The Comeback Page 3

  Fleur snorts. “Well, at least there’s no competition there.”

  She tucks her braid into her jacket collar and twizzles down the ice, executing tiny, tight spins with style.

  I bite my lip and start my backward crossovers. Fleur’s words seep into my veins. No competition there. I dig my blade deeper and follow Hollie as she zooms past in an elegant spiral.

  “Maxine!” Judy calls. “I want to see that triple toe.”

  Hollie moves from a spiral into a catch-foot. Oh, I’ll show her my triple toe. No problem.

  I point my arms and three-turn, holding my position until I’m ready to launch. I’m skating faster than ever.

  One. Two. Three. I hold my breath.

  Takeoff.

  I hurl my body into small revolutions. I’m a marionette on a puppeteer’s string, winding and winding before the release. And then the string snaps. My toe touches down, blade pressed into the ice, left leg extended. Chin high, I glide.

  Judy nods. “Excellent. Great work, Maxine.”

  I peek over at Hollie, but she’s got her body stretched into a vertical split, her eyes straight ahead. Sam stumbles over, his mop of ringlets sloshing into his face.

  “Yo, you were on fire, Max!” he hoots, slinging an arm around my shoulder.

  Hollie is hunched over, panting against her knees. I lean back into Sam’s embrace. Huh. Who’s incredible now?

  Why Math Class Is the Worst

  In all six years of elementary school, Alex Macreesy and I managed to avoid having a single class together. Back in the good old days, I blissfully skated down Mirror Lake Middle School’s checkered hallways and onto the ice, gliding past the sharp line of his laughter. Now? I cross paths with him in not one but three classes a day: art, math, and history.

  In math, Ms. Valencia waves a laminated grid in our faces and announces my worst nightmare—a new seating chart. She calls out the assignments one by one.

  The smart kids are in the back so they can use algebra as nap time. Victoria is dead center because she’ll watch Instagram videos all class unless someone keeps an eye on her. And I’m far right, by the window, so I can thankfully blend into the scenery. Much to Victoria’s delight, she’s seated behind Alex so she can gaze at the back of his head. But as soon as he starts to sit down, Victoria giggles, a grating tune that refuses to let up through Ms. Valencia’s lecture on order of operations. Our math teacher frowns.

  “Alex,” she says, “on second thought, please move over there.”

  She points to the desk right next to mine, just three feet away from my quiet corner of sunlight.

  “Oookkkay,” Alex says, walking over and sliding into his seat.

  He seems to have reclaimed his stolen sweatshirt. Admittedly, it makes him look a lot less like a blueberry than it did on Victoria. She crosses her arms, cold and grumpy now that she’s all by her lonesome.

  I stare straight ahead, my eyes glued to the blackboard. I’m determined not to look at him. Alex taps his pencil against the desk, a steady rhythm growing louder. I focus on the numbers: 82 – 32 x 4. Eight squared. Eight. Squared.

  The 8 on the page reminds me of a figure eight, and my mind curves into lines sliding across the ice. Hollie’s jumps may be better than mine, but her edges have nothing on my footwork. Despite her unearthly ballet skills, she tilted on a rocker turn this morning, and Viktor was so disappointed, he didn’t even yell, just shook his head. My rocker? It’s so perfect, I could frame it.

  I glance down at my planner peeking out from underneath my math work sheets. October fourth. Only two and a half more weeks until North Atlantic Regionals. Judy and I scoped out the competition last weekend—other than Hollie, it should be the usual faces: Fleur, who’s arguably more graceful than any of us but can barely complete a double Lutz, much less a double Axel; Gwen from New Jersey Skating Club, who twisted her ankle and may not even make it to regionals; and Katarina from New York Skating Club, who’s a powerhouse but as inconsistent as my math grades this year. I just need to work on fully rotating my double Axel, perfecting my triple toe, and nailing my combination jumps, and I know I can medal. You have to finish in at least fourth place to make it to sectionals, so my placement really counts. Panic rises in my chest. I try to focus. Nathan Chen, also known as the quad king (that’s four and a half revolutions in the air), zips around my brain before skidding to a stop. His curly hair dips between his eyes. He winks. I stifle a smile.

