Chapter Eleven Ana
Chapter Eleven
Ana
Before—Eight Months at The Palace
And now the conversation continued from the locker room, where they’d practically kidnapped Indy after one of the bleacher bees helped her off the ice and all the way to the bench by her locker.
Not to be kind, Jolene reminded them, but to revel in Indy’s epic fall, which had taken down part of the set and disrupted the entire show.
It had felt like a spy mission, getting her out of The Palace without Patrice or Dawn seeing them.
Ana had to get her own skates off, and the costume, then help Indy with hers, while she was crying, sobbing so hard she couldn’t tell them what had happened.
Why she’d tried the triple Axel, knowing she couldn’t land it.
Knowing that the ice wasn’t big enough for one of her falls tonight with the curtain and the props.
Kayla shoved her costume, and Ana’s, into Shannon’s hands and told her to take them back to the second rink. Indy was supposed to meet Patrice there after her solo. Shannon agreed, even though she’d already returned hers. She wanted to be their friend, and this was a chance to prove it.
From there, they crossed over to the men’s locker room. The back door exited to the parking lot, and Jolene ran ahead to get her car.
It was then, in the back seat of Jolene’s Jeep, that Indy finally caught her breath and told them about the fight she’d had with her mother.
“I can’t go home,” Indy said, wiping her runny nose with the back of her hand. “I tried to talk to her about Bobby, and she wouldn’t listen.”
Jolene turned around when they got to a stop sign. “We know, Indy,” she said.
Kayla looked back, too, from the passenger seat. “But what the fuck with the triple Axel?”
“I was just so mad at her!”
“But you hurt yourself, Indy. Not your mother,” Jolene said, stepping on the gas.
Indy laughed through the tears. “Don’t be so sure.”
They were quiet until they reached Avery Hall, then slipped past Edie’s apartment, where the door was closed anyway, a reality show blaring—big surprise—and up the stairs to the bathroom, where Indy went right into a stall, locked the door, and started crying all over again.
Twenty minutes later, she hadn’t budged.
“Indy—come on. We have to go,” Kayla said, while Jolene twisted her hair, up and down, up and down. A sign that she was losing her patience. Ana knew—the field was waiting for them, the two sixteen-year-olds who’d been looking forward to this night for weeks.
“Just go without me,” Indy said.
This sent a shock wave through Ana—she and Indy usually banded together, IndyAna, not drinking more than a few sips of beer and avoiding the rest of it, except to take it in, as observers.
Not that they didn’t wonder, didn’t think about the boys they saw there and who saw them.
But for Ana, it still felt like she was playing at all of this.
The same she’d felt trying on her mother’s clothes when she was little.
Wrapping every single scarf around her like a tapestry.
The scent of her mother’s perfume spilling into the air.
Clinging to her skin for hours after she’d put them away.
Jolene bit her lip. “We’re not leaving you behind. Just open the door.”
Kayla was more direct. “Open the damn door, Indy!”
Ana leaned against the row of sinks, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror—long hair falling around her one bare shoulder, painted eyes and lips and cheeks.
She looked every bit as old as Kayla and Jolene, minus the subtle curves, but that was hidden beneath the part of the shirt Jolene hadn’t cut off.
She realized, now that the show was over and it had gone so well, that there was more excitement left in her stomach.
Excitement for the field, and the party, and the possibilities—of what, though?
Being someone else, maybe? Not Ana the skater rounding the corner, fighting with her own mind, her fear.
Not Ana the Orphan at Avery Hall who cried in closets.
Who used to cry in closets. Whose mother was sick.
But Ana—a teenage girl, a pretty teenage girl, about to go to a party.
Come on, Indy. Giving advice was usually Jolene’s job, and being tough was Kayla’s, but they were sucking at all of that tonight. Their brains had been hijacked by yearning.
So Ana stepped away from the sink and said, “Indy—you knew Patrice wasn’t going to let you go home. What else happened? Just tell us.”
Indy inhaled a huge sniffle, then coughed. Then blew her nose into a wad of toilet paper that she dropped to the floor with a pile of others.
“Indy?” Ana said, Kayla and Jolene now holding their hands like they were praying, apparently happy to cede their roles in their Orphan family if it would get them to the field faster.
“Come on, Indy—it’s me!”
Finally, Indy started to speak in a long ramble.
