Fireworks: A Holiday Bad Boy Romance (82 page)

“I still have school
here,” he says. “Actually, I don’t really know if that’s going to be true after
this semester. I can always apply for student loans, I guess, but that’s one of
the biggest rackets on the fucking planet.”

“Maybe so,” I tell him,
“but if that’s what you need to do to get an education—assuming you actually
want one and it’s not just your dad that was pushing you into it—maybe you just
need to do it. Besides, nothing says you have to stay here to go to school. You
can go anywhere you want once you’re pro.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I can’t
help but notice that you’re not in any of these plans.”

Strained silence returns
for a few seconds while I try to figure out a decent way to respond to him.

“Yeah,” I mutter.

I feel like I’ve planned
to say more, or at least there’s more that I
should
be saying right now, but nothing else is coming out.

“Well, I guess that’s
just the way it goes, huh?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I answer. “I
guess so.”

Chapter
Sixteen

The Long Drumroll

Ian

So, this is it.

I rode down with Rob,
Nick, and Marci, Nick’s new girlfriend.

Nobody said a word the
entire ride.

Rob knows how big a deal
this is. I’m not sure that Nick has the whole story, and I’ve certainly never
gone too in-depth with him about what’s going on with my mom, but he knows
enough that neither he, nor Marci broke the silence on the way here.

Now, I’m all signed in,
checked in, registered, whatever, and I have a couple of hours to kill before
things are going to get started.

I usually like to show up
right before a competition, so I don’t have time to mindfuck everything, but
today, I wanted to get as many practice runs in on the vert ramp as possible.

After my near-second
performance in the street competition, I’m even going to break down and take a
couple practice runs there, too.

The last one was to prove
to myself I could actually survive a vert competition. This time, I need to
win.

Not only do I need to win
vert, but I need to win everything.

As much as I’ve liked to
console myself with the possibility that I’d make a solid enough second or
third-place showing to convince the sponsors to pick me up as well as whoever
actually wins the thing, but that’s just a pipe dream.

If this is going to pay
off the way I need it to pay off, I can’t come in second. I need this to be a
sure thing.

I visited my mom today,
long before we were getting ready to come down to the competition. She wasn’t
having one of her better days.

In the back of my head, I
think I was hoping for some indication that she’d be well enough to come, but
that was just a pipe dream, too. I actually feel pretty stupid about that one.

I’m here, though, and
whether mom is or not, this is still for her and about her.

I just wish I knew they
weren’t opening up the venue, even for practice runs, for another few hours.

Signing in was easy
enough—I just found somebody with a clipboard—but having to stand out here in
the parking lot as the first few spectators start to arrive, bragging about
that time they saw Ryan Sheckler at Dunkin’ Donuts or Mike Vallely getting into
an argument with one of the guys at a record store, and it’s really not helping
me focus.

“What do we do now?”
Marci asks and both Rob and Nick gasp.

“It’s fine,” I tell them,
waving off their shock that Marci would be so careless as to say something when
I’m trying to get in the right headspace for the competition. “I guess we just
hang out and try to pass the time until they open the doors.”

“I’m going to go see when
they’re going to open it up so you can get in there and practice,” Nick says,
still giving Marci the stink eye for breaking the
no-talking-before-a-competition rule.

To be honest, the only
reason I ever instituted this particular rule is because I started getting sick
of Rob blathering on about the last time he got faced every time we got in the
car to head to a competition.

Nick starts walking and
Marci goes with him. Rob looks at me, even lifts his hand to about the level of
his eyes and opens his mouth, but only ends up telling me that he’s going to go
with Nick.

As soon as their backs
are turned, my hand goes into my pocket and I pull up Mia’s number. My thumb
hovers over the send key, but I just end up turning the screen off again and
replacing the phone in my pocket.

I apologized, but that
hadn’t reversed anything.

The fact of the matter is
that I was really shitty to Mia and she absolutely didn’t deserve it.

