Fireworks: A Holiday Bad Boy Romance (80 page)

“Yeah,” I tell him, “I’m
on the list: Ian Zavala.”

“Check in for skaters ended
almost ten minutes ago,” the man says. “Sorry, bud. You missed your chance with
this one.”

Well, I tried. Not only
that, but Mia tried, too. Even Nick and his mom tried, but oh well. I guess
that’s that.

“Wait,” the guy says.
“What was the last name?”

“Zavala,” I answer. “I
know I’m late. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

“No, man,” he says,
stepping out of the way, “I’m sorry. Yeah, Kara told us you’d be coming. Your
number’s right here,” he says and lifts the top page of his clip board and
producing two squares of paper with the number 2311 on them.

“You just carry that
around on your clipboard?” I ask.

“Nah, man,” the guy says.
“Kara called on the radio and had someone bring it over. Better get ready,
though. They’re about to start and you’re not even in your pads.”

Shit.

As I’m walking past the
man with the clipboard, I can hear the beep of his walkie-talkie. “He’s here.
You can tell Kara she can stop reading names out of the phone book,” he says.

Nick’s mom is certainly
tenacious.

“Please, a big round of
applause for all of our friends here at the Richfield Community Skate and
Ride!” the voice on the loudspeaker declares. “Are you ready for some skating?”
Nick’s mom says to thunderous applause.

I check the board to see
the skating order.

My name is crossed out
near the top, but it’s scribbled in again at the bottom.

Last.

I love being last.

Nick’s mom’s voice comes
over the loudspeaker one more time, declaring, “Here we go!”

The first skater rolls in
and we’re getting started.

First, we’re going to do
the street demo, then the vert. The scoring, as this is technically not a
competition, is a little lazy: Everyone gets three runs, only the highest
scoring run counts and whoever’s got the best score “wins.”

It’d probably seem a lot
more like winning if I was actually going to get paid for being their poster
boy, but I guess getting my face out there isn’t a bad thing.

It is a rather nice face,
after all.

My first run comes up and
I start off a little easy, taking my time between tricks, only bothering with
one gap and basically just trying not to make the other skaters want to kill
themselves before they’ve had a chance to take their other two runs.

If I was as confident on
vert as I was on a street course, I’d probably already have my own video game
series.

I finish my run only five
points up on my nearest competitor.

This is too easy.

The next round goes by
and I’m actually outscored by a particularly determined guy with vampire teeth
affixed in his mouth.

I’ve really got to stop
doing the local demos.

When my second run comes
up, I do just enough more to put myself back in first place and I wait for
everyone to shit their pants on their third run.

I think they know I’m
toying with them. This pleases me.

Still, as skater after
skater takes their final run, I’m becoming acutely aware that I’m not going to
have long to enjoy my runaway victory on the street course because the vert
course is about to make everyone forget that I could ever skate.

Vampire kid—who I’m
reasonably certain has never even heard the name Peter Steele—has a solid last
run and he takes first place.

He’s up by three points.

Now it’s time to turn it
on.

This is why I love being
last. When you’re first, it’s all business because you don’t know what everyone
after you is going to do. There’s always someone who can knock you off the top
of the mountain.

Being last, though…

They call my name for my
final run and I’m on my board, coming down the roll-in ramp, feeling a mix of
complete control and absolute helplessness.

Just push it out of your
mind, Ian. You’ve got this.

I start with a varial
heelflip, decent enough on its own, but as I land, I bring down my front foot a
little sooner than my back foot, sticking the nose manual. Still on my front
two wheels, I nollie into a back foot impossible and I can almost feel the
blood draining from the faces of my competitors already.

Problem is, my foot comes
down on the side of the board and I botch the landing. I’m running out of time
and I have nothing to put on the board but a failed combo.

Shit.

I get back on my board
and put a little extra into it as I push toward the ledge, a pop shove it into
a Smith grind on the ledge and a 180 out.

At least I stuck that
one.

I still have some time,
but I’ve got to step it up or I’m going to be out of this thing before I even
get to the vert.

Rolling up the halfpipe,
I 50-50 the lip, but all I’m really looking for right here is the speed of
dropping in, and I get it. Coming up to the fun box, I’m riding switch relative
to the rest of my run, and a quick backside 180 into a 5-0 on the rail, and I
manage to kick out a double kickflip, revert on the landing and I just might be
back in this thing.

The clock says ten
seconds now, and the revert hurt my speed coming off the fun box, so I’m
pumping as hard as I can up the roll-in and, when I get to the top, time for
only one more line, I come back down the roll-in hard.

The sweat is dripping
into my eyes and all I can hear is my heartbeat and the sound of the wheels
beneath my feet, and I’m crouched as I come up to the kicker.

I catch the clock running
down out of the corner of my eye: 6, 5, 4…

One more quick push for
that little bit extra I’m going to need and in the air, I’m spinning 180, 360—I
finally get comfortable in my mute air—540…

The ground is coming up
fast as I pull my free hand into my body, trying to get just that final touch
and my wheels come down smooth out of the “switch” (ha!) 720 mute, and I don’t
really care if winning doesn’t mean anything, I’m off my board, hands at each
side of my mouth and I’m shouting, “Woo!”

I take a look back at the
kicker and just start laughing. Coming off my board early in the run may have
damaged my score enough that I don’t come in first, but getting a 720 off that
kicker is enough of a feather in my cap.

