by Claire Adams
“You inspire me to be a rich man like yourself, Dad,” I tell him.
“There’s a sweet spot,” he says. “I’ve lived in that sweet spot my entire professional life. We’ve got enough money that we don’t have to worry about day to day financial concerns, but we’re not so rich that we think we need to build some sort of empire for the fact that we’re rich and we can.”
“You should come and teach economics,” I tell him.
“I really should,” he says. “Those guys you’ve got now haven’t been churning out any winners.”
Dad pulls over somewhere near the center of campus and unlocks the door.
“I know you don’t think this is where you want to be right now, but what you do now is going to have an incredible impact on what kind of life you can have later down the road. I’m not going to support you forever, Ian,” he says. “Once you’re out there, you’re going to need to have something that will provide for you and any family you may have down the line.”
“Weren’t we done with the lecture?” I ask.
“I thought I explained rather clearly that we’re never done with the lecture,” he says and smiles.
As I get out of the car and close the door, I catch a look on my father’s face. It’s only there for a brief moment, but it almost looks like a tinge of pain at seeing me going back to school, like a parent sending his kid to kindergarten for the first time.
Then I realize that he’s wincing at the sight of the board in my hand and the knowledge that that’s how I’m going to start this semester: riding up to class on a skateboard, tattoos popping out from under sleeves and pant legs, hair a wonderful mess, and yesterday’s clothes on my back.
This isn’t the prestigious moment he’d envisioned when he scheduled this morning off so he could take me to my first day of fall classes.
Not really my problem.
I push the pine across the campus, then across the street to the building where my psychology class is. I get to my classroom without too many awkward glances.
Really, I don’t like being the moron sitting in class with a skateboard under his feet, but I can’t miss a moment working. This next competition is the big one.
Class is late in starting, so I dodged a bullet there, but most of the seats are already filled. I’m about to make my way to one toward the back when I recognize that chick I was trying to flirt with at the competition a few weeks ago and I change direction.
The only open seat near her is directly behind, but I take it.
“Small world,” I say, but she doesn’t turn around or otherwise acknowledge my presence or existence.
“All right, class,” the professor says. “Sorry about the late start; how was everyone’s summer? Wonderful. Now, let’s get down to business: the human mind. It’s one of the most fascinating things—scratch that—the most fascinating thing that we can study, because through its ability to perceive and to process…”
I thought it would be better to get the core pre-law stuff out of the way first, and having a couple of semesters where I only had to worry about generals seemed like the way to go at the time.
Yeah, the professor’s still talking.
Psychology is interesting as a subject, but I hate the touchy-feely direction it’s taken in the last few decades. Nurturing is great, and sure, it’s important, but sometimes people need to be confronted with the results of their negative behavior and learn that there are real consequences involved in being the dapper little snowflake that we’re all supposed to be now.
Really, I think I’d be willing to tolerate living with my friend Rob. He’s about the sloppiest guy I’ve ever met, but there is that one big perk that comes with living at home: I don’t have to worry about a job.
It’s juvenile, yes; irresponsible, absolutely, but them’s the breaks, and if I don’t have the time to do what I need to do with my board, I just might end up living Dad’s pet fantasy of my life course.
Speaking of fantasies, I have never actually found myself attracted to the back of someone’s head, but the girl sitting in front of me who caught me checking out what she was packing under her Vans shirt at the competition has every bit of the attention I’m not willing to let the professor borrow.
Her hair is dark, maybe black, though it’s hard to tell with the highlights coming out under the fluorescent lights. The hair’s almost to her shoulders, but it gives way just in time to leave the curve of her neck bare, only it’s not bare, teasing the proximity of an angle with a better view leading below. She’s wearing a black choker. I caught a glimpse of some kind of pendant on the front, but I wasn’t looking that high as I was passing.
I don’t know what it is about her, but even before she turned around, I knew that I wanted to talk to her. It’s something in the way that she carries herself. You usually only see it with people who’ve been skating for a long time, but I’d never seen her around.
She’s standing up now, and my eyes don’t raise, they only resettle on the curve of her hips.
She’s the only person standing, and I should probably be paying attention to what it is that she’s saying because it looks like I’m up next for whatever we’re doing, but there’s nothing but the punch in the gut of my attraction for her.
Now she’s sitting back down, and the professor is looking at me. The rest of the class turns to look at me and I stand up.
“I, uh…” I start. It’s very eloquent, I know. I think Keats said that at one point.
I’m starting to regret my mini-fantasy.
“Tell us your name, what year you are in school and what your major is,” the professor says.
“Ah,” I say and clap my hands, eliciting a couple of raised eyebrows, but more generally, slight annoyance. “I’m Ian Zavala,” I tell the class. “I am a…” I actually have to think about it “…junior, and I’m pre-law.”
“Pre-law?” the professor says. “Well, it’s good to know the constitution’s going to be in good hands.”
