Parkour Ponderosa

If there was one thing Ponderosa had learned in life, it was that everybody wanted to do a backflip. If you could do a backflip, you were automatically cool. No questions asked. In elementary school, kids would do backflips off of the swings or the bars. In high school, some random guy would throw a backflip at a school dance and the crowd would go wild. Everyone loved backflips.

The crazy thing, as Pond well knew, was there were way cooler tricks than backflips. True, dedicated athletes who worked hard for their tricks could do insane things with their bodies. People were capable of incredible things that Pond had seen firsthand at her parkour gym. But nothing received applause quite like a backflip. So, when Pond began eighth grade and her life started to go downhill, she decided the thing that would save her was a backflip. And her knees hated her for it.

“Alright, this is the one. You’ve got this all by yourself.” Pond drew in a deep breath, nodding her head along to her coach’s words. “I’m barely even spotting you anymore. It’s just a mental thing at this point.” Pond continued to nod, shaking out her hands as she tried to believe him. Pond had only been training parkour at Kaleidoscope Freerunning for a year, but in that year, Coach Q had been the most supportive, encouraging person she had ever met. Even before she had decided to join his competition team this year, he had always been there to offer a helping hand. Literally. His hand had been the only thing stopping her from backflipping straight to her knees for the past eight months. But he couldn’t spot her forever, especially with competition season just a week away. Pond needed to get these backflips on her own.

“On three,” he said, because Pond found she worked better with a countdown. “One.” She let out her breath. “Two.” She bent her knees. “Three!” Pond swung her arms through the air and pushed off the ground with as much power as she could, throwing her head back and doing her best to tuck her knees to her chest. Of course, she wasn’t supposed to throw her head back, as she had been told so many times, and her knees never made it to her chest. What she did barely even qualified as a tuck jump.

She didn’t land on her head, which was nice, and she almost made the full rotation despite the many errors in her set. However, it still didn’t feel good when she came crashing to her knees on the spring floor, just barely missing her toes. Pond huffed in dismay, flopping onto her side as she avoided eye contact with her coach.

“Yeah, I already know what you’re going to say,” she said before he could, knowing full well everything that had gone wrong. They were the same things that went wrong every single time. Coach Q grinned before reaching out and pulling Pond to her feet.

“You’ll get it, Ponderosa. I have faith,” he told her with a smile, giving her a light pat on the shoulder. Pond did her best to smile back at him, but it was a little forced, especially because she knew what he was going to say next.

“You know there are more categories to a competition than freestyle. You also need to be drilling your foundational skills.” Pond pursed her lips in a tight smile and nodded, resisting the urge to argue. He was right. Parkour competitions had three categories and she would be competing in all of them. She shouldn’t just focus on freestyle. But… freestyle was her favorite and the only one Pond really wanted to excel in. She didn’t care so much about the other two, and it was a real struggle to find the motivation to practice them. Part of her wanted to say that out loud, but this was competition team practice. This was two hours every week where she was immersed and trained in all aspects of parkour, and she needed to respect that. She knew what she was getting into when she tried out for the team. Besides, her coach already knew how she felt.

“How about you hop over to the precision station to work with Dimitri for a while?” Q nodded in the direction of the gym sectioned off for practicing different types of jumps. His tone made it sound like a suggestion, but Pond knew that was where she needed to be heading. Ah well, she would have time to work on her freestyle later.

“Yessir,” she responded readily, a bit of her energy returning to her. Then, before she scurried off, she made sure to add, “Thanks for helping me with the backflips.” The thing was, Pond could never be too upset that she wasn’t able to backflip, because technically that wasn’t true. She could backflip, but only when she was standing on something with a bit of height. If she was at least a foot off the ground, she could backflip no problem. On flat ground, not a chance.

To be fair, though, Pond had only been training in parkour for a year now. She had been training at Kaleidoscope for two years, but the first year she dedicated entirely to learning wall trampoline and aerial silks. She had always been intrigued by the parkour aspect of the gym, but also a little intimidated. It wasn’t until she started seventh grade that she decided to actually start taking parkour classes. While aerial silks and trampoline were fun for Pond, they didn’t benefit her at all when it came to school. She was athletic, but not in the ways that mattered to the other kids.

