Gold Medal Winter

by Donna Freitas

  My cheeks are red. “I’m looking for Danny Morrison. And his dad.”

  “Lucky him. I’ll go see if they’re here.”

  He disappears up to the second floor while I stand there awkwardly, aware that there aren’t any other girls or women in the vicinity, including among the staff. After five painful minutes, I see Danny make his way down the stairs. He’s wearing jeans, black boots, and a black leather jacket.

  Okay, so he’s really attractive.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” he says when he reaches the place where I’ve been standing in the corner, waiting for him. Well, hiding, really.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” I say. “I got caught up in something and didn’t realize the time.” I take out the guest passes I shoved in my bag earlier in the day. “Here are the passes I promised your dad. Where is he anyway?”

  Danny takes them. “Thanks. But my father crashed already. He doesn’t do well with jet lag.”

  “Oh.” A wave of disappointment floods through me. While I was spending time with a person who doesn’t necessarily have my back and brings with him a whole host of drama, I don’t bother to show up for someone who actually wants to be supportive. “That’s such a bummer. Maybe I’ll see him when we get to the Games?”

  He shrugs. “Sure. Maybe. I’ll ask him.”

  “Please tell him I’m sorry.”

  One of the other hockey guys walks into the foyer. “She’s cute, Morrison,” he says casually before heading away again.

  “Oh, to be young and in love,” another one calls out from the other room, and the rest of them laugh.

  Danny rolls his eyes. “Shut up, D’Amato,” he shouts back. Then he looks at me. “Let’s go outside.”

  “They’re out there too.”

  “We’ll take a walk, then.”

  “Okay. You’re not tired?”

  “No.” He opens the door. “After you.”

  The whistles of the other hockey players follow us as we leave and don’t stop until the door shuts and cuts off the sound.

  Danny puts his hands in his jacket pockets. “They may be college graduates, but they act like small children.”

  “They’re definitely different from the figure skaters.”

  He looks over at me as we walk. “What are figure skaters like, then?”

  I try to think of how to describe so many types of people. “Well, even though technically we’re all figure skaters, there are four different sports we compete in — pairs is really different than ladies’ and men’s, for example, which are different from ice dancing. And I think each category attracts a certain type.”

  “And what type are you?” he asks.

  I think about Meredith and Stacie and even Jennifer Madison. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I can say that I’m a typical ladies’ figure skater, to be honest.”

  Danny and I turn the corner and head toward the old part of town. “I don’t always feel like I fit the typical hockey player image either.”

  I laugh. “You definitely don’t.”

  “Oh?”

  I’ve sparked his curiosity — and potentially revealed that I’ve given this some thought. “Look at all those pastries in the window,” I say, trying to distract him.

  He doesn’t take the bait. “You’re not getting out of answering. So quit stalling.”

  I adjust my scarf tighter around me so that it comes up higher, almost to my mouth. “You know the kind of hockey player I mean,” I say finally. “The big meathead arrogant guy with thick legs, a chest as wide as a truck, and an even thicker neck topped off by a crew cut. Kind of like the other guys in the safehouse.”

  Danny bursts out laughing. “That’s quite an image. I’m relieved I don’t fit it.”

  “Me too,” I say, trying to hide the giant smile on my face.

  For another hour we wander the streets, talking and getting lost, since the roads go round and round in circles that twist and turn. The cold and snow doesn’t seem to dissuade the Austrians or the tourists from being out, and the evening is crowded with people headed to dinner and packed in cafés and shopping in the glitzy stores everywhere in this part of town. Vienna is full of life, and I am swept up in the excitement of being in Europe on my way to the Olympics, and getting to do all of this with a guy from home, who turns out to be really nice once I get to know him a little.

  Much to my chagrin, the evening goes by fast and soon I have to get back, so we turn around.

  “Are you with that Hunter Wills guy?” Danny asks when we reach the figure skating safehouse and we’re about to say good night. “Romantically, I mean.”

