The Comeback Page 2

  “Thanks,” I mumble.

  I bandage my torn skin and gently wrap gauze around both ankles. I can tell Mom is waiting for me to finish so she can give me a lecture. I won’t give her the chance. I move straight from my ankles to my skates, snatching one from the floor and wiping it dry. That’s when I catch my reflection in the blade. My dark irises, my eyelids that fold over so you can’t see the crease. I blink. What would they look like if they were wider, fuller, with long spiderlike lashes—the kind that Alex wouldn’t notice? The kind that Victoria wouldn’t giggle at?

  I blink again and continue rubbing off the melted ice.

  Mom inches closer.

  “Maybe this is too much right now.”

  She begins pacing, tangling the leftover gauze between her fingers. “With all your schoolwork and regionals and middle school … maybe you don’t need to compete right this second.”

  My head bolts upward, ponytail swinging against my neck. “Of course I need to compete! I have to!”

  “Okay, okay, never mind.” She collapses onto the bench, her hands up in surrender.

  We sit in silence. To make her stop thinking ridiculous thoughts, I almost blurt out everything: the painting, Alex, Victoria’s laughter, the way I fell five million times on the ice because his stupid face was stuck in my head. But if I tell her, she’ll go do something horrible like talk to the principal. Everyone knows everyone in this town. If Mom so much as lifts a finger, I’ll be front-page news for the rest of my life. I want to be a famous skater, not a famous tattletale.

  Mom crouches down before me, setting her purse on the ground.

  “It’s fine,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t seem fine.”

  Her voice comes out in a whisper. She eyes my far-too-forceful blade wiping.

  “I think they’re dry by now, honey.”

  I glare at her. But I can’t help but notice the softness in her face, the way she tries to smooth out the lines in her forehead to hide her worry.

  I remember the first time Mom and Dad showed me a video of Kristi Yamaguchi in her glittery red dress at the 1992 World Figure Skating Championships. To me, she seemed to float on ice, and the judges agreed—we were all transfixed by her giant smile when she learned that she’d won. Her black, frizzy hair looked like my own. The sparkle in her eyes matched mine, even though I was only six years old. I immediately told Mom and Dad I wanted to be just like her. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t laugh at my strange obsession or my seemingly impossible dreams. After all, Dad once had some of his own. He originally moved here to ski. Now he lets me forge my own path.

  They took me to the rink and enrolled me in Learn to Skate classes. They sat on bleachers so cold, their legs became numb. Mom hot-glued gems onto my red velvet dress for my first competition just so I could look exactly like Kristi. They don’t ever talk about it, but I know that they both take extra weekend shifts as pharmacists at the local Walgreens to pay for my lessons and costumes.

  I’m old enough to know that skating doesn’t fund itself.

  I drop my feet to the ground.

  “I really am just tired,” I tell her. “I’m sorry.”

  Mom taps my chin, our secret love pat, before gently tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Shuǐ dī shí chuān,” she says.

  I smile, but a balloon of shame fills my chest. I can’t help but imagine what joke Alex would make if he heard these words—which lilts in Mom’s voice he would mimic, which he would laugh at. But he is not here. I try to remember this. Instead I think about what the words mean. I barely know any Mandarin, but this is the one ancient phrase ingrained in me since I was little:

  If you’re persistent, you can overcome anything.

  Nightmares

  I am being chased. Faceless figures in black cloaks follow me down empty, forested roads into seemingly never-ending night. Then the street turns to ice, but I’m still in my sneakers, slipping and sliding and tumbling down a very large hill—no, a mountain. Of course, the creepy figures have skates on and are catching up to me as I tumble. I’m scared. But mostly, I’m annoyed. I am going to have so many broken bones from this. Then I’m going to miss the entire competition season. If I could face-palm while falling, I would.

  I jerk forward, crashing into the dozens of stuffed animals strewn across my bed. My back is coated with sweat. I blink, adjusting to the darkness. This is my pillow, I remind myself. This is my polka-dot comforter. These are my bandaged ankles and my two brown eyes. And then the memory of Alex stretching his own eyes curdles in my mind. He may not be as terrifying as a Dementor, but I still want to punch him. Or duck for cover. I can’t decide which.

