by Laurence Yep
We were about a dozen rows back, so we could hear Vanessa as she greeted the other skaters. “Hi, Paige.”
“Oh, very well, what’s your name?” Paige sighed as she held out her palm—and then seemed surprised when Vanessa shook her hand.
“Vanessa Knowles,” Vanessa said. “We met at the Springfield Invitational last year.”
Paige extricated her hand from Vanessa’s grasp and kept her palm extended in the same way as before. I realized that she hadn’t been reaching out to shake Vanessa’s hand but to take a paper for an autograph. “So who do you want me to sign my name for this time?”
“No one. We competed against one another,” Vanessa said indignantly.
Paige, though, just looked blank.
“You know.” Vanessa was sounding desperate now. “I’m from the Lucerne.”
“Sorry. I meet a lot of skaters.” Paige glanced at her friends, but they both shook their heads as if they couldn’t remember Vanessa, either.
“My parents are pretty busy, so I don’t get to go to as many places as I’d like,” Vanessa said and then hurriedly rattled off the half-dozen invitationals that she had been at.
She impressed me, but not Paige or her friends. “It’s nice to know you’ve done so well training at such a little club,” the blonde girl said snottily.
“Anyway, here’s what I heard about Justin,” the third girl said, turning away from Vanessa to Paige and the blonde girl.
Though their backs were to her now, Vanessa stood there, peering over their shoulders and trying to act as if they were including her in their conversation.
“Poor Vanessa,” Mom said to me in a quiet voice. “She’s been a big frog in a little pond. But now she’s finding out that there are bigger ponds with bigger frogs.”
It was sort of what Coach Schubert had warned us about, and what my brothers had also been afraid of.
It was a scary thought, and even scarier to go near the big frogs, but Vanessa seemed so miserable that I couldn’t leave her there. I took the steps two at a time until I could reach out and tap her on the shoulder. “Vanessa, I’m sorry to bother you, but my mom has something she needs to ask you.”
Now that I was closer, I could see that the pins the girls were wearing were souvenirs of the many competitions and invitationals that they had been to. Compared to them, with all their experiences, I felt like a beginning Twinkle.
“Oh…uh…sure,” Vanessa said to me and then announced to Paige and her friends, “Well, bye. I’ve got to go now.”
However, they didn’t acknowledge her—if they even heard her at all.
Vanessa stared down at the steps as we climbed upward. “So what did your mom want to ask me?”
“Do you want something to nibble on?” I asked. “I’m warning you, though, the snacks Mom brought are all healthy. I mean, what kind of self-respecting snack is good for you?”
“You called me away for that?” she demanded, annoyed.
I just shrugged.
She glanced back at Paige and her friends and then mumbled, “You didn’t have to bother. I was about to leave anyway.”
“Well, you got to do it earlier,” I snapped, annoyed at her ingratitude.
I had the first practice session of our group, and Paige Clement’s slot was right before mine. I changed in the locker rooms and when I came back, I found that Mom and the others had moved down to the front row with Coach Schubert. At one end of the rink, leaning against the wall, was Paige’s coach, Sam McManus. He’s a chubby man whose trademark look is a tweed coat and a fedora hat, which he waved for emphasis as he shouted instructions at Paige.
If I wanted an autograph from anyone here besides Coach Schubert, it would be from Coach McManus. In his long career, he’s trained a lot of skaters who have made it to Nationals and to the Olympics. Because of his reputation, elite skaters come from all around the country to train with him at the Belmont.
And Paige certainly belonged at the top of the class. I could see why she had placed well at so many competitions. She was good—very good. She skated fast and with confidence and grace, and she had the power to propel herself high up from the ice. Honestly, I thought she should have been skating at the next level rather than at ours. There were actually a dozen fans recording her every move on their camcorders.
“She’s even better than the last time I saw her,” Vanessa said to Anya and me in awe. “How are we going to beat someone like her?”
