Chapter 36 2006
“Everyone,” Esma bellowed over the noise, “this is Patch!”
It was my first meal at the institute. We ate in a room called the mess.
It was the size of two classrooms and had six white round tables with eight chairs at each.
At the far end of the room was a salad and sandwich bar.
Astonishingly, it was stocked from dawn to lights out, and we could help ourselves any time we wanted.
There was also a food window, where we could order what we’d like from a cook from six in the morning to seven in the evening.
A dozen faces turned to look at me, kids ranging from eight to eighteen.
I smiled and lifted my hand in a wave. Some smiled back, others sized me up.
I would soon learn they were less interested in my nevus than my physiology.
Figure skating was an intensely competitive world, and not everyone would make it to “the show,” which was what the students called the Olympics.
A great deal was being invested in us to be good at something that was incredibly difficult to be good at, and survival was a matter of doing better than those around you, including your friends.
It was a gamble of the highest order and an awful lot of pressure to put on a bunch of kids.
So that morning, most were appraising me to decipher if I was a threat.
Most decided I was not and went back to their food and conversations.
As I followed Esma to a table toward the back, I heard a girl mutter, “She’s the one Meryl brought in.”
From somewhere else there was a hushed “Short.”
Esma dropped her duffel beside a chair, and I did the same.
“Welcome!”
I looked sideways to see a boy, or perhaps he could be called a man, smiling wide. “Botan. Botan Izuki.” He stuck out a hand. He was solidly built with black hair dyed deep purple at the ends.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Izuki,” I said as we shook.
He laughed, and so did the kids around us. “Mr. Izuki,” one mimicked.
I blushed.
Esma and I went to the salad-sandwich bar, and I made myself a thick peanut butter and jelly sandwich, extra heavy on the peanut butter.
I couldn’t get over the idea that I could eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
At home, I never had peanut butter and jelly.
Mother didn’t like peanut butter. It might have been my single favorite thing about the school at that point.
When we got back to the table, Botan asked, “When did you start skating?” He rocked back on two legs in his chair, another thing that never would have been allowed at home or at Gaines.
“In November,” I said around a large bite of sandwich.
The chair dropped. “November? As in, this past November?”
Esma startled as well, her great big eyes bigger and rounder than ever. “Wait. You’ve only been skating”—she stopped to count on her fingers—“five months?”
I’d actually only skated four months, since I hadn’t skated at all since the ice melted, but I didn’t correct them. Instead I asked, “How long have you been skating?”
“Since I could walk,” Esma said. “Even before that. My mother used to hold me between her legs and skate around with me as soon as I could stand.”
“Same here,” Botan said. “Actually even earlier. My mom skated with me when she was pregnant. She was so sure I was going to follow in her strokes.” He smiled at the joke.
Strokes are how skaters propel themselves forward.
“It turned out I didn’t have her talent.
So now I coach. It’s what happens when you wash out.
Those who can’t do, teach. You, Patch, are looking at the resident cautionary tale of what happens if you don’t make it. So make sure you make it.”
“She’s going to make it,” Esma said with supreme confidence, considering she’d known me less than a day and had never seen me skate. Then she linked her arm through mine. “We both are. The two of us are going to be the next two greatest figure skaters in the world.”
Finally, it was time to skate.
We left the main building and headed across the school’s grand front yard.
The grounds were very beautiful. Before it became the IIFS, it had been an army base.
The architecture was very regal, the buildings built of opuka, a dove-gray stone common in Prague, and the windows and roof were patinated copper.
It was surrounded by woods, a river, and a pasture full of cows.
And at the far edge was a barn with a stockade full of horses, donkeys, goats, and chickens.
Esma and I changed into our skates in the women’s locker room, then walked through a square tunnel to the rink. I’d never been to an ice rink, and I felt both nervous and excited.
I kept my eyes glued to the concrete as I teetered down the ramp. Walking on a rock-hard surface in skates was incredibly difficult, and I was afraid I was going to make a fool of myself before I even reached the ice.
“Dummkopf.”
I looked up to see a boy leaning on the wall beside the entrance to the rink.
He stood at least a head taller than me and had a wild mop of deep-orange curls and too many freckles to count.
Though I didn’t know what “dummkopf” meant, I’d been insulted enough in my life to know it wasn’t a compliment.
He pushed off the wall and skated away, his head shaking like I was an idiot.
I forgot about the insult instantly, overwhelmed by the glorious sight before me.
Though I’d seen ice rinks on television, nothing could have prepared me for the electricity of the actual thing.
Before me lay an oval sheet of pristine ice.
Enormous overhead lights gleamed off its frosty white surface, and two dozen skaters glided, leaped, and spun around it.
My nerves buzzed, both yearning to be a part of it and terrified.
The skaters were all fantastically talented, and it was clear I was in way over my head.
“Come on.”
I blinked to see Esma on the ice in front of me. She had removed her sweats and wore a lilac skating outfit that was well worn. The skirt was frayed on one edge, and there was a tear at the seam of her waist.
“Time to show them what you’ve got,” she said.
The boy who had insulted me skidded to a stop deliberately hard at Esma’s feet, spraying her skates with ice.
“Jerk,” Esma said.
“Neophyte.”
“Patch, meet Heinrich.” Esma rolled her enormous eyes in a great irritated arc.
Before I could say anything, Heinrich whipped something from behind his back, causing me to rear back as memories of Bart grabbing me flashed in my mind.
“Whoa. Settle down,” Heinrich said. “Guards.” He waved two thin black plastic things in front of me. “So you don’t ruin your blades.” He nodded to my feet. “I got them from the spare gear box.”
“Oh,” I said, heart still misfiring.
“Dummkopf,” he repeated, but this time I saw the twitch of a smile.
“Jerk,” Esma repeated.
“Neophyte,” he responded, then he set the guards on the rail and skated away.
Esma raced after him, skating with a vengeance, both of them turned backward, which is actually faster than going forward.
I picked up the guards and examined them.
They were hard plastic an inch wide with a groove for the skate blades and springs in the center that made them expandable.
I bent down and slotted my left skate into one and smiled to myself at what a “dummkopf” I was.
No wonder I had such a hard time walking to the rink.
I popped the guard off and set it, along with the other, beside the duffels and backpacks the skaters had left beside the entrance to the rink.
“Come on, dummkopf,” Heinrich yelled as he raced past, Esma now right behind him.
Heart pounding, I leaped out after them, the whip-sharp tail of the dragon. It’s how I imagined we looked—Heinrich with his fiery red curls in front, Esma’s lean, lithe body sashaying in the middle, and pint-size me zigzagging with all the speed I could muster behind them.
The air was cold and sharp. Music blasted from somewhere overhead. And I was happier than I could recall—
Oomph!
The wind went out of me as I hit the ice.
I gasped, trying to get a breath, as Heinrich skidded to kneel beside me and Esma shouted, “Nicolette, you witch!”
“It just fell off.”
A girl with sleek black hair to her shoulders held a pale-pink scarf, and through my daze, I realized it was what my skate had caught on that caused me to go sprawling.
“Oops,” she said as she flicked the pink wool around her neck.
The scarf matched her silver and crystal-bedazzled skating outfit. She looked down at me. “Welcome to the institute,” she said and skated off.
Esma’s hands clenched and unclenched at her sides.
“Beat her on the ice,” Heinrich said in a low growl to Esma as he took hold of my elbow and helped me back to my feet. “That’s what will hurt her the most.”
It was my first lesson in the lengths some would go to win.