  I’m standing on the first step, so I’m just about the same height as Danny. Maybe still even a little bit shorter. I shake my head. “No. I’m not.”

  “Interesting” is all he says, and turns to go.

  “Interesting good or interesting bad or interesting neutral?” I call after him.

  “Definitely not interesting neutral,” he says cryptically. “See you at the Olympics, Esperanza,” he adds, and then walks off into the snowy Vienna evening.

  When I enter the room, my cheeks are flushed from the cold and my heart is racing. I pull off my scarf and coat and heap them onto a chair before I realize I’m not alone.

  “Hi, Meredith,” I say.

  She’s sitting on her bed, facing the window. Her shoulders are hunched over and shuddering.

  I move closer. “Meredith, are you crying?”

  “Why would you care if I was?”

  “I care.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” she says with a sniffle. “It’s not like I’ve ever been nice to you. And now this is karma, isn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Me having to room with someone I’ve been mean to. Me not being the alternate for the Team Event. Me falling behind on everything. I was once America’s Hope for Gold, you know. I just never came through.”

  “Meredith,” I say. “Don’t talk like that. You’re going to the Olympics! You could still win,” I add, even though a part of me is thinking, Wait a minute, Esperanza! You want gold too! But the thing is, I’m not that girl who plays mind games with the competition and does whatever it takes to win — not if it includes kicking someone when they’re down. I don’t want to become that girl either.

  Meredith turns a little, enough that I can see her profile. “You shouldn’t say things like that. You’re supposed to enjoy this moment, because it’s going to help you beat me.”

  I get a little bit closer but stop short of sitting down next to Meredith. I’m not sure I’m really the company she wants right now.

  Then she wails for me not to come any closer and starts crying again. Harder. So I have my answer.

  “Do you want me to get Stacie?” I ask gently.

  “Noooo,” she howls. “Her seeing me like this is even worse than you.”

  I take a step back. “I can go. I won’t tell Stacie a thing.”

  Meredith turns again. Even with her face blotchy from crying, she’s still really pretty. All that cascading red curly hair. “You won’t?”

  I laugh a little. “No way. It’s not like Stacie and I are besties or something.”

  Meredith laughs, but it comes out more like a snort from all the crying. “Definitely not.”

  “Can I get you something? Water? Food? Schnitzel? The famous Austrian chocolate cake?”

  She laughs some more and turns around on the bed to face me. She crosses her legs and leans forward, looking at me with an openness I’ve never seen before. “I’m okay.”

  “Are you sure? I could go find whatever you want,” I offer, as though she is Joya or Libby, because the thing is, I would do it for them, since that’s what girlfriends do for each other, and maybe Meredith and I have a chance at something like friendship. You never know.

  Meredith gives me a weak smile. “You’re not so bad, Esperanza.”

  “I like to think that I’m not overly horrible.”


  Her smile gets bigger. “Maybe sometimes you are. Like when you beat me out for stuff.”

  “Yeah, well. Same to you,” I say, then do something I’m not expecting. “Can I ask you something?” When she nods, I go on. “I’ve always wanted to braid your hair. It’s kind of amazing.”

  “My hair?” She seems startled by the request. “My hair is a frizzed-out mess.”

  “No, it’s not. Have you ever looked in the mirror? I’d die for your hair.”

  “It’s so hard to take care of. I’d rather have your sleek long locks.”

  This makes me laugh. “Sleek long locks are boring.”

  “Sleek long locks are pretty and people who have them shouldn’t complain.”

  “Yeah, well, people with long curly red hair shouldn’t either.”

  She pats the bed. “Come try and braid it and you’ll see exactly how difficult it is to have on your head.”

  “Okay,” I say, and join her. She turns around so I can start. We chat about nothing much while I work on her hair, but still, we chat. About her brothers and my mother. About leaving for the Olympics tomorrow morning and what it will be like when we get there. About how weird it is that the competition for figure skating starts the day before the Opening Ceremonies this year.

