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PAIN EXPLODES IN her shoulder as Violet hits the ground hard with a grunt. Her skateboard clatters to the ground somewhere to her left. Tears spring to her eyes and her vision goes blurry. All the wind's knocked out of her lungs and she lays crumpled on the concrete for a couple seconds, concentrating on forcing air back into her body.
"Close," Sage hums, standing over Violet, a dark silhouette eclipsing the silver sky. She waves her video camera around. "Wanna see the playback?"
Like a camera lens shifting into focus, the world becomes clear again as Violet's eyes recalibrate. Pulling herself upright, she rolls her shoulder a few times, grimacing. With a smile, Kit offers her a hand up and Violet takes it, straightening to her feet. She brushes off the dirt from her clothes, shaking off the electrifying impact of the fall from her body. They huddle around Sage as she rewinds the recording and presses play.
"That was a little ambitious," Violet mutters, pursing her lips and eyeing the video capturing every moment of her failure right down to the moment she's attempted to do a flip off one of the wooden ramps in Kit's backyard with a critical eye.
One summer, back when they were twelve and made of matchsticks for bones and gasoline for blood and Kit had been grounded for something entirely her fault, Violet had pitched the idea to build a mini skate park in Kit's backyard. That way, they could still hang out and skate without leaving the perimeters of the Lahote residence and, thus, without violating the strict guidelines of Kit's punishment. Violet's father had been more than content to fund the entire operation. Paving concrete over a large patch of the grass that Kit's mother was more than happy to shed responsibility of mowing so often, adding a few ramps here and there, installing some sturdy ledges and benches, and Kit's backyard had been turned into a playground for the three of them. When they didn't feel like making the long trip to Tillicum skatepark, this was where they hung around.
Right after lunch, wherein—true to Sage's word—Paul and his friends had to be forcibly pried off the pasta to let the girls get in a plateful, the three girls, still buzzing from their impromptu reunion, were lounging around Kit's backyard, rocking back and forth on their skateboards to wait out the lethargy from a big meal. Sage had dug up a slightly crushed-up carton of cigarettes from her pocket and passed them around. Kit had refused, because Kit never liked smoking, but Violet had taken one—much to Sage's evident surprise.
While Paul and his friends had vanished off to make trouble elsewhere, Sage and Kit had caught Violet up with the latest news in town first. About the people at school, and the cute girl in their Physics class Sage supposedly had an eye on for a few weeks until she figured out that girl was devastatingly straight and not privy to experimenting anytime soon. Neither of them were included in much of the pointless melodramatics of petty high school scandals, since they preferred keeping to themselves, maintaining their impersonal exclusivity towards most of the high school population. In their eyes, the only friends that mattered, the only friends they would ever need were within their tribe of three.
