Fire on the Ice--Snow & Ice Games

by Tamsen Parker

  I throw in a triple flip, give myself a little room before heading into a triple loop. My stamina is one of my strengths, so I store up some of my jumps—including the biggest challenges—for the second half of the program, including something the judges won’t know what to do with. Something even my coach won’t see coming because I’ve only practiced it in secret.

  Now’s the time for my step sequence, and it leads into my combination spin. Even though I can’t see her—don’t even dare try to find her—I can picture Blaze’s face. And since I can’t hear her, she must have her hands clamped over her mouth, but I hope she’s enjoying this. I am.

  And I continue to, through a triple salchow on its own, followed by a triple flip, double toe, double loop combination, and into a flying camel spin, and now it’s time to make some noise. Just you wait, Blaze.

  There’s only one other woman who’s ever done this, and while I’m not nearly the athlete that Surya Bonaly was, I can still pull off a version of it. Picking up speed, I turn, and the preparation could be mistaken for a lot of things, but by the time I’m digging my toe pick into the ice, the experts in the audience will know I’m not going for any kind of regulation jump. Nope.

  Right toe pick hard into the surface, and then I’m pinwheeling my left leg straight over my head, joined as soon as I can by the right. Hard pike to get the full rotation in before gravity turns against me, and yes, yes, both my blades land solidly on the ice, and the arena goes nuts. I can’t land it on one leg like Surya, but no one can. Still.

  Back. Flip. Eat it.

  I extend a leg behind me, and spread my arms, opening myself to the crowd. I don’t mean to make it a saucy thumbing of my nose to the figure skating establishment, but that’s probably what throwing this illegal move into my program looks like. Feels like to the judges, and I’m sure my score will reflect that. But oh well. Blaze was right. This is my last shot, and I want to do it my way. Showing off my abilities—which are for better or for worse more athletic than elegant—is my way.

  We’re into the second half of my program, and the music is really taking off now, loud and pounding, and the crowd is eating it up. I bask in the sounds, a wide smile splitting my face so hard it hurts, and I keep it up through my single choreographic sequence. That gives me a tiny break in which to slightly rest my burning legs and my lungs that feel near to exploding.

  This starts to seem like the craziest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s too late now. I could tone it down, pull the rotations on my jumps, but I don’t fucking want to. Which leaves me with my last offerings. I’m going to leave it all on the ice, and I say a wish to I don’t even know who that I don’t flub this too badly. My thighs are trembling, my mind is racing, but I will do this. The murmur in the crowd kicks up a notch when they see my forward approach. There’s no toe pick to help me here, only a bend of my shaking knee to get that coveted elevation, and with a push as hard as I’ve ever pushed with my left foot, I’m in the air.

  With my hands holding tight to my chest, and my ankles crossed close against each other, I make the three-and-a-half rotations that make up a triple axel, and then my right blade touches down with a slight wobble, but I keep it together in a near-picture-perfect landing.

  The crowd has no hope of being as loud as my pounding heart, but they provide a rumbling background to the rhythmic thump of my blood. My whole body pulses with excitement, exultation . . . bliss. This is how I want to skate. This I how I want to be seen.

  Even though I’ve been on the ice for what feels like forever, it has in fact been slightly less than four minutes. I’m ridiculously grateful that the crescendo of the music that cues the start of my final spin has arrived, though, because I’m about to drop. Flat out pancake on the ice because I’m exhausted and the emotions roiling inside me are too much to take. I let them spin up, spin out as I do, the heavy G-forces tearing some of them away and leaving me feeling clean and elated.

  I don’t cry on the ice. It’s not something I do. Too much drama, and that’s not a thing I should do. It’s not what Harpers do. But when I’ve dug in my toe pick, come to a final stop and raised my hands to the sky, I feel the tears forming, and I don’t stop them. I’ll give the audience this, too.

