by Sandy Hall
David. He’d rested her on top of his life jacket. She looked into his intent green eyes. The water had frozen her to the core, yet a touch of warmth filled her chest. David floated, partially on his back, and held her hands behind his neck.
“Hold on to me. Don’t let go,” he said.
Partners for life, or just on the ice?
Maddie Spear has been in love with the boy next door forever.
Will their new romantic skating program be the big break she’s been hoping for, or the big breakup that Gabe has always feared?
Find out in this intensely romantic novel from
FEBRUARY 3, 2015
Gabe
A love story? This is some sort of deranged joke. Except Igor doesn’t crack jokes. He barely knows how to smile.
I glance at Mad going all starry-eyed next to me. I’ve heard correctly. I look back at Igor and hold my eyes steady on him, but my insides are shaking worse than when I told Kurt I was quitting hockey just before the bantam travel team championships.
Igor nods his head toward our water bottles at the boards. “I leave copies of the music there. You listen at home tonight, yes? For today, we see what we have to begin.” He cracks his knuckles under his leather gloves. “Death spiral again. Before, you skate for audience. This time? No audience. Only Madelyn and Gabriel. You understand?”
“Yes, sir.” I understand, but there’s an ice rink’s chance in hell that I’m actually going to do what he wants. I take the lead and set my pivot, looking at the empty bleachers. It’s been Madelyn and Gabriel for longer than I can remember. I let her hack off all my hair in preschool. I quit hockey for her. I broke my arm for her. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her … except this. She’s like my sister, the way we read each other so well. Sib closeness, I can deal with. That’s where it stops.
On the exit, I push out so my back is facing Igor and I stare over the top of Mad’s head. Epic fail on my mission to fool our coach. “Again,” he says. “You must look, Gabriel.”
This time, I watch the skate on Mad’s free foot as she circles around me. Igor is skating toward us before we’ve even finished the move. He nods at Mad. “Good, Madelyn. I have changed my mind. We listen to music now. Put it on.”
Mad skates off, leaving me alone with the KGB. “I do not believe,” Igor says. “Make me believe.”
I kick at the ice with my toe pick. Disrespectful, yeah, but a trip to the penalty box is sounding like a winning idea right now. I’ve known this day was coming. Known it since I first made myself look away from Mad’s arched chest and … “I can’t.”
Igor steps closer, and I stop. I’m not sure what he’ll do if I accidentally kick him but I’m sure I don’t want to find out. His breath makes warm puffs of air in my face. “Do not tell me, ‘I can’t.’ ‘I can’t’ is not part of plan.”
For years, I’ve trusted Igor’s plans. For good reason. He’s coached me and Mad to the national junior pair title and three Junior Grand Prix medals, including a fourth-place finish at the final last year. But … “This is Mad.”
Igor’s stainless steel eyes glint at me. “You want to win, yes?”
“Yes,” I whisper. Mom’s medals gleam in the back of my mind. I need to win.
“So you pretend. You need me to, what do we say, write it out?”
I don’t need Igor to spell it out. I know how to get a girl going. Trouble is, I’m not so hot at keeping things going. Mad returns and I ease her into the move once again, this time to the long, desperate notes of the music. I look at her face. “Sister, sister, sister,” I chant to myself. But there’s a cartoon red devil on my shoulder reminding me I’m an only child. Okay then: “Friend?”
My feeble attempt only spawns another devil. They slap each other five. “With benefits!” they chorus.
Where the hell are my angels? “No.”
I must’ve said it out loud, because Mad startles. She slips off her edge and falls out of the spiral. She was only a few inches from the ice, but still. Stupidest move in the world to fall on. Even juvenile pairs do it in their sleep. I help her up. “Sorry.”
“Madelyn,” Igor says, his voice as sickly as a tornado-warning sky, “please go work on your brackets for a moment.”
Igor’s temper usually blows on Chris’s shenanigans, but today, I get the twister cloud eyes. “I see you. All those girls, under bleachers at hockey games. What is problem here?” His gloved fingers curl, now black claws.
I look at Mad, zipping through her brackets. She attacks the twisty turns, the determination fierce on her face. She puts so much power into the pattern that she almost slams into the barrier at the end. That’s the problem. I’ve compartmentalized my life for so long, but Mad has no fear of the barrier.
I look back at Igor, watching me watch Mad. His fingers have relaxed in his gloves. “Is pretend,” he says, cajoling now. “But we are needing under the bleachers. Mind in storm drain.”
If I let my mind go in the gutter, I’ll never get it out.
“Madelyn,” Igor calls. “Get a drink. We resume.”
I skate over for a drink, too. Anything to stall.
Mad plunks her water bottle down on the barrier. She keeps her chin up but she doesn’t look at me. “Am I that disgusting?”
“What?”
“You won’t even look at me.”
“No.” Shiny dark brown hair. Eyes as wide and blue as summer sky. Cheeks splashed with such tiny freckles that I want to lean in close just to see them. Barrier. God, I need that barrier. “Mad. No.”
“Forget it, forget I said anything.” She skates back to Igor.
I follow, but this time, it’s me stretching my hand out to her. Once more, we set up for the move. I do what Igor wants. I watch the white of Mad’s neck as her head dips backward, let my eyes trail from those perfect collarbones over the bloomed arch of her chest. Mad’s circling smoothly around me, but my whole world is waterfalling down the storm drain.
On the exit, my heart is pounding so loud I can’t even hear the music. We present, arms locked out, free legs extended. But I can’t stop. I take an extra stroke toward Mad, my face right up to those barely there freckles. “You’re disgustingly beautiful.” With my eyes locked on hers, I miss Igor’s reaction. But I don’t need even a nod to know this time was exactly what he wanted.
Sandy Hall is a teen librarian from New Jersey, where she was born and raised. She has a BA in Communication and a Master of Library and Information Science from Rutgers University. When she isn’t writing or teen librarian-ing, she enjoys reading, marathoning TV shows, and long scrolls through Tumblr. A Little Something Different is her first novel.
A SWOON READS BOOK
An Imprint of Feiwel and Friends
A LITTLE SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Copyright © 2014 by Sandy Hall. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
ISBN: 978-1-250-06145-4 (trade paperback) / 978-1-250-06177-5 (ebook)
First Edition: 2014
eISBN 9781250061775
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