Page 24 of Blade
So it felt good, but then bad, using her own words as knives. But this wasn’t about Shannon. It was her mother. And if one of them had to leave costumes and makeup bleeding, better this bleacher bee than Ana. ThenewAna. The one who’d stopped climbing into Indy’s bed at night.
She skated her solo in the pirate-girl costume, her joy unfettered by the bleacher bees and her parents MIA and the triple flip she still couldn’t land but needed for the upcoming season.
The song was from the movie, a quick tune, and her choreography matched the scene where one of the pirates swabbed the deck. She made the most of it, a bounce in her strokes, quick arm moves, one hand on her hip and one stretched high into the air,ahoy!—then landed a gorgeous triple-toe-triple-toe combination for everyone to see—including the judges who would be at Regionals in the fall.
Her heart was still racing when she neared the end of the ninety seconds, because she had never performed like this—in a dark arena with a spotlight following her every move. Skating a solo for a packed crowd. Killing the performance. Bursting with satisfaction as the audience applauded.
Then the music ended, and new music began, the claps fading as the spotlight moved from her to a new trio of girls who’d just taken the ice.
She exited stage left, with a shiver from a kind of elation that she’d never felt before. Not even when she’d won a medal. There was something about doing it here, as a Palace skater, that resonated deeper.
Behind the red velvet curtain, a bleacher bee checked off her name on a clipboard. Indy was there, too, waiting with Mio and the top three men training at The Palace—the ones who’d also been at breakfast. Ivan, Hugo, and Travis.
Mio smiled and waved.Great job,she mouthed, following the shushing orders from another bleacher bee.
Ana smiled and waved back, then looked toward Indy a little farther away, hoping to catch her eye as well. But Indy was distracted, staring into the stands. And when Ana followed her gaze, she saw Dawn at the boards by the entrance to the snack bar, next to Indy’s mother. The two of them watching the show side by side, former rivals now enlisted in the same cause—to make Indy a national medalist this year and then the next one, too, leading up to the Olympics. A second chance at a dream neither one had fully realized. Lifelong rivals in a tenuous détente.
Ana skated around the back to find her way to where Indy stood, but one of bleacher bees grabbed her arm.
“Exit that way, dear,” she said. Ana pulled away, tried again, but then her path was blocked by a swarm of younger girls being lined up for an ensemble number.
“Indy,” Ana whispered.
But the bleacher bee was angry now, giving her an evil eye, pointing to the boards and the exit from the ice.
So Ana left just as the music for the trio signaled the end of their number. She grabbed her skate guards, almost falling over as she put them on in the dark, then walked, hugging the boards so she wouldn’t block anyone’s view of the show, to a spot where she could see the skaters who were watching in the stands, Kayla and Jolene and the others who were done and already out of their costumes.
The audience applauded again as Indy’s name was announced, and Ana looked back to the ice and watched Indy skate to the center, then stop, arms overhead, right toe pick planted behind her left skate. Her starting pose.
The music began. A dramatic action scene from the movie that showed off Indy’s power. No one moved faster on the ice. Not even Mio.
A tickle in her gut, and not the good kind that had been there before, Ana glanced back at the stands and caught Kayla’s eye, then Jolene’s. She waved at them to come down.
“What’s wrong with Indy?”
Kayla shrugged. “We think she had a fight with Patrice. She was crying in the locker room. We had to put her head thing back on and shove her out there.”
They all watched then, as the music played and Indy moved. She rounded the corner and hit a triple flip. Ana’s gaze went back to the two women by the snack bar entrance, clearly visible under the light for the exit. Dawn was watching Indy with herfake face, the one Indy told Ana to watch for whenever Indy had a lesson. This face, she said, was proof that the détente was a ruse. A cover. And that Dawn was just using Indy to torture her mother, not to help Indy land the triple Axel and make the Olympic team.
“She hates me,” Indy had sworn a million times. “Coach Emile told me.”
She said Dr. Fear had told her the same thing. And then asked her what she was going to do about it. Cry like a baby?
Standing beside Dawn was Patrice, oblivious to the fact that Dawn wanted to annihilate her daughter, but instead watching her daughter with freakish intensity, her arms actually moving in sync with Indy’s, knowing the program by heart, her face changing expression with the music, like she was the one on the ice performing, landing the jumps, soaking up the applause. A champion once again, and right under Dawn Sumner’s nose. Just like she’d done twenty-three years ago. As ifthat one lucky moment had failed to seal her lifelong victory and she still needed more.
Now all eyes were on Indy as she finished a footwork sequence, a spiral, then started to pick up speed.
“What’s she doing?” Kayla asked. “Is she trying the Axel?”
Indy hugged the boards, then turned backward—Kayla was right. This was her approach to the triple Axel.
“But she can’t land it!” Ana said, a gasp filling her lungs. She’d been falling, crashing all summer. And hard.
Then Indy was turning, stepping forward, flying into the air off her left toe pick.
The entire arena froze as Indy spun like a top. She came down hard, catching her right blade, then flipping off it again into the air, this time almost sideways, landing on her right hip, sliding into a fake palm tree that fell over on its side with a dramatic thud.
“Oh my God,” Ana whispered, her hand over her mouth as the rink quieted to a hush. The music changed abruptly as the spotlight shifted to the ensemble that was taking the ice early, Indy’s solo cut short by the fall, the show disrupted, the audience buzzing within a hush.