by Gail Nall
The bathrooms are off to the right, along with an open door with a sign hanging over it that reads LOCKER ROOMS. The L dangles from the sign at an angle that makes it look like a V. Vocker Rooms. I bite my lip to keep from giggling.
Then I remember this is my new rink. Not new, shiny, so-white-it-glows Ridgeline Ice Plex, but this place—Vocker Rooms and all.
Rows of dull orange plastic chairs are scattered throughout the lobby. Skaters perch on them, lacing up their boots and talking. A few look up at us, and I give them a tentative smile. Mom grabs my hand and pulls me over to a knot of adults. My face flushes. Why does she have to yank me around like a little kid in front of everyone?
“Hello,” Mom says to the group.
They stop talking and look at us. I wrench my hand out of Mom’s grasp and cross my arms.
“You must be Laura Azarian-Carter.” A tall man wearing polished black skates steps forward and thrusts his hand out.
Mom shakes it. “Yes. And this is Kaitlin, my daughter.” She nudges me forward toward the group. I stumble and smile at the man.
He grins, and large dimples appear in his cheeks. Something about his smile makes me relax a little. “I’m Greg Stevenson, the skating director here. I used to star in the Skating Sensation touring show before I became a coach.”
I wonder what a circus-themed touring show has to do with anything, but Mom looks pleased. She smiles and nods.
“A great show. We took Kaitlin to see that when she was little. She loved it so much, she wanted to be in it. You wanted to be one of the dancing elephants, Kaitlin, remember?”
I look at the floor and wish I could disappear.
Greg just lets out a booming laugh and says, “Thank you, thank you.” He gestures at the two women wearing skates next to him. “This is Svetlana Priaskaya.” He puts a hand on the shoulder of the short, round woman stuffed into a fur coat. She nods at us but doesn’t smile. Instead she looks me up and down like she’s analyzing me.
I shift from foot to foot and look toward the other, younger woman with the braided hair and tie-dyed fleece jacket.
“I’m Karilee Clemmons,” she says.
Mom reaches out to shake her hand, but Karilee steps forward and grabs Mom in a hug. Mom’s arms stick out around Karilee, and her eyes are like saucers. I cover my mouth so I don’t start cracking up.
“We’re so glad you’re here!” Karilee says. “We love new skaters. It brings good energy to the group dynamic.”
Greg checks the clock on the wall and gestures at the doors to the ice. “Why don’t you put your skates on, Kaitlin? Freestyle starts in five minutes,” he says as he zips up his jacket. He turns to introduce Mom to some of the other parents, and I catch the words SKATING SENSATION written across the back of his jacket in sparkling silver thread.
I put my bag in front of the nearest chair.
“Don’t sit on that one. It’s broken,” the girl across from me says.
“Thanks.” I move to the next chair. It looks like it has thirty-year-old dirt embedded in the seat. I try not to think about it as I pull my skates on.
“Are you new?” the girl asks.
I look up and recognize the Nice Screechy Violin girl from Praterville. Is she joking? I mean, how could she forget? She’s gathering her short black hair into a tiny ponytail and looking like she’s never seen me before. “Yeah. I used to skate at Ridgeline, but now . . . I don’t.” I tie a double knot in my right skate laces and reach for my left.
The girl shrugs and fishes a pair of red gloves from her skate bag. They completely clash with her pink hoodie, but she either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “I used to skate at Pound Lake, but I don’t anymore either. It’s much better here.”
“Oh.” I wonder what happened to force her to leave a club as good as Pound Lake, but there’s no way I’m going to ask. I’m sure she’s just saving face by saying that Fallton is better, when everyone knows otherwise.
She tilts her head. “Weren’t you at Praterville?”
Now she remembers. I take a deep breath as I search for my own gloves. “Yeah.”
She breaks into a smile. “I knew it! You had that really great program to Swan Lake, right?”
I blink at her. “Um, yeah. That was me.”