  I don’t talk about Hunter or Danny or landing my quad.

  Meredith doesn’t talk about Stacie or her coach or whatever else she refrains from telling me.

  And it isn’t quite like when I’m with Libby and Joya, but it’s definitely a start.

  “Is it true that you’re cracking under pressure? That the Olympics is too much for you to handle?” a reporter asks Meredith the next day at our pre-Games figure skating press conference.

  My mouth widens in shock at the audacity. Meredith blinks quickly, and I wonder if she’s holding back tears. If I was sitting next to her, I would nudge her or squeeze her arm in solidarity. But I’m not.

  Hunter is to my right, which means I lean to my left, which unfortunately is occupied by none other than Stacie Grant. She is as perky as ever on our last morning in Vienna, her blond hair blown out and sprayed to perfection, her makeup professional and perfect, highlighting her big blue eyes.

  “I’m as focused as I’ve always been,” Meredith responds, but her voice cracks.

  The press corps murmurs and I worry they’re going to ask a follow-up, but they move on to a question for Tawny.

  “Is there romance in the air for you and your partner this time around?”

  Tawny laughs good-naturedly. “I’ve learned my lesson from last time, so no,” she says authoritatively, ever so poised and articulate and somehow friendly too. “My partner and I are close, but just as friends.”

  “Stacie?” a woman from one of the television networks pipes up.

  “Yes?” she says in her sweetest voice, the one she only reserves for press conferences like these, since I’ve never heard her use it outside this sort of situation.

  “It’s rumored that your teammate, Esperanza Flores, is going for a quad,” the reporter says, then pauses as though she wants what she’s just revealed to sink in with everyone around her.

  I gasp.

  Stacie’s face pales.

  Meredith’s jaw drops.

  It’s one thing for the figure skating team to discuss what’s possibly going into my program, and it’s a whole other thing for the rest of the world to be gossiping about it. What if Mai Ling decides to go for one too now? What if I decide to leave it out because it’s too risky? Then everyone will know I’ve failed. That I’m Esperanza Pollo!

  The reporter gets a little triumphant smile on her face. She was obviously eager to unnerve all of us and now she has. Her eyes are still trained on Stacie. “Are you worried that she’s going to beat you out for the gold because of it?”

  Stacie shifts in her seat. “No,” she finally answers. “Of course I’m not worried.” She straightens up, shoulders back, chin up. “No ladies’ figure skater has ever landed a quad at the Olympics, and it’s simply not going to happen this year either. I’m sure my teammate Esperanza knows better than to risk a fall in front of the world during the most important moment of her skating career. Right, Espi?” she adds, turning to me, batting her eyelashes and smiling sweetly as ever.

  “Um,” I say, because I don’t know how to respond.

  But I’m saved from answering. Sort of. Stacie’s acknowledgment seems to have opened the way for the reporters to fire their questions at me.

  “Esperanza, is it true that one of the US senators from Rhode Island is getting your mother a visa so she can come see you skate?”

  I blink, surprised. “I don’t know,” I say immediately, looking around for Coach Chen, who looks as shocked as I am. “Is she? I mean, that would be wonderful!” I add, excitement puffing me up like a balloon.

  A lot of the reporters laugh, but one man looks at me hard. “Esperanza, is it true that you and Hunter are on the outs? Rumors are flying that you’ve broken up.”

  My eyes go wide. “Um. Um,” I stutter. “We aren’t —”

  “No, those rumors are false,” Hunter answers before I can get any more words out, putting his hand over mine on the long table where we sit. “We’ve made up and we’re going strong,” he adds, and gives me that megawatt smile from his photos in People and Us Weekly.

  I am too stunned to speak right away.

  “That’s not —” I start once I find my tongue.

  But I’m too late. The reporters are clamoring for one of the pairs to answer questions about their rumored romance, and soon after, the press conference comes to a close.

