Chapter Text
I squint as the bright sun reflects sharply against the array of shiny new ramps and metal rails in front of me; this course setup looks amazing, and it’s honestly taking all of my self control to keep from bouncing around and making an excitable fool of myself. I feel a calloused hand grip my shoulder and spin me around.
“Shit, Frosh, looks like we made it!”
I can’t hold back the little noises of happiness and general anticipation I let out, and quickly pull my best friend into a hug.
“Laf! This is unreal, I never thought that I’d see the day where we were the ones about to ride in the Dew Tour…”
“Well you better start believing, kid,” Lafontaine said with their notoriously toothy grin, “Because we’re here. And also, the women’s BMX streetstyle comp starts in like, an hour. So you should probably start stretching. Or at the very least—” they gently pry the half-empty can of grape soda from my hands, “start drinking water. We don’t need you getting a leg cramp when you’re half way down that twelve stair handrail.”
I pout at the loss of my sugar-filled beverage, but wince at Laf’s imagery. Nobody wants to bail in the first round of a competition, let alone one as big as Dew Tour. This is especially true for me, being a first time competitor and newly sponsored amateur rider, while the bulk of my competitors were seasoned riders who had been on the tour circuit before. Fucking up that spectacularly would be a surefire way to eliminate myself from the game before it’s even begun.
While I’m not usually an anxious person, the sight of the course in front of me, which is one part enticing and two parts daunting, is quickly turning me into one. The presence of some of my favorite riders, who eleven year old me could only dream about seeing, isn’t helping either.
Thank god for Laf, though, they’re the only thing keeping me grounded.
———
Lafontaine and I grew up on the same street in a suburb just outside of Toronto, two houses apart. We were the only two kids in the neighborhood that were around similar ages, Laf being roughly two years older than me, so naturally, we became friends. When I was ten, Lafontaine started to learn some tricks on their bicycle. I was impressed, to say the least. I just couldn’t wrap my head around how they went from cruising around the streets with me, to hopping into the air and doing a bunch of fancy maneuvers with their bike instead. They tried to teach me a few times, but my small frame, which was even smaller at the time, simply couldn’t achieve the same results; so by the time I was eleven, I stopped trying.
I still remember the exact moment when things started to change.
—
I was outside on my front lawn watching a now short haired, 14 year old Lafontaine set up a rickety launch ramp out of four bricks and two pieces of dubiously sturdy wood. They’d been explaining how to do a 180 barspin when my house phone rang. I remember nodding along to what Laf was saying while also trying to listen in on the one side of conversation I could hear coming from my father inside the house. I was clapping at Lafontaine as they landed flawlessly for the fifth time in a row when my dad came walking shakily outside.
Immediately, I noticed the tears on his cheeks and the way his eyes seemed to be void of any life.
“L-Laura, sweetheart… I need you to sit down and listen to me— please…”
Lafontaine had noticed his presence as well, and they hurriedly dropped their bike and ran over towards us. It sounds stupid now, but that was sort of what cued me in on the fact that something was seriously wrong. Laf had been saving up for months to buy that bike, that shiny new BMX bike with the fiery red frame to match their hair… they’d never just drop it to the ground so carelessly like that, unless, of course, something serious was going on.
They gripped me by the elbows and helped me sit down, my father knelt in front of me.
“Honey, there was an accident… M-m-mommy’s gone.”
As he burst into tears, the only thing I could feel past the numbness that news inspired was a combination of Lafontaine and my Dad hugging me tightly.
After the funeral, I didn’t leave my room for three months.
Being homeschooled with a now deceased teacher kind of allowed for that.
Eventually though, my dad realized that I couldn’t keep existing that way. I was enrolled in public school, and Lafontaine became my anchor once again.
Four weeks after my enrollment, Laf did something that would become the most important gesture in my life.
They walked up to my house, leading their new bike in one hand, and the old one they’d outgrown in the other. Unceremoniously, they rolled the old bike into my surprised, but welcoming hands.
“So kid, I figure it’s about time we give this another go.”
———
From that point on, I was hooked. Nothing really broke through the shroud of gray that’d been hanging heavily over me since the funeral like landing a new trick did, not Harry Potter movie marathons, not hot chocolate, nothing. By the time I was fourteen, I had an impressive array of tricks under my belt, including some that even the guys at the local skatepark, who were always so vocal about how much older and stronger than me they were, couldn’t hope to land.
