The Comeback Read online

  Mr. Warren approaches my seat. “Find your hero, Miss Chen.” He smiles.

  I dig my hand into the hat and pull out a crumpled paper: Mary Ludwig Hays.

  I don’t know who she is, either. But I guess now is a good time as any to find out.

  Ballet Blunder

  Mary Ludwig Hays might have to stay in my back pocket for now. Literally—I stuff the slip of paper in my jeans pocket and promptly forget about it for the rest of the day. After all, I have bigger things to worry about, like my twisted ballet skirt refusing to untangle itself in time for class. I fling it around the locker room, whipping it like a kite before giving up and watching it deflate on the ground, still knotted.

  “Maxine Chen?” I can hear Winona calling from the studio. “Is she here?”

  “Coming!” I yell, yanking the coiled ties one last time. Blessedly, they come undone.

  I quickly put on the skirt and dart to the nearest open spot as Winona moves into fifth position. I turn my feet and try to ignore her when she pokes my butt because she wants me to suck in.

  “Your glutes, Maxine,” she whispers at a volume still loud enough for the entire class to hear.

  The ballerinas by the window titter, their lips barely moving so as not to seem indelicate. I sniffle. Maybe they should change career paths and become ventriloquists.

  Under the harsh studio lights, the dancers kick up swirls of dust as the pianist drags his fingers across the keys into a Chopin melody. My leotard feels scratchy against my skin and my tights rub against my ankles. I close my eyes and imagine myself in bed, snuggled up in my blankets, a loose corner of my Kristi Yamaguchi poster fluttering in the cool night breeze. If I concentrate really hard, maybe my head can magically transport itself to a soft feather pillow.

  “Plié!” Winona’s thin screech breaks through my daydreams. I open my eyes a sliver to see her giant nest of orange hair bobbing in the center of the studio as she pliés against the mirrors. I bet birds could lay eggs in that bun.

  The pianist abruptly transitions from Chopin to a musical theater jive. The upbeat melody hurts my ears. I glance around the studio. When Winona’s not looking, I purposefully push out my butt into a full-on squat. This is my plié protest. Or, it almost is, until my butt hits the front of a gauzy skirt, and the person attached to the skirt trips backward.

  I twist around to see Hollie blinking at me, her mouth forming a tiny, perfect O. My butt is still poking out as she cocks her head at me, a few perfect strands of curls cascading down her cheeks. My face flushes, and I snap back to standing position.

  “Sorry,” I mutter.

  “It’s okay, Maxine,” she says, pushing back her hair, her forehead crinkled. “But I don’t think that’s how you—”

  “Yes, I know,” I bark.

  Of course she would use this moment to try to scold me, with her delicately bent knees and graceful fingertips and mocking, sugar-sweet voice.

  She blinks. “Okay, sorry.”

  I scowl into another plié. I can hear Hollie’s shoes take a step backward. The pianist is getting hammy with the musical theater medley, his fingers dashing across the keys. My scowl stretches to my chin.

  Winona bounces over to me.

  “Smile, Maxine.” She lightly touches the corners of my mouth. “There are no angry ballerinas in here!”

  Now even the pianist is snickering. Have I mentioned that I despise ballet class?

  At last, the clock hits seven thirty. I beat the rush to the locker room, pull my sweatshirt over my head, grab my backpack, and jet out of there faster than you can say relevé.

  The sun has set and the parking lot is getting darker by the minute. When I get to the car, I have to bang on the window because Dad is, as expected, lying down in the driver’s seat with 580 Sports Radio blasting.

  “DAD!” I shout.

  My fist hits the glass at least five times before he shudders awake and snaps off the radio. Then he fumbles around for the button to unlock the doors.

  Two cars down, Hollie and her mom swivel their heads toward me. Even in the dim light, I can tell that they both have the same irritating forehead crinkle. I bet when they drive home in their dumb minivan, they will giggle at the clumsy Chinese girl who butts into people when she pliés.

  Dad squints sleepily at me, offering a lazy yawn as he maneuvers his seat back to a sitting position. He finally unlocks the door, and I climb into the car.

