Scomiche Short-Story Drafts (Purplechick's Unfinished Thoughts)

Draft 8- Free Skate

Written in 2018 Inspired by Juke Jam- Chance the Rapper, Justin Bieber& Towkio, and the fact that my whole family skates.

Scott ignored the shaking of his fingers as he checked the frayed laces on his borrowed skates for the third time. He'd been impatiently waiting for Friday night to arrive, excited to finally be granted permission to go somewhere without parental guidance now that he was thirteen.

Funny enough, it was now that he remembered why he avoided the skating rink since it was recently built—he was terrible at anything involving balance and coordination. So, in an attempt to stall, he tightened his laces one last time and tried to prepare himself for inevitable embarrassment.

"Okay, come on already," his best friend Dylan groaned. "If we fall, we'll just laugh it off, no problem." He held out his hand and Scott sighed, gripping it to pull himself up from the bench. Their friend Riley and his cousin Ashlyen lingered eagerly at the closest floor entrance a few feet away.

"Fine, here goes nothing."

Scott and Dylan tip-toed over on their toe stops, and all together the group inched onto the smooth wood flooring. Then they all linked arms and started an awkward foot shuffling, trying to pull one another along while people breezed around them. Having been participating in ice skating since they were old enough to walk, the two cousins applied the same skating basics and managed to clumsily tug along Scott and Dylan.

Scott was glad for the help, but after a few songs and snails-paced laps around the disco-ball lit rink, the friends separated and tried skating on their own. Needless to say, Scott was a wild mess of long limbs as he made his way around the oval space. He clung to the wall circling the floor every few glitchy glides until his lanky legs started aching and begging for a rest. He happily stood against the wall then, and watched everyone that passed him.

He recognized most of the kids around the room from his middle school, and even spotted a few groups of high-schoolers since it was Youth Night. Skill knew no age, he realized as he watched them. People of all ages were either successfully gliding by him, stiffly stomping along, or falling every which way. He tells himself that he has no reason to even feel remotely embarrassed for his own lack of agility.

But maybe he spoke too soon...

Scott was so caught up in his observations that he didn't hear or see Dylan coming at him full speed until it was too late to push off the wall to avoid him. They collided hard, the force of his friend's weight slamming into his backside sent him half stumbling, half rolling forward. His arms waved and flung on their own accord as he panicked.

"Use your stoppers!" Ashlyen screeched to him from somewhere and he quickly attempted to do so.

Unfortunately, he tipped his feet forward too sharply and pitched his entire body face-first toward the ground. In an attempt to save his face from the hit, he reached out and instinctively closed his fists around the first thing his fingers came in contact with. It just so happens that thing his hands closed on was the fabric of one Mitch Grassi's shorts, that were now swimming around the ankles of said boy.

Scott felt like time went still as his eyes traveled up slowly, taking in the fallen shorts, knobby knees, small hands trying to hide SpongeBob undies from sight, and finally a completely horrified face. The dark-eyed boy scrambled to tug up his pants once he'd got over the shock of the situation, only managing to fall backwards in the process. Skaters on the floor erupted in laughter at that point if they hadn't already, and to make things even worse, a bunch of heartless kids made a show of falling over each other in the midst of the their laughter and it seemed to be the final straw for Mitchell. Tears sprung from his eyes and started steaming down his bright red face.