, but not through conscious analysis—through something deeper, something muscular, something that lived in his tendons and his joints and the small bones of his feet.

He tried a variation—a frontside shove-it instead of backside, scooping the board the other direction. Bailed the first five, his body having to relearn everything it had just figured out, the muscle memory fighting the new motion. Landed the sixth, barely, his back foot half off the board, but he stayed on, rolled away, kicked the board up. Tried it again, landed it cleaner. Tried again, cleaner still.

He tried linking tricks together. Push, shove-it, push, manual, push, shove-it. The manual was sketchy—he could barely hold it for three feet before his weight shifted wrong and the front wheels slammed down—but the sequence felt good. Felt like skating instead of just practicing. Felt like something a real skater would do.

He tried the shove-it off the curb near the fence. Bailed twice, the added height throwing off his timing. Landed once, scrappy but real. Tried it again, landed again. The adjustment happening faster now, his body adapting more quickly, like it had figured out how to figure things out.

The sun moved across the sky. The shadows shifted—first shortening as noon approached, then lengthening as the afternoon wore on. Quinn didn't notice. He wasn't checking his watch, wasn't thinking about time at all. He was somewhere else—not physically, but mentally, in a place where minutes and hours didn't mean anything, where the only measurement that mattered was the trick and whether it landed.

He kept skating.

(Cont.)