  “You could wake up a little faster, you know,” I mutter.

  “Well, hello to you, too.”

  He makes a show of swinging his head back and forth to wake himself up. I shake my head. What a weirdo.

  We swerve out of the parking lot and onto the spiraling mountain road, the sky blackening.

  “How was ballet?”

  I curl myself against the window. “Terrible.”

  Even with my eyes closed, I can sense Dad looking at me.

  “Huh.”

  He pauses. “You know, if this ever gets to be too much for you, with skating and school and ballet and regionals—”

  “Dad,” I snap.

  “Got it, yup, end of conversation.”

  I lean my head against the window, peeking out at the lonely road, falling asleep to the light hum of the Ford’s heater. Right now, I wish I could just stay permanently in this car. Even though I’m theoretically closer to my blankets and my pillow, I still have two Pythagorean theorem worksheets to do and I haven’t even begun thinking about Mary Ludwig Hays. Maybe one day, when I join the ROBOlympians, I can build a robot that does my homework for me and then puts the information in my brain while I sleep.

  Dad turns on the radio again, flipping through stations until he lands on nineties hits.

  I groan and cover my ears. “It’s so loud,” I whine.

  He takes a hand off the wheel to flick my shoulder. “But it’s your favorite.”

  I weakly pop my head up from the window. It’s TLC’s “Waterfalls.”

  Sometimes we have to travel really far for competitions just to reach mostly empty rinks with overpriced food and a handful of spectators. I’m better about it now, but I used to get really antsy during car rides, especially if they were several hours long. So Dad began blasting this nineties satellite radio station as a form of distraction. We made it all the way to Jersey and Pennsylvania powered by the Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child, Green Day, R.E.M., Snoop Dogg, and Sir Mix-a-Lot. When we got super bored, we’d make up little dance routines like we were in some early YouTube music video. Even Mom would shimmy in her seat.

  Now, Dad crows along with the song.

  He winks at me, his head bopping up and down. I lift my head from the window, my mouth unconsciously spreading into a smile. Dad starts doing some strange shoulder roll, and I can’t help but laugh.

  “Come on, Maxine!”

  He is relentless. I toss my bun dramatically and then join in.

  “That’s the spirit.”

  The car flies down the road, Don’t go chasing waterfalls bubbling through our speakers. The ride is short, but the night seems to go on forever. I sing with Dad until the music lulls us home.

  Competition Day

  “Eat up,” Mom says, her hands outstretched.

  I stick my nose into the still-steaming bowl, the lotus leaf wrapper puffy and hot. Sticky rice, sweet soy sauce, juicy pockets of egg, and slivers of crispy sausage ooze from the sides of the wrapper. Lo mai gai is my favorite thing to eat the day of a competition. The meat and eggs keep me full and the palm-size portion ensures that I’m not too stuffed before my big skate. Mom hands me a pair of chopsticks and I dig in, the sauce instantaneously sliding down my throat and calming my nerves. Still, I can’t help but run through every move in my short program, like I’m suddenly going to forget something.

  Double Axel, triple toe, I silently chant, camel spin, sit spin, lunge—

  Dad interrupts my merry-go-round of thoughts, patting my tightly wound bun.

  “Wow,” he says, “you reall
y sprayed that thing into place.”

  He studies his hand, now coated in a thin layer of hair spray, before turning to the sink to wash it off. I pat my hair to ensure he didn’t ruin my perfect chignon. I probably used about sixty-five bobby pins to keep it in place.

  “Well,” Mom says, “we don’t want any hair snafus while Maxine’s on the ice.”

  I nod in agreement, but my brain is back on the carousel: double Lutz, double toe, spiral, layback—

  “Max? Did your teachers email you the homework you’re going to miss?”

  I shift my gaze to find Mom scrolling through her phone contacts like she’s going to dial Mr. Warren and Ms. Valencia any minute now.

  “Mom! Yes!” I shout, flailing over the counter so she won’t successfully humiliate me forever.

  “Ooookay, just checking.”