  Crack! Alex’s pencil splits in half against his desk. The class snickers, and Ms. Valencia sighs, shaking her head.

  “Whoops,” he mutters.

  “Here.” Ms. Valencia pulls out a sharpened pencil from the tin on the chalkboard and offers it to Alex.

  She walks back to the front of the room, glancing at the clock. “Actually, you’ll all need sharpened pencils because I’m giving you a pop quiz.”

  We all groan. Victoria buries her face in her hands.

  “Don’t worry,” Ms. Valencia assures us as she passes the quizzes down the rows, “it should be easy and will only take about ten minutes. I just want to make sure you know your fractions from last week.”

  The packet lands on my desk. Multiplying and dividing fractions. Okay, I can do this. After skating practice last Thursday, Dad sat with me in the dining room and went over my fractions homework one question at a time. Thankfully, this might be the only unit this year I fully understand.

  I start on the first question, digging my pencil into paper. To my right, sunlight scatters across the page. To my left, Alex’s desk seems closer than ever. And then his elbow inches toward mine. I peek out from behind my quiz. Alex’s face tilts, his eyes glancing down at my paper as he sniffles. He cranes his neck to get a closer look.

  I immediately swing my arm around to cover my quiz.

  “Stop,” I hiss, keeping my eyes down.

  “What?” he whispers innocently.

  “You “know what.” I hunch over my desk, my nose practically touching the page as I scribble my answers.

  He scooches closer. “Come onnnnn,” he says. “I just need a little help.”

  I finally turn my face toward his, piercing daggers with my eyeballs. His grin only widens.

  “But you people are good at math,” he whines. “Can’t you just be useful?”

  My breath hitches. “You. People?”

  Heads swing toward us and I can hear heels clacking up the aisle behind me.

  “Maxine? Alex?” The sharp twinge in Ms. Valencia’s voice bounces off the classroom walls. “Please stop sharing answers.”

  At once, twenty-four heads turn. Alex hunches in his seat. My neck is sweating and my pencil shakes against the paper.

  “No, Ms. Valencia, I wasn’t—”

  But Ms. Valencia just holds a finger to her lips. She surveys the rows of staring eyes and looks back at me, casting an invisible spotlight over my head. On the ice, I’m struggling to nail a showstopping performance, but here, I’m apparently made for the silver screen.

  “All right, everyone, back to work.”

  She shakes her head just slightly, lips pursed before her skirt swishes away. I don’t dare look at Alex, although his forehead is probably pasted to his desk. I grip my pencil to stop my hand from shaking.

  Focus, I tell myself, come on, Maxine. I picture Mirai Nagasu, muttering silently to herself at the US Championships, fists clenched before she starts her free program. I’m not a cheater! I want to shout. I’m not a cheater and if I were to start, it wouldn’t be with Alex Macreesy, the boy whose cackles are just loud enough to get under my skin, who thinks he can tell me all about my slanted eyes and then turn around and steal my answers. Because “my people” are good at math. Well, joke’s on him. He should have cheated off Victoria instead.

  The clock ticks. Five minutes left. Slowly, I exhale to the image of Kristi Yamaguchi, poised in the center of the ice, unafraid as the music begins. My mind clears inch by inch and I manage to scribble down the last two quiz answers. The bell r
ings.

  In an alternate world, I get up, drag Alex along, and march over to Ms. Valencia. I’m like Nathan Chen, determined to redeem himself after his disastrous short program at the 2018 Olympics. I force Alex to admit that he was trying to cheat off me, that I had nothing to do with this. In an alternate world, Alex cowers sheepishly and Ms. Valencia offers me a profuse apology.

  Instead, I sit, frozen. Ms. Valencia collects everyone’s quizzes, shuffling papers as students linger to ask about homework assignments and extra credit. Alex scoops up his books and slings his backpack over his shoulder. He half smiles at Victoria, who is waiting for him by the door while pretending not to. She trips over her ballet flats, and stumbles.

  I instinctively get up, and we lock eyes as she catches herself on the doorframe. She glances my way, but her eyes glaze over my face. It’s like she doesn’t even recognize me.

