Vitamin Water and Orange Sunset

The bull at the skate park wouldn't leave me alone.

"Yo, Marcus, that trick was weak sauce," Jaxon yelled, pumping his fist like he'd just won something. Which, technically, he had — my dignity.

I wiped sweat from my forehead, grabbed my water bottle from the concrete. The Arizona sun was doing its thing, turning the sky orange behind the half-pipe. Perfect Instagram lighting, terrible skate conditions.

"Whatever," I muttered, but my voice cracked. Classic.

"I'm just saying," Jaxon continued, carving up the ramp while his little fan club watched like he was Tony Hawk's second coming. "You gotta commit. That was some scaredy-cat energy."

I wanted to disappear. Not literally — though that would be sick — but just, like, melt into the pavement and re-materialize somewhere else. Anywhere else.

That's when I noticed her. Chloe. The new girl from English class, sitting on the bench with her sketchbook, totally not watching me fail at life. Great.

My phone buzzed. Mom: Did you take your vitamin D yet? I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. Yes, Mother. Because that's what teenagers need — their moms texting them about supplements in the middle of a social crisis.

"One more time," I heard myself say. Because apparently humiliation is addictive.

I dropped in. The board wobbled. My arms pinwheeled. And then — somehow — I landed it. Not perfectly, but I didn't eat concrete. The bull had been defeated. Or at least mildly inconvenienced.

Jaxon's expression was worth it. That microsecond of "wait, what" before he recovered his cool guy facade.

"Not bad," he admitted, which in Jaxon-speak meant "I'm threatened."

Chloe looked up from her sketchbook and smiled. Actually smiled. At me. Not at Jaxon, not at the sky, but at my awkward, sweating, vitamin-deficient self.

"Nice," she said.

That was it. Just "nice." But it hit different coming from her.

I took a long drink from my water bottle, suddenly aware of everything. The orange sky, the distant hum of traffic, the way Jaxon was already showing off for someone else. None of it mattered as much as it had five minutes ago.

"Thanks," I said, and meant it.

Some days you eat it. Some days you land it. And sometimes, just sometimes, you realize the only bull you've been fighting is the one in your own head.