  She glances at Dad and rolls her eyes when she thinks I’m not looking. I cross my arms. Because we’re one of the youngest groups of girls, we compete on Thursday and Friday and miss two days of school. It means I’ll have a bit more homework to do this weekend. So what? That’s the least of my problems. I run through my step sequence—wait, it’s brackets, then forward twizzles, right? Or is it the other way around? Oh no.

  “Ahem.”

  Mom has put her phone down, and now leans over the granite, eyes bulging at the lo mai gai and then back at me. I roll my eyes and take a big bite. She smiles, satisfied. I know she won’t let me leave the house if I don’t finish my food. Food is fuel, she always tells me, especially for a skater.

  I swallow. Did Nathan Chen feel this nervous before his back-to-back world championship wins? When you get to that level, does your stomach still do backflips? I bet it does, with all those cameras on you and the world watching on live television, just to see if you’ll mess up. At least I’m not under that kind of pressure—not yet.

  I fish a chunk of rice and sausage into my chopsticks. Girls who skate always think they’re the next Olympians. One day soon, I’m going to get there.

  Sing, Sing, Sing

  I have never been good at waiting. Even though I’ve stretched in the locker room and practiced all my jumps on the jigsaw mats, I still can’t help feeling like a jittery jelly bean. On deck in my black dress with the deep U curving down my bare back, the velvet rubbing against my sheer sleeves, I chatter in my skates. Judy rubs her gloved hands against my arms. I do a couple of squats to keep myself warm. We stand at the precipice of the rink, in the little side hallway with the peeling walls and rubber floors.

  “Remember, home ice,” she repeats, a mantra to keep me calm.

  One of the perks of living in Winter Olympics Capital (or as Dad likes to call it: “the second Canada”) is that most of the big competitions are held here. It’s got five indoor rinks inside the arena to offer simultaneous sessions of hockey, synchronized skating, practice, and competitions like these.

  Home ice. I know every one of these red bleacher seats, every harsh light beating down, every scratch on the boards’ walls. This should make me calmer. But instead, everything feels strange: all these girls—not just the intermediate ladies like me, but tiny three-foot skaters caked with blush, and elegant junior teens with flamingo legs and flicked eyeliner—make the rink feel alien. Like it’s not mine at all.

  They’re just about to announce Katarina Novak’s short program score. From here, I can see the tiny Kiss and Cry box where Katarina and her coach are probably boring holes into the monitor by their feet that will decide her current fate. The nine judges are dots sitting at tall black tables on the other side of the ice. Regal and stone-faced, they’re like the Supreme Court justices of figure skating. At a lower table, three technical specialists carefully replay each element on a slow-motion video.

  I inch to the boards, Judy by my side. The booming voice overhead announces Katarina’s score and pockets of applause echo from the thousand-capacity rink. There are only forty to fifty people here—families and locals mostly, since tourists only come for national and international competitions. But I don’t care. I’m not performing for them. I focus on the merry-go-round: double Axel, triple toe, camel spin, sit spin—

  “Our next skater is Maxine Chen, representing Lake Placid Skating Club.”

  Mom and Dad are cheering far too loudly from the bleachers. Even though they sit at the top to avoid distracting me, I know they’ll spend the next two minutes and forty seconds holding their breath, clutching a packet of Twizzlers and trying not to look every time I’m about to jump.

  “Go get ’em,” Judy says.

  As I skate onto the ice and rest my hands in starting position, the silence seems to stretch infinitely and horribly. It feels like a year has gone by before the opening drums of “Sing, Sing, Sing” fill the rink. And then the saxophone belches and I’m in motion.

  The steady, rising beat fills my ears as I dance down the ice.

  Now, my hardest element—the double Axel. I breathe into my backward crossovers, pumping my legs to pick up speed. I flick out my wrists, extend my back leg, three-turn so I am facing forward, and then, finally, push off.

  I am floating.

  And then I am

  really,

  really,

  not.

  My blade slips and my hip hits the ice before I even realize I am no longer in the air. Snow streaks my dress. My tailbone stings with pain.

  The chaos of saxophone and cymbals and drums crowds the rink’s walls. I can hear gasps in the bleachers.