“So, are you going to skate here now . . . what’s your name?”
“Kaitlin,” I say as I stand up and follow her out to the ice. “Maybe.”
“I’m Miyu. It’s Japanese.” She runs the words together like she has to explain this every day.
No one is actually skating yet. All the skaters and coaches are busy stabbing and scraping at the ice with their blades. Some of them are even hacking away at it with little shovels. I try to figure out what they’re doing as I cross the rink with Miyu.
She glides to the boards on the opposite side, where she deposits her skate guards and music. I put my stuff next to hers.
“What’s everyone doing?” I finally ask.
“Scraping down the bumps. Come on.” She moves into the middle and points with her toe pick at a smooth, shiny mountain rising from the ice.
I glance down the rink. The huge bumps are in neat soldierlike rows, stretching from one end of the ice to the other. I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, Ridgeline used to get little bumps sometimes, but these things are the size of Mount Everest. “How does the ice get like this?”
“It happens in the summer mostly. My mom says it has something to do with humidity and bad insulation.” Miyu chops at the offending bump with her toe pick. Ice chips fly in all directions. “If you hit one of these in a spin or even just skating backward, down you go. So we smooth them out every morning.”
I go to the next mountain in line and imitate Miyu by stabbing it with my blade. “How come the Zamboni doesn’t fix these?”
Miyu shrugs. “The thing’s been here since the dinosaurs. We’re lucky it smooths the ice at all.”
I chop away at my bump until it’s even with the ice around it.
Once the bumps are gone, the session really begins. Most of the skaters move around the perimeter of the ice, doing various patterns of edges and turns to warm up. But one older girl glides into center ice in front of us, turns backward, and then leaps into the air to turn three times before landing.
My eyes want to pop out of my head. Who does a triple salchow to warm up? Except maybe Michelle Kwan? The girl launches into a series of triple jumps, one right after the other. I squint to see if I can figure out who she is. She definitely looks good enough to have gone to Nationals. All I can see is that she has dark, curly hair. Wait . . .
I turn to Miyu. “Is that—”
“Jessa Hernandez. She won Nationals a couple of years ago.”
“Wow.” I watch Jessa dig her toe pick into the ice behind her and launch into a triple flip. She rotates three times in the air before landing gracefully on one foot. “I thought she retired after her big meltdown at Worlds. I didn’t know she was skating here.”
“She’s been trying to make a comeback,” Miyu says. “I think this is her year.”
Miyu skates off to have a lesson with Karilee, the hugging coach, and I wrench my eyes from Jessa and begin to move around the rink.
As I watch Miyu work on spins, I realize how different she is from Ellery. She never mentioned my outburst at Praterville, even though she was the one who helped pick up all the medals. A smile creeps across my face as I realize no one here—not even the coaches—said anything about the competition. It’s like it doesn’t even matter to them.
I feel lighter somehow, as if the whole thing was just a bad dream. I push off and warm up with an energy I haven’t felt since before Praterville. I don’t think about the judges’ scores or what I said. Instead I fly across the ice, taking care not to get in anyone’s way. I do my favorite old crossover and turn patterns. I do
n’t think I’ve ever skated this fast in my life.
It feels good.
The session flies by. With only five minutes left, I do one last double axel, my hardest jump. Skating forward on one foot, I leap up, twist around two and a half times, and land backward. Perfect. I glide to the boards, where I left my water next to Miyu’s stuff. I grasp my purple plastic bottle and chug. The water’s freezing cold from sitting in the rink. I can almost feel it rolling down into my stomach.
“I saw your double axel,” a voice says over my shoulder. “It’s pretty good.”
I almost choke on the water as I spin around. A guy stands at the boards next to me. And not just any guy. A really, really cute one.
“Um . . .” He points at my chin.
Too late, I feel the water dribbling down from my mouth and threatening to drip from my chin. I swipe at it and wish I could think of something funny to say to make him laugh.