  And then both of them are gone, and I’m by myself.

  Even Nathan Chen winking doesn’t seem that appealing anymore.

  The Package

  As we pull into the driveway, I can see the small cardboard package sitting on our front doorstep, half hidden by an overgrown shrub. I know immediately what it is. Mom doesn’t seem to see it, thankfully. She’s still too busy trying to figure out why I haven’t said much about my day.

  “How was art class?” she asked on the car ride home, studying my face through the rearview mirror.

  “Fine.”

  “Science?”

  “Good.”

  “Skating?”

  “Okay.”

  “Spanish?”

  “Bueno.”

  “Math?”

  Nothing. What was I supposed to say? The math teacher embarrassed me in front of the whole class because Alex tried to cheat off me? I apparently now have zero friends in school? I’ll pass, thanks. I can just imagine Mom’s face if I told her: anxious eyes quickly filling with darts of anger, furrowed eyebrows as she pulls the car over and takes out her phone, using her scary mom voice to ring up the school and demand answers. I’ll have to drown myself in Mirror Lake if she does that. The coroner can label my body: Maxine Chen, death by phone call to principal.

  Mom is about to pull up to the garage when I press a hand to her shoulder.

  “Wait!”

  She brakes, and we jolt forward in our seats. She turns to me, startled.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I just thought maybe I could bring up the trash bins tonight.”

  Mom’s face brightens. The empty bins need to be rolled up our driveway and to the garage every Tuesday. I am usually very adept at whining so Mom will do it instead. I mean, the bins are empty, but they’re heavy and have that nasty leftover-garbage smell. But today, I am more than willing. If that package is what I think it is, then there’s no way I want Mom seeing it or questioning me about it. I do my best to fake a wide-toothed smile. Mom looks so pleased I think her head might detach and do a cartwheel around her neck.

  “Oh, thank you, Maxine,” she says. “That’s very mature of you.”

  I nod a little too vigorously, swinging my backpack over my shoulders and speeding out of the car before she can become suspicious.

  The trash bins smell just as putrid as I thought they would. I flip the lids closed and clasp the handles before waving her forward. She cruises up the driveway and into the garage. I roll up the bins very slowly so that by the time I reach the garage she’s already inside our house. Success.

  Now it’s time to practice my ninja skills. I take pointers from ballet class and relevé, heels lifted, sneakers tipped off the ground in order to make as little sound as possible. Then I jog across the grass to the front door, ducking under the kitchen window to sneak the package into my backpack, and zip back to the garage. This probably only takes about thirteen seconds. Maybe if skating doesn’t work out, I’ll become a world-class sprinter.

  When I swing open the door to our mudroom, the electric garage door grinding shut behind me, I can see Mom peering into the fridge. She pulls out ground beef, a carton of eggs, scallions, and dumpling wrappers.

  “Dad should be home in five,” she says. “I thought we could make dumplings tonight.”

  Dumplings are our favorite collective comfort food. There’s something really calming about sitting at the kitchen table together, listening to reggae (Dad’s go-to), spooning spiced meat onto paper-thin dough and folding the wrappers so intricately, each dumpling could be a little work of art. Mom’s always the best at it. Her dumpling folds could have their own Instagram account.

  “Yum,” I tell her, gradually backing up until I reach the staircase. “I’m just gonna do some homework upstairs first.”

  “Mmm,” Mom replies, looking down at her phone.

  I bounce up the stairs and shut my bedroom door behind me. This is my happy place: medals hooked all over my walls, interrupted only by posters of Michelle and Kristi and the other greats. I plop down on my comforter and slowly unzip my backpack. The package is sandwiched between my take-home folder and math textbook. I can’t even think about math, and Alex, and the way my cheeks flamed. I fling the textbook out of my bag, determined to hurl the memory from my brain. And then I move on to the most important thing—the package. Gingerly, I lift it onto my bed and slice open the packing tape with a fingernail.

