I. Quincey

I pick up my helmet, grimacing at the sweat that’s gathered there from my ride. Maybe we should make a habit of washing the padding in these things. But It’s not like anyone will use this helmet ever again. I sit down, the wood of the bench still cool on my thighs from being in the shade all morning.

I’m in the grassy area of the beach house at Ladle bike park, my bike leaning up against the heavily beaten wooden picnic table. It’s a sunny day, too warm and sticky for my taste, our first warm day this year, but just what Steve would call “A good start to the season.” I sigh, I love Ladle. People on my team say that its trails are boring and annoying to ride on, but I need these trails like the blood in my veins. This park is what saved me.

Ladle is where I’ve become the biker that I am. The ladle was my first spin on the pedals, my first glide on my skis, and my first friend ever. I might be too sentimental for my own good, but I’m not sentimental about many things.

My whole life I’ve longed to escape my city, my country, my family. Not that I don't love my family. But the one thing that has rooted me here has been my mountain bike team. My trails. On the edge of suicide, at only age eleven, the thought that kept me here wasn’t, "My family needs me." It was, "My team needs me." 

Not that I believe that anyone on the team wouldn’t survive without me, they’re a strong bunch, but I need my team. I need the trails, I need the joy of feeling like I’m flying while both of my tires are still on the ground. 

It might help that I’m somewhat of a prodigy at mountain biking. However, I do believe I would still love the sport if I was bad at it. Currently, I’m ranked number five in the state for Varsity riders and number one for my grade. I’ll compete in national qualifications in a couple of weeks here. I don’t even understand how that happened. It’s a slap in the face considering I never thought of myself as anything special; my body is built just like everyone else’s, yet my performance excels even my expectations.

 Ladle Bike Park is named after a kitchen tool because of how the whole area is shaped. Our trailhead and bike/ski chalet is in the very middle of the scoop. Trails swirl around from there, creating the base of the scoop. Around the base of the scoop is what we call the Wall Ridge, and it has our most hilly trails. If you go north, over the Wall Ridge, you’ll get to a variety of trails that loop out and back for about five miles. This is our handle. Many of the bikers and skiers here just call it the Skje (sh-AY), Norwegian for spoon. 

A lot of things here are named after Norwegian words, something that irked my French mom forever when she first moved here. Most of the kids here speak a funny combination of English and Norwegian. The adults all speak English, but generations of kids, after being taught about our town’s history with Norwegian immigrants, have purchased Norwegian dictionaries and added the words into their dialogue. 

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Ladle bike park is pretty hard to find because you need to find our town first. The town is called Litenskiloper, which translates to “little skier” in Norwegian. I’ll pay you five bucks if you can find it on a paper map. It’s not a small town by any means, but the ancestors of Litenskiloper have done everything in their power to keep our town under cover. 

In elementary, kids used to tell each other that our town was a secret because it had undetected connections with the Norwegian government. I wasn’t one for rumors in my childhood, I was too concerned with my own body and the fact that it made me feel like crawling out of my skin to think about why the Google Maps description of our town lacked any photos and listed it as a population of 63. 

Norwegian government or not, I have more important things to focus on.

Like the fact that the team is showing up for the captain's practice that I insisted needed to happen. This year I was elected captain by the people on my team which rarely happens. None of the other captains wanted to make these practices happen before they needed to, but I respectfully pestered them through the resource known as TeamApp until it became a reality. How else are we supposed to teach the young riders how to hit jumps without the coaches calling us bad influences? 

I turn at the sound of car tires on hot pavement and see Jax Opsvik stepping out of his car. Jax is a senior, and, like me, it’s his first year as a captain. Jax is tall, he has ear-length blond hair and freckles dotting his face, like a bridge of stars traveling over his nose. He’s got his blue team jersey on, which I’ve tried to explain to him multiple times, is not cool. He does it anyway, which I respect. He wears a happy expression most days, but I’ve seen him in darker moments. I think me and Jax are more similar in that regard; keeping things under the surface and pretending that they aren't there. I stand up, smiling in greeting and he returns my smile with one of his own. Generally, I think me and Jax are good friends, but I wouldn’t ever invite him over to my house or anything. Jax isn’t a beast on his bike the way that some people are, but he puts his all into everything that we do and always seems to enjoy himself. 

I used to wish I was Jax. I wished people saw me as a positive beacon in the dark sea the way they did Jax. I wanted to look like him too. It’s hard to be tall, blonde, and freckled with an award-winning smile without making a 12-year-old me worship the ground you walk on. 

I like to think that I’ve moved past my days of wishing to be someone else, but sometimes when I see guys at the beach with their shirts off, that tiny voice in my head that I’ve worked so hard to ignore nags. There's no use in wanting someone else’s life, or more specifically, their body because it only brings unhappy feelings. Those are other things I try my hardest to eliminate from my life. Not that I ever recommend doing that. I know it’s unhealthy, Jax knows it’s unhealthy, Fabian knows it’s unhealthy. Regardless, we all do it. 

Speaking of Fabian, he is now rolling in on his bike, holding the Fanta and box of Oreos I asked him to grab under his arm. Fabian is my younger brother by three years and he’s going into 7th grade. Despite the age difference, we tell each other everything. Unlike me, Fabian is tall, with a mop of almost white blond curly hair that reaches his neck and unmistakable green eyes.

Sometimes strangers don’t believe that we’re related.

“Fabian! Second arrival and you got me food? You must love me!” I say, taking my requested cookies and pop from him, offering a fist bump and a smirk in return, raising my eyebrows.

He ignores it and says, “I will take it back, Quinn.” Jax throws me a jokily weary look and I grin.

The next people to show up are: Priscilla Pryor, a bubbly annoying Junior who happens to be a captain and has been an assistant captain since ninth grade; Silas Grünberg, a short brown-haired freshman and currently an assistant captain; and Vilhelm Stordalen.