  They love it. Clap and cheer and oh my god, I feel as though I’m swimming in it, being carried by it as I skate a lap around the arena, picking up the brightest bouquet I can find, waving like mad, and smiling so broadly there’s a good chance I’m going to split a lip. Plus of course, swiping at the tears running down my cheeks because I can’t stop them. Just can’t stop them. Don’t even want to.

  Waiting with my coach—who is positively rigid with anger—is anticlimactic. I didn’t do this program to win, have no expectation that I will. I skated the way I wanted, not the way I’ve been shoehorned into for my whole career. While a medal in my trophy case would be nice, what I’m prouder of is that I could silence the voices for long enough to come out here and dazzle my audience with my actual talent. They liked me exactly the way I am. I was, am, enough for them.

  I’m sure there was some headshaking from the old guard, and no doubt my parents are either screaming at their television or have thrown it out a window with all my possessions, but for the most part there was adulation, and I could get a hint of what Blaze must enjoy all the time. I fucking loved it.

  Eventually the scores come up, and they’re . . . far better than I was expecting. I suppose they couldn’t penalize me too much since all the elements I did include were done almost flawlessly. Except that damn wobble after my triple axel. But I pulled that off at a point in my program when most women wouldn’t have been able to land a double.

  149.17, which brings my overall to 217.06. That could be good enough to medal. It would have been at the last SIGs. Bronze, but a medal still. The rest depends on the remaining skaters. Six to go and I’ll learn my fate, how I’ll be remembered in the history books.

  Blaze

  It is absolute torture sitting here, waiting. I would like for these people to skate faster, but noooo, they’re going to take precisely the amount of time allotted. At least I didn’t have to suffer through another warm-up and ice-resurfacing. I would have lost my fucking marbles all over the ice, and then it would’ve taken even longer.

  . . . It’s possible patience isn’t my strong suit.

  Not to mention that after Maisy’s performance, most of the programs seem dull and lifeless. Pretty, sure, but I’m not the only one who seems to feel like the next few skaters are kind of letdowns. I feel a little bad about it because it’s not as if they had any way of knowing what Maisy was going to pull—none of us did—so I don’t heckle. Also, I’m pretty sure that’s not how figure skating works. Unfortunately. So I sit on my hands and literally bite my tongue—sometimes the insides of my cheeks—to keep from saying anything.

  Skater after skater goes, and I keep holding my breath, waiting for Maisy to get knocked out. I don’t want her to. I’m far from an expert in figure skating, but even I know that what she did was a huge risk. I want it to pay off. It’s got nothing to do with me, but somehow I can’t help feeling that if taking this chance pays off, she might be more willing to take chances with me, too.

  The last three skaters are the worst, and I can only imagine what Maisy must be going through if I feel as if the anxiety is going to rip out of my body. They’re the last three people on earth who could stand between Maisy and a medal. I don’t want to be an asshole, but I kinda hope all of them bite it. Not in way that will injure them, just, you know, leave a Maisy-shaped hole on the podium for her to slip on into. Not slip. That makes it sound like she didn’t put in any effort, and hoo-boy did she. More like punch and kick, head-butt, and goddamn backflip her way onto the podium. She’s incredible.

  The third-to-last skater nails her program, bumps Maisy down to second in the standings, and my heart is in my throat. Watching this is worse than waiting for my own results, I swear. Partly because if I screw up my races, yeah, it friggi
ng sucks, but I also still have for better or for worse, my hair, my magazine shoots, my notoriety. This is all Maisy has, and goddammit, I want her to hold onto it.

  Little Miss second-to-last gets up, and she’s this ridiculous Russian skater, who I swear to god isn’t even real. She’s that good. Even not knowing jackshit about the sport, I can tell she’s phenomenal, and she’s got a jam-packed program that she executes flawlessly. Bully for her, but shit fuck and damn for Maisy. Except the judges must’ve seen something I didn’t, because her score comes up, and she and Maisy are now tied. Motherfucking tied.

