Rough Patch

by Nicole Markotic

  “No. The point is, it’s not Tyler any more. It’s the sheep like Talia Sitkins. If the sheep think you’re a target, a safe target, this will go on for weeks. Maybe longer.” She looks so grim, I’m impressed.

  “Okay,” I tell her, though I’m not sure what I’m agreeing to. “Okay.” I head in to the rink, and Sita heads back home. But we’ve agreed to something, some plan Sita is already hatching in her adorable brain, which we put the final touches on while texting that night.

  Friday, we wait till last bell. Sita’s wearing a rose-coloured blouse and matching shoes. I’m wearing a loose, taupe jersey and I put extra gel in my hair, like I do on competition days. Today is a high-adrenalin day. On the way to my locker, I clip Tyler on the shoulder as I run past—a fast slap that he barely acknowledges, as if a feeble girl-hit is exactly the kind of retaliation he expects from his dweeb little sister. Tyler’s wearing his fave “I’m prettier than you are” T-shirt. There are just enough kids around to enjoy this little play that Sita has scripted for our after-school pleasure.

  Behind me I hear Tyler’s friends burst into laughter at the “PITY ME: I’M TYLER’S TWIN” message I’ve taped onto his back. He turns around to give me the finger, but I ignore him to enjoy the rest of the show.

  As soon as Tyler rips the sign off his back, the crowd is already hooting again, this time at Jason. While I’m running past Tyler, Sita’s casually loitering around, slapping Jason’s back like he’s been brilliant all week attacking her best friend. She even bats her eyes at him, I swear. And Jason drinks it in. He’s cute, but not the sharpest fork in the cutlery drawer. His sign reads: “I CAN’T READ EITHER.”

  As Sita struts casually away from the circle of braying hyenas, Jason begins to figure out that Tyler isn’t our only target. He whips his head around, like he’s able to see over his shoulder, and then yanks at the paper. Unlike Tyler, Jason holds it right in front of his face, reading it through a couple of times.

  “I don’t get it,” I hear him say, to further hoots. Boy, am I gonna get it over the weekend. Totally, totally worth it.

  I’ll say this for Tyler, he’s a total twerp, but he’s not a baby. He crumples up Jason’s sign and throws it on the floor next to his. “Let’s go,” he jerks his head at the boy horde.

  “Bitches!” Jason calls out.

  At that, Tyler whirls around and slugs Jason for insulting his sister.

  Ha, ha, as if.

  “I said, let’s go,” he repeats and heads off down the hall with anyone who’ll follow. Most of the grade twelves do.

  Not Jason.

  Sita, who doesn’t hurry, reaches halfway to where I’m standing when Jason starts after her. For a second I think he’s going to hit her, but even Jason must be smart enough to know that hitting a girl for teasing you is a sure-fire ticket to Loser City. A few kids are still hanging around, waiting to see what Jason’s up to.

  “Slag!” Jason calls out at Sita, the word bouncing off the metal lockers, giving the sound a metallic jangle. Slag? A useless insult—who outside of British television ever uses that word?

  Jason must have been playing for time, though, because he doesn’t say anything else until he’s standing directly in front of Sita. She goes to walk around him, still heading down the hallway toward me, but he blocks her way, pushes his chest at hers. And then I get it: Jason hasn’t been picking on us all week just because I’m Tyler’s sister: he’s been trying to get Sita’s attention. And now she’s called him an idjit in front of his friends.

  “You don’t have to be like that,” he says. “We weren’t after you.” His big flirt move. Guess when you’re that good-looking, you don’t have to foster much charm.

  “Mmm?” she responds. As in, “go on.”

  “Well, you’re cute, in a foreign kind of a way.” Jason swirls his hips, emphasizing that what he says is a compliment. Except I can’t tell if he’s seriously hitting on her or just randomly insulting her. “You’re like, you know, exotic, and good for a, well—”

  I don’t think Sita has worked out if he’s for real, either, because this time when she says, “Go on,” it’s to make him speak the words he’s thinking. Would he really stoop that low?

  Now’s the time to mention that one of the reasons Sita and I have lasted as best friends is that we’re both really good at standing our ground and sticking up for the right thing. For each other, I mean. We both totally suck at sticking up for ourselves.

