by Cindy Dees
Anya drew in a sharp breath. “Oh my gosh. It’s gorgeous.” She disappeared eagerly into the bathroom and emerged, smiling widely.
The skirt was made of asymmetrical wisps of silk attached at random points all around the hips. Strands of faceted crystal beads were attached among the strips, giving the effect of a belly dancing belt. The crystal flames rose strategically on the chest, covering Anya’s breasts, and flickered to an end just below her chin. It hinted at the all-over henna body tattoos of harem women, but with sinuous, flashing movement, twining all over Anya’s body.
Judy said to the girl, “It covers all of you from your neck to your wrists to your ankles. The conservatives can’t complain about that, right?”
Isabella made a skeptical sound. “She looks like a belly dancer made of fire.”
“That’s exactly the look I was going for!” Judy exclaimed.
“Well, you achieved it,” Isabella said grimly. The costume was beyond sexy. Beyond daring. It was dramatic. Stylized. Avant garde. Shocking. Absolutely stunning. And there wasn’t the slightest doubt in her mind that Anya would want to wear it, and furthermore that she ought to wear it. It was the exclamation point to her fashion statements so far.
“I’m not even going to try to talk you out of wearing it.” Isabella sighed.
Anya laughed. “Oh, Judy. It’s spectacular. How can I ever repay you?”
The older woman staggered under the girl’s enthusiastic hug. “Never fear. I charged the ISU an arm and a leg for it.”
Anya peeled out of the costume carefully. “Now all I have to do is skate well enough tonight so I get a chance to wear it.”
Judy made a face. “You’re in fifth place. All you have to do is stand up through your program and you’ll make the finals. Go out and enjoy yourself and you’ll do fine.”
As the afternoon progressed, Anya focused more and more tightly on her short program. She walked through it in her room, hopping around in circles and going through arm movements, head turns and poses. She listened to the music, humming along with it, her eyes closed, visualizing the program. And same as before, Liz talked her through every excruciating detail over and over, until even Isabella knew every last nuance.
About fifteen minutes before they were due to leave, there was another knock on Anya’s door. This time it was the American figure skater, Ashley Caldwell.
“Hi, Anya. I just stopped by to wish you luck and to see if you’d like me to take your skates to the arena for you. You know. Just in case.”
Anya nodded and gave the American a rueful smile. “That would be awesome. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
Ashley laughed. “Nah. My coach carries my bag for me anyway. He gets to deal with the extra weight.”
The two girls chatted for a couple of minutes, then Ashley said, “Well, I’d better get going. My coach will wonder where I am.” She took Anya’s skates by the blades and carried them out of the room.
“You know, I could protect your skates, too,” Isabella commented as the door closed behind the American.
Anya grinned. “I wouldn’t want you to have to choose between the two. In a crisis, I’d yell at you to save the skates first.”
She probably would at that. Isabella had learned it took about 60 hours of excruciatingly painful skating to break in a new pair of boots, and all skaters guarded their broken-in boots like gold. It would be a nightmare for a skater to have to skate in new boots. They’d be too stiff, too tight, and would rub their feet raw in a matter of minutes.
Liz came in, carrying Anya’s glorious white costume in a garment bag. “Let’s go get ’em, kiddo.”
They rode over to the Hamilton arena in a minivan Karen drove, parking in the official lot beside the stadium. Tall piles of freshly plowed snow lined the edges of the parking lot, which was gritty with little green pellets that looked like kitty litter. It acted like salt to melt the ice and snow but was friendlier to the environment.
A set of metal barricades held back a small crowd of fans waiting near the entrance. A cheer went up as Anya drew near, and voices called out good luck and encouragement. Karen opened the door to the building and something came flying out of the crowd.
Acting purely on reflex, Isabella jumped lightning-fast and knocked Anya to the ground, covering the girl with her body. “Incoming!” she shouted as the projectile flew past and connected squarely with the back of Liz Cartwright’s head.