Her question made me wonder if Vanessa had ever had to fight for anything in her whole life. Her parents seem to buy her whatever she wants, but a place on the podium is one thing their money can’t get for her. I don’t think she knows how to handle a situation as frustrating as that.
“So we should give up before we even get onto the ice, and just hand her first place?” I demanded. “Paige gets the same two minutes that we do to impress the judges.” I remembered the conversation I’d had with Coach Schubert when the coach was sewing my costume. “Sure, it’s going to be hard, but that’s what makes it so worthwhile when you win. I almost never beat my brothers, but once in a while I do, and then I feel on top of the world.”
“Until the next time they beat you,” Anya pointed out.
I grinned. “But if I won once, I know that I can win again.”
“You’re crazy,” Vanessa declared.
Because of my brothers, competing seems as natural to me as breathing. But Vanessa has grown up an only child, and a pretty lonely one, since her parents seem constantly busy. I might as well have been talking Martian to her.
Anya began to jiggle her knee nervously. “I’ll just be happy if I don’t fall.”
I remembered my day as Zuzu the Squirrel. There had been moments when I hadn’t felt like Mia but actually like Zuzu herself—and those were the times when I’d been best at acting like a squirrel. “So stop being Anya Sorokowski when you’re out there. If you fall, it’s not the real Anya Sorokowski, but Anya the Skater. So think Anya the Skater, act Anya the Skater, be Anya the Skater.”
Mom glanced at her watch and then said to me, “It’s time for your practice, honey.”
Down by the wall, Coach McManus was signaling Paige to get off the rink.
“But I’d like to get that sequence near the start down pat,” Paige said to her coach, and then she saw me standing by the doorway onto the ice. “You understand, don’t you?” Without waiting for me to say anything, she started on her routine again, although this time without the music.
“No, it’s someone else’s turn,” Coach McManus called out and gestured urgently with his hat for her to leave the ice.
“But she doesn’t mind,” Paige protested.
I gathered up my courage. “Actually, I do.”
Paige shot me a dirty look as she skated to Coach McManus’s end of the rink. Her coach was so mad at her that he hardly let her get off the ice and through the other doorway before he started to scold her.
“Things like this are going to happen,” Coach Schubert advised me as she put out her hand to take my skate guards, “so don’t let it get to you. You’ve been a regular ball of fire during your last few practices at home. Let me see that same skater now.”
As I skated out onto the ice, I couldn’t help glancing toward Paige. I couldn’t hear Coach McManus, but his face had become red and he was wagging his index finger at her. Paige stood there, still in her skates, head bent but turned so that she could stare at me resentfully, as if it were my fault that her coach was so mad.
Suddenly he stopped talking to Paige and pulled out his cell phone. It must have been an urgent call, because he looked anxious as he quickly climbed up the stairs.
“Concentrate!” Coach Schubert called.
I had barely started my routine when I saw someone aiming his camcorder not at me but at the far end of the rink. Twisting my head, I saw that Paige was on the ice and clowning to my music! As she made faces, she flailed her arms as if she were about to fall, narrowly keeping her balance.
<
br /> Other fans were digging out their camcorders. I was so busy watching them and her that I tripped over my own feet. As I sprawled on the ice, I saw Paige leaping up in a double lutz that was higher, faster, and better than any I had ever done.
“Get up!” Coach Schubert ordered sharply. “You’re on an ice rink, not a bed. Never mind her. Just focus!”
As I rose to my feet, I could feel myself growing angry—not at Paige but at myself. I wouldn’t let my brothers get away with something like that, so why was I letting some stranger do it?
It was time to follow my own advice to Anya and Vanessa. Even if my brothers are better than I am at most things, I haven’t given up against them. And I couldn’t do that now.
I picked up my routine to match the music. I had another double lutz ahead of me, and this time when I launched myself from the ice, I found myself spinning through the air perfectly. I’d never been so high, and when I landed, I felt Bob’s specially sharpened blade bite the ice perfectly.