  Most of the package is just pink Bubble Wrap. And then, at the bottom, I spy a tiny plastic container with brown cursive scrawled across the top: Magic Methods Eyelid Tape. Through the plastic, I can see the crescent moon stickers, dozens and dozens ready to be peeled and placed on my lids. Just like the YouTube girl said: Apply it right where you want your crease to be. That way, the tape will cause your lid to fold in that exact spot. Good-bye, collapsed canoe lids. Hello, big eyes. I finger the package, examining each magical sticker.

  “Maxeeeeeeen.” Dad’s voice floats up the stairway alongside his favorite Bob Marley album. “It’s dumpling time!”

  He’s so dorky, but I can’t help but laugh.

  “Coming!”

  I stuff the tape under my pillow and run downstairs. Mom and Dad have already created an assembly line of ingredients: meat and chives, flour and dumpling wrappers, cascading down the kitchen table. Dad is shoulder shimmying to Bob Marley, which is definitely not the correct way to dance to Bob Marley. Mom tucks my hair behind my ears and throws a Grinch apron over my T-shirt and leggings.

  “You don’t want to get flour all over your clothes,” she says, reaching behind to bunny loop the apron’s ties.

  We push in our chairs and Dad hands me a wrapper. I spoon a tiny ball of meat into its floury center before dipping my fingers in water and gently rimming the dough. It always seems like it won’t work, but water seals the dumplings and keeps their creases in place. To me, it’s a small form of wizardry. Dad is already pinching his dumpling shut, although it looks like a puffer fish with meat ballooning from its sides. Mom laughs, rolling her eyes at his lopsided creation.

  “So,” Dad says, “how was school today, Maxine? And practice?”

  “Fine.”

  Mom sighs. “Apparently, that’s her only vocabulary word today”—she dramatically waves her hand in the air—““fine.”

  To be fair, at least practice was fine. I landed two double Axels. My Biellmann spin stayed centered on the ice. But I don’t want to talk about any of it. As I trace my finger across a second wrapper, Alex’s sneer keeps pushing through its center, followed by Ms. Valencia’s pursed lips, that slight shake of her head, the way her heels clacked away like a door slamming in my face. I don’t think either of us got any points deducted from our quizzes, but that doesn’t erase Alex’s nasally voice, the “come onnnnn,” the “you people,” the “can’t you just be useful?”

  You people. Can’t you just be useful? I cup the dumpling in my hand. Mom hums along to I, I’m willing and able. She looks so happy. The dough flops against my palm.

  “Maxine, honey, you okay?” Dad’s voice cuts through Marley’s smooth melody.


  I look up at Dad’s floppy black hair, one strand curled over his forehead, wire-rimmed glasses pushed up on his nose. The uncooked dumplings piling on the plate in the center of the table, Mom twisting dough into origami boats. This is just what Alex Macreesy thinks we people do. We are exactly what he pictures when he leans over my desk and copies my answers.

  I swallow. “Yeah, Dad, I’m fine.”

  Nighttime Secrets

  The house is quiet. I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad are asleep. Slipping my hand underneath the pillow, I grope blindly for the package of eyelid tape until I find its plastic rim. Just where I left it, thank goodness. I yank at my comforter and hop out of bed, pulling my hair into a high ponytail. Time to prepare for battle. Tape? Check. Scissors? Check. Tweezers stolen from Mom’s makeup bag? Definitely check. Peeking through the sliver of light in my doorway, I check for signs of life. The coast is clear.

  Once I’m in the bathroom, I flick on the lights and gently close the door. My skin stretches before me, this time a real blank canvas. One for me to paint as I wish. Under the harsh glow, I can see every freckle and line. The droopy curves of my eyelids. The flat ridge of my nose. Maybe Alex was right—my self-portrait looks nothing like me.

  I rip open the package and take out the folded instructions. Peel away the strip and trim as needed. I inspect one strip and hold it up to my eye. I try to cut it a tiny bit shorter, but it’s so flimsy that I feel like I’m going to ruin it. It looks like sticky paper. I paid fourteen dollars for this? Shake it off, Maxine, I scold myself. This is what you’ve been waiting for.

  I keep reading. Identify where you would like your new eyelid fold to be. Place the strip right above the crease you want to create. I lift the tape onto my skin, but my fingers struggle to stay still and the tape flops all over my lid. It lands in a haphazard, dangling line.