Skateboarding By Rachel Martin -

By thirteen, she was the only girl at the Westside Park ramp after 4 p.m. The boys called her “Rocket” because she shot up the quarter-pipe like she had somewhere better to be. She didn’t correct them. Let them think speed was the point.

Rachel Martin doesn’t remember learning to skate. She remembers falling—concrete kisses, gravel in her palms, the hot sting of a failed ollie. But the board itself? That felt like an extension of her spine from the first push. skateboarding by rachel martin

She wasn’t skating for proof. She was skating because when the world wanted her still, Rachel Martin chose motion. By thirteen, she was the only girl at