That’s when I glimpsed one of the fans switching her camcorder over to me. And that was a triumph in itself.
When the music ended, Coach Schubert waved me over, and as I skated toward her, I heard Coach McManus bellow, “Paige, what do you think you’re doing?!” I saw him galloping down the stairs, waving his hat over his head like a flag. “You need to apologize immediately.”
Paige seemed to shrink. “I’m sorry,” she called. “I lost my temper.”
This time, Coach McManus made Paige leave the arena entirely.
In the meantime, Coach Schubert was waiting for me with folded arms. “So what do you do if someone tops your jump?”
“You don’t worry about it. You just focus on your own program and do your best,” I said without hesitating. “Maybe you’ll even top theirs.”
Coach Schubert nodded approvingly. “Right, because when you’re focused, you will do your best. That’s how you use the competition to improve. Remember that the next time you meet Paige.”
That was going to be a lot sooner than I wanted.
On the day of our event, I thought there might be fifty people in the arena, as there had been at the practice, but there were triple that number instead. Some of them were family, but Vanessa said some of them were fans.
Anya’s father and little sister, Alexandra, had driven up that morning, and they waved a homemade sign at Anya. But Vanessa’s parents were nowhere to be seen—though she looked all around for them. She tried to pretend it didn’t matter, but from her frown I knew that it did.
There was no sign of Dad or my brothers, and that worried me. “I hope they didn’t have an accident on the way here,” I said to Mom.
“I’m sure they’re just fine,” Mom assured me and then hobbled over on her crutches to sit with the Sorokowskis in the stands. “Come sit with us.”
We skated in groups of six, and by chance Vanessa and Anya were in the third group while I was in the last group with my old buddy, Paige. So as their turns approached, I went along with Anya, Vanessa, and the coach to the roped-off waiting area by the door to the ice. Only skaters and coaches are allowed there, and it gave me a little thrill to show my official skater’s credential badge to the guard. I was planning to keep it as a special souvenir of the day.
In the locker room at the rear of the waiting area, I helped Anya and Vanessa change and then accompanied them back toward the doorway.
I surveyed the stands again, but Vanessa kept her eyes on the rink as if that were her whole world now. “Don’t bother,” she said resignedly to me. “They won’t be here.”
Poor Vanessa. I hoped that her parents would show up soon.
Standing next to us, Anya was getting more nervous with each passing moment. I was trying to encourage her when I saw some people pointing at us. Since Anya and Vanessa were the ones in skates, I thought they must be the ones attracting attention. “Look. Word must have spread about you two,” I said.
Vanessa glanced at me sideways. “Don’t be a dope. You’re the one they’re curious about. They heard about your run-in with Paige yesterday.”
“How?” I asked dumbly.
“Skating gossip moves with the speed of light, and juicy stuff even faster,” Vanessa said. “And the way those things get twisted in the telling, they’re probably saying that you were the one throwing a tantrum.”
I felt my stomach do flip-flops. I had thought that yesterday had been like a disagreement at a playground: However important it might seem at the time, everyone forgets about it as soon as they go home. But now it seemed I had become The Girl Who Was Going to Be Steamrolled Over by Paige the Rising Superstar.
For a moment, I could just imagine how everyone was laughing at me for trying to defy Paige—or worse, was annoyed at me for refusing to give up more practice time to her. After all, no one expected anything of me, but they expected everything of her.
I glanced around the arena, wondering who else knew about me and Paige. It seemed as if everyone was staring at me, and I could feel myself breathing faster and faster.
Then I felt the coach’s reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Easy, Mia,” she said. “You’re starting to hyperventilate. And you’re not even in skates yet.”
I reminded myself that, compared to what my mom faces every day, my own problems were small ones. So I’d have to do what she does: Take things one step at a time. Don’t think about Paige. Don’t think about the fans. For now, just concentrate on helping Anya and Vanessa—then on getting out on the ice at the right time myself.