  Gold, two silvers. That’s it. No room for a bronze. But unless something truly bizarre happens—always a possibility at the SIGs—Maisy’s getting a medal. It remains to be seen whether it’s silver or bronze, but she won’t be going home empty-handed.

  It almost doesn’t matter to me how the last skater does, but because it apparently matters to other people I try to keep my excitement to myself. It’s not easy. I feel like a balloon, filled, filled, filled until I’m about to pop. If this South Korean could get her stuff over with, that’d be great. Then I can start breathing again. And composing my text. A lot of it would be the same, but not all of it. Besides, my fingers are all twisted up in the edge of my sweater, and I can’t pry them off the yarn to type anything into my phone.

  It’s three minutes into her program, and I can tell from the sounds in the arena that even though it looks pretty damn perfect to me, the woman on the ice hasn’t been flawless. And then, in a second that’s hard to miss, she falls. Fucks up her landing on a jump maybe she shouldn’t have been doing so late in the program—see, Maisy, I do listen when you talk about figure skating. If I’d paid more attention, I might know if that’s good enough to take her out of contention for a silver, bumping Maisy and the Russian down to a tie for bronze. Unless I’m completely off base, no way is this program grounds for a gold.

  The South Korean woman finishes up her program, and then we all have to wait while the judges tally up their shit. This is why I like going to races. Unless it’s short track or unless something really frigging weird happens, you know right away. I don’t think my heart can take this. But eventually the numbers flash on the screen, and I know what my girl’s got.

  That shiny silver is going to look phenomenal on her, but not as good as that smile when she’d finished her program, not even knowing the score.

  Maisy

  Silver.

  I’m getting a silver medal. It’s . . . I’m not going to say unbelievable. That’s unkind to myself. Unexpected, yes, but . . . It’s all I can do to keep from pumping a fist in the air and shouting, pointing at my coach, and FaceTiming my parents to tell them to suck it. Which would be rude and ungrateful, and I’m not either of those things, but still. A little behind the scenes I-told-you-so never hurt anyone.

  There’s a whirlwind of press and staff and I don’t even know who, talking at me, shoving microphones in my face, and wanting to ask me questions. It happens in a blur, and when I finally find a second to go to the bathroom, I tug my phone out of my pocket while sitting in the stall. Not classy, but it’s the only place I can reasonably escape from all the hubbub. Of course there’s a voicemail from my parents, saying god knows what. Instead, I opt to click on my texts, hoping the message blinking on it is from Blaze.

  And because she’s Blaze, and she doesn’t get so tied up and twisted by these things, of course it is.

  o/

  This is a drawing. It could be a lot of things. For example, it could be:

  1. The silver medal that’s going around your neck at the medal ceremony later. You’re so fucking awesome, Mais. That’s what I was talking about. You were fantastic out there, and even if my approval doesn’t mean anything to you (and there’s no reason it should), I’m going to say it anyway. I am so proud of you. Not for winning the medal, which of course is cool, but for taking a chance and skating the way you wanted to. You knocked me out.

  2. Me celebrating exactly how badass you are—in the privacy of. . . . . . well, to be completely honest, I only managed to make it out of the arena before I made a scene but not that much farther. So, if you heard a person cheering like whoa outside, that was probably me. Don’t worry, I didn’t say your name. Even though I wanted to. Because you are awesomesauce.

  3. My head between your legs because we’ve still got a few more days and I’d really like it if you would forgive me. I know I screwed up and I apologize and will apologize some more, and it might take you some time to decide because you’re not as impulsive as I am, but it would make me the happiest girl on earth if we could have these last few days together. And if you’re not sure yet, how about you can think about it while I go down on you? I’ve heard ladyhead is super helpful with tough decisions like whether or not you want to forgive the idiot girl who’s completely infatuated with you and would like to give you many, many orgasms.

  o/

  Oh my god. I should probably delete this, because if anyone found it, it’d be mortifying. But it’s just so Blaze, and so adorable, and so—

  My screen flashes, taking away her delightfully ludicrous text message. Yes, right, parents. They’d probably like to speak with me. I would rather not right now, but I suspect they don’t give a shit.

