by Melissa Grey
“I’m sorry,” Javi said.
Noah’s head jerked up. “For what?”
“For misreading the situation.” Now it was Javi who looked embarrassed. “I thought that you … that I … Never mind.”
Noah dumped the instruments onto the tray, but made no move to place it back on the counter. “Wait. You thought … ?”
Javi shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, mussing up its artful arrangement. “Nothing. It’s stupid. I’m an idiot.”
“What? No.”
Javi paused, his hand still half-raised. “No what?”
“You’re not an idiot. I’m the idiot. I mean, look at me go.”
That got a laugh out of Javi. “A little clumsy, maybe, but not an idiot.”
Noah sat back on his heels. “What did you think?”
He had to know. He simply had to.
Javi sucked in a deep breath before answering. “That you were into this. Into me.”
Was he? Of course he was. It seemed absurd now, that he’d hemmed and hawed when Cece had asked exactly that question. That was why he’d gazed at Javi through the lens of his camera on the first day of school. Why he’d tried to capture that dazzling smile on film. Why he’d stared at the photo for what felt like hours when he finally did. And why he would never ever admit to doing that to Javi. He’d take that shameful little secret to the grave if he had to.
Javi moved, as if to stand. “Look, I’m sorry. I should go. I’ve taken up enough of your—”
Noah shut him up with a kiss.
Well, he tried to. It wasn’t a kiss so much as an artless collision of lips. His teeth bumped into Javi’s teeth, which was probably not how a kiss was supposed to go, but since Noah had never actually kissed anyone before, he lacked the proper frame of reference with which to compare it.
A little oomph escaped Javi, muffled in the nearly nonexistent space between their mouths.
Noah was about to pull back, to apologize profusely, to perhaps die of mortification, his corpse beautifully illuminated in the crimson light of his darkroom, when Javi moved his lips against Noah’s and all rational thought ceased to exist.
It wasn’t a perfect kiss. Noah knew his lips were chapped. He had a tendency to bite them when he was anxious, which he was most of the time. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, and he was a little congested and he couldn’t really breathe through his nose, so he felt like he was suffocating in the best way possible.
It wasn’t perfect. Except for all the ways in which it was.
Javi’s lips. Those were perfect. They were soft and just the right amount of plump to have a little give to them, which Noah found he liked. A lot. Javi’s soft laugh puffed against Noah’s mouth as he pulled away for an interminable second for air. That was perfect, too.
“Was that okay?” Javi asked.
“ ‘Okay,’ ” Noah said, “doesn’t begin to cover it.”
And to prove it, Noah leaned in and kissed him again. And again. And again.
The North Atlantic Regional Championships were the first step on the road to nationals. If Hana performed well enough at regionals, she would qualify for sectionals. And if she skated well enough at sectionals, she would qualify for nationals. Success at nationals would mean a possible berth on the team for worlds. It would mean assignments at competitions on the Grand Prix circuit. This was technically Hana’s second year competing as a senior, but the first hardly counted. The injury had sidelined her for the majority of the season; she hadn’t even had the chance to compete at nationals. This year was her true debut. And she was determined to make it spectacular.
Hana waited by the boards as the skater before her took her bows. First to the judges, as was right and proper, and then to the handful of spectators scattered about the arena. At a competition like this one, the only people who showed up were relatives of the skaters and occasionally very good friends. Hana’s own parents were somewhere in the stands. She didn’t know where they were sitting, but kept her eyes on the ice in front of her to discourage herself from searching for them. She hated when they watched her skate. It made her even more nervous than usual. She’d asked them to skip the competition, but they just stared at her as if she’d asked them to perform some absurdist circus act.
“But we’re your parents,” her mother had said in Japanese. She spoke Japanese when she thought Hana was being recalcitrant. Hana didn’t think her request had qualified as such, but she wasn’t a parent. She wouldn’t know.
The girl who’d just skated stepped off the ice. Hana stepped aside to let her pass, trying to ignore the streaked mascara running down her cheeks. She didn’t watch other skaters perform, but the look on the poor girl’s face told Hana everything she needed to know. It hadn’t gone well. And she’d forgotten to apply waterproof eye makeup. A rookie mistake.
“Next to skate,” the announcer said, her voice booming across the mostly empty arena, “representing the Skating Club of Jackson Hills, Hana Sakamoto.”
Polite applause shepherded Hana onto the ice. She raised her arms in presentation, as was also right and proper. Everything in skating was a show, not just the seven minutes spent on programs over the course of a competition. The judges watched the practices. They analyzed every move made on the ice, right down to the skaters’ reactions to their own performances as they took their bows. Dmitriev always told her to never let her disappointment show if she made mistakes. The judges were human. If you acted like you had just given the worst performance of your life, they would think that you had. Hana straightened her back, bent deep into her edges, and skated to the center of the ice, her composure as solid as she could make it.
Her nerves were powerful enough to overwhelm the hunger gnawing at her stomach. She hadn’t eaten anything that morning. She could never eat right before a competition.