  I take a deep breath. Maybe I just need a distraction. I lie down on my carpet and stare at the speckled white ceiling. Judy says I’m supposed to do twenty crunches every morning and twenty every night to strengthen my core. In skating, your core is one of the most important parts of the body. If it’s strong enough, it keeps you centered during spins and launches you into the air during jumps. I used to feel like my body was gravy sloshing around in an empty can any time I tried to do a single crunch. Now I’m more like mashed potatoes. I can do fifteen in a row easy-peasy. It’s the last five that give me grief.

  Streaks of moonlight from my window illuminate the carpet as I lace my fingers behind my head and yank my body upward once, then twice, until my back lifts off the floor. Two down, eighteen to go. With every crunch, I try to erase Alex from my brain. Seven. Focus on the ceiling. Twelve. Pay attention to your muscles. Fifteen. Think about brushstrokes. Nineteen. Think about not dying on twenty. Twenty. Think about anything. I drop to the floor, panting. For a moment, the room is hazy. My heart bulges against my chest as my lungs fight for air. But as soon as I catch my breath, Alex’s face flickers in my head, his laughter coiling through my ears. He’s a cockroach crawling through my brain. I cover my face with my hands before reaching for my phone, parting my fingers to scan the white glow. The numbers on my screen read 11:30 p.m. Way past my bedtime. I need to be up at 5:00 a.m. to get ready for practice.

  I wriggle back under my comforter and scroll through website after website, but nothing helps me fall back asleep. Soon, I find myself on YouTube, clicking through makeup videos. I’m watching a tutorial on lipstick application when I notice a suggestion in the sidebar. It’s a clip of an Asian girl holding up a peace sign, smiling. Underneath the caption reads: How I got double eyelids without surgery! My finger hovers over the icon. I press PLAY.

  The girl is talking about this special tape. She calls it double eyelid tape. She takes it from the packaging and dangles it in front of the camera. You can barely see what she’s holding, even when you examine it. They’re clear, crescent-moon-shaped stickers—nearly invisible. There are about sixteen on a sheet. Carefully, she uses tweezers to lift a single piece of tape and place it on her eyelid.

  “Apply it right where you want your crease to be,” she instructs. “That way, the tape will cause your lid to fold in that exact spot.”

  With her eyelid closed, she prods the tape with her tweezers to make sure it stays. Then she does the same with the other eye.

  When she opens both eyes, it’s almost a miracle. Her eyelids are bigger. Her eyes look wider. She blinks, and you can barely tell that the tape is there at all.

  She goes on to apply mascara, all while discussing which eyelid tape is the best to buy.

  While she’s talking, I open Amazon and quickly type in some of the options she’s mentioned. There are packs and packs of eyelid tape, and they’re all surprisingly cheap. My fingers are shivering with excitement. I touch the flat ridges of my eyelids, the skin that dips like a collapsed canoe. If I get this stuff, they don’t have to look like that anymore. And then I won’t have to think about Alex again. For once, I am hopeful.

  I linger over the BUY button. Auntie Lillian got me an Amazon gift card for Lunar New Year that I still haven’t used. The tape is only fourteen doll
ars. I click ORDER NOW.

  The screen flips to cheery green letters on a white background. Thank you! it says. We’re processing your order.

  I press my phone to my chest. My order is processing. It’s coming soon, and then everything will change. A tiny smile pulls at my lips, and I, at last, drift back to sleep.

  New Girl

  “And plié!” Winona shouts, clapping her hands to the beat of the accompaniment.

  The pianist’s fingers dance across the keys. Twelve girls, doubled in the mirrors lining the walls, their arms out, fingers arched, bending gracefully. Well, everyone, that is, except for me.

  “Maxine, dear”—Winona grabs the sides of my waist and squeezes, pushing against my rib cage—“remember your posture.”

  Yeah, “posture,” also known as sucking in your breath so hard that you become dizzy. How am I supposed to skate without breathing?

