The Less Miserables Lose the Day (2)

(Cont.)

 

"Yo, Q!"

Quinn looked up. Blinked. The world came rushing back—color and sound and the weight of his own body, suddenly present again, suddenly tired in a way he hadn't noticed until now.

The sun had moved. It was lower, angling in from the west, throwing long shadows across the park. The light had that golden quality it got in late afternoon, softer, warmer.

Tanner was walking toward him from the parking lot, board under his arm, grinning like he'd just heard a good joke. His Pixies shirt was dark with sweat stains, and his hair was sticking up in random directions.

"Dude, how long have you been here?"

Quinn looked at his watch. The digital display read 4:23 p.m.

"Uh," he said. His voice came out rough, like he hadn't used it in a while. "Since like ten, I guess?"

"Six hours?" Tanner's eyebrows shot up. "You've been skating for six hours? By yourself?"

"I didn't..." Quinn tried to find the words. Six hours. That couldn't be right. It had felt like maybe two, maybe less. "I mean, it didn't feel like six hours."

"What were you even doing?"

Quinn thought about it. What had he been doing? He'd started with kickflips—the frustrating ones, the ones that never worked—and given up. Moved to shove-its. Landed some. Tried variations. Linked tricks together. Tried them off the curb.

The details were fuzzy, like trying to remember a dream after you woke up. He knew he'd been doing things, but the specific sequence had blurred together into one long motion, one continuous attempt.

"Shove-its, mostly," he said.

"For six hours?"

"I guess?"

Tanner shook his head, but he was still grinning. "That's insane, man. In a good way, maybe. I don't know." He dropped his board, kicked it into a lazy roll. "Everyone else is coming. Dusty texted—well, paged, whatever—said we're doing a S.K.A.T.E. tournament. Loser buys Slurpees."

Quinn felt a flutter of nervousness in his stomach. S.K.A.T.E. meant being watched. Meant everyone seeing him bail and mess up and be the worst skater there, which he definitely was. Meant performing instead of just skating, meant thinking instead of doing, meant all the noise coming back into his head.

But under the nervousness, there was something else. Something that felt almost like confidence.

He'd just landed shove-its for six hours. Or his body had, anyway. Maybe he could land one when it mattered.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay. I'm in."

---

They arrived in clusters over the next half hour.

Dusty first, on foot, his flannel tied around his waist despite the heat, a fresh cigarette behind his ear. Then Zara, who'd apparently walked from her mom's apartment on the other side of town and was in a bad mood about it, her jaw set in that way that meant everyone should give her space. Then Garrett in his dad's Civic, with Nova in the passenger seat, her sketchbook open on her lap, already drawing something Quinn couldn't see.

Hector showed up last, emerging from behind the Cone Mills building like he'd been there all along, watching. Maybe he had been. Hector was like that—appearing and disappearing without explanation, always seeming to know things before anyone told him, his quiet presence somehow making everything feel more real.

"S.K.A.T.E.," Dusty announced, once everyone had gathered by the flatground. "Standard rules. You set the trick, next person has to match it. Miss it, you get a letter. Spell S.K.A.T.E., you're out. Last person standing wins."

"What does the winner get?" Tanner asked.

"The eternal glory of not buying Slurpees for everyone else."

"That's not a prize, that's just not losing."

"Same thing."

They drew straws—literally, pieces of dead grass from the edge of the park—to determine order. Quinn drew third, which meant he'd have to match whatever Dusty and Tanner did before he could set his own trick.

His stomach tightened. The nervousness was back, stronger now, all the noise flooding back into his head. He could feel everyone's eyes on him, even though they weren't looking at him yet. Could feel the weight of their expectations—or maybe their lack of expectations, which was almost worse.

Dusty went first. Simple kickflip on flat. Landed it clean, rolled away smooth, kicked the board up like it was nothing.

Tanner matched it easily, adding a little grab at the end just to show off.

Quinn's turn.

He set up. Positioned his feet. Thought about the kickflip—the same kickflip he'd been bailing all week, the one with twenty-three attempts and zero lands in his notebook. The trick that made him feel like he didn't belong here, like he was pretending to be something he wasn't.

But that wasn't the only trick he knew anymore.

"Yo," he said, before Dusty could call it. "I can't kickflip yet. Can I substitute?"

Dusty shrugged. "House rules. What've you got?"

"Shove-it."

Tanner snorted. "Shove-it? That's not a substitute for a kickflip. That's like substituting a hamburger for a steak."

"Shut up, Tanner," Zara said. "Let him try."

Quinn took a breath. Set up. Positioned his feet—back foot on the tail, toes hanging off, front foot behind the bolts. The same position he'd been in a hundred times today. Maybe two hundred. Maybe more.