The Aussie dropped to the ground, out cold. Karen jumped over the coach to help protect Anya as chaos erupted in the crowd, with screaming and shouting.
The metal barricade beside Isabella rocked as the crowd surged forward. “We’ve got to get them out of here!” she called to her teammate.
Karen bent over quickly, grabbed the injured coach under the armpits, and dragged her into the building. Isabella yanked Anya to her feet and hustled her inside, her arms around Anya’s head and her body crowded against the girl. The door closed behind them as the sound of sirens filled the air outside. Isabella dropped to her knees beside Karen who was checking over Anya’s coach.
“She got hit in the back of the head. She’s unconscious and unresponsive.” Louder, Karen said, “Somebody call an ambulance.”
A frantic voice from nearby said they’d do it.
“Pupils?” Isabella asked.
“Dilated and fixed.”
Not good. This wasn’t a faint. The woman was out cold. Isabella reached down for Liz’s boot and pulled it off the woman’s limp foot. She tore off Liz’s sock and ran her fingernail up the length of the woman’s foot. There was the faintest of jerks. Isabella took an Olympic pin off her jacket and used the pointed tip to poke Liz’s ankle. A slight jerk. She poked Liz’s hands and her other leg. All four limbs responded. Thank God.
“She’s got reflexes and movement,” she announced. Karen traded relieved looks with her over Liz’s still form.
“What does that mean?” Anya demanded.
“It means the blow to her head didn’t paralyze her,” Isabella replied as she stripped off her coat and took off her sweater. She wadded it up on one side of Liz’s head while Karen did the same with her sweater on the other side.
“Now what are you two doing?” Anya asked. The girl sounded scared stiff.
“Immobilizing her neck and head. It’s just a precaution,” Isabella explained.
The paramedics were fast getting there. Two, maybe three minutes. They took over quickly, immobilizing the still unconscious coach’s head and neck with a backboard and foam neck brace. As the team of two men and a woman prepared to transport her to the hospital, Karen and Isabella stood back.
“Python, did you see what hit her?”
“It looked like a snowball.”
“A snowball wouldn’t do that kind of damage.”
Python looked down at the floor inside the door. “It would if it had a rock in it.”
Isabella looked down at where her teammate was staring. There lay a round rock almost the size of her fist with a puddle of water around it. She swore under her breath. “Python, tell ops what happened. I’ve got to get Anya down to the locker room. She’s still got to skate if she can pull herself together.”
“Take care of our girl,” Karen muttered.
Isabella nodded grimly. She hurried to the crowd of people surrounding Anya. All the fussing probably wasn’t helping her. She looked pale and shaken. Isabella waded through the crowd to the girl’s side. “Let’s go, sweetie.”
Anya nodded numbly and followed her to the relative quiet of the dressing room.
Isabella led the girl to a bench and sat down beside her, taking the skater’s hands in hers. “Liz is going to be okay. She got hit in the back of the head by a snowball and it knocked her out. All that stuff we did upstairs was purely precautionary. She’ll be calling you on her cell phone and nagging you with last-minute instructions in no time. Okay?”
“You’re not just saying that? You’re telling me the truth?”
It was on
ly part of the truth and completely glossed over the potential seriousness of Liz’s injury, but Isabella looked the girl squarely in the eye and lied through her teeth. “I’m telling you the God’s honest truth. Liz will be fine. Now, do you feel up to skating?”
Anya took a deep breath. “I have to be up to it. Liz will kill me if I don’t.”
Isabella laughed. “She will at that. For a little thing, she’s pretty tough.”
“Did you know she was an Olympic pairs skater? Her brother is the head American coach.”
“Peter What’s-his-name?”
Anya nodded, mustering up a weak little smile.
Isabella looked at her watch and tried to remember what Liz had done with Anya before the qualifying round of competition. “It’s about time for you to get dressed.”
She stayed with Anya, hooking the neck of her white costume for her. “Do you need help with your hair?” she asked.