The parkour athletes at the gym were fast and coordinated and talented and fun. They could do parkour wherever they went, and people thought they were awesome. It wasn’t like Pond could just carry around a pair of silks to impress the other kids. She needed to be able to work with whatever she had in any given surrounding. She needed to adapt and adjust and flow. She needed to backflip.

“Alright, guys! Last jumps! Let’s wrap it up!” Coach Q announced from where he stood on the highest point in the gym. Pond glanced up at the clock. Holy cow. It was 8:35, five minutes past the end of competition practice. Q had sent her over to the jumps station at 8. She had done a lot more standing around thinking than she had meant to. There was a group of parents spilling out of the front office, and the kids closest to them were suddenly putting in a lot more effort for their moms and dads to see.

Pond blinked a couple times as she scanned the crowd. Every now and then Pond’s mom would show up to watch her last few minutes of practice, but tonight was not one of those nights. That was okay, though. It was hard for her mom to get out of the house with five other kids to put to bed. Plus, the other kids on the comp team had at least a fifteen minute drive home, whereas Pond was lucky enough to live just across the street. She could come and go to the gym whenever she pleased, and for that she was very thankful.

“Hands in!” Pond smiled as she found herself on the inner part of the circle for the end of the competition team practice. The rest of her teammates gathered around her, placing their hands on top of one another, the younger students fighting for the top. She always liked this part. It was a nice way to end a hard day of training.

It was dark by the time she left the gym, but that was okay. The sidewalks were dimly lit by the warm street lights, and pretty leaves and flowers and bushes spilled out onto the walkway from people’s yards, decorating the path. Pond reached up and ran her hand along a low hanging tree branch, causing a pinecone to drop onto the path. She gave it a light kick with her toes and it skidded a few feet in front of her. She did the same thing when she reached it again, guiding it all the way to her own front yard. She smiled when she looked up and saw her Husky lying peacefully on the porch, watching Pond as she approached.

She lifted her head, which had been resting on her paws, and she opened her mouth to let her tongue hang out, as if she was contemplating if her friend was worth getting up for.

“Hey Maggie,” Pond whispered happily, giving the pinecone one last kick across the grass. It was airborne for several feet before landing with a soft thud in the dark green, rolling the final distance to the front porch steps. This got the dog’s attention, and she jumped to her feet to examine what Pond had brought her.

The front door was unlocked when Pond arrived. As soon as she pushed it open she was greeted with the delicious smell of whatever her mom had made for dinner. Her mouth immediately began to water. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until then. Her mom was nowhere to be found, but that made sense. She was probably tucking the siblings in bed.

Friday nights had to be Pond’s favorite. Aside from the fact that Fridays were simply superior as the gateway to the weekend, Fridays also meant coming home late to a quiet house. Her siblings would all be in bed, and Pond would get at least an hour of her mother all to herself as soon as the house was still.

Quietly, Pond kicked her shoes off beneath the coat rack and hung up her bag. Her socks slid on the hardwood floor as she made her way into the kitchen to grab whatever was leftover from dinner. Although, leftover wasn’t the right word, because Pond’s mom always made more than enough and always set aside a plate for Pond to come home to.

“Well, hello friend,” a voice said softly, and Pond turned to see her mom gently shutting a bedroom door behind her. “How was school today? It’s the end of the first month! Woo hoo!” Pond grinned as she set her plate down at the table before going to give her mom a big hug. School had not been great, but the rest of the day had been, so there was no need to fake a smile this time.

“It was good,” Pond answered as she pulled away, careful not to be too loud. “I finished decorating my locker and I like it a lot.” It was genuinely the highlight of Pond’s first month at school. Last year she hadn’t put a lot of effort into decorating her locker, which she regretted. This year, she had a pretty pink wallpaper taped up inside, and everything was neatly organized in little white shelves and magnetic pencil holders. There were stickers absolutely everywhere, glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, and pictures of her and her friends coating every empty space. Opening her locker was the best part of Pond’s day.

“That’s awesome, sweetheart,” her mom continued, grabbing a plate of her own and sitting down at the table with her daughter. Cooking food and cleaning up after a large family left little time for her to eat, and she was happy to have her eldest daughter for company now that things had settled down.

“And how are classes?” she continued, causing Pond to stumble on her next bite a little. That was the only problem with getting home late. All of the questions were directed at her, and there was no one to save her from them. Pond really would rather not answer that question, but she did anyway, assuring her mom they were great. It wasn’t a lie, necessarily. Academically, she was doing good. Socially…

“Pond?”