“I’m new here,” I say instead. Which is probably the dumbest thing ever.
But instead of saying I know or Duh, that’s obvious, the cute guy grins. He pushes his swishy brown hair out of his eyes.
“You probably already know that,” I say for him. I seriously wish I could start this whole conversation over.
“So, what’s your story?” he asks as he leans against the boards. He’s a little taller than me, but looks about the same age.
“My story?”
Miyu slides to a stop next to me. “This is Kaitlin,” she says to him. “She’s checking us out to see if we’re good enough for her.”
“No, that’s not—” I start to say, but Swishy Hair nods.
“She’s gotta have a story, or why else would she be here?” he says.
Miyu taps her blade guards against her gloved hand and narrows her eyes at him. “Don’t you have something to practice?”
He ignores Miyu and waves at me. “See you Monday, Double Axel. Tell me your story then.”
“What was he talking about?” I ask Miyu when he leaves.
She shakes her head. “Who knows?”
Swishy Hair swoops by us and jumps into a perfect double axel.
And I realize I’m looking forward to seeing him again Monday.
Chapter Six
DUH. THAT’S Y IT’S FALL DOWN CLUB.
I read the text from Ellery and try to think of what to say next. Houses and stores slip by the van window as the sun starts to come up. It’s Monday morning, and I can imagine Ellery texting as her mom drives her to Ridgeline.
Mom was so excited about me officially joining Fallton, she gave my phone back last night. The first thing I did was text Ellery about the club. She just got back to me.
My phone beeps before I get the chance to respond.
CAN’T BELIEVE UR SKATING W/ THOSE FREAKS.
NOT SO BAD, RLY, I type.
WHATEVER.
C U SOON.
I wait for a response. When nothing comes, I stuff the phone into my skate bag. I just wish she was happy I’m skating again, the way Dad was when I told him Fallton didn’t seem so bad. After all, Miyu was really nice. Jessa Hernandez skates there, and then there was that guy with the perfect hair who called me Double Axel. And even though none of the coaches are Hildy, Greg seemed really into working with me and didn’t even mention my fiasco at Praterville.
Best of all, I’d be unstoppable at Regionals if I could skate with that wonderful, light feeling like I had on Saturday. That feeling I used to have moving around the rink at Ridgeline, where nothing exists except me and the ice. If I work hard, maybe I can make the judges forget what happened at Praterville—and those embarrassing apology letters Mom made me write—and be back on track to qualifying for Nationals.
In the rink lobby, I find an empty chair—one that’s not broken—and pull out my skates. Miyu is talking with some other skaters. She waves. I wave back. I’m wondering if I should join her when Mom sits next to me.
She consults a sheet of paper from her purse. “I signed you up for two free skate sessions this morning. You have a lesson with Greg first thing. They don’t have skating again until later this afternoon, so we’ll go home and you can do your schoolwork. Then when we come back, you have a couple more practice sessions and an off-ice class. Oh, and we’ll have to join a gym, since there’s no exercise equipment here. You can’t slack off on your strength training.”
I yawn just thinking about it all. As I lace up my skates, I watch through the rink windows as a slender blond woman makes camp on the bleachers. She lays out a blanket, pours coffee into a mug from a thermos, and pulls a notebook and pen from a huge orange bag. She has to be someone’s mom, although I don’t know why she’s sitting out in the cold by herself when she could watch just fine from the lobby with most of the other parents.
“Kaitlin! It’s so nice to see you. Are you ready to work?” Greg looms over me, smiling as if seeing me is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
I double-knot my laces and stand. “Ready.”
“Skate hard!” Mom shouts after us. She’s already moving toward her usual rink activity—gossiping with the other parents. I swear Mom knows more about skating than I do, and she’s never even been on the ice.
I pull my guards off and glide toward the far wall to deposit my stuff before working on the ice bumps. As I dig into the nearest one, someone flies past me. The girl is blond, about my age, and wearing this expensive practice dress Ellery and I drooled over when we saw it at a designer’s booth at the last competition.
