LESBO ALERT: LIKES FIELD HOCKEY.
HET-GIRL ALERT: THINKS FOCUSSING ON SCHOOL SPORTS WILL DISTRACT HERSELF FROM THE KISSING A GIRL THING.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Famed Hollywood dancer Ginger Rogers (yes, the ’30s also crack me up), once said that women have to do whatever men do, only backward and in high heels. She was talking about dancing, but she was really talking about everything. And she’s dead-right. Except in skating.
The real reason I don’t enter pairs competitions is because your partner has to lift you over his shoulders. Even at the Regionals, you have to be wicked strong to lift another person while you’re gliding around on knife-thin blades. Women have way harder moves, and we have to be flashier, but guys have to jump and spin and carry weight. I may not have many curves, but there aren’t any boys strong enough to lift my five-foot, eight-inch frame. And there certainly aren’t any girls who can throw me over their heads and then catch me on my way down. It’s hard enough getting my skate-heavy foot above my own head for the Biellman spin, where I hold the blade in both hands and arch my back. Maybe that’s why too many people think male ice skaters are gay: the guys have to sweat like grunts, but at the same time dance around the ice like they’re dainty.
Twice this fall, I have taken a serious ... fall. The third time, Winnie happens to be observing to give me notes, standing in toasty-warm boots with a note pad. I spin counter-clockwise so hard, I spin onto my left ass-cheek. Hard. I hear clapping coming from somewhere in the bleachers. Hockey players waiting their turn for the ice. “Ignore them,” Winnie tells me, “focus on the problem you’re having.”
The problem is, I’m letting these falls get to me. Or I’m letting everything else get to me, and the pressure is making me fall.
“You don’t know about pressure,” Winnie says, dismissing the dramatics of my swan-dive.
“I’m not trying to make excuses, just saying that’s why my timing is off,” I tell her, wiping ice shavings off my cheek and lips. The shavings taste like exploded bits of Pop Rocks. “I’m going to a new school, and I’ve got new worries. Different worries,” I tell her. I’m about to describe those worries in detail.
“Ha,” is Winnie’s sympathetic reply. “Life is pressure.” I swear she does the Sita hand wave. Missing your best friend means missing even her most irritating habits.
I try to concentrate on what Winnie’s telling me. After all, the Regionals are this coming weekend. I need to come in at least third place to advance to the Provincials in January, a week after my sixteenth birthday. Before boys, before girls, before Sita even, skating was my first love. I have to focus on that romance. Right now.
Back to my routine. Winnie let me go with Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated,” even though it’s from eons ago. But the song switches from fast to glide-y to fast again, and the lyrics suit me. Winnie shifted some of my jumps around to give me more of a breather between my flashiest moves, but mostly she leaves composing the routine to me. She knows I can get any jump or spin down to perfection, as long as I rehearse it enough. As long as I let myself live inside the routine instead of just following the routine.
The way I practice is to repeat each complicated move till I can do them all in order: no music, no decorations, simply jump, jump, leap, spin, leap. Then I add the waltzing, the three-turns, the linking moves that let me sweep across the rink and look pretty while doing so. When I’ve added in every minor flourish, I get through the entire routine slowly. Then I skate it over and over and over and over. I skate till I’m not following a program, I’m the very essence of skating itself. Till I don’t have to think any more, I just do. Till the routine is skating me.
Some skaters flinch or choke during competitions. Too much pressure to execute every single jump perfectly, to maintain a centred spin, to not bobble any toe loops. That pressure ripples the icy air and caves their spirit. Some skaters listen to the do-or-die tune, some fail one Axel and skim through the rest of their routine listlessly. Winnie believes I’m an intergalactic meteor because my competitive routines shine so brilliantly. As long as my feet scrape across this frosted mirror and scissor through air, as long as I can stroke the ice, I’m the Calgary Stampede parade in February, a snowstorm in July, and the Winter Olympics every day.
After Winnie gives me some more practical tips—“Not pressure, but release; not your body in two directions, but in every direction at once”—I skate through the routine again, not thinking, not even feeling, just letting the ice seep into my blood. My blades swish and my arms wave at the top row of bleachers. My hair lashes the boards, my hips spin and circle and twist. One toe shatters down and one leaps straight up. A winter carnival of a jump. A tsunami between destruction and creation. Magic.