  Coach’s hands cover her face. When she finally meets my eyes across the room, she’s shaking her head. The one thing she wanted me to do was to stay away from the drama, and I just got pulled back in. What’s more, Hunter gets up quickly without even looking in my direction and stalks off like I don’t exist. So why in the world would he say that we’re together?

  Then I think of something else that makes my heart sink like a stone.

  Danny.

  I wonder if he’ll see what just happened on television.

  He’s going to think I lied to him about Hunter.

  Dios mío, I think to myself as Coach and I drive in silence to the airport to catch our flight to the Games.

  The Olympic Village and its arenas and hotels and residence halls for athletes are in a quaint seaside town pressed right up against the snowy mountains. From the airplane we can see the giant bubble domes the host city has built in the middle of all that quaintness, just inland from its long stretch of beach. The Ice Palace looks like a silver spaceship, and the blue-windowed Skating Arena swoops and curves. The ski slopes and jumps are farther off up the nearby mountains, and I barely catch sight of them as the plane heads in for a landing at the local airport.

  Happily, Coach Chen and I seem to have a silent agreement not to discuss what happened at the press conference. In fact, we talk about everything but that as we sit in traffic for two hours before we pass through security at the entrance to Olympic Village. This time it’s only the two of us, since Mr. Chen went back home to teach. He won’t return until the ladies’ finals event.

  Once we are through the gates, the Olympic Village is a chaotic zoo. It’s even colder here than it was in Vienna, with snow and ice covering the ground and frost coating the edges of the car windows. People mill about everywhere, athletes proudly wearing their country’s colors and going a little crazy with their, well, enthusiasm about being here. The guys especially run around grunting and groaning and high-fiving each other like madmen.

  Coach Chen looks at me hard when we get out of the car. “I know you’re a little boy-crazy lately, Espi, but these men are off limits. Understand?”

  “I’m not boy crazy!”

  She waves me off. “Right, Mrs. Hunter Wills.”

  “But there’s nothing going on!”

  “Hmm” is all she responds.

  Even if I am the teen
siest bit boy crazy, most of the athletes are older than me anyway. I forgot I’d be spending two weeks living in close quarters with hundreds of people at least six or seven years my senior, and many of them more than a decade. A lot of the athletes here seem to be looking to party too, which is something else I’m not expecting. It makes me long for Danny and Meredith, who are at least closer to me in age.

  Not Stacie, though. I don’t long for her. And she’s the closest in age of all.

  Coach leads me up toward the athlete dormitory where I’m slotted to stay. “So you and Meredith seemed kind of chummy this morning at breakfast.”

  “We had a heart-to-heart last night.”

  “And what did your heart say?”

  “That’s she’s not so bad.”

  “Great news,” Coach Chen says, opening the front door so we can check in and go to my room, “since Meredith is going to be your roommate while you’re here.”

  “She is? How come you’re just telling me this now?”

  “Vienna was a trial run,” she says. “But you made it through without killing each other.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” I say sarcastically. “Did Coach Danson arrange this with you?”

  She shakes her head. “I did. Coach Danson hasn’t been very nice to Meredith since she’s dropped in the rankings. I thought she could use a friend.” She looks thoughtful. “If I had to bet, I’d say it was Danson who leaked the rumors to the press about your quad sal.”

  I open my mouth, but words don’t emerge.

  “Espi, while I’m glad you’re making friends with Meredith and I think she needs some good company right now, ultimately the only person you need to worry about out there on the ice is you. You need to focus on yourself a hundred percent. Okay?”

  I nod.

  “No more drama, please,” she says. “Stay away from it.”

  I nod again.

  Coach takes the keys from front desk security and we find our way to the suite where I’ll be staying for the next couple of weeks. We unlock the door and pass through a kitchen and lounge area that has two bedrooms connected to it.

  Coach eyes the one to the left. “At least you’re not rooming with Stacie, right?” she whispers.