“Yeah. What?” Pond’s eyes snapped up from where they had been staring at the table.

“How was competition team practice?” Ah! Now there was something she could talk about.

“Awesome!” she replied sprightly, the color coming back to her cheeks and her appetite returning. “I could stay there all night training if they’d let me. I heard that some of the coaches actually do that sometimes. As long as there’s at least two people there, they can be at the gym as long as they want. How cool is that?” Pond’s mom smiled and nodded, scooping some food onto her spoon.

“That does sound pretty cool. Maybe you oughta be a coach there one day,” her mom commented offhandedly, and something tightened in Pond’s chest. Work there? No way. That would be crazy. All of the coaches there were insanely talented and had been training for years. Plus, they were just really cool people. Pond admired them all so much and loved watching the way they interacted with each other. Pond would be way too intimidated to work with them. Sometimes it was even hard to train with them because she felt so out of place, despite how welcoming they all were.

“Maybe,” Pond ended up answering, finishing the last of the food on her plate. She was surprised to find a small smile trying to sneak onto her face after the word was spoken, despite the contradicting thoughts in her head.

“Your first competition is next weekend, right?” her mom continued, reaching out to stack Pond’s empty plate on top of her own. “I’m so excited to watch! I’m sorry I haven’t been there much to watch you practice. It’s been a little bit chaotic here.” Pond’s mom nodded with a slightly stressed out smile in the direction of the bedrooms down the hall, and Pond pursed her lips as she got up to follow her mom to the kitchen.

“Yeah, I bet,” she said quietly, her tone sympathetic. “How are you doing?” Her mother took in a long breath and let out a short sigh as she set the dirty dishes down in the sink.

“I’m good. Yeah, I’m doing good. I think.” Her mom let out a small, airy laugh as she ran a hand through her hair. Pond tried not to let the worry show on her face as she watched her mom struggle to keep the answer to her question positive. “It’s definitely a challenge at times, but that's life. Right? You just keep on keeping on.” Pond tried to laugh with her mom, but the laughs were forced on both ends. Her mom leaned back against the kitchen counter, tilting her head back to look at the ceiling. Pond placed her forearms on the counter to rest on, looking at her mom expectantly. She didn’t have a lot of people to talk to these days, so her eldest daughter made sure she was always around whenever her mom needed someone.

Pond liked to stay up as late as she possibly could talking with her mom. During the week, her mom went to bed early so she would be well rested to teach her third graders the next day. But on Fridays, they both stayed up late so they could spend time with each other. It was Pond's favorite time of the week.

Her mom yawned, which caused Pond to do the same. She hadn’t realized how tired she was until a wave of sleepiness rolled over her. The duo exchanged goodnights and I love yous, and then Pond turned to head off to bed as her mom went to turn off the lights.

Within a matter of moments, Pond was joined in her room by a fluffy presence carrying a pine cone in her mouth. The two of them made eye contact before the furry one leapt up onto Pond’s mattress, promptly sprawling out sideways and taking up more than half the space. Pond narrowed her eyes at the dog before shaking her head. Then her nose scrunched up in disgust as a slobbery pine cone was dropped dangerously close to her pillow. She sighed before making her way over to flick the object onto the ground, earning an offended stare from Magpie. Luckily, the dog was too tired to retrieve it, and she laid her head down on the pile of blankets.

The corners of Pond’s lips twitched upwards. That dog was annoying, but she sure made up for it in cuteness. Memorizing where she would go once the lights turned off, Pond flipped the switch then booked it to her bed, laying down in the little space Magpie left for her. She had to weasel her blankets out from under her dog’s head, but once she succeeded, she was able to find a comfortable position to fall asleep in.

Exhausted from a long week, Pond found sleep easily that night, but not before her mind wandered a little bit. She thought about how her weekend would go and what she would do the next day. Not that there was much to think about, as her days had all been similar since the school year started. Saturday, she would go to the gym and practice her flips again and again until she could do them on solid ground. On Monday, if all went well, she would find the perfect place to show her friends the new skill she had learned, and they would be in awe. She could see it now, everyone at school would be so impressed. She could feel it. This was the week she would master it. There would be no sitting alone at lunch after this.