When I leave the ice on Friday morning, I think I’m ready. I know I’m ready. And not just for the competition tomorrow. I’m ready for Jayne’s poised lips.
After that “my lips just did a triple-loop and when can we do it again?” first kiss, Jayne and I don’t kiss again for days. Almost a full week! My lips drift through winter to spring and back to winter again, as I wait for her lips to etch out the seasons in ink or cirrus clouds or Saskatoon berries. Waiting for the softest of snowfalls to scrawl stories onto my skin. Onto the skin of my skin.
When we pass in the hallways, she chews her lips and I wave, then duck into my physics class, or I nod and she shakes her ponytail. Every day, we’re communicating in code. At lunch, she eats with her friends, and I settle down with The Three.
So on Hallowe’en, I decide that maybe I’m waiting for her and she’s waiting for me. “Walk me home?” I ask when she’s at the drinking fountain, and she skips the bus ride that Friday. How could I have ever called her Plain Jane? When Jayne squishes her lips to one side, whatever’s inside my chest bounces zigzag against my ribs. For most of the walk, we chat about her brother (applied to and got accepted into a draughting program) and Sita. While we walk, the backs of my knuckles slip against the back of her knuckles.
“She’s freaked out about my liking girls. But also ...” I flinch at the part that’s so hard. “Sita wants me to like boys, but if I can’t be that, then I should be totally lesbian. For totally sure.”
“You’re saying you’re not out? Are you’re saying you haven’t even entered a closet to come out of?”
“Huh?” My suave comeback.
“You into girls or not?”
No layback spin will get me out of this conversation. Hmm. Maybe I should add a second layback to my routine? Judges are always so impressed that figure skaters can perform moves that make astronauts dizzy. I remember to nod at Jayne, but I’ve taken too many seconds to respond to her question. She’s unfolded her arms and started to walk away from me. I follow. Jayne’s walking in the direction of my house, so before she gets there, I decide to show her how I feel. My body works so much better than my mouth does, right? “Flaunt your strengths,” Winnie always says. “Tilt into your best stuff.”
I run to catch up and give her hip a nudge when I reach her side. She bites her lips—good sign! So, without really thinking too much about my plan, I grab the belt loop in her jeans and pull her into the alley just behind my house.
“Happy Freak Day!” I whisper into her ear, pull our hips together, and press my breasts into hers. Triple axel bliss. I bend to kiss the side of her earlobe. Only the side of her earlobe, because she moves away as I’m zeroing in. “Hey, I’m not trying to be funny,” I say to her, “I want to—”
“Yeah, I know what you’re trying,” she says, pulling away from the wall and heading back to the sidewalk. She doesn’t look mad, but she certainly doesn’t look turned on.
We climb the hill to my house. “Are you mad?” Maybe I am supposed to wait for her to pick the right moment. She kissed me last time. Maybe she’s in charge of kissing from now on? I’m confused and horny and feeling a little embarrassed and a lot rejected. Is this what boys have to go through? Am I going to have to be more sympathetic to Tyler?
“I’m not mad, Keira, I’m just ... You’re not ready to kiss me yet. Not really.” She sighs like it’s so complicated it might take years to explain. “Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?
“Kip.”
“Kip who?”
“Kip your hands to yourself, girl!”
We’re at the ramp at the front of the house. I walk up, unlock the door, and head for the kitchen, not sure if Jayne will follow me. She does.
“Want a snack?” I ask. Partly to be polite, because Mom always says when it’s your place, you’re the hostess, no matter who comes to visit. And partly to say something, rather than demand what the hell she’s talking about, and how does she know what I’m ready for?
“No thanks.” She sits at the top of the stairs that lead down to my parents’ bedroom, maybe waiting for me to either invite her into my bedroom or to kick her out.
