Page 14 of Blade
They walked from the locker room together, skates laced tight, rubber guards hugging the blades, and stood among the herd. Indy smiled andmouthed the wordsgood luckbecause Dawn was already there, on the ice, before the Zamboni had cleared into the dock, finding her spot on the side across from the snack bar entrance, away from the mothers so they couldn’t hear, close to her office where she could easily retreat.
Ana felt the urge to take Indy’s hand and never let it go.
But the doors opened and the herd began to move, pulling off guards and taking the ice, stroking counterclockwise like horses on a track as they warmed up.
This wasn’t the dream, the nightmare, Ana reminded herself as she gathered speed. Her spine straightened and her shoulders pulled back as she made the first turn at the end of the boards. She felt joy moving this way. Freedom. She lifted her right hand over her head in a perfect dancer’s arc as she turned backward.
Dawn was standing at the boards, and Ana wondered what she was so afraid of. Why Dawn had grown so ominous.
“Ana!” Dawn called her name, summoning her for the lesson.
This is not the dream.She wasn’t lying flat on her back, unable to move. Dawn was just a woman, barely five foot two, her navy blue puffer coat unzipped and hanging loosely from her narrow shoulders. She reached out and took Ana’s face in her hands, her skin cool against Ana’s flushed cheeks.
“How are you today?”
Ana answered, “I’m good.”
Dawn let go of her face and smiled with her thin lips and nearly perfect white teeth—save for the crooked one in the bottom row.
“I was thinking about this dilemma with the flip,” she said. “And why you can’t get the height—I can see it, Ana. I can see the exact moment when the fear takes over.”
The word—fear—entered Ana’s mind like a storm warning. A trigger.
“I see everything.”
Ana followed her gaze to the session, where skaters moved in and around one another, jumping, spinning, stroking into footwork passesor spiral sequences. It became innate somehow, the way they all knew where each body was heading and cleared a path.
She caught a glimpse of Jolene in the center, working on her flying camel spin, slow and labored by lanky limbs.
And then Kayla gathering speed by the Zamboni door, too much speed. Out-of-control speed, because—Jolene said—this was the only thing that stopped the thoughts in her head. Thoughts about her old life in New York that she never spoke of.
Ana knew only what she had pieced together—that Kayla had been rescued from her evil grandmother by some charity in New York that gave her a sponsorship to train at The Palace. And that whatever else had happened there, her unrest was big and unruly, and quelled by adrenaline from the speed and cigarettes and Jack Daniel’s that she kept in a metal flask under her bed.
And, finally, Indy, procrastinating by the boards with Coach Emile, pulling on neoprene gloves. Not wanting to be here. Not wanting to fall, but there was no way around any of that.
“That’s where it counts—out there,” Dawn said, her words perfectly enunciated and delivered with an extra burst of breath, like she was narrating a movie. “It’s easy to stand here and make promises. Anyone can do that.”
And now Dawn opened her hand and pressed it again to the side of Ana’s face. “I don’t think you’re ready.”
Ana froze, not knowing what this meant.Not ready for what?
Dawn looked from the rink, the ice, to the break in the stands that led to the offices. Standing there was a man in a cardigan sweater, with gray hair and glasses.
He waved at Dawn, who waved back. And then his eyes shifted to Ana.
“I’ve decided you shouldn’t have any more lessons until you stop slowing down,” she said.
“What? No ...” Ana protested. She felt like she was pleading for her life. Skaters who stopped getting lessons were not making the Olympics. Not ever.
“I’m sorry, Ana—I think you need to work on what’s going on in here,” she said, knocking on Ana’s head with her knuckles. “I know you cry in the closet. I know you miss your sick mother.”
How did she know that? About the times Ana sneaked away to the closet in the basement, sat in the darkness, with the mops and the brooms and the Pine-Sol, leaning against a wall and letting herself cry? Because she was alone, and because her mother was sick, maybe more sick than she even knew because they’d kept it from her with lies and colorful scarves for months before she’d left. All of them. Carl. Connie. Even Tim. She would never believe them again. But, also, they’d lied so she could come here. So shewouldcome here.
And now it was all for nothing? Because she was a big fucking baby?
“No!” Ana said again. “I can do it. I can!”
Dawn sighed like she was exhausted by Ana’s pleas. Like she’d heard this all before. It was in her book. Chapter 7. “Denial—the Fourth Response to Fear.”