The Beautiful Leaving

The wheels knew the yard better than Shiloh did.

Two pushes from the far end and he was already reading the surface the way he always did: the smooth stretch past the rusted chain-link, the rough patch near the loading dock where the concrete had heaved and settled wrong decades ago and never been fixed, the shallow pooling spot everyone called the swamp even when it wasn't wet. His wheels rattled through the rough section and he shifted his weight forward without thinking about it. His feet just knew.

This was the part he liked best. Not the tricks, not the filming, not Cole's running commentary from the loading dock. Just this. The push and the roll and the surface feeding information up through his shoes and into the rest of him, the whole yard turning into something he understood.

He came around toward the painted line and set up his approach.

The line was faded white going gray, whatever it used to mean long since irrelevant. It ran for about six feet, straight and flaking, a remnant of what this place had been before it stopped being that and started being theirs. At one end sat the drainage grate, iron and dark, surrounded by a permanent ring of dampness. About two body-lengths before the grate was the crack: a fault line running roughly east to west, a little wider than his trucks were long, filled at its edges with old grit and weeds going yellow. Between the crack and the grate was the territory Shiloh had been arguing with since April.

The trick was a kickflip to boardslide on the edge of the loading dock's low concrete lip. He'd come close enough to feel it in his chest before it slipped away. Today it felt possible again. The air was the usual Washington version of cold, damp without committing to rain, the sky doing that flat gray thing it did nine months out of the year. Past the fence somewhere, the water sent the yard its particular combination of salt and low tide and old rope. In here it smelled like wet pavement and the oil that had long since stopped being a spill and started being the floor.

Zane was crouched near the base of the loading dock with his phone angled low. He'd found the shot before Shiloh even started his approach. That was how Zane operated. He found the frame and then waited for the world to fill it.

"Ready," Zane said, which meant the camera was running.

Cole was on the loading dock above him, holding a can of soda he hadn't opened yet. He was holding it the way someone holds a prop when they're waiting for their cue. "Here we go," Cole said. "History in the making. Probably. Statistically unlikely, but theoretically possible."

River was leaning against the chain-link near the swamp with her arms crossed and her beanie pulled low. She didn't say anything. She watched the way she always watched Shiloh skate, like she was calculating something, like the answer was going to come to her if she looked long enough.

Shiloh pushed twice, found his speed, and committed.

The approach felt right. His foot found the tail, the board popped clean, and for a half second the world tilted into that specific silence where everything was either going to work or it wasn't. His front foot kicked out, the board flipped, and then his feet found it again, and the lip of the loading dock was right there, and he was going to slide it, he was actually going to slide it, and then the light changed.

It didn't dim. It did something worse. It shifted sideways, like someone had nudged the sun two inches to the left, and the whole right side of his vision went briefly and completely wrong. He felt the board go out from under him and stepped off it fast, both feet hitting the pavement, and he stood there for a second with his hands out to his sides like he was on a balance beam nobody else could see.

Behind his left eye, something pressed.

He knew this feeling. That was the problem. He'd been getting acquainted with it for weeks now, and he was very tired of the acquaintance.

"Close," Zane said from below, not looking up from the phone. He was reviewing the footage already, thumb moving across the screen.

"Closer than yesterday," River said. She'd straightened up from the chain-link. Her arms were still crossed.

"My grandmother could do it closer than yesterday," Cole said. "My grandmother is seventy-three and hasn't skated a day in her life, but she has good instincts and a surprising amount of core strength."

"Your grandmother sounds fake," River said.

"She is a little fake," Cole agreed. "But very supportive."

Shiloh picked up his board and stood there holding it, waiting for the pressing behind his eye to ease up. It didn't ease up. It settled in and made itself comfortable the way it always did, like it had paid rent and had every right to be there. He breathed through his nose, slow and even, and kept his face arranged in the way he'd been practicing, which was the way that looked like nothing in particular was happening.

He was getting pretty good at that face.

"You good?" River asked.

The question was too flat to be casual. She'd said it the same way she said everything, direct and without decoration, but there was something underneath it that had been there for a while now. He'd noticed it the way he noticed the rough patch near the loading dock: automatically, without wanting to, because it was just part of the surface now.

"Came off wrong," he said. "The approach was off."

"The approach looked fine."

"The approach felt off."

She held his gaze for a second longer than necessary and then looked away, back toward the chain-link, like something over there needed checking. The fence was the same as it always was. Rusted, holding, not going anywhere. There was nothing to look at. They both knew it.

Shiloh set his board down and put one foot on it and pushed off slow, just rolling, not going anywhere particular. The motion helped. It usually did. When he was rolling, the pressing behind his eye had something else to compete with, and sometimes it backed off a little, gave him some room. He rolled past the crack and past the grate and turned in a wide arc near the back wall where the old loading company had spray-painted their logo before the place went vacant, and he came back around toward the center.

The afternoon light pressed down flat and gray from above. Even through the clouds, it was doing something unkind to the inside of his head today.

He pushed twice more and set up his approach again.

Cole climbed down from the loading dock and sat on its edge instead, feet dangling. He finally opened the soda. "You know what your problem is," he said.

"I'm sure you'll tell me."

"Your problem is you're thinking about it."

"That's everyone's problem with everything," Shiloh said.

"True," Cole said. "But yours is more visible. You get this look. Right here." He pointed to the space between his own eyebrows. "Like you're doing long division."

"Maybe I am doing long division."

"Does the long division help?"

"Not so far."

"Then stop doing it," Cole said, and drank his soda like that was the end of the conversation.