I know I’m too scared to join the Gaysta Club (sorry, but that’s what the kids at Backstrom call it). I know I’m not brave enough to hold her hand in the school halls or walking down the street near my house or at the mall or the coffee shop—or anywhere, really. No, scratch all that. I want to hold her hand from the moment before I wake up until I flop onto the bed at night. I want to hold her hand when I’m skating alone and when I’m in Mr Grier’s lethal literature lessons. I want to skate while holding her hand at the Olympics, and I want to slow-dance with her at the school dance she’s not allowed to attend. I want to, but ...
S’long as we’re alone, hidden behind bushes, no one else elbowing into our couple-fest. Then, what I want to do with Jayne flares into x-rated territory (x-rated for virgin-me, that is). With Surge, the kissing was the starting point. With Jayne, the kissing is the rest of the routine, the beginning and the middle and the grand finale. With Jayne, I want our kissing to be figure-eight infinity. But I’m scared. So I look around in the fridge, searching for the perfect snack to offer my almost-girlfriend, rather than making sentences out of the “bi, bi, bi” struggling to propel out of my mouth.
Jayne wants more from me than a half-baked “I’m not sure, yet.” But I’m not sure, yet.
Even without Sita around, I’ve figured out that I aimed my crush at Dianne because there was no way anything would happen. For weeks I could fire lesbionic lust in her direction and not end up kissing her. Truth be true, if I’d had a crush on Surge, I would’ve probably screwed that up on purpose, too.
But Jayne is not Dianne. Jayne knows ancient mythology and can draw hidden stories and has her entire life planned out so she can get to be who she already knows she is. In the kitchen, I open and close cupboard doors, wash an apple, peel an orange. I stand in the kitchen doorway and see Jayne, only a few feet away, sitting very still. She’s waiting for me to stop waiting. She’s waiting for me to join her, not just by sitting on the steps, but at her parade into the future. Jayne likes me, and that alone should send me running out of the kitchen to grab her shoulders and shout out loud. But I can’t lie to her.
From the stairwell, she calls out, “No more kissing. Not until you decide who you truthfully are.” She means until I’ve laminated my full-on “out-and-proud” membership card. But that’s so unfair, because she’s not even entirely out yet.
“Look, maybe I wasn’t entirely ready for you before, but you kissed me anyway.” I’ve brought grape juice and two plastic cups with me, but my hands shake, so I put the bottle down beside us. I wipe my damp hand on my forehead. The cold feels good. “But I do know I want to kiss you again.”
She’s holding herself very still, like my words might hurt her. But isn’t she the one trying to get me to skate around in only one kind of rink?
“Jayne, I really want to kiss you again.” I sit down right beside her, hip to hip. “It’s not that I’m unsure about you, I’m just slow when it comes to romance, okay?” I smile, so she sees I’m being Keira the knuckle-headed, mixed-up, teen-girl wonder.
But she’s not smiling back. She’s not putting her arms around me and taking advantage of the fact that my house that is never empty is now occupied by just the two of us. “Look, Keira,” she twirls her hair between two fingers. “I’m not trying to out you, and I don’t want to preach about who you tell and when. But you don’t want to tell anybody. Besides Sita—who told you, and not the other way around—who knows you like girls? You don’t even tell your sister, and she loves you to pieces.”
“You haven’t even told your best-friend brother!” I hurl my accusation at her. “Jayne, telling Sita was a big deal, a huge deal. We’d never talked about gay things before.” I get that Jayne doesn’t know who I am, really, but I like her a lot. Why isn’t that enough? I’m practically crying, and that, of course, makes me mad. “Why do I have to figure out who I’m going to be seventy years from now? If we both like each other, if we both have stuff to hide, why can’t we just kiss?”
Jayne’s shoulders soften a tad. “It’s not about waving placards around, I’m not saying that.” She turns to meet my gaze. Sitting staring into each other’s eyes should be mega-romantic. This is so unfair.
“Maybe you are the one too scared to kiss me,” I cut in. She stiffens, like I’ve hit something. “This isn’t about coming out with a megaphone in the auditorium at a school dance, right?” I’m on a roll. “You wear certain clothes with drawings on them to send signals to people who already know you, but most people remain clueless, right?” Why is my mouth working overtime? Usually, I can’t think of any words, but right now the worst ones swoosh out and whip around us. “Teachers don’t know who you are, most kids at school don’t even know you’re a lesbian.” Jayne leans farther and farther away from me as I talk, her body practically disappearing into the wall. “And your oh-so-close family members haven’t even met you yet; you’re saving that truth for when they’re as much of your past as I will be!”