“Anya the Skater, I’m Anya the Skater,” Anya was murmuring to herself over and over. Trying to work off her nerves, she was fluttering her hands and arms like the blades of a blender.
Seeing Anya in trouble made me forget about myself. “You’ll be okay,” I said to her and repeated my advice to myself. “Don’t think about the arena or the judges or the other skaters. Just focus on one part of the routine at a time. And when that’s done, think about the next. Trust our coach and her training, and you’ll do fine.”
Anya nodded absently as if she’d only half-heard me, but Vanessa had heard. She grumbled to me, “Will you be quiet? I’m trying to visualize my routine.”
I’d heard that some skaters try to picture each moment of their performance in their imagination.
“Okay,” I said.
“Are you done, Mia?” Coach Schubert asked. When I nodded contritely, she added, speaking to Anya and Vanessa, “Mia happens to be right, though. Don’t try to worry about your whole program at the same time. Just do it one step at a time.”
“Right,” Anya said, looking at Vanessa.
The coach smiled at them. “I just want to let you know that I’m proud of how hard you girls have worked. You’ve got everything you need to win. So go out and do it.”
Anya and Vanessa sailed out with the other skaters in their group to warm up and practice bits of their routines. Vanessa seemed fine on the ice, and Anya was trying to keep it simple by substituting single jumps in place of the double jumps she would do later.
As the group finished, I saw Mr. Knowles hurrying down the steps, hand in hand with Vanessa’s mother. When Vanessa and Anya came off the ice, I pointed out her parents to Vanessa. “Amazing,” she said, but I realized that she has a pretty smile when she’s happy.
Vanessa was the second skater in the group. As Coach Schubert gave her some last-minute instructions, Vanessa never stopped gazing at the ice as she kept picturing herself out there.
Vanessa began well, but then, she always does. She is a strong, fast skater and a great jumper but a lousy lander, so when she whirled up from the ice like a spinning top, I crossed all my fingers and even tried to curl my toes across one another. She twirled through the air but at slightly the wrong angle, so I held my breath when she came down. Luckily, she managed to stay upright as she spun away.
Coach Schubert had created a routine for her that brought out her speed and energy, and I never saw her skate it better. I got exhaust
ed just watching her.
When she came off the ice, I made sure that she turned toward her parents so that she could see them standing up and clapping like crazy.
This time she kept her eyes on them, but she said to me, “Thanks.”
“For what?” I asked.
“You’re noisy and a real pest sometimes,” she sniffed. “But I figured if you were right about my parents, maybe you were right about some other things. After all, what did I have to lose? So I just took things one step at a time, and it worked.”
I thought she would go and change and then join her parents, but instead she said she wanted to wait for Anya to finish.
“Good luck,” she wished Anya.
“Remember—you’re Anya the Skater right now,” I reminded her, “not Anya Sorokowski.”
“Skater, skater, skater,” she repeated quickly and softly even when the coach came to give her some last minute tips. She still looked pretty nervous when she went out onto the ice.
In the stands, Mom put an arm around Mrs. Sorokowski, who looked anxious enough to bite through the chair in front of her. It was just like my brothers had said: a competition can be as hard on the competitors’ families as it is on the competitors themselves.
As Anya’s music began, her first steps seemed a little stiff, but she softened as soon as she arched backward in a layback spin. One leg raised, she spun in one spot as if she were trying to drill herself into the rink itself.
It is something Anya does well, and she knows it. When she came out of the spin, she seemed to relax—and it showed. If Vanessa’s routine had been about power, Anya’s was all about grace and balance, and Coach Schubert had planned a program that showcased her skills. And as Vanessa had, Anya performed her program better than I’d ever seen before. Watching Anya sail across the ice was like watching a piece of lovely silk drift in the wind.
When Anya was done, she came off the ice grinning. “It was just the way you said. I didn’t feel like my regular self. I was someone who could do anything.”
Vanessa hugged Anya—amazing Anya as much as it did me. “That was fantastic, Anya!”