Leave It on the Track

by Margot Fisher Narrated by Bailey Carr

Overview

From Reese's Book Club LitUp Fellow Margot Fisher, a moving debut about healing, self-acceptance, and queer first love, set on a roller derby team

Morgan “Moose” Shaker barely survived the fire that killed her fathers in their beloved roller rink in small-town Utah. Now she has to move to Portland, Oregon to live with her much older half sister, Eden. Eden's doing her best, but she's hardly ready to be a parent to a sixteen-year-old she hasn't seen in years. Plus, barely-out-of-the-closet Moose worries that she's not ready for super-affirming, rainbow-flags-everywhere Portland. Her anxiety and frustration are at peak levels.

Fortunately, Moose finds an outlet for her emotions and a surprising group of friends in roller derby. Her teammates help her grieve her dads and confront her queer imposter syndrome. And even though it's against league rules, she might be falling for a teammate.

Heartfelt, funny, and romantic, this debut will make you want to lace up your skates, pull on your pads, and hit the track.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

★ “Fisher’s debut romance whips its way out of the pack with smart first-person narration that smoothly balances heartfelt grief with droll humor, plentiful sports action, and meaningful discussions about queer identity.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A beautiful exploration of grief, healing, and self-acceptance, Leave It on the Track will break your heart and put it back together. An incredible read that made me want to lace up my own skates!”—Jennifer Dugan, author of Some Girls Do

"Never has a book punched me in the gut so hard, so fast, but Fisher skillfully builds both readers and Moose back up with both tender self-empowerment and a cruisin' for a literal bruisin'. A truly great debut about coming into your own under the toughest of circumstances, and so queer it could be its own roller derby team."—Dahlia Adler, award-winning author of Home Field Advantage

"Electric, visceral, and affecting, Leave It on the Track is a grand slam of a debut. I cried and cheered alongside Moose and her roller-derby family—all as tough and tender as their hard-earned bruises. Margot Fisher is a YA author to watch."—Jen St. Jude, author of If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

"Fisher’s debut grabs you and doesn’t let go, tackling grief, being LGBTQ+ and finding community."—The Associated Press

“Fisher’s debut novel is raw and real, combining deep exploration of grief with edge-of-your-seat derby action…. Skaters and non-skaters alike will want to lace up after this fast-paced, moving story of recovery.”—Booklist

“Moose’s path to healing as she copes with the physical and emotional aftermath of the fire feels authentically raw. . . A hopeful, tender debut about grief, healing, and finding community.” —Kirkus Reviews

“This debut is a heartrending coming of age story of loss, self discovery, and self acceptance that will be enjoyed not only by derby fans, but those who are derby curious, or are just looking for a story with some emotional depth and featuring LGBTQIA+ characters.” —School Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

2025-08-02
In the wake of devastating loss, a queer teen finds a home on a roller derby team.

Sixteen-year-old Morgan “Moose” Shaker has grown up skating alongside her dads at their local roller rink in Finney’s Mesa, Utah. When a fire breaks out at the rink one night, Moose narrowly survives, but the fire claims the lives of both Papa and Dad. She’s forced to move to Portland, Oregon, to live with Eden, the older half sister who’s a near stranger. Moose always felt too queer for small-town Utah; she now worries that she isn’t queer enough for Portland. She and Eden struggle to adjust to their new lives together, but they tentatively find common ground when Eden introduces Moose to roller derby. Moose finds an unexpected sense of community on her team and explores a romantic connection with Mercury, the team captain, despite dating among teammates being frowned upon. Moose’s path to healing as she copes with the physical and emotional aftermath of the fire feels authentically raw and includes positive depictions of therapy. The developing relationship between Moose and Eden is particularly compelling as the two reconcile their past and forge a new sisterhood. Fast-paced roller derby sequences lighten an otherwise heavy story and are easy to follow even for those unfamiliar with the sport. Moose reads white, Mercury is white and Korean American, and there’s some racial diversity in the supporting cast.