  Unsurprisingly, it was Judy who recommended me for ballet training. She said it would help with my artistry. You can nail all the jumps and spins, but if you’re not elegant, you just look like a flying robot. Personally, I think robots are cool. When I was younger, I wanted to be a part of the ROBOlympians, a group of middle and high schoolers that makes three-foot-tall robots and travels to a technology university downstate to show them off. They win medals, too—everyone is decorated for something in Lake Placid, home of the 1980 Winter Olympics. But I never got a chance to join. There was just no way I could make both practice and club meetings.

  I press a hand against my tender ribs. Well, if I can’t join the ROBOlympians, at least I can pretend to be one. I’m about to make my argument on why my bad posture is therefore just a modern choice for a fledgling robot, but I pause when I glimpse Winona’s pinched face. Her fire-orange bun perched on the crown of her head makes her look like an exasperated bird. I swallow my words in one large gulp.

  “Here, watch me,” she says.

  Winona spreads her arms out in a 90-degree angle and softly bends to the ground.

  “See?” she says in her perkiest possible voice. “Not that difficult!”

  Winona Carpenter is a world-class liar. But for the sake of artistry, I return her fake smile with one of my own. Then I suck in so tightly that I think I am literally going to become a pancake. Winona stares at my legs. I plié. She clasps her hands, strands of hair waving across her face like party streamers.

  “Yes!” she exclaims. “Much better.”

  Great. Call me Flat Stanley.

  I look at the clock. We have twenty more dreadful minutes and then a twisty ride home. Our town is so tiny that my ballet school is in the village next door. The drive here is short, but the winding mountain passes and figure-eight roads make the trek a dangerous maze. To avoid making multiple trips, Dad ends up waiting in the car out in the parking lot with his favorite sports news and talk station on full blast. Every time I head inside for class, he cranks back his seat until he’s essentially lying down and promptly falls asleep. He only wakes up when the commentators mention his beloved Buffalo Sabres before passing out again. I don’t give a flying hoot about any sport other than skating, and would do almost anything to avoid watching Dad snore for an hour and a half, but this stupid ballet class is really changing my perspective.

  As we work our way through third, fourth, and fifth positions, I play a Would You Rather in my head:

  Would you rather do multiplication tables for five hours or go to ballet class?

  Would you rather sit through If You Are the One (Mom’s favorite Chinese dating game show that makes no sense because it’s in Mandarin and looks like Jeopardy! but with romance) or go to ballet class?

  Would you rather dissect a cow’s eyeball (an actual thing we had to do in science class the other day) or go to ballet class?

  Would you rather write a sixteen-page essay on why you hate ballet class or go to ballet class?

  Spoiler alert: the answer is never ballet class.

  We’ve moved on to piqué turns. Some of these girls are actual ballerinas, so they’ve transitioned to pointe shoes. I stand entranced as they pirouette, their bodies like spinning tops.

  Then I see her. A new girl turns in the center of the room, rotating again and again and again. Her foot is perfectly pointed, her arms curved in a neat half circle before her rib cage. She’s so impressive that everyone pauses to watch her. She looks just like a dancer in one of those music boxes, her sheer wrap skirt a current of waves enclosing her body. Even the pianist is mesmerized. Finally, the girl stops: one leg delicately extended, chin lifted upward as she stares at her reflection. She’s not even breaking a sweat.

  Winona is practically whooping.

  “Brava, my dear, brava!” She swoops toward the girl. “And welcome to our studio! Remind me of your name?”

  “Hollie,” the dancer says, blushing. “I just moved here from Virginia Beach.”

  Now that she’s no longer just dizzy circles, I get a good look at her face. Bright green eyes, wavy blond hair tied up in a bun, a small smile that screams confidence. She’s at least a half foot taller than I am, making her even more intimidating. Who is this girl?

  I can hear the jealous ballerinas colluding in the corner, tight whispers filling the studio.

  Winona taps a finger against her chin. “Have you thought about joining our dance conservatory? You’re really quite fantastic.”

  “Oh no.” Hollie shakes her head. “I’m not really a dancer. I’m a skater.”

  My heart lurches.