  With Jason blocking her way and flinging insults at her face, Sita’s shoulders just hunch down, which means she’s not going to let her talent for being adorable get her out of this one. She could smile up at him, as if she were shy. She could do the hand-wave thing, dismissing him and saving herself. But she doesn’t do any of those things. She’s not even looking at Jason any more, but off to his right, as if to measure how far she’s standing from the next set of doors. A long way. Even if she runs now, his ugly words will hit her square on the shoulders as she races away.

  “Don’t you finish that sentence, Jason Billings!” I yell out. Not that I think I’ll be able to stop him, but at least he won’t be able to whisper racist shit into Sita’s ear without witnesses. The few kids left in the hallways stop pretending to twirl their locks, and just face the action.

  Jason knows that Tyler won’t care one bit if he tears me to strips in front of the entire school. But Jason isn’t interested in me. Not any more. He only has eyes for Sita. And Sita only has eyes for the linoleum floor.

  “Stay out of this, princess!” Jason shoots over his shoulder at me. “This is between me and the brown girl.”

  Jason hasn’t yet said the worst word, the one he’s building up to, but the way he says “brown” makes it sound important—in a rotten way. A way that’s hard to pinpoint, but so easy to feel. Sita, who never takes shit from anyone, just stands there taking it.

  I walk up to them and stand behind him. He doesn’t even bother to turn. One advantage of being a tall girl is that you’re about the same height as most boys in grade twelve. I quietly place my feet about three inches behind his and position my knees behind his.

  “That’s Ice Princess, to you, jerk!” I yell into his ear, bending my knees forward and making his buckle. He grabs for Sita, but she ducks to the side, so it looks like he’s lunging at her but misses. “And right now,” I yell, “the brown girl and the white girl have much, MUCH better things to do than hang around in the hallways with a red-letter boy.” His football jacket has “JB” embroidered on the chest.

  Sita chortles (you know, chokes and snorts at the same time). Maybe because calling someone a red-letter-boy is as ridiculous as thinking that “brown” is an insult. Maybe because Jason now needs the floor more than she did. “Which one of us is the white girl again?” she asks, hooking her arm around mine.

  “That bitch to your left,” Jason sneers, peeling his knees off the floor. “The Ice Princess,” and he says it just like he’d said the word “brown.” Suddenly my retort is smudged and aimed back at me. I really hadn’t thought that Jason would immediately make it into a sex joke. Or did he?

  I decide that his repeating my term mostly reminds everyone that I had a pretty good comeback for him. So today, with our little morality play, Sita and I actually win.

  IDJIT ALERT: JASON—SOMEONE-LEFT-THE-TAP-ON-TOO-LONG—BILLINGS (NUF SAID!).

  CHAPTER NINE

  The first thing that gets you when your skates hit the ice is not the cold. No, morning rinks woo us skaters. Because the Zamboni has washed the ice with a thin sheen of water, paving over all hockey games and open-skate practices from the day before. That’s what gets me up when the alarm blares, gets me out the door on a glacier of a day like today.

  In summer, it’s kinda great to have what feels like air conditioning built-in, though in the dead of winter, we all want to drag electric heaters onto the rink with us. But that’s usually only a few months of every year. September and October, March and April—for the most part—are fine. Today i
s not fine. Sometimes, Alberta gets fabulous, magical warmth in the middle of winter because of Chinooks. These warm winds blow in and last either a few hours or a week. People walk around in February wearing shorts and T-shirts. For skaters, the Chinooks totally help to relax a body that’s been strained and clenched by deep, deep winter. But today, I think as I leave the house into what feels like the middle of night, today must be the opposite of a Chinook. We’ve had a freak fall snowstorm, and the days are filled with icicle-drenched air.

  Doesn’t help that on Friday morning, we’re into minus-minus weather, yet I can still taste summer (well, Surge) on my lips! But memories of blueberries and burnt marshmallows fade too quickly with this temp drop. Carrying my skates, the laces feel frozen solid already. Maybe the gods are giving me a sign. Maybe it’s time to become a gymnast, where you practice indoors, where your fingers are never too cold to lace up your dainty gymnast booties. Ha.