Thinking back on the
expression on her face, how the corners of her eyes and the corners of her lips
were pulled back as she grinned, the perky enthusiasm of her voice and then the
way those eyes went wide and that mouth came open when I started going off on
her right in front of about two dozen strangers, and those are just the people
who I’m absolutely sure could hear every stupid, fucked up word out of my
mouth.

I don’t blame her for a
damn thing.

Still, it’d be nice if
she was here.

I pull my phone back out,
but it’s in my pocket again just as quickly.

What exactly am I
supposed to say to her? “Hey, I know I was a jerk to you last time we were at
one of these things, but you should come down here so I can feel better about
everything?”

It doesn’t seem like the
classiest move.

I try to get my mind off
of Mia and back on the competition, but every time I visualize myself on the
vert ramp, even though I haven’t come off my board again since that last run at
the Richfield Community Skate and Ride, I’m falling off, crashing to the ground
and seeing any hope I had of making a living at this go right into someone
else’s hands.

I take a deep breath and
close my eyes, trying to relax and focus, but no matter what I do, in my head,
I’m crashing every time.

Rob, Nick and Marci come
back over, saying that the park course and the vert ramp will be available for
pre-competition practice in about an hour, leaving about another two hours
before the competition actually begins.

I tell them thanks for
checking on that, and add that I’m just going to skate around to clear my head
for a while.

Nobody objects. Nobody
really says anything.

Of the few people that
are waiting in line to get in, as far as I can tell, I’m the only competitor
here. There are a few people tooling around on board in the parking lot, but
none of them seem that advanced with it.

I’ve been to the park
before, but only once a few years ago, and that was before they had the vert
ramp inside the repurposed warehouse that is the venue. It wasn’t a
competition, just me and a couple of buddies wanted to see if it was really as
nice as everyone said it was. It’s funny how much easier everything seemed back
then.

My mom had already been
diagnosed, but I was starting to really distinguish myself on the board. I knew
there was a long way left to go, but I was making progress and, before I knew
it—or so I told myself—I’d be in a position to take the turn and go pro.

Well, that’s today, and
it doesn’t seem like much time has passed at all right now as I skate around,
feeling more unsure of myself now than I did back then.

When I get to the end of
the parking lot, I look both ways down the street and just keep going. It’s not
like I’m going to be late if I take a little detour and explore the area.

They say that forward
motion, whether it’s walking or riding a bike or driving or skating or
whatever, helps the mind work through things, but all I can see is Mia’s face
after I climbed off of that stupid fucking vert ramp.

Forward motion isn’t
helping my mind work through shit.

Nevertheless, I just keep
going.

The town of Greenville
doesn’t really have much to boast about other than the skate park. It’s a small
town, less than 10,000 residents, and the most interesting thing I’ve found on
its streets so far are the bronze statues of horses every fifty feet or so
along the main drive, painted in various ways, some as advertisements while
some are painted to look like normal horses.

I get a few blocks away
from the skate park and take a right, going from the road to the sidewalk to
let people past as they walk. Another couple of blocks and I turn again to head
back.

This isn’t helping, and
the fact that it’s not helping is actually serving to frustrate me more. I’ll
be stupefied if I end up making any kind of a decent showing in the
competition.

I’m trying to meter my
breathing and just tune into the feel of the board beneath my feet, but it’s
all I can do not to hyperventilate.

I was afraid of this.

Given any opportunity to
think, I can generally figure out a couple dozen unique ways to poke holes in
anything, and I’m having a really difficult time seeing any way that I’m going
to come through this with a smile on my face.

I take that final right turn
and it takes me back to the edge of the parking lot.

It couldn’t have been
more than fifteen minutes since I skated out of here, but the crowd seems to
have at least tripled in size.

So recently on the verge
of hyperventilation, it’s all I can do right now to breathe at all as I see the
first of my competitors in the crowd, chatting. It’s Mike Onomato.