Zane had moved his position, crouching lower, the phone angled up toward the lip of the loading dock. He was looking for the shot that would make the trick look the way it would feel when Shiloh finally landed it. That was how Zane always worked. He wasn't filming what was happening. He was filming what was about to happen, the version that existed a little ahead of the present moment.

"Wider," River said, without looking at Zane.

"I've got it," Zane said.

"You're cutting off his feet."

"I'm not cutting off his feet."

"You're going to cut off his feet."

Zane shifted two inches to the left. "Better?"

"Ask him," River said.

Shiloh didn't answer because he was setting up his approach again and the world needed his full attention right now. He breathed out. He pushed. He found the speed he needed and the tail was under his foot and he was going to pop it right this time, he was going to feel the flip and find the board and hit the lip clean.

The pressing behind his eye turned sharp.

It went from a dull, manageable weight to something that felt like a nail, specific and sudden, located somewhere just above and behind his left eye, and the light coming off the concrete went briefly, horribly white. He got the pop. He felt the flip. His front foot found the board and then lost it again because his whole body had shifted in a way that had nothing to do with his feet and everything to do with whatever was happening inside his skull right now, and he stepped off and grabbed the chain-link because the chain-link was there and he needed something that was staying still.

He held on for a second. The pavement was very solid beneath him and the fence was cold under his fingers and the pressing behind his eye was enormous, filling the whole left side of his head, and he stood there and breathed and waited for it to back off.

Nobody said anything.

That was how he knew it had been visible. When Cole didn't say anything, it had been visible.

"I'm fine," Shiloh said, to the fence, to the yard, to whoever was listening.

"Obviously," Cole said, but he'd put down the soda.

River was next to him before he turned around. She hadn't run. She'd just moved quickly and quietly and now she was there, standing close without touching him, her hands in the front pocket of her flannel. She looked at his face the way she'd been looking at him for a while now, the way he'd been pretending not to notice.

"How long has it been doing that?" she asked.

He let go of the fence. He straightened up and looked at the back wall with the faded logo and the two pigeons that had taken up residence on the roof of the loading dock and the pale, flat sky above all of it. "Doing what," he said.

"Shiloh."

"The approach was off," he said. "I lost my balance on the approach. It happens."

"You grabbed the fence," she said.

"There was a fence. It seemed like a good option."

"You've been losing your balance for weeks," River said. "Not big. Little. You compensate for it and most of the time it looks like nothing, but I watch you skate every day and it's not nothing."

He looked at her. She looked back, steady as the concrete.

He wanted to say something light. He had several options prepared. He'd been preparing options for weeks, keeping them in rotation, because there had been more and more moments that needed covering and he was running low on material.

"It's probably just a migraine thing," he said. "Or dehydration. I don't drink enough water."

"You've been saying that for a month," River said.

"It's been a dry month."

"It's Washington," she said. "It's never a dry month."

Behind them, Cole had gotten off the loading dock and was standing a careful distance away with his hands in his pockets, watching the chain-link like he'd also found something important to look at over there. Zane had lowered his phone. He was still holding it, but the camera wasn't running anymore. Shiloh could tell by the way Zane was standing. He stood differently when he wasn't filming.

They knew. That was the part that settled into him now, slow and cold like the water coming off the fence posts, that they had all been watching and noticing and saying nothing because they were waiting for him to say it first. They'd been doing him a courtesy he hadn't asked for and didn't especially want, and now River had decided the courtesy was over.

The pain behind his eye was still there. It had backed off from the nail-sharp moment but it hadn't gone anywhere. It never fully went anywhere. That was the thing he hadn't told anyone, the thing that lived underneath the jokes and the prepared responses. It wasn't coming and going. It was always there, and sometimes it was quiet and sometimes it wasn't, but it hadn't actually left for weeks.

"It's fine," he said. "I'll see a doctor or whatever."

River didn't look convinced. She looked like someone who had been unconvinced for a while and was only now allowing herself to show it. Her jaw was set and her hands were still in her pocket and she was watching him with that thing in her expression that she worked very hard not to show, the thing that was softer than everything else about her.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay," he said.

Cole cleared his throat from over by the chain-link. "Should I say something helpful? I have several things prepared. Most of them are jokes but there's one that might be genuinely useful."

"Save it," River said.

"Saving it," Cole said.

Shiloh picked up his board from where it had rolled near the drainage grate and tucked it under his arm. The iron of the grate was dark and damp, the same as always, surrounded by its permanent ring of moisture. The yard smelled like it always smelled. The pigeons on the loading dock roof had not moved. Everything was exactly the same as it had been an hour ago, and he was the only thing that had changed, or was changing, or had been changing for a while now without permission.

He stood in the middle of the yard for a moment and looked at the faded line in the concrete, the one that ran straight and flaking for six feet and didn't mean anything anymore. He'd landed tricks near this line. He'd fallen near it. He knew every variation in the surface between the crack and the grate. He knew this yard the way he knew very few things, and the knowing felt important right now in a way he couldn't explain and didn't try to.

"Same time tomorrow?" Zane asked, from his spot near the base of the dock. He'd put the phone in his pocket. His voice was careful in the way Zane's voice got when he was trying not to show that he was being careful.

Shiloh looked at the sky, the flat gray Washington sky that lived here the same as all of them did.

"Same time tomorrow," he said.

He pushed off once toward the far end of the yard, slow, not going anywhere in particular. The wheels read the surface. The rough patch near the dock. The swamp that wasn't wet today. The long smooth stretch past the chain-link where the concrete had been poured right, once, a long time ago, and had stayed right ever since. His feet knew all of it. The knowing went up through his shoes and into the rest of him, and for the length of that one slow roll, the pressing behind his eye went quiet enough that he could almost forget it was there.

Almost.