  By the time I trudge into the change room at the community centre, my bones are joined-together ice cubes. Then we have to take off our winter coats and toasty boots and slip our feet into not-so-toasty toe-torture machines. Usually Winnie lets us practice in double layers of long underwear, though sometimes we have to wear our competition outfits, short skirts and thin nylons. Those days, she yells, “Skate fast and you’ll stay warm!” even though she’s usually yelling at us to “Slow down! It’s not a race!” And, yes, she walks around the ice in lined boots and wrapped tightly in her winter coat.

  But once I’m ready to go, the first thing that sends a thrill up my spine is the gorgeous, pristine ice. At this time of day, not a single skater has marked it up. We’re the first since the Zamboni smoothed over all the rough patches the night before. I push off from the boards, glide to the centre, and stand with my feet in a T-formation, hands on my hips. Then, even though Winnie absolutely insists we begin with warm-up figure 8s, I do a short warm-up routine, starting with the opening I’m planning for the Regional competition. It’s slow, but each turn builds on the last, each jump shoots my legs higher, and each spin whips my head faster and faster. I really, really should start with my figures, but having the entire rink to myself is too tempting. When I try the triple Lutz, I land a bit too sharply on the edge of my blade and nearly topple over. Still worth it.

  Yep, this is why I skate, why I get up at rooster hour, freeze my butt (quite often fall on my butt), have to rush home from the arena and then rush to school, have to scrub dental gunk for extra cash so I can afford quality skates, so I can afford the fee to enter the competition, so I can afford to get to the competitions. The ice is so immaculate, I can believe the blemishes I make are all perfect, that my routine is the finest it can get, that the music I’ve chosen and my routine will fuse in my body. Not a single rough patch. The ice itself will lift me when I need to reach high and guide me when I’m in danger of falling. Yeah, I know: figure-skating nerd.

  This moment is why I never join in when the other skaters complain that we get the worst ice hours, that the only thing our community cares about is hockey, hockey, hockey. I think our community cares just as little about girls’ hockey, though, so I guess we should count ourselves lucky. I finish off with a double Axel, skid without falling, and finally start to outline two fat circles with the outside of my blade. I don’t mind figure 8s, though most of the other skaters do.

  “But we don’t need to do them in a competition, Winnie,” Zoë Bandicoff whines. Zoë’s a bit of a whiner. Winnie’s always lecturing us about how when she was competing, they not only had to practice their figure 8s, but half the actual competition was judged on them. The audience could watch a brilliant dance routine, see a skater get near-perfect scores from all the judges, and still come in seventh place—all because she’d blown her figures.

  Zoë hates doing figures because her 8s look more like dented letter Bs. She’s the best jumper of all of us, but she’s all force, all show. She’s never bought second-hand skates in her life, her parents eagerly purchase extra ice time, private coaching, three glitzy competition outfits. But Zoë doesn’t get that bling doesn’t matter, not the way figure 8s do.

  Don’t get me wrong. I adore flying through a routine, lifting my leg higher with a hefty skate strapped to my foot than I ever could if I was just standing around in sneakers. But there’s something peaceful about drawing a thin circle in the pristine ice, then going over and over and over that circle—inside blade and then outside blade—without making the outline of the circle barely any thicker, without changing the formula. Without ever reaching an end.

  When I skate, I can be me: enjoying myself, calculating the height I need for this jump, the width I need for that twirl, challenging myself, my only worry being falling onto my toujours-tender tush (take that, Mr Grier, alliteration and Franglais!). When I’m skating, I get to just be in my body, no either/or choices.

  The point of figure skating isn’t getting there first; that would be speed skating. The point of figure skating isn’t looking grandiose and glorious; that would be the Ice Capades.

  Zoë can leap around like the air has footholds for her to catch onto, but it’s not enough. I’m good enough to keep wanting to win, but I’d skate anyway, even if I didn’t have a hope of placing at the National Finals. That’s how Tyler and I differ. Gliding through freezing air and onto the ice makes my heart melt. Winning at football makes his heart race. He even has good-luck rituals and routines he taps out before every game. Zoë’s the same way: she thinks kissing her snowflake bracelet will help gain her a medal. For me, all of it matters: the skating and twirling and figure-8-ing.

