Learning to Fall

Skateboard

Tag found the skateboard on a Tuesday, leaning against the back fence like it had been waiting there just for her.

It was scuffed up and scratched, with wheels that made a rumbly sound when you spun them with your hand. The grip tape on top was rough like a cat's tongue. The bottom had a faded painting of a lightning bolt that was mostly peeled away.

"Can I keep it?" Tag asked her mom.

Her mom looked at the board, then looked at Tag, then looked at the board again. "I'll get you a helmet," she said.

The first day, Tag stood on the skateboard in the driveway and immediately fell off.

Not slowly. Not gracefully. Her feet went one way, the board shot the other way, and Tag sat down hard on the concrete.

"Ow," she said.

She got up. She tried again. She fell again.

She tried again. She fell again.

By the time her mom called her in for dinner, Tag had a scrape on her left elbow, a bruise on her right knee, and a very clear number in her head.

"I fell fourteen times," she announced at the dinner table.

Her older brother, Miles, didn't look up from his pasta. "Only fourteen?"

The second day, Tag pushed off with her back foot the way she'd seen kids do at the park. The board wobbled underneath her like it was alive, like it was a wild animal that did NOT want to be ridden.

She fell on the grass. She fell on the driveway. She fell in a way that made her slide forward on her hands and knees, and tiny bits of gravel got stuck in her palms.

She sat on the curb and picked the gravel out, one piece at a time.

"Twenty-two," she told her mom at dinner. "Twenty-two falls."

Miles raised an eyebrow. "That's more than yesterday."

"I was trying harder today," Tag said.

The third day it rained, and Tag stood at the window staring at the wet driveway like it had personally betrayed her.

The fourth day, Tag discovered something. If she bent her knees — really bent them, like she was about to sit in an invisible chair — the board didn't wobble as much. She still fell. But between the falls, there were these little moments, these tiny slices of time where she was actually riding.

Three seconds. Maybe four.

The world got smooth during those seconds. The rumbly wheels hummed, and the wind touched her face, and everything felt like flying and falling at the same time, except the falling part hadn't happened yet.

Then it did.

"Seventeen falls!" she reported at dinner. "That's less than yesterday!"

"Less than the day before yesterday," Miles corrected. "You didn't skate yesterday."

"Shh," said Tag's mom.

By the end of the first week, Tag knew every crack in the driveway. She knew which ones would catch the wheels and which ones were small enough to roll over. She knew that the driveway tilted slightly to the left, which was why she always drifted toward the recycling bins.

She kept count every day. Twelve falls. Fifteen falls. Nine falls. Nineteen falls — which was a bad day because she'd tried to turn, and turning was a WHOLE different thing.

She wrote the numbers in a little notebook with a cover that had puppies on it.

"Why do you count them?" asked her neighbor, Alma, who was watching from her porch while eating an orange.

"So I know if I'm getting better," Tag said.

"Are you?"

Tag looked at her notebook. The numbers went up and down and up and down. She frowned. "I can't tell."

The second week, Tag went to the park. There was a real path there, smooth and flat and long, and she wanted to try it.

She saw other skaters, too. Older kids, mostly. They carved back and forth like they were drawing on the ground with their wheels. One boy did a jump where the board stuck to his feet like magic.

Tag pushed off on the smooth path. She rode for five whole seconds. Six. Seven. Then a wobble came, and she crouched low, and the wobble... passed. It just passed! Like a wave that came and went, and she was still standing.

She rode for twelve seconds. Fifteen. Twenty.

Then she hit a pebble and went flying.

She lay on her back, staring up at the sky, breathing hard. An older girl with braids skated over and looked down at her.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," Tag said. "That was fall number... um..."

She scrunched her face. What number was she on? She'd lost track. Had the last one been six or seven? Did the wobble count, the one she'd saved? Did she count the time she'd stepped off on purpose?

"What?" said the girl.

"Nothing," Tag said. "I'm fine." She got up and brushed off her pants and got back on.

Something was different after that.

Tag stopped bringing the puppy notebook to the park. She still fell — she fell ALL the time — but instead of counting, she was thinking about other things while she rode. She was thinking about her knees, and where to put her weight, and how the board felt under her feet when she pressed her toes versus her heels.

She was thinking about the wind.

When she fell, she got up. That was all. She got up and she tried again, and the getting-up was just part of the riding now, the way breathing was part of being alive. You didn't count your breaths. You just breathed.

One afternoon, Tag was rolling down the long path at the park when Alma showed up with her scooter.

"How many today?" Alma asked.

"How many what?"

"Falls."

Tag shrugged while she skated, and the shrug didn't even make her wobble. "I don't know. A bunch."

Alma scooted alongside her. "You stopped counting?"

"I guess so."

"How come?"

Tag thought about it. She leaned gently to the left and the board curved to the left, smooth and easy, following the bend in the path. She leaned right and came back to center. The rumbly wheels hummed their rumbly song.

"I got busy," Tag said.

By the end of the month, Tag could ride all the way down the long path without falling. She could turn, both directions. She could stop — mostly — without jumping off and running.

She still fell. She fell trying to go faster. She fell trying to ride off a curb. She fell in a spectacular, spinning, arms-flailing wipeout that made two joggers gasp and a little kid clap.

She got up from that one laughing.

At dinner that night, Miles said, "I saw you at the park today."

"Yeah?"

"You're actually getting kind of good."

Tag kept eating her rice. But under the table, her scraped-up, gravel-bitten, bruised-up knees bounced with a happiness she didn't need to count or measure or write down.

That night, Tag sat on the back porch with the skateboard across her lap. She spun the rumbly wheels with her hand. The lightning bolt on the bottom was almost completely peeled away now, and in its place were scratches and scuff marks and dings — the whole messy, beautiful history of everywhere the board had been and everything Tag had tried.

She ran her finger over the roughest scratch, a deep one from the day she'd tried to ride down the hill on Maple Street.

That had been a lot of falls.

She smiled.

Tomorrow she was going to try the hill again.