  “You are?” The words leave my lips before I even realize I’m speaking.

  Hollie cranes her neck to peer down at me. “Yeah,” she says, grinning with a mouthful of braces. “Are you?”

  My head nods, but my stomach is doing more pirouettes than all the ballerinas in the room combined. The puzzle pieces of the new girl start clicking together in my head: Who moves from a beach town to icicle city? Skaters, that’s who.

  Hollie’s face brightens. “Wow! My coach and I are here for the rink.” She bounces toward me, her skirt flapping up and down. “You guys have an incredible arena.”

  Don’t I know it.

  “Cool,” I say, trying painfully to act as casual as possible. “What level are you?”

  “Intermediate,” she says. “You?”

  I wish I could plié into a puddle.

  “Oh,” I squeak, “me, too.”

  “Awesomesauce! I’m sure I’ll see you on the ice all the time, then.”

  I smile through my teeth. “Yup.”

  “Well, I’m so glad you’ve made a new friend, Maxine!” Winona interrupts. “But let’s get back to work.”

  The pianist starts up again with a ragtime medley. Winona demonstrates a pas de chat, and we follow suit, a jumble of arms and legs. I watch Hollie, who looks like she was born to dance. I feel like a prancing goat.

  All I can do is look up at the mismatched tiles on the studio ceiling and pray to the skating gods. Please, I beg them, please, please, please don’t let this girl be as good a skater as she is a ballerina. I can already see her on the podium, waving and grinning with her dumb turquoise braces matching her turquoise dress, her posture impeccable. Then there’s me, stooped on the sidelines as Mom tells me there are always more competitions, don’t worry, next time. I scrunch my nose and stretch out my arms.

  Hollie from Virginia is not going to ruin this for me.

  On Fire

  Clearly, the skating gods didn’t listen to my prayers. Hollie is not just a good skater, she’s flipping fantastic. At practice after school on Wednesday, I watch as she zooms down the ice on a forward outside edge and into a double Axel, double loop combination. A double Axel combination jump! And here I thought I was so high and mighty landing one clean double Axel all by its lonesome. I fight the urge to bury my face in my mittens.

  Carmen’s “Habanera” belts from the overhead loudspeaker. Hollie’s coach is tracking her every move, clapping vigorously to the beat as Hollie transitions into a layback sp
in. We both watch as her head and torso effortlessly lower, like she’s simply falling back into pillows and not contorting her body into a practically inhuman position. She could give Sasha Cohen, queen of laybacks, a run for her money.

  Hollie’s coach apparently thinks otherwise. He’s shaking his head, bleached blond hair flapping against his temples.

  “Focus!” he barks. “This is baby stuff!”

  I flinch from my spot in the corner and hug my elbows. The rink feels colder.

  Fleur drifts toward me, a sly smile etched onto her lips.

  “His name’s Viktor,” she whispers. “I think he’s Russian.”

  She skids to a stop and leans close. “I heard he used to coach with Team Turgenev.”

  Team Turgenev? They’re basically the best coaching team in the entire world. They’re based in Moscow and run by Sabrina Turgenev, a coach so intense she could melt a skater into a puddle on the ice with one sharp glance. A lot of her skaters quit early because their bodies break under the pressure. But when they push through the pain, they’re golden. They’re always on top.

  I gulp. “So why did he leave?”

  Fleur shrugs. “Guess he found something better.”

  Our eyes slowly turn once more toward Hollie. She’s speeding down the rink on a forward outside three-turn. Triple Salchow. I squint. Not even the slightest bit under-rotated.

  “Honestly,” Fleur says, “she’s incredible.”

  Heat tingles in my fingertips and burns through my cheeks. I want to look away but I can’t. Fleur’s eyes are wide and glassy, as if she’s been hypnotized by a twelve-year-old girl and her slightly terrifying Russian coach. My teeth clench.

  “Girls!”

  We hop backward as Judy screeches at us from across the rink.

  “Get to work!”

  She’s helping Sam with his sit spins, but he keeps leaning too far to the left and toppling over. Judy’s fists are balled in her hair.