For a second, his mind went blank. He could feel everyone watching, could feel the weight of their attention pressing down on him. He thought about all the times he'd bailed in front of them. All the times they'd had to pretend his failed attempts were "getting close" when they obviously weren't.

The noise got louder. His hands started to shake.

He took a breath. Let it out. Felt his feet on the board.

Scooped.

The board rotated beneath him—a clean 180, the grip tape flashing in the late afternoon sun—and his feet found it. Both feet, landing on the bolts, solid and sure. He rolled forward, steady this time, no wobble, and kicked the board up into his hands.

Silence. Then:

"Yo!" Tanner's voice was loud enough to echo off the bowl. "When did you learn to do that?"

Quinn felt his face flush. "Today, I guess. I've been practicing."

"For how long?"

"Like... six hours?"

More silence. He could feel the quality of their attention shift—from polite tolerance to something else, something closer to actual interest. Hector was looking at him with something that might have been approval. Nova had stopped sketching and was watching with her pencil frozen mid-stroke. Even Zara seemed almost impressed, her jaw unclenching slightly.

"That counts," Dusty said finally. "Shove-it substitutes for kickflip. Next round."

---

The game continued. Round two: Zara set a frontside boardslide on the curb—clean, aggressive—and Quinn couldn't match it, had never landed a boardslide in his life. "S," Dusty called.

Round three: Hector set a nollie shove-it. Tanner bailed twice. Quinn stepped up, tried to feel the motion, came down with one foot on and one foot off. "K," Dusty called.

The next three rounds went fast—a heelflip he didn't know, a tre flip he couldn't attempt, tricks that belonged to a vocabulary he hadn't learned yet. By round six, he was at S-K-A-T.

Round seven: Zara set a kickflip. The trick Quinn had been trying to learn for months. The trick with twenty-three attempts and zero lands in his notebook. The trick that had started this whole day, before he'd given up and found something else.

He set up. Tried to remember everything Hector had taught him—flick off the corner, watch the board rotate, catch it at the apex. His body went through the motion. The board flipped beneath him, rotating once.

His feet reached for it.

Missed.

"E," Dusty called. "Quinn's out. Thanks for playing."

Quinn walked off the flatground to a smattering of applause—genuine, not mocking. He'd been eliminated, but not embarrassingly. He'd lasted seven rounds. He'd landed tricks. He'd shown them something.

---

The game continued without him—Hector versus Dusty, both of them locked in a battle of increasingly technical flatground, the tricks getting harder and more precise with each round. Quinn sat on the edge of the bowl and watched, his body finally telling him how tired it was, the six hours catching up all at once.

Nova appeared beside him, sketchbook tucked under her arm. "That was good," she said. "The shove-it."

"Thanks."

"How'd you learn it? Like, actually?"

Quinn thought about the morning. The empty park. The endless repetitions. The way time had disappeared without him noticing, hours collapsing into minutes, minutes stretching into something timeless.

"I just... kept trying," he said. "But not the way I usually try. Usually I try a trick a few times, bail, feel bad about it, give up. Today I just... didn't stop. Didn't think about how many times I was failing. Just kept doing it until something clicked."

Nova nodded slowly. "That's what Hector talks about. Deliberate practice."

"Maybe. But it didn't feel deliberate. It felt like..." He searched for the word, something to describe that state he'd been in, that place where his brain went quiet and his body took over. "Like I wasn't even there. Like my body was doing it and my brain was just along for the ride."

"Huh." Nova was quiet for a moment, watching Hector land a nollie flip that made Dusty shake his head in frustration. "I've felt that before. When I'm drawing. Hours go by and I don't notice. I'll start a sketch at noon and look up and it's dark outside."

"Yeah. Exactly."

"It's weird, right? Like time works differently when you're really into something."

"Super weird."

They sat in silence for a while, watching the game. Hector won eventually—Dusty bailed on a switch heel and threw his board in mock frustration, laughing even as he lost. Everyone clapped. Someone mentioned Slurpees. The group started drifting toward the Quik-Mart, voices overlapping, the easy chaos of friends who'd spent too many hours in each other's company.

Quinn hung back for a second. Looked at the flatground where he'd spent six hours doing the same motion over and over. It looked different now. Smaller, somehow. More familiar. Like a place he'd been to so many times it had become part of him.

He'd come to the park this morning feeling like a visitor. Now he felt like something closer to belonging.

"Q!" Tanner's voice carried across the lot. "You coming or what? I'm not buying you a Slurpee if you're not there to drink it!"

Quinn grabbed his board and jogged to catch up.

(Cont.)