A hopeful, tender debut about grief, healing, and finding community.(Fiction. 14-18)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940194300433
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/18/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

We wait in line at the roller rink for fifteen minutes, even though Papa made a point to get here early. The chaotic line for the Finney’s Mesa Rollerdome always stretches around the corner on Friday nights. There’s a family of four behind us—a dad on his phone, a mom trying to stop her little kid from putting on their plastic Fisher-Price skates outside, a preteen in a hoodie avoiding looking at the rest of his family. The preteen has reached that phase of waiting outside the rink that comes with stoic patience. He’s too old to be running around like the little kids and too young to be huddled in a group of his friends being obnoxious on their phones. So he’s standing, slightly apart from his embarrassing family, clutching his skates and probably looking forward to getting inside and being able to roll away from them. That was me a couple years ago, awkward and unsure of myself even though I’d been skating at the Rollerdome all my life.

Dad is completely unbothered by the queue and falls into conversation with the guy in front of us, a dance skater who’s new to Finney’s Mesa. Dad’s always been able to do that—zero in on some- one new, say just the right thing to get them smiling, opening up, dip so suddenly into conversation that they don’t notice when the line’s moving. I’ve never managed to figure it out.

“Dad made another friend,” Papa says to me with a bemused look. His skates are slung over his shoulder, laces tied together, the black suede striking against his bright red jacket. Papa always dresses nice when we go skating—nicer than church, he’d say, even though we’ve never been to church. This is our church, he said once when I was little, skating between him and Dad and clutching both their hands. The church of eight wheels. He’d ripped it off the name of a famous roller rink in San Francisco, polished wood laid down in the shell of an old church with makeshift lights and a DJ booth set up every weekend. Papa’s always showing me old skate videos from the famous roller rinks, pointing out the way the floor is curved or the types of wheels people used in the ’90s as though I can see them in the grainy footage.

We get inside to the ticket stand, where Dad hands our skate passes to Gemma. She’s slouched in her scuffed wooden booth, grumpy expression contrasting with the sequined top hat and glowstick necklace someone made her wear. “Happy Friday, Gemma,” Dad says smoothly, and Gemma cracks a rare grimace.

“It’ll be happier when I can go home,” she says as she stamps our passes. “Hey, Moose,” she says to me, “nothing better to do on Friday night?”

It’s our usual routine—Gemma acts like seeing a sixteen-year-old at the Finney’s Mesa Rollerdome with her parents on Friday night a month before school lets out is an affront to human nature. I ask her if she knows of any other exciting social activities happening in deadend Finney’s Mesa; she rolls her eyes, stamps my well-creased pass, and slides it back to me, along with a Tootsie Roll from her stash under the counter.

On Fridays, the rink comes alive. The neon carpet underfoot vibrates from the speakers, the space crowded with people lacing up their skates and half rolling, half stepping awkwardly around the benches. The ugly stained carpet around the edges of the rink is there to slow you down and keep you from plowing at full speed into a little kid with a plastic tray of nachos. It’s like a gentler introduction to moving with wheels on your feet. See? Papa said to me once when I was little and just learning, clutching his hands with white knuckles as I wobbled to my feet. It’s not so different from walking on the carpet, right? He’d gently pried my hands off his and made me roll along the lace-up area, letting me stumble over a crease in the carpet and slapping his thighs in approval when I steadied myself without help.

Tonight, the overhead lights are shut off in favor of flashing lasers and a disco ball, and the floor is packed with a slow-moving ring of skaters decked out with glow sticks. We squeeze through the crowd to our usual spot by the lockers, a carpeted bench between the DJ booth and the arcade. Papa uses a key from his belt to open our locker, tossing in his wallet and jacket. “Where’d your friend go?” he shouts to Dad over the music, and Dad gives him a playful shove.

“Can you move?” I press, waving my coat in Dad’s face. “Some of us are here to skate.”

“Okay, Your Majesty,” he says, taking my coat and stuffing it into the locker with his. “You gonna keep up with these old men tonight?”

“Are you?” I ask, reaching out to spin one of the wheels on his skates. “Sounds a little crusty. Cleaned your bearings lately?”

“Not since someone lost the bearing press.”

“My turn,” Papa proclaims, dramatically fake shoving both of us apart so he can squish his bag into the locker.