Anya eyed her askance. “Liz usually does the hot rollers for me. Are you sure you won’t mess it up?”
Isabella laughed. “I have three little sisters. I used to do their hair all the time.” It was another bald-faced lie, but she wasn’t about to rattle Anya any more than she already was. If the girl needed her hair set, then by God, her hair was going to get set. The rolling part went well. Isabella remembered how Liz had done it before and managed to get all the rollers lined up pretty much the same way the coach had. But when the rollers came out and Anya’s head exploded into a mass of uncontrolled curls, Isabella looked at it in minor panic.
“Can I help?” one of the Russian coaches said from the next makeup table over.
Isabella threw the woman a look of abject gratitude and stepped back. In minutes, Anya’s hair was pulled up and back into a rhinestone clasp and fell in graceful waves to her shoulders. The Russian finished it off with several extra bobby pins she said were for luck, and then she lacquered the living heck out of it with hairspray.
Thankfully, Anya did her own makeup, and in a few minutes had drawn out the shape of her eyes with eyeliner into exotic points. Her high cheekbones looked smashing, and her mouth shone with just the right amount of gloss.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” Isabella asked. She rarely used makeup herself.
Anya smiled, and for a moment returned from exotic creature back to bubbly nineteen-year-old kid. “My cousin is a makeup artist for the Sydney Opera Company.”
Ashley Caldwell, already in her skates, clumped over to Anya. “Here are your skates. We have thirty minutes until the warm-up.”
Anya laced up her boots then went to the well-heated room lined with mirrors and waist-high ballet bars. While she stretched, she listened to her music on a portable radio and headphones. Isabella tried to remember what came next. Last time, Liz had talked through the program with Anya.
The girl finished loosening up her muscles and Isabella said, “Okay. Now how does that go again? Two ballet hops, three-turn, four back crossovers into a glide. Waltz jump, big step, camel spin…”
Anya nodded and walked a dry run of the program as Isabella recited what she’d heard Liz going over all afternoon. After the second run through, Isabella said, “Again?”
Anya shook her head. “Now’s the part where you leave me alone for a few minutes to gather my thoughts. Although what really happens is we all stand around trying to psych each other out by pretending to be totally absorbed in our own programs.”
“Right. How long does that part last?”
“Until the last skater before my warm-up session steps onto the ice. Then we head out to the ice.”
Isabella nodded. “Got it. Are you okay? You feel steady? Breathing calmly and deeply?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.
“Besides,” came a German voice from behind Isabella, “today we’re not going to psych each other out. She’s had a scare, and we’re going to talk about happy things until it’s time to skate.”
Isabella turned around in surprise. The skater currently in first place, Karis Neidermeier, stood there, along with the Takamura sisters, Alyssa Walcheka, and Sara Dormonkova.
“Is there any word yet on her coach?” asked Sara in a surprisingly slight Ukranian accent.
“Not yet,” Isabella answered. “But she’ll be fine. She just got hit by a snowball and it knocked her out temporarily.”
“You’re lucky it didn’t hit you,” one of the other skaters said to Anya.
Isabella looked at her charge quickly. Her eyes clouded over with awareness of that fact, but determination rapidly replaced the look and not fear. Good girl.
An ISU official came in to announce, “Five minutes, ladies.”
The girls went their separate ways at that point, and Anya talked through her program one more time with Isabella. Then it was time to go. Anya stepped out onto the ice with the other five women who comprised the top six placed skaters. They would skate in reverse order of their current placement, which meant Anya would skate second after the warm-up.
Isabella stood on the rail with the other coaches and watched Anya zip around the ice. She didn’t have the faintest idea what to say to her by way of coaching. She would just have to hope Anya knew what to do from here on out. The girls started jumping, and Anya threw her troublesome triple salchow. She fell, landing on her bottom.
She got up and skated over to the rail in front of Isabella. “I need a tissue,” the girl said.
