The Street
Ian
I’m leaning against a wall in the janitor’s closet, just trying to catch my breath.
There’s a lot more that I want to say, but Mia hasn’t responded to the bomb I just dropped. She said she knew what I meant, but the silence is suggesting otherwise.
The silence doesn’t last, though, as outside the door to this room that smells like bleach and now, sex, comes the heavy thud of music over the sound system.
I look down at Mia. She looks up at me.
“You should go,” she says. “It sounds like they’re letting people in.”
“Yeah,” I answer, but I hesitate. “Should we…?”
“Just go,” she says. “We suck at talking.”
I wheeze a bit of nervous laughter and ask, “When exactly did I lose my shirt?”
“I couldn’t even tell you,” she answers, wiping a forearm across the sweat on her brow.
I find the shirt dangling from the handle of a mop and I grab it, sticking my head through the neck hole and pulling up my pants.
“Are you coming?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll be out in a minute. I’m going to try to freshen up a little so maybe I can look a touch less I just made it with a guy in a janitor’s closet.”
“You know,” I start again, “you never responded to what I—”
“I love you too, dummy,” she says, patting me on the cheek. “Now go before I change my mind again. You know how fickle I can be.”
I’m smiling, although I’m not a hundred percent sure she’s joking, and I leave the janitor’s closet, still adjusting my shirt as I close the door behind me.
I can’t really say I come out of the room unnoticed, but the people who spot me either don’t seem to know what just happened in there or they just don’t care. There’s no way to tell, and I’m sure as hell not going to bother asking.
People are still filing in through the front doors, but the place is already pretty packed.
A few people are starting to skate around the street course, but they don’t seem to be competitors.
I should be rather pleased with myself at the moment, and I would be if it weren’t for the fact that I have no idea where the hell my board ended up.
I ditched it after what happened with Abby, when I was trying to catch up to Mia. From there, who knows?
It’s not like it’s the end of the world or anything. Even if I can’t find my board, I’m sure I could borrow one from Rob—he’s always got one in the trunk—it’d just be nice to have my own.
As I make my way toward the first bright pink shirt I see in the distance, I take a quick look back in the direction of the janitor’s closet. The door’s closed. I can’t see whether there’s light coming from under the door or not—there are too many people between me and there—but I guess I’ll see her when this thing gets started.
I track down Nick, but he hasn’t seen my board. I ask him where Rob and Marci are, but he just shrugs, saying, “How the hell should I know?”
“Hey shit brick, forget something?” Rob’s voice comes from behind me, and I turn around to find him standing on my board.
“Do me a favor?” I ask and Rob rolls his eyes as he steps off of my skateboard and kicks it in my direction.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“I think you’ve got about an hour,” Nate says. “If you’re going to get some practice time in, though, you’d better do it. I think the break between street and vert is only like ten minutes.”
“Can’t even drop a deuce in ten minutes,” Rob says, pretending like someone would actually care to hear it.
“All right, I’ll see you guys in a bit?” I ask.
I get affirmative responses across the board and I stomp the tail of my board, catching the nose in my hand when it comes up, and I walk through the crowds toward the vert ramp.
There are a few people up top and one guy’s doing a practice run, but as I start to get closer, I’m gripped by cold fear. This is too real. It’s just too real.
I know it’s probably a mistake, but I take a left turn before I get to the vert ramp and head for the nearest portion of the street course. After finding the obligatory woman with a clipboard, I’m let through and I skate over to the roll-in ramp.
Over the next hour or so, I spend almost every second I’m not riding to look over at the vert ramp. Every time, I tell myself, “All right, just one more line and I’ll head over there,” but I keep finding ways to talk myself out of it and it just doesn’t happen.
I’m still trying to talk myself into taking at least one practice run now, as I may not have time between disciplines, but when a woman comes over the sound system—I could almost swear it’s Nick’s mom, although that would certainly be a surprise—I know it’s too late.
The street competition is about to begin.
I make my way down to the edge of the crowd and find Rob, who has my duffel bag complete with my pads, a beer, and the obligatory victory joint.
By the time I’m back to the starting area, unzipping the bag, the first guy is already rolling in to start off the competition.
I haven’t met everyone I’ll be competing against today, but I know all of them, at least by reputation. I’ve got a solid edge in the street competition, but I’m not going to be pulling any cute tricks like I did back at the demo. Here, that could really backfire.
My turn comes and I start off with a more relaxed run, still pulling enough tricks, hitting enough gaps, but I can tell before my time’s out that it’s not going to be a first place attempt.
The scoring for today’s competition is simple. Best two out of three runs from each discipline will be counted, highest score wins.
By the time my turn comes around again, I’m in third place: Not bad, but I’m going to have to turn it up if I’m going to cancel out that first run.
I roll in and this time, I head straight for the pyramid, coming fast up the bank and launch into a 540 hospital flip to roast beef.
Landing fakie, I push hard toward the euro gap, kicking a 180 sigma flip over the gap, landing in a manual and I big flip off the ledge onto the flat.
Approaching the flat rail, I nollie up and into a darkslide.
I get a few more lines in before the buzzer ends my second run.
The street round isn’t over yet, but I’m feeling pretty confident as I squeak into first, just ahead of Mike Onomato, who pats me on the back as I return to the starting area.
“That was a hell of a run,” he says. “Seriously, are you regular or goofy?”
“Wouldn’t you just love to know?” I ask and laugh.
Mike’s a nice guy, but when it comes to competing, once he’s up, he’s all in and it doesn’t matter who else is there. I went harder on the first run than I did at the demo, but unless I can top that and let that lower number drop, Mike could very easily walk away with the first here and if that happens, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make up the difference.
What I need out of my third run is overwhelming force.
What I get out of my third run is a solid, but hardly game-changing score, putting me a few points ahead of Mike, whose last run had knocked me into second.
He’s picked up a few things.
There’s one more competitor, Jimmy Plimpton, a redheaded pimply kid who’s going to be lucky if he ends up in the top half of the field and then it’s over. While I easily win the street competition, I’m only three points ahead of Onomato going into the vert session.
Any other day, that would be a blowout. Today, though…
It never occurred to me that I could end up going into the vert section without at least a five point lead.
There’s no time to think it over, though, as everyone starts heading over to the vert ramp.
I’m one of the last to the top, but I’ll be the first to go and whatever happens, I need to just keep my head: just focus on the moment and not get carried away by anything outside of it.
I’m thinking I’m going to have time to take a quick practice run while they get everything ready to go, but the judges are already set up and the announcer is welcoming everyone to the vert portion of the competition.
I look out over the crowd.
None of them besides Mia, Rob, Nick, and maybe Abby—if she’s even still here—will have any idea why I’m so pale, and I’m just hoping they can’t see it. That theory goes all to hell though, when I turn around to find a camera in my face.
There are no microphones or people asking for insight, so I just give a quick smile and a wave and turn back around at my earliest chance.
They’re calling my name, ready for me to start, and I get into position.
My foot’s on the back of the board, and I take a deep breath as I look down and across the ramp. Under my breath, I’m mumbling, “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”