Dad and I sit on the carpeted bench to pull our skates on. There’s an eyelet near the toe of my left skate that’s started lifting out of the leather—probably just from these skates being three years old—and I use my pinkie to pop it back in before I slide it on my foot. “I need new skates,” I tell Dad, threading the laces in the special pattern he showed me years ago, the one that helps lift my arches so my feet don’t cramp. “These are gonna fall apart soon.” The lights, in the shapes of pink flowers and stars, rove over my hands.

“Oh, come on,” he chides, reaching down to pinch the toe of my skate and check the fit. “We can just slap some duct tape on there and buy you another year at least.”

“I will buy you new skates when I’m in SLC next month, favorite child,” Papa says, sitting down on my other side to put his skates on.

“That’s why you’re my favorite dad.”

“Pushover,” Dad says across me, and Papa gives him one of those annoyed-yet-lovesick looks. They always flank me like this when we lace up—when I was little and first learning to skate, it was so they could each grab a hand and pull me to my feet. Now it’s ritual. I finish lacing my own skates and give Dad’s a tug to make sure they’re tight, but not too tight. Dad and I like the high-top rhythm skates with dance plugs instead of toe stops, but Papa still wears sleek black artistic skates from his figure roller skating days and refuses to let either of us touch them.

I’m always ready first, and I stand and pat Dads on the head. “Too slow!” I tell them over the music, and they wave in lazy acknowledgment as I head to the skate floor.

The minute my wheels hit polished wood, I’m sailing. I weave in and out of the throngs of other skaters, deftly maneuvering my way around the floor and scanning for familiar faces. While Friday-night skate always draws a handful of newbies from Moab proper shuffling across the floor, the regular crowd is the heartbeat of the rink. I wave to Sam and Mike, the two old dudes who show up every night to skate slowly around the outside and talk about sports, no matter how crowded it is.

“Hey, Moose,” Sam says, barely audible over the music, and I turn to skate backward in front of them.

“Who’s losing this weekend?” I ask.

“Cougars are a fucking mess this season,” Mike sighs. “Your dads follow the Cougars?”

“They definitely don’t.” Dads—the only gay couple in Finney’s Mesa (that we know of, Papa always reminds me)—probably don’t even know what sports season we’re in.

“Good. Fuckin’ painful this year.”

I leave Sam and Mike to their griping as Lorraine, the artistic skater with impossibly long silver hair, skates past and catches my hand to spin me in a circle. She nearly takes out a teenager struggling to stay upright on peanut butters, the battered tan-and-orange rental skates that separate the regulars from the newbies. The teenager flails, and Lorraine steadies him easily before twirling away into the crowd. Skatemare, the only other rhythm skater in town besides Dad and me, rolls up next to me, stepping smoothly in time to the music. His real name is Shawn, but since I was a kid he’s always introduced himself as Skatemare, the alter ego embroidered across the shoulders of his jacket.

“Fall in, kid!” he calls, and I roll into step with him, following the familiar pattern. The trick with rhythm skating is making it look easy and carefree, like you’re dancing at the club, when really you’re sweating your ass off and trying to find your edges in your skates and match the pattern of the person you’re skating with, all while avoiding uncoordinated little kids flailing around on peanut butters. Skatemare is one of those rhythm skaters who makes everyone skating with him look good— he grooves his shoulders in just the right way, laughs the whole time like he’s never had more fun. Dad always talks about taking me to the rinks in California, where folks clear the floor to watch people skate off against each other, backflipping and spinning and dancing in perfect time. Someone skates past me too close, and I lose the beat for a second—Skatemare easily takes my hand and points down, showing me how to spin my foot to find the pattern again. Dad made me watch a documentary about the Black roller rink scene once, pausing it every three minutes to add commentary on the history of adult skate nights. “There you go,” Skatemare says, dropping my hand now that I’ve found the pattern again. I cross over in time with Skatemare, then lift my crossing knee, raising my hands to pivot on one foot so we’re skating backward. Dad wanted to show me the specific type of wheel jam skaters use and the racist roller rinks in LA that banned jam skating as a roundabout way of banning Black skaters. Dad is there suddenly, falling easily into step with Skatemare and me, but his moves are even smoother, his smile wider, a slinkier version of the rhythms Skatemare and I are already doing.

