Page 23 of Blade
Indy sighed, with extreme exasperation.
“Fucking Patriceis going to kill me. I can’t be late!”
And then Jolene also sighed, with aggravation, because to her the show was a nuisance she had to get through until the party at the field.
Bag on her shoulder, Indy charged toward the door, grabbing Jolene’s car keys from the dresser and tossing them to Ana.
“We’ll go without you! Ana knows how to drive.”
Ana felt her heart jump. Jolene had let her drive a few times, but that didn’t mean she actually knew how. And she was two years away from even getting a permit. She looked between her two friends, the keys in her hand, not knowing what to do. But then Jolene folded.
“Fine,” she said to Indy. Then she turned to Kayla. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
She took the keys from Ana’s hand and, finally, they headed down the hall.
They drove to The Palace with the top down, music blasting, sun shining. The show just two hours away, and Ana’s solo, and the costume that made her look twenty and not thirteen. Everyone had noticed at the dress rehearsal. Hugo told her she lookedsexy, and Travis tried to pinch her ass, true to form. No one liked Travis.
They parked in the back of the already crowded lot and made their way like a proud band of thieves through the door to the snack bar, then to the big rink, which was decorated with fake palm trees and strips of sand-painted plastic, and the red velvet curtain at the far right end that opened to the locker rooms.
Kayla mumbled, “This is a total shit show,” and maybe it was. But Ana had never felt this kind of excitement.
The Orphans walked to the other end, out through a set of swinging double doors, to the second rink that was being used for makeup and costumes.
The second rink was smaller, about two-thirds the size of a normal arena. Years ago, skaters would practice compulsory figures there, before they were eliminated from competition. Now it was used for practicing spins and choreography, and giving public lessons for little kids.
This week, for the show, the ice was covered with rubber mats and racks of costumes. Headpieces, suits, dresses, capes, and skate covers shaped like pirate boots.
Ana could barely sit still when it was her turn to have her makeup done, and then have her costume zipped and strapped and buttoned by the skating mothers who had volunteered to help with the show. She just wanted to be on the ice.
Normally gathered in the stands just outside the snack bar entrance, the mothers would be everywhere now. In the second rink doing costumes, and later outside the locker rooms with clipboards of pages listing the numbers and the skaters performing in each one. They would stand behind the curtain, lining them all up in the right order and shushing them because it was hard to stay quiet with so much excitement in the air.
There were two kinds of skating mothers at The Palace—another thing Ana had learned in her time here. The first—the locals—were the lesser of her worries. They lived close enough to Echo to drive to the rink and stay for hours until the sessions were done, thinking that their kids had any remote chance of making it past Regionals. As if the odds of winning the lottery were better just because you lived next to a gas station that sold the tickets.
The second kind—the ones who could cut you with a single look—were the transplants who’d moved to Echo from far away. They’d left the rest of the family back home with a father, auntsand uncles, brothers and sisters. Their lives, their sole purpose, and the reason they were so vicious, so annoying, Jolene said, was to justify the sacrifice to the families they’d abandoned. Their kids had to succeed. So they spent their days watching every move of every skater—their own and their child’s competitors. They kept notebooks on each session. What their kids practiced—jumps, spins, footwork connecting required program elements, choreography, run-throughs, maybe twice to build stamina.
Jolene called them bleacher bees. “Steer clear of their nest,” she said. “They’ll sting you until you’re dead.”
When Ana walked by them, it was sometimes hard to remember what she’d been told, because they were mothers, and in her old life, mothers were always looking out for kids. It was one of those things that she had to keep in the front of her mind, like a Post-it note of something you’re likely to forget.
Ana repeated this to herself now, as they zipped her up and pinned her hair and painted one eye with a black circle that was supposed to look like a patch. She reminded herself not to let her guard down, not to be fooled by their smiles and the words that turned into knives, spoken with voices that were sweet and soft.
Like the one doing her makeup, Shannon Finch’s mother, who smelled of stale coffee from the snack bar and the unmistakable scent of the rink—ammonia, gasoline, and sweat.
She studied Ana’s face, smoothing the makeup with her thumbs.
“There,” she said, pulling her face back a few inches to admire her work. “Adorable!”
The woman looked her over, head to toe. She brushed a trace of lint from Ana’s shoulders. Straightened her headpiece.
“It’s such a shame no one’s here to see you.”
She knew what Mrs. Finch was really saying—that Ana’s family didn’t care about her—but Ana wasn’t going to be taken down by this woman with her gray roots and saggy underarms, who had left herhusband and son back in Oregon so Shannon could train with Dawn. Shannon didn’t even have a triple-triple combination.
So Ana took a breath, like she’d been trained to do by Dr. Westin, and let it fuel her anger.
“They’ll see me when I make Nationals.”
Shannon’s mother smiled wider, but her eyes got smaller and her teeth clenched together so tightly Ana worried she might break one in half. Shannon would be lucky to make it out of Regionals this year. Maybe that was cruel to even think. Shannon had been sucking up to Ana since she got here. Trying to be her friend, since they were the same age.