I lean toward the girl sitting next to me, a very nervous-looking Asian girl who can’t be more than 15 years old and ask, “Is she being sarcastic? I can’t even tell!”
“What is one thing about you that most people don’t know,” the professor says.
Apparently I hadn’t filled my obligatory time.
“Uh,” I start again, beginning to become increasingly aware at just how foreign an entity these people think me to be. “Most people don’t know that I once caught my dad hiding money for one of his clients. I think the guy was a drug dealer or something—never came by the house or anything, but I used to go to my dad’s office after school when I was younger, and when I got off the bus and into his office that day, this crazy-looking guy with all these scars and just insane muscles was coming out of there and my dad was stuffing a duffle bag full of cash. I don’t know if the guy ever got his money back or not, but I know my dad lost the case. I’ve always kind of wondered if he blew the case just so he could keep the money, but the police don’t like to investigate—”
“And let’s move on,” the professor says, and I sit down, hardly able to contain my laughter.
Apparently, nobody here thought I was joking. Either that or nobody here thought the story was funny, but that can’t be it. I’m hilarious.
Class goes on and ends, and I remember something about a big project coming up, but once those magical words, “We’ll start next week…” came out of her mouth, I just naturally tuned out.
Out of class now, and I decide to forego my scheduled skate home to nap and go straight to the skate park near the college.
There are a few guys tooling around, but this park only really ever gets busy after everyone’s done with classes for the day. This is my favorite time to come here.
If I ever woke up early enough, I could probably get in some time with the park all to myself, but mornings are death, and coldness and burning eyes are certainly not the kind of comfortable dream or well-furnished nightmare I could otherwise be
experiencing at 6 a.m.
I hate mornings almost as much as I hate the coffee most people drink to cope with their own hatred of mornings.
It’s a tortured existence.
My problem right now isn’t the street part of the coming competition, it’s the vert portion. Some jackoff got it into his stupid head that it would be great to have an all-around competition rather than three separate competitions. That way, the dickhead no doubt theorized, the best all-around skater would win.
It’s not that big a deal. It’s just something that I should have learned before now that I just never quite got around to.
I mean, I’m a street skater. What the hell do I know about vert? The parks around here don’t have vert ramps. How the hell am I supposed to practice for that?
Everyone says it’s not that different. Once you roll in, it’s just the same board on the same wood. They never say what you’re supposed to do if you can’t roll in.
There’s a concrete portion that equals out to be comparable to one side of a vert ramp, but I’ve always just done wall rides on it. It never occurred to me to climb to the top and practice dropping down. I guess I’ve just never really thought of this as a suitable substitution for a full vert ramp, but it’s close enough for what I need.
I cruise around the park a bit, pulling a few tricks here and there, but mostly just eyeing that tall concrete fall into a curve which is supposed to allow for a person to become vertical again without crashing. I’m going to see if it’s really that simple.
I come out at the quarter-pipe near the vert section, and I climb the makeshift ladder all the way to the top.
It’s kind of nice up here. There’s a good view of the park. It helps that I’m not afraid of heights.
Now I’m looking down and everything’s changed. From where I’m standing, the bottom of the concrete where there’s supposed to be a nice, gentle curve to ease one from going straight down to straight across is a barely perceptible inverted bump. I drop in from here and I may as well be taking a swan dive straight onto the ground below.
“What up, shithead?” a voice I really don’t want to hear right now says as that stupid head comes up above the level of the concrete.
“I need to get used to dropping in,” I tell Rob. “Vert’s part of the Midwest Championship and it’s not like I have a halfpipe at my house.”
I should really have a halfpipe at my house. Why do I not have a halfpipe in my house?
“You’ve never dropped in before?” he asks, pulling himself to the top and standing next to me.
“I’ve dropped in,” I lie. “It’s just the one part of my game I haven’t really developed.”
“It’s easy, man,” he says. “Watch.”
I watch, and he drops his skateboard to his side and moves it to the edge with his foot until only the tail is keeping the board from going over the edge. Rob holds the board in place at the tail with one foot, and with the other, he steps further up the board. The nose of the board drops as he shifts more of his body weight to the front foot, and now he’s going straight down the incline, dipping down a little as the concrete curves beneath him and he rolls out without issue.
Okay, so I was watching and taking notes. I multitask.
It really seems simple enough, and lord knows I’ve seen people do it on video enough times. This is just one of those moments where I have to swallow my fear and just make my body go through the motions.
There are a lot of moments like this in skating.
They usually come right before an injury. Sometimes, though, these moments come right before you learn something big, and I need to be comfortable doing this. The foundation of my future, as my dad would call it, is going to be built or it’s going to crumble.
So, I ease the board forward with my back foot and I try to keep from shaking with the adrenaline that comes as the back trucks pass the concrete and the tail of the board comes down hard on the lip.