Bringing her family into this mess is a low blow. But I want us to get past the part of a relationship that Sita calls the “Pre-make-up break-up.” I want to blast us to smithereens, so we can remake ourselves into one smithereen, together. After I’ve said those fracturing words, I take her hand, to show her that we’re in this together.
She lets me take her hand, but she doesn’t exactly squeeze back. “But I am out at school, Keira, don’t you know that? All the gay kids know, and some others. I just have to keep it from the kids who go to my church.” And, even though we’re sorta holding hands, the distance between hasn’t stopped growing.
“And how exactly do you manage that?” I ask, with as much sarcasm as I can. “It’s not like you wear a lesbian nametag or anything. And it’s not like you’ve joined the Gay-Straight Alliance at school.”
Backstrom’s seven out kids sit together at lunch, and meet up at the coffee shop before classes every morning so they can walk to school together.
“I have, actually,” Jayne replies. “Sort of.” She looks embarrassed.
“You attend club meetings? You walk with them to the coffee shop before school?” I enquire. “And you’ve sat at that lunch table?”
“No, but ...” No way she’s come out at school. Her brother would find out in a fast-forward minute, and Jayne’ll go to any length to protect her family from knowing her real self. “Um, I did date one of the members for a couple of months last year.” My stomach switches from angry mosquito mode to jealous grasshopper mode. My jealousy is completely unfair, given that I still haven’t told Jayne about Surge.
I nudge my leg against hers. Has she had many girlfriends? Why are these questions only occurring to me now? I have a story to tell her about Surge—why should I be surprised that she has stories, too?
Suddenly I lock onto the point of the story: she’s had a girlfriend who was out, but didn’t out her.
I take a deep gulp. “I’ll sit at that table,” I tell Jayne. Gulp. “I’ll sit at that table, and you can come by, and people will only think you’re being supportive of that group, like always.” Gulp. Once I’ve joined tha
t table regularly, Tyler will know, every kid in school will know. And Sita won’t ever forgive me, again. My heart thumps out through my chest and flops onto the stairs.
Jayne’s knee relaxes against mine. My heart madly quivers, lying so exposed outside my body, but there’s no going back now. “I’ll sit there at the Gaysta lunch table. Every lunch period.” I’m gonna get creamed. By Tyler and by all the kids at our school who love to harass fresh meat. Dad will thump some furniture around, maybe hit a wall with his fist. Mom will freak out, maybe immerse herself in a baking frenzy and give me lectures about teen sexuality. Endless lectures. And take away from me whatever she thinks is left to take away. Everything except skating, I hope. Sam will just be so happy that she gets to hang out with Jayne some more. And Tyler can’t be much worse to me than he is right now, right? He’ll just be awful in a different way. Amanda (and maybe even Joline?) will kill me for abandoning our lunch table (and maybe for why I abandoned them), but I’ll deal with that—
“Ooh, Keira,” Jayne says. “Kay-ira.” “You don’t need—we won’t—but, oooh—”
My offer has smoothed over all this rough patch, and then—finally, finally, finally—she’s kissing me. Her hand on my face again, her knuckles grazing my cheekbones, ever so softly. I inhale the scent of her hair—sweet, fall leaves with a hint of mint. And I let my forearm trace across her shoulder and down her back.
And then we’re smart enough to go out to the alley to wait for James, which is a good thing, cuz I hear Mom and Sammie at the front door just as Jayne and I stumble out the back. Jayne lays her palm flat on my sternum. My heart flutters like a whiskey jack.
LESBO ALERT: [CENSORED]
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jayne and I practically tumble into the back alley, our arms still wrapped around each other. Mind you, my house is close to the alley, and there’s barely a strip of grass for our backyard, so we go from inside groping to outside smooching in record time. Alleys are great that way.
Rough Patch Page 14