The lights overhead caught the rhinestones sewn onto her sleeves. They sparkled beautifully against the dark blue fabric of her dress. As she took her starting pose, one hand draped delicately over her shoulder, a thought rose, unbidden and unwanted.
Tamsin’s voice, asking questions Hana wished she wouldn’t.
Is a gold medal worth killing yourself for?
The sounds of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 drifted from the speakers, filling the cavernous space with almost enough noise to drown out the intrusive thoughts pushing at the edges of Hana’s concentration.
Almost.
She pushed off the ice, tracing a semicircle with a strong and steady edge. Figure skating had ceased to be about tracing actual figures on the ice decades ago, but her coach was old-school enough to make her practice what used to be compulsory figures every day. Incorporating them into the beginning of her program was an excellent way to show off her skating skills, a valuable part of the program component score. But it was her technical element scores she was hoping would impress the judges.
It was only regionals. Not even sectionals. She didn’t need the triple Axel to qualify for the next competition, but god she wanted it.
Her blades cut across the ice as she performed the footwork leading into her first jump. It was tricky skating into a triple Axel. Simple crossovers would have built up more speed, but the added footwork boosted the value of the element. She took a breath and flew into her jump preparation. Her blade skidded against the ice for a fraction of a second before she launched herself into the air from a forward edge.
Is a gold medal worth killing yourself for?
She rotated. Once, twice, three times—but not three and a half. Her feet were still crossed when her toepicks caught the ice. Her hip slammed into the ice as she collapsed, her legs tangled with each other. Hana pushed herself up as quickly as she could. Bits of snow clung to the fabric of her skirt, but she didn’t brush it off. The element was behind her. She had to forget about it and move on, even if the bones in her hip were screaming in agony.
Her next jumps were in combination. A triple flip, double toe loop. Not the most difficult co
mbination at the senior level but a serviceable one. After the understated crash on her opening jump, she needed a clean combo with a positive grade of execution. She could salvage the rest of the program. She had to.
Is a gold medal worth killing yourself for?
The triple flip was off the moment she kicked at the ice. Hana managed to crank out a landing, but it skidded so badly that she barely had enough speed to attempt the double toe. The second jump took off almost from a standstill. That would be a negative grade of execution on both jumps.
She was slow, too slow. Her body was still turning when her blade touched down. A skater was allowed only a quarter of a full rotation on the ice. Any more than that and the jump wouldn’t count as fully rotated. If the technical caller was feeling kind, they would count it as an under-rotation, which wasn’t nearly as costly as a downgrade. If they were feeling vicious, they’d call it a single.
Hana felt tears sting at her eyes, but she blinked them away. She had three and a half minutes left in her program. Three and a half minutes to get it together and keep it together. In that moment, three and a half minutes felt like an eternity.
With every bobble and every balance check and every cheated landing, she felt herself die a fresh and horrible death. Nationals had felt so close just minutes ago. She’d been able to imagine the lights, the packed stadium, the weight of a medal as it was hung around her neck. The awed commentary about her triple Axel, a jump so difficult only a handful of American women had ever landed it.
But now those dreams were scattering further and further away, specks of dust on an uncaring wind.
The rest of the program went by in a blur. Tamsin’s voice was louder than the Rachmaninoff piping through the speakers.
Is a gold medal worth killing yourself for?
She wanted to scream that it was. That it wasn’t. She wanted to rip the skates off her feet and tear the bedazzled dress from her body. She wanted to quell the pain in her stomach that had become her most constant companion. She wanted to curl into a ball and fade into nothingness.
All that remained was her last combination spin. A flying camel into a doughnut spin into a backbreaking Biellmann. She spun, the velocity of it drying the tears on her cheeks. When had she started crying? Her back twinged as she reached behind her to grab the blade of her free leg and hoist it up behind herself, contorting herself into the Biellmann spin.
She let go of her leg and the twinge worsened. Something was wrong. But it didn’t matter. Whatever injury was forming in her spine wasn’t an excuse. Skating through pain was expected of her. By her coach. Her parents. By herself. Competition was supposed to be mind over matter, and in this, Hana knew she had failed. That sense of failure was so powerful, so visceral, that she wobbled as she exited the spin. Her body hadn’t betrayed her. Her mind had.
The music came to an end, and Hana thrust her arms behind her in her final pose. It was designed to look triumphant. But triumph was the furthest thing from what she felt.
Her body went through the motions of saluting the judges. Bowing. Waving to the handful of people politely clapping for her disaster of a performance.
She skated to the boards, where Dmitriev wordlessly handed over her skate guards. Tense silence accompanied them to the kiss and cry—a glib name for the section of the rink where Hana sat down to receive a score she didn’t want to see. Beside her, Dmitriev sat as still as stone. There were no words of condolence, no admonishments. The admonishments, at least, would come later. The condolences, probably never.
The top four would advance to sectionals. Everyone else would have to come back and try again next year.
At the sound of the announcer’s voice, Hana closed her eyes.