  Keep going, I know Judy is thinking, and I have to. I have to. I quickly rise to my feet and continue my program. I try not to think about my body splintering, Mom’s hands pressed against her temples, Dad’s video camera slowly lowering, Judy’s held breath.

  Thankfully, I make it through my triple toe without crashing, and I keep a plastic smile on my face through the rest of my elements. I just want this terrible cacophony of drums and saxophone to stop. Just, please, stop.

  Camel spin. Sit spin. The merry-go-round goes faster and faster. It refuses to let up. I tilt on my double Lutz, double toe landing. I can already see my technical points sliding down my score sheet, like the snow now melting on my dress. My layback is clunky, not delicate.

  But then the drum rhythm accelerates, signaling the end of the program, and I’m spinning until I can’t breathe. Then, thankfully, my toe pick hits the ice. It’s over.

  I curtsy twice before speeding off the ice. Judy ushers me into the Kiss and Cry, her mouth moving a mile a minute.

  “It’s just the short program. You completed two rotations in the air before you fell and the judges will count that. Your triple toe was solid, you’ll get a high grade of execution for that. You under-rotated your double Lutz, double toe, but you had a clean landing, so you shouldn’t receive too many deductions. Your layback wasn’t perfect, but I don’t think you’ll lose points. And your edges were strong. Good job keeping up that smile. Remember that you tried your best, and that’s…”

  Judy’s voice trails off as she watches me. I plop down onto the bench and stare glassy-eyed into the monitor.

  “It’s just the short,” she says again, like she’s reminding herself, too.

  I don’t say anything back.

  Hollie is last to skate. I can see her glittery red dress from here, her thin fuchsia lips, her curls perfectly pinned to her head. As I watch her sailing past, I have the urge to leap back onto the rink and cross-check her into the wall like a hockey player.

  “The scores, please, for Maxine Chen.”

  I lean forward, my arms gripping my sides.

  “For her performance, she has earned a score of 33.01. She is currently in sixth place.”

  Judy is patting my back.

  “Not that bad,” she says, her voice squeaky and high-pitched. “It could be worse.”

  I shake my head.

  “Sixth,” I manage to choke out. “I need to be at least fourth to make sectionals.”

  Then I remember Hollie. When she�
��s done, I’ll probably be seventh. To think I was sure I’d medal. Look at me now.

  “Maxine”—Judy’s voice lowers—“you have an entire free skate to go.”

  But I’m not listening to her anymore. I run out of the Kiss and Cry and smack straight into Mom and Dad, who immediately try to wrap their arms around my shoulders.

  “Just remember what that famous skater Yogi Berra said,” Dad offers. “It’s not over till it’s over.”

  I don’t even know who that is or what that means. All I can think about is my butt hitting the ice. So I rip myself from their grasp and stomp into the locker room. Alone.

  A Tough Landing

  The crowd is going wild. Even though I’m curled up in the corner of the locker room, skates still on, I can hear their distant cheers.

  “For her performance, she has earned a score of 45.15. She is currently in first place.”

  Hollie. In first place.

  The announcer babbles on about the conclusion of the short program, but I can’t listen. The room swirls before me, dizzying and dreadful. Suddenly, the door swings open. There she is, golden curls, sticky lip gloss, a huge braces-filled smile on her face. There are a handful of people in the wings, but I somehow only see her.

  Before I can escape, Hollie notices me in the corner. I spring to my feet.

  “Good skate,” she says. “I’m sure your free will be even—”

  “Are you serious?” I blurt. “Just go away.”

  Hollie’s mouth opens, and then closes.

  Immediately, I know I’ve done something terrible. Her face drains of color and tears prick her eyelashes. She stands there, frozen, like she doesn’t know where she is, like she’s separated from her body. I can’t help but feel her tumbling shock. Alex’s face flashes in my head. This time, I realize, I’m the perpetrator.

  A shadow steps out from behind Hollie. It’s Mom, a bag of pretzels nestled in the crook of her elbow, a vending machine snack I’m sure she bought to make me feel better. Now her face is rigid, her eyes pointed.