“You know your daddy’s a show-off, yeah?” Skatemare yells to me, and I roll my eyes, but everyone in the vicinity slows to watch Dad skate. Where Skatemare makes it look easy, Dad makes it look like breathing—so fluid and simple even though he’s throwing out patterns that would send most skaters to the ground.

Rinks aren’t the same in Utah, Dad always insists, though the Rollerdome is where he met Papa. Papa was a freshly excommunicated Mormon (and a baby gay, he liked to say) who did artistic skating all his life—Dad tried to get him into rhythm skating, but he prefers to swirl around the rink with Lorraine in his artistic skates, both of them twirling and jumping around the peanut butters like figure skaters on wheels.

When the music pumps like this, the sweat and foot cramps feel insignificant. I’m twisting and dancing and moving in time with the music, in time with Skatemare and my dads. Lights and heavy bass reverberate through the rink, and we all fold into the music and the consistent clap and whisper of our wheels on smooth, polished wood. At a certain point on Friday night, the other skaters all blur into each other—a frenetic mix of rink staff in neon shirts yelling at parents not to pick up kids in skates, the rhythm skaters, the artistics, the peanut butters, the single annoyed speed skater with big-wheeled in-lines, who inexplicably chose this night to skate—it all just turns into wheels on polished wood and heat under the disco ball.

The current song ends, and an old-fashioned alarm bell plays over the speakers. “Happy Friday night, Finney’s Mesa,” the DJ announces. “It’s time for the couples skate! You must be holding hands with a partner to skate, so singles who aren’t ready to mingle, please clear the floor.”

I join the mass of people rolling off the floor while some cheesy ’80s ballad starts to play, practically blowing out the rink’s ancient speakers. It’s good timing—I’m slick with sweat from trying to keep up with Dad and Skatemare.

“You want something to drink, Moose?” Skatemare asks, gesturing to the snack bar as we glide onto the carpet together.

“I’m good.” I’m parched, and the snack bar has fizzy lemonade on Friday nights, but Jenna from freshman English—beautiful, shiny-haired, incredibly hetero Jenna from freshman English—is working the counter. I’ve had this debilitating crush on her since middle school without ever having really talked to her, until we were in the same group for the Huck Finn project. I spoke probably three words to her the entire time, mostly staring at my notebook and praying nobody noticed me. I don’t know what I was hoping for—that Jenna would casually mention being attracted to girls, notice me, and tell off the kids who call me a dyke behind my back, while simultaneously sweeping me off my feet in some grand romantic gesture? Somehow, being the only child of the only gay couple in Finney’s Mesa (that we know of ) has made me the latest target for hurling unimaginative slurs. Even if they’re right. They don’t have to know that.

Skatemare rolls toward Jenna and the snack bar, and I skate to our locker instead, pulling a five out of Papa’s wallet for the vending machine in the arcade. I hover for a moment by the carpeted half wall that separates the locker areas from the skate floor to watch the couples skate. Dad and Papa skate hand in hand, so close their shoulders touch, even though Papa has half a foot of height on Dad. The couples skate is the only time they’re not actively trying to outskate each other—they both roll easily along the outside, talking in hushed tones, grinning at each other and giggling, squeezing hands the whole time. Dad takes Papa’s other hand and turns so he’s skating backward in front of him, singing along to the power ballad with embarrassing bravado. People are looking, but Dads have been gay in Finney’s Mesa for years now. The stares don’t seem to faze them anymore. I used to imagine skating with Jenna during the couples skate, holding her hands and singing to her and not caring who watched.

The arcade is just off the main skate floor, occupied by a trio of middle schoolers daring each other to play Dance Dance Revolution in their rental skates. I slide the bill into the vending machine, and a can clanks into the chute. My chest is still heaving when I crack the Coke, perching sideways on the peeling chair of a racing game to drink it. I usually retreat to the arcade anytime I need a break from the pumping music and flashing lights of the skate floor. There are two small windows in here that they prop open regardless of the weather. The cool air trickling in is always a reprieve.

It takes me a while to smell the smoke.

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