Lafontaine and I just had fun. We challenged one another. Laf was a genius when it came to creating new lines of tricks that both linked obstacles together seamlessly and were ridiculously technical, while I focused on the more, quote-unquote, ‘ballsy’ tricks. Big airs, big transitions, big rails, you name it. I hit them all, and with Lafontaine’s help, I managed to do all of it with a distinctly technical flair.
By the time I was sixteen, I’d become a name to watch out for. Lafontaine had been competing in local shows for a couple of years at that point, so with their guidance, I began to enter them as well. Together, we were a force to be reckoned with. If the two of us entered a competition, there was no doubt that we’d be claiming the top two medal spaces, both of us usually competing against the other for gold.
Things got more complicated as we got older, however. For me, it was my personal life, for Lafontaine, it was how their personal life interfered with their competition life.
—
I started to question my sexuality at a young age, but never thought much of it until I hit my mid-to-late teens. When the fact that I was clearly gay started to become more apparent, I went to Laf for guidance, as I did with most things.
The fight that was happening in my mind was impacting my performance on my bike, and I knew that I couldn’t figure everything out on my own. There would be days where we would be riding at the skatepark, and I’d see an attractive girl, literally forget what I was doing, and ride full speed, head-on into the side of a ramp. I must have spent at least half of my savings on new wheel rims and handlebars the summer before I turned 16.
It didn’t help that the community pool was right next to the park. Cute girls in bikinis are a serious threat to tiny gay BMX riders apparently, and well, I’m only human after all.
There were also days that I wouldn’t get out of bed because I felt so sick to my stomach at the idea that I wasn’t ‘normal.’ Those days usually came directly after the days where I was particularly flirty with a girl, or vice versa, or when I’d spent too much time reading Harry Potter slash fics, and gotten way, way too aroused from it.
Lafontaine didn’t judge me for anything though, they were my short ginger wall of unwavering support. Together, we worked through my inner turmoil. When I was seventeen, I came out to my dad. I couldn’t have asked for a better reception.
Laf didn’t get off as easily, though.
Unfortunately, as the age brackets increase in competitions, they also start to differentiate and divide male competitors and female competitors.
Lafontaine came out to me as nonbinary when they were fifteen, and I supported them wholeheartedly during the time it took for their parents to come around to the concept. The thing is, competition judges didn’t care about how you identified, they cared about what your birth certificate said. Even though Laf continued to compete, I could see the spark of pain in their eyes each time an announcement for the women’s division for a comp came around.
Lafontaine loved the discipline too much to let the gender binary hold them back from yet another thing though, and eventually, that dedication allowed them to rise to the top of the game, with me following closely behind.
————
The sound of cheering pulled me out of my thoughts and focused my attention back on the park in front of me. The people in the stands surrounding the course are waving around various homemade posters to support their favorite skaters, and the crowd erupts once more as I hear the announcer begin to speak.
Damn, I didn’t even notice that people were starting to warm up on the course in front of me.
“Alright folks, welcome to Dew Tour 2015! We’re about to start our women’s AM skateboard street competition. Each skater will have three 45 second runs, and whoever has the highest score from the combined three runs will be crowned as the winner of the competition. The top three skaters will receive the opportunity to advance onto the next leg of the tour!”
I watch as the competitors mill around the platform that leads to the first drop-in section of the course. Some of them are chatting amicably, others bopping their heads along to whatever rhythm is pumping out of their headphones, and one girl is standing off to the side, arms crossed and head leaning back against the railing. From what I can see, she’s got long, wavy black hair that she’s keeping out of her face with a backwards snapback, and other than the green of her hat, she’s dressed head to toe in black. Black cutoff tank top, black bracelets, black skinny jeans, and black low top sneakers. The sun shining off her pale skin is nearly as blinding as the rays glinting off the metal obstacles around her. I can’t help but notice how gorgeous she is, even from a distance.
My sight is pulled back to the announcer’s booth as he continues.
"Up first, we’ve got a fan-favorite; twenty year old Toronto native, Carmilla Karnstein!”
I’m leaning over the safety railing that surrounds the viewing section for other competitors even farther than I was earlier. I can’t stop looking.
The crowd cheers again as the horn blows, signaling the start of the first run. With a confident smirk that almost seems as if it was aimed at me, the lonely girl that I’d been checking out just moments before throws down her board and kicks off effortlessly. Immediately, I’m captivated.
For the next 45 seconds, I don’t hear a single thing that the announcer says.