Chapter Five Ana #2
But the doors opened and the herd began to move, pulling off guards and taking the ice, stroking counterclockwise like horses on a track as they warmed up.
This wasn’t the dream, the nightmare, Ana reminded herself as she gathered speed.
Her spine straightened and her shoulders pulled back as she made the first turn at the end of the boards.
She felt joy moving this way. Freedom. She lifted her right hand over her head in a perfect dancer’s arc as she turned backward.
Dawn was standing at the boards, and Ana wondered what she was so afraid of. Why Dawn had grown so ominous.
“Ana!” Dawn called her name, summoning her for the lesson.
This is not the dream. She wasn’t lying flat on her back, unable to move. Dawn was just a woman, barely five foot two, her navy blue puffer coat unzipped and hanging loosely from her narrow shoulders. She reached out and took Ana’s face in her hands, her skin cool against Ana’s flushed cheeks.
“How are you today?”
Ana answered, “I’m good.”
Dawn let go of her face and smiled with her thin lips and nearly perfect white teeth—save for the crooked one in the bottom row.
“I was thinking about this dilemma with the flip,” she said. “And why you can’t get the height—I can see it, Ana. I can see the exact moment when the fear takes over.”
The word—fear—entered Ana’s mind like a storm warning. A trigger.
“I see everything.”
Ana followed her gaze to the session, where skaters moved in and around one another, jumping, spinning, stroking into footwork passes or spiral sequences. It became innate somehow, the way they all knew where each body was heading and cleared a path.
She caught a glimpse of Jolene in the center, working on her flying camel spin, slow and labored by lanky limbs.
And then Kayla gathering speed by the Zamboni door, too much speed. Out-of-control speed, because—Jolene said—this was the only thing that stopped the thoughts in her head. Thoughts about her old life in New York that she never spoke of.
Ana knew only what she had pieced together—that Kayla had been rescued from her evil grandmother by some charity in New York that gave her a sponsorship to train at The Palace.
And that whatever else had happened there, her unrest was big and unruly, and quelled by adrenaline from the speed and cigarettes and Jack Daniel’s that she kept in a metal flask under her bed.
And, finally, Indy, procrastinating by the boards with Coach Emile, pulling on neoprene gloves. Not wanting to be here. Not wanting to fall, but there was no way around any of that.
“That’s where it counts—out there,” Dawn said, her words perfectly enunciated and delivered with an extra burst of breath, like she was narrating a movie. “It’s easy to stand here and make promises. Anyone can do that.”
And now Dawn opened her hand and pressed it again to the side of Ana’s face. “I don’t think you’re ready.”
Ana froze, not knowing what this meant. Not ready for what?
Dawn looked from the rink, the ice, to the break in the stands that led to the offices. Standing there was a man in a cardigan sweater, with gray hair and glasses.
He waved at Dawn, who waved back. And then his eyes shifted to Ana.
“I’ve decided you shouldn’t have any more lessons until you stop slowing down,” she said.
“What? No . . .” Ana protested. She felt like she was pleading for her life. Skaters who stopped getting lessons were not making the Olympics. Not ever.
“I’m sorry, Ana—I think you need to work on what’s going on in here,” she said, knocking on Ana’s head with her knuckles. “I know you cry in the closet. I know you miss your sick mother.”
How did she know that? About the times Ana sneaked away to the closet in the basement, sat in the darkness, with the mops and the brooms and the Pine-Sol, leaning against a wall and letting herself cry?
Because she was alone, and because her mother was sick, maybe more sick than she even knew because they’d kept it from her with lies and colorful scarves for months before she’d left.
All of them. Carl. Connie. Even Tim. She would never believe them again.
But, also, they’d lied so she could come here. So she would come here.
And now it was all for nothing? Because she was a big fucking baby?
“No!” Ana said again. “I can do it. I can!”
Dawn sighed like she was exhausted by Ana’s pleas. Like she’d heard this all before. It was in her book. Chapter 7. “Denial—the Fourth Response to Fear.”
Ana looked at the man in the stands. The work they did in his office was covered in Chapter 12. “Turning Flight to Fight.”
“Go on,” Dawn said. “Take off your skates and meet with Dr. Westin. When he says you’re ready, we’ll try again.”
Ana felt a wave of electricity fly through her body. “No!” she said again. “I can do it.”
And with that, Ana skated out into the session, the adrenaline surging, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, screaming at herself, Just do it! You’re such a baby!
And she was a baby, crawling into Indy’s bed. Missing home after swearing she wouldn’t. Slowing down at the takeoff. But this—nothing was worse than losing a lesson.
She could feel the eyes on her, the other skaters, the mothers in the stands, as she picked up speed and hugged the boards all the way around to the other end.
Past Indy and Coach Emile, she cut into the center. Past Kayla, who slowed down to watch as she moved onto a left outside edge. Don’t slow down . . . fight the fear.
Jolene was watching, too, as Ana made a three turn, then jammed her toe pick into the ice . . . Don’t hold back . . . fight the fear . . . pulling in tight, arms crossed at her chest, right leg tucked behind the left. The blur, a split second, Don’t be a baby . . . you’re a freaking baby!
And then—no! It wasn’t there, the height, she felt it like an instinct, but she had to make it around.
She tucked her legs higher, squeezed them tighter as she descended, every muscle turning to the left, until she felt her right blade slam into the ice and pop her backward, onto her tailbone, so hard she thought it must have shattered.
And as she lay there, taking in the shock, she heard a clap and a holler. “That was it!” Dawn yelled. “Three rotations!” Before she could get up, Dawn was there, looking down at her with a giant smile and a hand reaching for hers.
“That’s not the right way—you know that—but you made it around,” she said. “Come on—I’ll show you the marks.”
The marks on the ice—the takeoff and where she came down, on a straight backward edge, her body twisted, the edge unsustainable, but evidence of the full rotation.
Then a hug, so tight, and the words that hugged her tighter.
“I’m proud of you,” Dawn said. Then, without even a beat, “And I’m sorry about your mother.
” The messages bleeding together to form just one.
She was sorry about the malignant lesion in her mother’s head.
But if that drove Ana to cry in closets and not hurl herself higher into the air, her dream would die, and all of this would have been for nothing.
She felt Dawn’s words leave her mind and burrow deep inside her, in her gut, where she suddenly felt a rush of something good, for a change. Something euphoric. And she wanted to wrap her arms around it and never let it go.
I’m proud of you.
No more tears, Ana thought. You big fucking baby.