“I told her how I was falling. And that Dawn didn’t care and that Bobby would never make me fall like this, he would find another way, and she said that was never going to happen. Even if I came home, she wouldn’t let me train with Bobby, and I asked why. And she just said because . . .”
Another sniffle, another wad of toilet paper hitting the floor.
“And then we both just kept saying that, why, because, why, because—and she never gave me an answer.”
Jolene’s maternal instincts were suddenly piqued, because she stopped twisting her hair and said, “So you went for the Axel to show her how bad it was? How hard you’ve been falling?”
Then Kayla rolled her eyes. “But she’s never letting you leave. I don’t know why, but you have to stop obsessing about Bobby Stark. It’s just making things worse.”
They were all sick of hearing about Bobby, who’d been Indy’s coach since she was five years old and who believed in her not just like a coach, but “really believed in her” like no one else ever had.
They’d seen him before at competitions. To Ana, he looked like a tired old man, especially next to Coach Emile.
Still—they’d seen something else tonight.
The way Patrice had almost teleported herself into Indy’s body while she performed, and the way Dawn’s face had lit up a little when Indy fell, so hard the entire arena gasped.
The whole situation was a rivalry dumpster fire that had been burning for decades, and now Indy was right in the middle.
The room went quiet.
Indy sniffled, loud as thunder. But then she said in her most quiet voice, “I don’t want to fall anymore.”
Ana, Jolene, and Kayla looked at each other, shaking heads and shrugging shoulders, and Indy blew her nose, sniffled, blew again, until finally, the lock slid open, then the door.
She stood there in her bra and underwear, lean muscle head to toe, one hand braced against the wall. The other holding down the top of her underwear, exposing her right hip—and a giant plum-colored bruise—and stunning them into a collective silence.
It ran from her waistline all the way down her thigh to just above the knee, with shades of red, yellow, purple. Some spots appeared to be popping out, protruding from beneath the skin like they wanted to explode.
“Holy shit, Indy,” Kayla said, as Jolene reached out to touch it.
“What do I do?” Indy asked.
Ana stared at her best friend, at her bruise, and wondered how she hadn’t noticed it before.
Jolene and Kayla shifted into their roles, performing their duties. Jolene wrapped her arms around Indy and let her bury her face in her neck.
Then Kayla pulled the flask of Jack Daniel’s from her purse. Only this time, she didn’t take a swig herself, but handed it to Indy, who shrugged, not sure whether to drink or not drink from Kayla’s flask, but the indecision stopped her crying.
“Going once . . .” Kayla said, waving the flask between them. She’d started to pull it away when Indy reached out and grabbed it with both hands.
Without a single beat she opened her mouth and tilted it back, wrapping her lips around the metal rim as she took a drink.
“God!” she blurted out, her face twisted and her throat gagging. But she swallowed it, only to have Kayla tell her to take another.
“Trust me,” she said. “Just take one more.”
Which Indy did, and then her face grew curious, and then she took a third sip, this time prepared and determined.
“It’ll kill the pain,” Jolene said.
“Which one?” Indy asked with a devilish smile. “The bruise—or my mother?”
Indy held on to the flask, drinking until she got a good buzz, while they spun plans and solutions to the problem of the bruise. They had no idea what to do about Patrice, who hadn’t even bothered to chase Indy down. Hadn’t come here to look for her. Apparently, she was more mad than worried.
Ice packs, heating pads, ACE bandages? What would help heal a bruise? A bruise that kept getting injured every day. Suddenly, Jolene knew.
“Wait!” she said. “Hugo told me about something he did back home. Something he used on a bad bruise.” Hugo—the Spanish skater who had a crush on Jolene and was bringing the booze to the field tonight for the underage skaters. Not exactly a reliable source for medical advice.
“He’s there—with the other guys from Avery!” Jolene continued, making her case for leaving now, for the field, because everything could be solved, satisfied, relieved—at the field.
And this was enough. This and the Jack Daniel’s were enough to get Indy into a pair of loose shorts and a T-shirt. Sandals and even some lipstick and then down the stairs and out the front door.
Jolene drove. Kayla sat beside her in the front, Indy and Ana in the back. The top was down, the wind drowning out Jolene’s singing until they were stopped at a light, and again until another light, and then a final time when they reached the field.