“Addison! Time to kill the bumps,” Greg yells at her.
She comes to a graceful stop next to us and daintily jabs her toe pick at an extra-large bump while she glares at me. “Who are you?”
I stare at her for a moment. Everyone was so nice on Saturday. Who in the world is this girl? “Kaitlin.” I give her a smile.
Addison doesn’t smile back.
“Kaitlin, why don’t you start down near the Zamboni garage?” Greg winks.
I skate off to the end of the ice—far away from Addison. One by one, the other skaters trickle out, and the bumps are gone in no time. Greg gives me ten minutes to warm up before my lesson, and I take off across the rink with the same free feeling I had on Saturday.
It’s not until I start my jumps that I notice Addison again.
She’s doing the exact same jumps, right after I land them. I do an axel, she does an axel. I squeak out the landing of a double flip–double toe loop combination—two jumps, one right after the other—and she does the same thing perfectly.
The little hairs on my arms rise. It feels like she’s following me, copying me. As if we’re in a competition and she’s trying to show judges—or maybe just me—that she can do everything better.
I don’t have anything to prove to her. I know I’m a good skater, never mind what the last judges thought. I push across the rink and move on to spins. I lower myself into a back sit spin, rotating on my right leg with my left leg extended in front and my rear end just inches from the ice. Addison does the exact same thing. I’m spinning so fast that everything’s a little blurry, but it looks like she just twisted her body into a pretzel-like position I’ve never seen before.
How did she do that? I whip my head around so I can see her again, forgetting that it will slow my spin. I lose the careful balance on my blade and it shoots out from underneath me, leaving me spinning on my behind.
Addison pulls up from her twisted sitting position and finishes with a fast upright spin. She glides over to me and smirks. “Nice butt spin.”
I open my mouth to say something back, but then I shut it. It’s only my second day here. I can’t be rude to people, even if they’re rude to me. I search for something nice to say.
“Thanks. I’ve been working on it,” is all I can come up with. It sounds like one of Dad’s jokes.
S
he doesn’t laugh. Instead she squats next to me. Her hairline shows brown roots, and I try not to stare at it. Her mom lets her dye her hair? Mine won’t even let me wear makeup unless I’m performing.
She narrows her brown eyes. “Your double toe was under-rotated. You don’t turn fast enough after you take off. That’s why you could barely land it.”
My face burns. Who does this girl think she is? A coach? I scramble to get up from the ice. She rises gracefully and looks me in the eye.
“You won’t ever get past Juvenile with an under-rotated double toe.”
I clench my gloved hands into fists at my sides. How does she even know what level I’m on? I don’t remember seeing her at competitions. I wish she would just go away.
And she does. With one last smirk, she turns and pushes off across the rink. I glance around, sure I have an audience. But, just as before, everyone is busy with their own practices.
Greg calls my name. I force myself to take a couple of deep breaths as I move my feet to start my lesson.
I show Greg my arsenal of jumps and spins. I try a few triple salchows and fall on each one.
He reaches out a hand to help me up after the third one. “That’s a good start. This is a jump you have to master, though, if you want to move on. Triple sal was the minimum required jump to be cast in the Skating Sensation.”
Since the Skating Sensation doesn’t even exist anymore, I don’t think I’ll be trying out for it anytime soon. “I’ve only been working on it for a couple of months,” I say.
“You don’t need it until next year, so you’ve got time. Did you bring your music? I want to see your program.”
I grab my CD and give it to the ice monitor. As I glide toward center ice, my throat goes dry. I want Greg to see me as the girl who could win Regionals, the one who’s got Olympic potential. Not the girl who almost placed last at Praterville. Mom’s always saying first impressions are the most important, and I want Greg to have the right first impression of me. Skating my full program—perfectly—is a chance to show him what I’ve got.