“And now, the scores for Hana Sakamoto …”
She didn’t listen. She didn’t want to know. If she hummed loudly, she could distort the sound of the announcer’s voice enough to muddle the numbers. Dmitriev would hold them over her head at their next practice anyway. They would haunt her, long after this.
But what she couldn’t block out were the vibrations against her wrist.
Her rating, docked to reflect her poor performance. The official judges were not the only souls sitting in judgment of Hana and every other skater who took the ice. Anyone in the crowd could weigh in. They could cast pity votes for skaters who fell and tried to rally. They could condemn the ones who failed to live up to whatever overused, bombastic music their coaches had saddled them with. Performing to Carmen or The Phantom of the Opera or Swan Lake was practically begging for a bad rating.
She didn’t look at her watch either. The numbers would not lie. They would reflect the brutal truth of her performance, but she didn’t need numbers to testify to that. She had skated it. She had lived it. And even with the pain still throbbing in her hips, there was only one thought floating through her mind on an endless loop.
Tamsin’s voice, soft with concern.
Is a gold medal worth killing yourself for?
“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”
A very smart man wrote those words, at a very volatile time in history.
It is true of all civilizations. We come to love our chains, especially if they are all we have ever known. We find a certain comfort in their weight. We are soothed by the limitations they place upon us. There is little chance for failure if we can only extend ourselves so far. Predestination is in many ways preferable to the unknown future before us.
But it is a false security peddled by false prophets.
None more false than the man who built our chains.
The red spray paint is more than a little dramatic. The blue and black are downright vulgar. But it looks so nice, so loud, against the white marble. It is a statement, made boldly, as the best statements ought to be made.
It is a key sliding into a lock. A door being opened. A chain breaking under the tide of change.
The rest is simply theater.
Five days before the Founder’s Day Dance, a second act of vandalism put the first to shame.
And Hana was lucky enough to see it with her own two eyes.
She had skipped practice that morning. Her parents normally forced her to go unless she had a good reason—bones sticking out of the skin was their minimum threshold for good reasons—but her parents weren’t in Jackson Hills. They were somewhere on the other side of the world, competing for more gold medals to add to their collection. Something as trivial as having a child—birthing or raising one—was hardly reason enough to slow Mariko Sakamoto down. Equestrian sports were the opposite of figure skating in so many ways. Skaters had the lifespans of mayflies. Their careers were often over before they could legally buy a beer. Equestrians like Hana’s mother could compete well into middle age and beyond. There was a guy in his seventies at the London Olympics. Hana could easily envision her mother trying to break that record. She lived on her horse, and she’d probably be happy to die on one.
Hana had called Dmitriev at five o’clock in the morning and informed him that she had a vicious stomach virus.
Blasting out of both ends were the words she used. No one asked for specifics after that.
He’d merely grunted out, “с Богом,” and hung up.
Go with God in Russian. It was the same thing he said to her before competitions.
After the disaster at regionals, she really should have been working herself to the bone to prepare for sectionals. She’d only just squeaked by to qualify. But the thought of spending another cold morning at the rink trying to be faster, higher, and stronger than she was the day before, while her stomach ate itself and her bones creaked with their increasing brittleness, seemed so unappealing.
Recovery was an important part of training. It wasn’t important to Dmitriev—who was Russian enough to expect his athletes to skate to their fullest potential every day—but Hana had heard that it was important to other coaches. So she was recovering.
It was odd, how much recovery felt like slacki
ng off.
But Hana was markedly less conflicted when she arrived at Maplethorpe Academy that morning and walked right into what was likely the most scandalous thing to happen in the school’s illustrious history.
The marble bust of John Maplethorpe—founder of the academy that bore his name, father of the Rating System, and architect of their society—had been vandalized.
The word vandalized didn’t do it justice. This was an act of desecration. A demolition of the sacred.
Paint smeared the stern countenance of John Maplethorpe. Downward slashes of blue over his eyes. Red splashed across his gently disapproving frown. Strategic dashes of black to complete the look.
His face resembled a harlequin mask. A jester. It looked just like the stickers that had been slapped onto the security cameras outside the school’s front doors.
But the desecration did not end there.
On the plinth, the vandal had spray-painted another phrase, this one more esoteric than the last.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
A few members of the faculty had formed a loose human shield around the statue, trying to prevent students from getting too close. Someone behind Hana jostled her to get a better look. She recognized the girl from some of her classes. Monica. Melanie. Melody? Perhaps. She was an art student, about as far removed from Hana’s lived experience as one could possibly be while also occasionally breathing the same air.
“Sorry,” the girl who was probably named Melody said. “Just wanted to see what it said.”
Hana stepped a few inches to the side so the other girl could peer over her shoulder.
“ ‘Man is born free,’ ” Melody or maybe Melanie read, “ ‘and everywhere he is in chains.’ ” A frown marred the girl’s delicate features. “What the heck does that mean?”
It was a good question. Not one for which Hana had an answer, but a good one nonetheless.
Someone else jostled Maybe-Melody from behind, and was less polite about it.