  “Hi.”

  “Maisy.”

  Yep, that’s my dad. I can see his crinkly forehead and his pinched mouth, sure signs he doesn’t know what to say. How about congratulations and let’s leave it at that?

  I know, though, that’s far too much to hope for.

  “You won a silver.”

  “Yes, I did.” The grin that splits my face isn’t for him.

  “That’s . . . very good.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Wait for it . . .

  “But if you had done the program you were supposed to do—”

  Maisy of a few days ago would apologize. I would tell him I was sorry to let him and my mother down, and that if I get another chance, I won’t do it again. I’m not that Maisy anymore, though, and new me is not having any of that.

  “If I had done the program I was supposed to, I would have finished out of medal contention.”

  He harrumphs, and if he were here in front of me, I don’t know that I could stand firm. He’s not, though, he’s just a disembodied, disappointed voice who’s never been satisfied with me in my whole life. Too much, too little. Which is basically what he’s saying about my performance. Too much because skating should be elegance incarnate, I should look pretty and effortless and graceful. Not what I actually looked like and how I felt: like a warrior. Someone who is strong and capable and proud of what my body can accomplish with the skills and muscles I’ve spent most of my life developing. And too little, because where’s my gold medal?

  “It was disrespectful and . . . ugly.”

  I hear my mother clucking in the background, and I can’t tell if she’s agreeing with him or if she’s merely telling him he shouldn’t say those things—not, of course, that he’s wrong, because she probably agrees. Perhaps if I ignore him, he’ll stop talking about this. Enough about his dissatisfying daughter, let’s talk about how the men’s hockey team is doing. No such luck.

  “Is this that woman’s fault?”

  “What—? Are you talking about Blaze?”

  “Is that the woman you were kissing on the computer?”

  I swear my parents don’t know how the internet works.

  “Why would this be her fault?”

  “She’s not a good influence on you.”

  What am I, twelve? “She isn’t an influence on me at all.”

  That’s not exactly the truth. I don’t think I would’ve had the courage to do my exhibition program as my free skate had it not been for Blaze. She’s been an influence on me for sure, but I don’t mean that in the way my parents do. I think she’s changed me for the better, and they would beg to differ.

  “I thought you were over this . . .” I can picture him waving
a hand, referencing my sexuality in the air as if it has a bad smell. No.

  “Queer thing? No, really not.”

  More tsking, probably some denial head-shaking, because I apparently don’t know any better. “You’re not—”

  “Queer? Yes, I am. If I haven’t dated a woman for a long time, it’s because I haven’t dated anyone at all. Because I didn’t want you to disapprove of me and tell me I love who I love to get attention.”

  Would I have chosen to kiss Blaze at the snowboard cross finals and end up plastered all over the gossip blogs? No, absolutely not, and I will make that very clear to her. But the thing is, I think she’s genuinely sorry, and she’ll be better about it in the future. Whereas when I’ve tried to explain myself to my parents, all they’ve ever done is tried to steamroll me into this narrow ribbon of exactly who they wanted me to be. I may be flexible and lithe, but not to that extent. All they’ve done is crush me.

  “I do like women, and I’m proud of the performance I gave today. I’m proud of the medal it won me. Yes, Blaze is a little much sometimes, and I wasn’t happy about that picture, either, but she’s also kind and supportive and funny and generous, and she likes me for who I am, not for the person she wants me to be. If you think you can do that, too, that would be great, otherwise . . . I think we need to take a little break.”

  There’s murmuring on the other end, as though my dad’s tucked the phone into his shoulder and is whispering with my mother about their volatile, ill-mannered daughter, and where did they go wrong? Clearly they took a turn somewhere because I’m just a SIG-silver-medal-winning lesbian.

  “We’ll talk to you later.”

  Okay.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Blaze