Girl Out of Water(24)

I lift my hands into the air, as if to showcase my incredible athletic dexterity. “I’m fine. It’s fine.” My ankles feel locked. The board wobbles again, but I refuse to show my hesitation a second time. “See? Everything’s fine.”

“Sure. Great,” Lincoln says. “Now why don’t you try the actual skating part?”

“I was getting there.”

“Want a push?” Nash asks, rushing forward with arms outstretched.

“No!” I shout—just in time to keep his hands from launching me forward and most likely to the ground. “Absolutely not. No pushing.” And then I mutter, “I should probably be wearing a helmet…”

“Excellent idea!” Lincoln calls. Apparently supersonic hearing is also one of his many talents. He pops off his own helmet and throws it to me. I reach forward, stumbling off the skateboard, and grab it with clumsy hands. I do not stumble. I do not have clumsy hands. Nebraska is obviously poisoning my coordination skills with its oppressive heat.

The helmet is too big for me, but not wearing it would set a bad example for those kids I’m supposed to be keeping alive. “Right.” I reposition myself on the board once more and gather a breath. “How hard can this be?”

Slowly, I remove my right foot from the skateboard, plant it on the ground, and then kick off. I almost lose my balance, but somehow manage to bring my right foot back onto the board and ride for all of two seconds across the pavement. My heart is racing. I don’t know why it’s racing. I’m three inches off the ground and moving at a speed of approximately half a mile an hour, but it’s racing all the same.

I grab the board, walk over to my audience, and drop the board on the ground. “See? Not that bad. Am I done now?”

“No, no, no,” Lincoln says. “That was not skating. That was inching. At a maximum it was scooting. But definitely not skating.”

At this point, all I really want to do is shove the board in Lincoln’s face and say I don’t give a damn about skating or inching or fucking scooting. But I don’t aspire to spend my summer with taunting cousins, which will inevitably happen if I give up now. Plus, I’ve never exactly been one to back down from a challenge, even a challenge as pointless as this.

“Fine,” I say. “What would you consider a respectable amount of movement to prove this sport is mind-numbingly easy?”

“Hmm.” Lincoln rubs his chin in mock thought. He turns to my cousins and bends slightly so he can look them in the eyes. “I don’t know. What do you guys think?”

All three of them debate back and forth while I stand there, hands on my hips and sweat dripping down my neck. Finally, they deign to speak directly to me, telling me I need to skate the length of the back fence of the skate park. The distance is short enough, about a hundred feet, but it looks like a marathon compared to my last tiny stunt.

“No problem,” I say, because if I say no problem it will be no problem, right? “But after this, no more challenges. My skating career will be over. Understood?” I direct this question at my cousins, and they nod in agreement.

I grab the skateboard once more, wishing that it were about four feet longer and in the ocean, and walk over to the far corner of the skate park. Two sides of a chain-link fence corner me in. Setting the board down on the ground, I once again balance myself and then kick off, a little less cautiously this time.

Okay, a lot less cautiously. I kick off so hard that I only manage to keep my “balance” for about three terrifying seconds until I crash to the ground, my arms bracing my fall and chafing hard against the rough cement.

“Shit!” I curse, clutching both arms to my chest to quell the stinging. I sit in a huddle on the ground, trying to breathe out the pain. “Shit, shit, shit,” I repeat.

I hear the twins laughing, which is very inappropriate considering their cousin is on the ground bleeding. At least, I think I’m bleeding. There’s no way I can feel this level of pain without some quantity of blood. Unless I’m mistaking pain for unadulterated embarrassment. Lincoln walks toward me, looming over me, his form blocking the sun so he looks like an absurdly tall version of one of those Victorian silhouettes.

“You okay down there?” he asks.

“Excellent,” I mutter.

He offers me his hand, but I ignore it, proudly lifting myself off the ground despite the protests of my throbbing arms. I inspect them and find only a few drops of blood. It’s mostly rubbed-raw skin. I pick out a couple grains of gravel and flick them to the ground, knowing I’ll need to pour rubbing alcohol on later. Years of surfing injuries have taught me it’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to infections.

“You know,” Lincoln says. “I hate to insult an injured party, but I did try to warn you it’s harder than it looks.”

“Warn me? You goaded me into doing this, which is like the opposite of warning me.”

“I thought you’d enjoy it. You know, once you get past the bleeding and bruising. Well, you never get past the bleeding and bruising, but you get really good at ignoring it.”

“I have no idea why you’d think I’d enjoy skating,” I say. “Surfing is ten times more interesting and difficult. Not many people can literally ride on water. Anyone can slap some wheels to a piece of wood and ride it.”