  I don’t even mind that I’m late for school—again. Classes at J.J. Backstrom start twenty minutes earlier than they did at our junior high, and I still haven’t worked out how to give up those twenty minutes of extra dreaming at the crack of dawn.

  As of today, we’ve survived a month of high school. The semester is in full swing: clubs, football, homework, even mid-terms loom. I haven’t exactly aced my assignments so far, but I’ve done well enough that I don’t have to start panicking until November. Which means, Sita informs me, that we have time for the “get Keira a boyfriend” plan. Gulp.

  I give her my list: “Max Bledsoe, Rick from math (seriously yummy forearms!), the Trevor without a car (he cycles to school even in winter), and Marly.” The last name just slips out. Have I done it, have I finally confessed my inner desires to my best friend?

  “What?!” she questions me, and at first I think her shock is because I find one of Joline’s minions attractive. Yeah, Marly’s personality may be robot-like, but her lips are pretty juicy. But, nope, Sita’s shock goes in a different direction: “Like as in, Marty Ghanem? You have a crush on one of your brother’s jock-pals?” Her shock turns sour: “He’s enough of a goon to turn any girl lesbo!” At that, my mouth clamps down and stays clamped. We immediately turn to her list.

  At that party we crashed, Sita flirted with Tony Baloney (what, you think I’m the only one with a doofus nickname?), but ended up in the backyard with Daz, who’s in grade eleven and cool enough to be invited to the party, but enough of a culture-geek to also be in the Drama Club.

  “Daz deliberately doesn’t comb his hair sometimes,” Sita confesses to me just before ordering her second double mocha. “He says you have to be careful sometimes if you’re into drama and a guy.”

  Her words convince me not to come out to Sita. Because how am I supposed to respond? That I agree being in Drama Club and being a straight guy is a hardship? That all “fags” like acting? How can I deal with these hardee-har comments out the mouth of my best friend? I’m articulate enough inside my head, but out in the open I can only sputter. Usually, I’m just tongue-tied.

  “I’m thinking of getting a buzz-cut,” I announce. As a counter or maybe to introduce my topic in an obviously too subtle way? But Sita doesn’t bite. Either she doesn’t believe me or she does but doesn’t allow this info to derail what she’s been saying about Daz.

  “Daz g
ets any part that demands singing or yodeling,” she continues. You’d be surprised how many school plays demand yodeling. As Sita’s loyal fan, I’ve suffered through a lot. “Or long memorization.” She stops for a second, then continues once I’ve finished swallowing. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  What, she’s worried I’m not paying attention? Or has Sita finally noticed how one-sided these conversations are?

  “What I’m telling you is that Daz was the lead boy for every performance last year.”

  Ah, and Sita wants to play opposite him. For more than one reason, now. Even before the party, Sita was gunning for lead girl. As a grade ten newbie, she barely has a hope of snagging it. But Sita wants the dazzling boy and a dazzling role. In that order.

  “Given what the drama teacher has lined up, though, I think Daz will get called a ‘homo’ this year, for sure.” And there it is: Sita’s big worry for her new darling.

  Homo. That word, again. Why? Tyler’s not actually out every night with a different girl; he’s out every night with the same set of (jock-boy) friends. Hanging out. But nobody’s calling Tyler and his friends homos. Except each other. As a joke. A joke that’s hilarious because—obviously—no cool teenage jock would ever be a homo. No, that special label is saved for the chess players and drama geeks, the math geniuses, and even guys in the Film Buffs Club.

  The coffee shop is mostly filled with groups, not couples. Shit on a stick, how could Sita spit out the word “homo” as if she’s spitting sunflower seeds from her lips? Talia Sitkins and friends have taken over a table not far from ours. They each wear pleated skirts, which is maybe a club thing or maybe just coordinated fashion. Because of what I see on the ice day-in, day-out, I don’t find heavy skirts particularly attractive. Doesn’t mean I can stop my mind from thinking about what’s underneath those skirts. Good thing Sita can’t read my thoughts. Most of the time.