Mike, now Mike’s a nice
guy, but he’s one of those people whose parents wanted him to be the Mozart of
skating, so they spared no expense on instructors, mentors, ramp construction,
and on, and on. It’s always been a source of pride for me that I can beat his
ass in street comps, but I’ve seen him on the vert and he’s no slouch.

Still, I don’t want to be
rude, so I skate over to him to say hello.

“Ian Zavala,” Mike says
over the head of a short, teenage girl for whom he’s signing an autograph.
Seriously, where does this guy get his PR? “Glad you could make it,” he says.
“It never feels like a real street x when you’re not around.”

“Hey, somebody’s got to
come and knock you off the top of the mountain,” I tell him. “I’m just doing my
public duty.”

He smiles and combs his
hair back with his fingers before taking another photo from a fan and signing
it.

“Heard you started
competing in vert,” he says. “Think it’s going to be enough?”

“You heard about that,
huh?” I ask.

I might be out of this
thing before it even starts.

“Yeah,” he says. “Don’t
worry about it. When I did my first vert competition, they could barely fit me
at the bottom of the scoreboard I did so badly.”

He doesn’t bother
mentioning that was when he was twelve.

I’ve always wondered why
it’s taken Mike so long to go pro. For a while, we were skating in different
places, different competitions. I knew who he was, though I doubt he could say
the same about me.

Everyone told me he was
the guy to beat in the park.

Ha, ha.

“Any tips to help me wipe
the floor with you?” I ask.

“Just keep low on the
drop in and the ride up,” he says. “You’re fine standing on the flat, but even
there, I’d recommend at least a little knee-flex.”

“You were there,” I say,
simply stating the obvious.

“Yeah,” he says. “I
wanted to see how worried I need to be about today. I knew you were going to be
here, but I’d never seen you on the ramp.”

“Got to be feeling pretty
confident right about now, huh?” I ask.

He shakes his head, and
I’m sure he’s about to offer me some sort of consolation, but a new group of
teenage girls spots Mike and descends upon him.

“I should probably leave
you to your adoring fans,” I tell him.

“Zavala,” Mike says
before I go.

“Yeah?”

“Just relax,” he says.
“If there’s one big difference between what I’ve seen you do in the park and
what I saw you do on the ramp, it was that you’re more relaxed in the park. On
the ramp, you were fine and everything, but you just need to loosen up, man,”
he says. “Do that, and I’m sure I’ll be competing with you for number one.”

“Yeah,” I respond.
“Thanks.”

I push off and start
heading back toward where I last saw Rob and them, but just as soon as I’ve
caught sight of Nick’s bright pink t-shirt, my board stops beneath me and
inertia throws me off the front.

I’m on my feet when I
land, but I’m really not in the mood, as I look back to find that someone had
kicked a board in front of mine.

“What the fuck?!” I
shout, turning around and startling most everybody in the general area.

“Hey, Ian,” a familiar
voice says, though I can’t place it until I see Mia’s friend Abby—Abs,
whatever—lift a hand and wave at me.

“Oh,” I say with a
sheepish laugh. “Sorry about that. What’s up?”

“Have you seen Mia?” she
asks.

“No,” I tell her. “She’s
here?”

“I know she was going
back and forth on it,” Abby says. “I don’t know what she ended up deciding.”

“Got ya,” I tell her. “I
haven’t seen her. It’s still pretty early, though.”

“Yeah,” Abby says and
starts twirling a finger through her hair. “Anyway,” she says, “I was really
sad to hear about what happened with the two of you. It’s really very tragic.”

“Yeah,” I respond,
looking past her. “Thanks.”

“Mia’s kind of like that,
though,” she says. “She never really knows what she wants, so she goes for
whatever she thinks she can’t get. Unfortunately,” Abby says, letting her hand
fall back to her side, “once she gets something, she doesn’t want it anymore.”

“There might have been a
bit of that,” I tell Abby, “but this last thing was my fault. I really screwed
up.”