After collecting my board,
I climb back up to the starting area and wait for the score.

“What was that?!” Mia
shouts, coming up to the barrier between the crowd and the skaters.

I walk over to her,
grinning so much my cheeks kind of hurt, and I pull off my helmet.

“When I saw I had ten
seconds left, I tried to think of the most crack-headed idea I could think of,
and trying to pull a 720 off that two-foot kicker when I absolutely couldn’t
afford to screw it up seemed like a pretty stupid option,” I tell her.

“Stupid or not,” she
says, pointing up to the board, “it worked.”

I turn around and look up
at the board.

Half a point: that’s all
that separates me and my closest competitor, but I eked out the first-place
spot.

“How long do you have?”
Mia asks, pulling on my shirt sleeve.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“About five ‘til,” she
says.

“Five ‘til five?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Then I guess I have
about five minutes,” I tell her. “Do me a favor: If you see Nick, tell him that
his mom should really start scheduling more than five minutes between events.”

“Are you up for this?”
she asks.

“What are you doing?” I
return.

“What?” she asks, looking
up at me with a furrowed brow.

“I’m pretty sure I was a
hundred percent up for it until you asked me if I was up for it,” I tell her.
“Now, I think I’m closer to seventy, sixty-five percent.”

“You got this,” she says,
changing tactics.

I smile.

“Fifty-five, fifty…” I
say.

“Oh, just shut up and get
over there before we have to listen to Nick’s mom thanking the cast of the
A-Team again,” she tells me.

“She what?” I chuckle.

“When she was stalling
for you,” Mia says. “I wasn’t entirely sure until she actually thanked Mr. T
for his very generous donation, but yeah, she was going through the cast of the
A-Team.”

“What’s most impressive
about that,” I tell her, “is that you’re that familiar with 80s gonzo crime
shows.”

“It’s not a gonzo crime
show!” she protests, but stops. Her hand almost goes over her mouth, but she
compels it down to her side.

Apparently, I’ve struck a
nerve.

“Go,” she says.

I go.

There are a couple of
people, including myself, who are doing both street and vert. I’m happy for all
the wrong reasons that vamp kid is one of them.

I wonder what happens if
he crashes. You’ve got to think those teeth, even if they’re made of shitty
plastic, would end up going right through one or more of his lips if he were to
come down wrong.

Hilarious.

The way the competition
is scored, from what I understand, is the result of a compromise. There were
those in whatever meeting where they decided these things who thought the two
contests should be scored completely independently of each other as not
everyone who signed up for street signed up for vert and vice-versa.

This was thought unfair
by the other curiously dedicated fashion who believed that the competition
should be scored by taking the combined score on both vert and street, and that
those who wouldn’t compete in both would just take the hit of scoring a zero in
one or the other disciplines.

The consensus, was that
they would take the best individual score and add that to the overall score,
then divide that by two. This, of course, produces a number that has no real
meaning, other than it happens to still favor someone with a decent score in
both vert and street (which are scored using a different method even than each
other,) thus accomplishing none of the original goals and convoluting the whole
process.

I just love the fact that
it’s going to take someone with a calculator to figure out whether a skater is
doing well at any given time after the vert scores start coming in.

My focus snaps back to
the present moment and what’s actually happening as I climb up to the top of
the vert ramp.

I’m really doing this.

After that initial drop
in, I seem to have pretty effectively broken through my mental block. I’ve only
come off the board a couple of times since.

That said, I now have to
do it in front of a shitload of people who are more than capable of ruining my
future by posting videos of me breaking my leg before actually getting around
to catching any air.

No pressure.

As I won the street
competition, I’ll be the fourth person to go.

I have no idea. This
whole demo structure is a train wreck.

When I was on the street
course, all of my competitors looked so inept, so green. There’s a lot of
potential, but it’s years from fruition for most of them.

As the first three
skaters go ahead of me on the vert ramp, though, everyone looks like a pro.

I’ve broken with my
tradition of freestyling my runs at the last minute, and have meticulously
planned out all three of my vert runs, even going so far as to plan out what to
do if I finish a run faster than expected.

It’s just a matter of
actually being able to do it.

There’s nothing huge on
the docket, and I don’t expect to come away with an overall win today, but as
the clock resets and I get into position, the tail of my board on the lip, it’s
not an idle moment.

The world around me seems
to go silent as I put my front foot on the board and start leaning in.

The front wheels come
down and I’m to the bottom before I can even think about it.

I’m still on the board as
I reach the flat, and I’ve got good speed coming up the other side.

I physically can’t
breathe as I catch my first few feet of air, and I do a simple indy grab,
coming down switch.

The landing doesn’t scare
me in any way like the drop in does, and I land smooth enough, pumping my body,
trying to get that extra bit of speed.

Air beneath my wheels, I’m
pulling for a lien 540, but I don’t have enough speed, so I have to drop it
down to a 360 on the fly.

I’ve spent so much time
worrying about how to start a vert run that the other relevant points have
taken a bit of a hit, and I’m in my head as I come down and try to remember
every tip I’ve ever heard or read on getting more speed on a vert ramp.

Next, I’d planned an
easier 360 heelflip for my next up, but after coming out a half-turn early on
the last one, I kick a 360 kiwi flip into a tail grab, pulling my hand off the
back of the board what can only be a foot or two before I land.