Okay, just lift my front foot, keeping most of my weight on the back for now, and set the front foot on the other half of the board. Now I just transfer my weight from back foot to front foot, I’m tilting forward, and…
I open my eyes to see Rob standing above me, bent over with laughter.
“That was the greatest thing I’ve ever fucking seen, bro!” he says. “You didn’t even put your arms out to catch you. Just straight deadpan like you didn’t even see the ground rushing up toward—you’re not really hurt or anything, are you? I almost don’t even care because seriously, dude, that. Was. Awesome.”
I look at him and I look down at the sourceless drops of blood on my T-shirt and I ask him, “What do you mean? What did I do?”
Chapter Three
Smoke
Mia
I really hope he’s not here today. He’s always late, but it’s never easy to tell whether he’s actually going to show up or not.
Ian hasn’t really tried to talk to me all that much since class started, but today’s the day that Professor McAdams assigns us partners for the final class project. Whoever I get paired with, I’m going to be stuck with for the next three months or so, and I really don’t want to endure the hyperambivalence that I have toward him with any kind of increased frequency.
It might be simpler if I didn’t like anything about him, but after seeing him skate, that stupid portion of my brain that’s shaped like a skate deck has been trying to convince me that all of the reasons I thought he was an annoying moron at the competition were misperceptions.
The reality, and I’m sure of this, is that Ian is nothing more than a tattooed guy with no personal skills that just happens to be about the best skater I’ve ever seen in real life, but being in that kind of proximity with him—I don’t know. That stupid part of my brain has won the battle before, and it’s not usually a brilliant idea when it does.
Class starts, though, and Ian’s nowhere in sight. I’m not ready to pop the champagne cork just yet, but it’s a good sign.
“All right,” Dr. McAdams says, “today, as you’ll know if you’ve been paying attention, we are going to put you in teams of two for your final project. During class today, I want you to talk with your new partner and come up with a few ideas you might want to do and hand them in on a paper that contains your names—I can’t believe I still have to say this to people. You’re adults, most of you, and you should know how to write your name at the top of a piece of paper for class. I’ll look over your ideas and select the best two. Of these, you must pick one, and that will be your final project. If you do not have two viable options on your paper, you can either try again on your own time, bringing something we can actually use at the beginning of next class, or I can assign you something.”
Oh, just get to it, will you? The longer you talk, the greater the chances that Ian walks through that door and I’m stuck between my standards and a hard place, if you’ll forgive the pun.
“I’m not vindictive when it comes to assigning projects, either, so if you and your partner are genuinely having a difficult time, don’t hesitate to ask for ideas from me. That said,” Professor McAdams says, “why don’t we get you paired off and we’ll get going?”
He’s still not here, but I’m not uncrossing my fingers yet. I’m in the fourth column, third row, and the professor’s taking her sweet time writing down everyone’s partner assignments. The good news is that she seemed to skip over the other empty seat on that side of the room. The bad news is that I can’t remember if that seat actually has a person that goes with it or not.
“Mia, you’ll be with Riley,” Professor McAdams says, and I turn around to face my new study partner—project partner, whatever.
Riley is about my age, dirty blonde hair and glasses. She doesn’t say a whole lot in class, but then again, I have been noticing that participation within the classrooms in our institutions of higher learning is waning prodigiously.
Whatever the case, she’s not Ian, so there’s nothing complicated, no competing feelings of att
raction and disinterest, just simple partner work where I’m probably going to end up doing just about everything and Riley will scribble her name at the top of any paperwork as her contribution to whatever groundbreaking research we decide to conduct.
The professor finishes pairing everyone up and I finally breathe easy. Even when Ian comes into the room while Riley and I are putting our desks together, I’m feeling a lot better about everything.
“Hold on,” Professor McAdams says, “we just had someone come in, so we have an even number. What’s your name?”
This isn’t happening.
“Ian Zavala,” Ian says.
It doesn’t matter. I’m already paired up. We’re really very close to beginning talk about what we’re going to do for our project. We’re locked in.
“Okay, and where do you sit?” Professor McAdams asks.
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.
No, I’m sure it’s not going to matter where he sits. I don’t even think the professor ever bothered writing down assigned seating. The fact that he’s set up camp directly behind me long enough that people just assume that’s his seat doesn’t mean it’s his seat, and even if it did, it wouldn’t mean that I’d have to give up my partnership.
If I have to give up my partnership, everyone who was paired up after me is going to have to give up theirs and there’s no reason to make this whole process that much work. She’ll just pair him with whoever was going to be on their own before and that will be—
“Why don’t you and Mia team together, and Riley, you and Patricia can be a pair,” Professor McAdams asks.
Okay, so being that Patricia was the only person after Riley, I guess technically it makes just as much sense to pair Ian with me as it would to pair him with her, but I really wanted this to be my easy class.
Psychology fascinates me. It’s my wheelhouse. This should be a class where I breeze through and solidify my foundation in the more general concepts before I go into more field-specific classes starting next semester.