The American coach, Peter Something, leaned over and said to Anya, “You’re gliding too long going into that jump. Pull your arms in harder and start the rotation earlier. Then you’ll have time to finish it before you land.”
Anya looked startled, but went back out and tried the jump again. She landed it flawlessly.
Isabella looked over at the American, who said merely, “She’s my sister’s student. Of course, I’m going to help her.”
“Thanks.”
He nodded. “Just before she goes on the ice to perform, tell her to focus and go out and do what she knows how to do. Then tell her she’s beautiful.”
“Is that what Liz tells her?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. But it’s roughly what all the coaches say to their skaters when they put them on the ice.”
Isabella nodded. “I’ll remember that.”
The warm-up period ended and Anya dried off her rear end with a blow dryer. She did a couple of stretches and jumped up and down a few times, and then an ISU official was in the door. “We need you by the gate, Ms. Khalid.”
Isabella and Anya’s gazes met.
Isabella said, “Are you okay?”
Anya nodded. “This one isn’t for me. It’s for Liz. And for all the women who wish they could do this but can’t, either because of culture or lack of opportunity. How can I mess up if all of them are out there with me in their hearts, supporting me and cheering me on?”
Isabella blinked. Anya had done a lot of growing up in the past week. She would, indeed, be just fine. They walked down the tunnel. The sixth-place skater, the elder Takamura girl, came off the ice and headed for the kiss-and-cry area.
Isabella took Anya’s skate guards and said, “Focus. Go out and do what you know how to do.”
Anya recited along with her, “And you look beautiful. I know, I know.”
Isabella added with quiet sincerity, “You do look beautiful. You’re amazing. Now go show all of them that.”
Anya met her gaze warmly and nodded. “For Liz,” she murmured, and then she was off, sailing on one foot out toward the middle of the ice. An appreciative “ahh” went up from the audience as they got their first look at her swanlike costume.
One good thing about that snowball. Isabella had the sense that lightning had already struck. Nothing bad would happen inside the arena now that today’s attack was over with. It was completely illogical, of course. Anya was still in danger out there all alone on the ice. But there wasn’t a blessed thing anyone could do about it now, so she might as well not worry and enjoy Anya’s skate.
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The music started, its graceful, waltzing strains carrying Anya lightly around the ice. It built in speed and power, and she soared around the rink effortlessly, nailing all of her required elements. Then it was time for the triple salchow. It was the hardest jump for Anya except the triple axel. But, it earned big points, especially when performed at the end of a program like this when the skater was getting tired.
The music crashed to a mighty crescendo, and Anya leaped into the air. Whether she glided less or pulled her arms in faster and sooner, Isabella had no idea. But Anya went up, up, up, twirling almost too fast to see. And then down she came, landing cleanly, her free leg checking out perfectly, stopping the rotation and leading her glide out of the jump.
Isabella started as the American coach beside her said, “Yes!” and pumped a fist. She knew the feeling. The music ended with Anya bent over from the hips, her arms extended out and back behind her shoulders, slender and graceful, evocative of a swan finally at rest after a glorious flight of fancy.
Yet again, the crowd went wild. Resigned to the necessity of a lengthy ovation, Isabella looked around the giant arena. The place was nearly full, with only the seats up in the rafters unoccupied. She’d put the crowd at a solid twenty-five thousand. They all were screaming for Anya. How must that feel? She had only to look at her charge to know. The girl glowed from the inside out.
Finally, the ice was cleared of flowers and stuffed toys, most of which would be donated to hospitals around the state.
Anya stepped off the ice and flung herself at Isabella in an exuberant hug. “Come sit with me.”
“Who me?” Isabella squeaked. “I don’t want to be on TV.”
Anya threw her a soulful, puppy dog look. “I don’t want to sit there all alone, and Liz isn’t here. Pleeeease?”
“Oh, all right. But Manfred Schmidt is going to have my head for this.”
“Who’s he?”