Walk on Water

by Laura Peyton Roberts

A kid in a Halloween tutu and rental skates knocked on the office window, startling Lexa back to her job. “The vending machine took my money,” she whined.

  “Fantastic.” Lexa held up a finger for the girl to wait and pushed the PA button. “Attention, skaters, this ends our public session. Please leave the ice by the nearest exit and return rental skates at the counter. Thanks for skating with us today, and remember: Ashtabula Ice is always nice!”

  Bry and Jenni chimed in with her on the rink slogan. Lexa released the button before the whole rink heard the mocking laughter that followed.

  “You know I have to say that,” she griped. Fishing quarters from the petty-cash drawer, she took off after the tutu.

  Outside the heated office, the air smelled of wet rubber. By the time Lexa forced the vending machine to cough up a stuck pack of gum, Blake was driving the Zamboni in shiny swaths around the ice. Ian was out there too, taking advantage of Blake’s favoritism by using the otherwise empty oval to warm up. Lexa leaned against the pay lockers and watched him stroke back crossovers into an easy double axel. His landing was beautiful: upright posture, shoulders level, leg turned out perfectly. Everything Ian did was textbook. Of the few skaters Blake deigned to coach—herself, Ian, Bry, and a couple of junior boys—Ian was the only one as intense as Blake himself.

  He and I would make the perfect pair, Lexa thought, as she had countless times before. Ian was a foot taller and two years older than she, strong enough to lift her like a doll. She’d imagined it all: the grace with which she’d pose in his uplifted hands, the thrill of a throw triple axel with Ian’s full power behind her, the two of them on Olympic ice with gold medals around their necks.

  Not that Ian had any experience skating pairs either. He was a singles skater all the way, and Blake became a jerk for days any time she dared to mention her longing to skate with a partner. No one skated pairs in Blake’s rink. He didn’t coach pairs, didn’t follow pairs, wouldn’t even watch them at competitions. The topic of pairs was more off-limits with him than drugs or pre-marital sex.

  Lexa sighed as Ian pushed into a camel spin, his posture still gorgeous. He was wearing all black, as always, his every line sharp against the ice. His hair was black as well, a thick, wavy mop that rippled and flowed in the wind his motion created. From where Lexa was standing, he looked like a minor god.

  But Jenni had called it. He was cranky. Not only had he always kept to himself at the rink, he had just finished high school a semester early, too driven to bother staying to graduate with whoever he’d hung out with there.

  Lexa heaved herself off the lockers. Blake had privates with Ian then Bry for the next two hours, after which he would close up, count the register, and take his sweet time coming home. Some nights he pulled the Zamboni apart, others, the refrigeration. She couldn’t hang around any longer, though. On Sundays she always had a mountain of homework due the next morning.

  Having a tutor was supposed to fix that! she thought, knowing she couldn’t complain. If her grandmother hadn’t stepped in, she’d still be pulling a full load of classes at Erie Shores High in addition to thirty-six hours of training each week and helping out at the rink. At least now she was out of school when the lunch bell rang—even if that did mean making up schoolwork in the middle of the night.

  Bry had begun lacing up on the bench outside the office. “You out of here?” he asked as she grabbed her keys from behind the door.

  “The joys of homework await. Text me after you skate. Better yet, text me every hour and keep me from dying of boredom.”

  “I will.” He flashed his most winning smile. “Think your dad will go easy on me today?”

  “That’s why I love you, Bry. You’re not afraid to dream big.”

  —3—

  “G-mom!” Lexa was happy to abandon her math assignment as Beth Lennox let herself in through the kitchen door, bringing the cold night in with her. Lexa smelled the frigid breeze off Lake Erie, then something far more delicious. “Ooh, what’s in the bag?”

  “Orient Express. I figured you probably hadn’t eaten a vegetable in weeks.”

  Lexa tried to look innocent with fingers still sticky from half a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough. Blake was always telling her that an athlete ought to eat better, but between his drinking and smoking, he was in no position to have his lectures taken seriously.

  “How’s school going?” Beth asked while she filled two plates with cashew chicken and stir-fried vegetables. “Are you caught up yet?”

  “More or less.” Lexa shoved her homework aside to clear eating room at the counter. “I still hate it, though.”

  “Naturally.” Beth cocked an eyebrow over an expression that couldn’t hide a trace of a smile. “If teenagers liked what was good for them, adults would be out of a job.”

  “I do appreciate the tutor, Grandmom. I’m in, I’m out . . . so much less drama.”

  “Hell hath no fury like jealous teenage girls. And the more good things come your way, the pettier they’ll get. I pulled Kaitlin out of school. I could do the same for you.”

  Lexa looked down at her stir-fry, painfully aware that any comparison between herself and her mother was ridiculous. When barely older than Lexa, Kaitlin had been a world champion. She’d been passionately loved by an older guy who, hard as it was to believe now, had been an international heartthrob. Of course, she had also gotten pregnant at seventeen, which should have evened the scales, but somehow she’d risen above even that. Lexa wasn’t envied and picked on; she was invisible.

  “My offer stands, you know,” Beth said. “Anytime you want to move back in with me . . .”

  She always said back in, as if Lexa had just left instead of living with Blake for the past eleven years.

  “Thanks, but I can stick it out at school. Besides, Blake needs me.”

  “Do you need him? That’s the question.”

  Lexa sighed. “Grandmom.”

  “You’re here by yourself all the time. You’re not eating right. And why can’t he get home at a normal hour? Is he drinking again?”

  “I don’t know,” Lexa lied, pushing the last of her dinner away. “Can we please talk about something else?”

  Her plate came back like a boomerang. “We can when you finish those vegetables, kitten.”

  —4—

  Two hours of darkness remained when the headlights of Lexa’s Explorer raked through the parking lot. Parking behind the rink, she hurried through the freezing pre-dawn, setting off the motion-sensing security light Blake had installed for her. He’d griped the entire time, saying how unsafe it was for her to be skating alone, not to mention at that hour, but once she’d gotten her license and inherited his old Ford, there was no keeping her off clean ice in her own rink. Fitting her key into the well-lit back door, she ducked inside and locked the bolt behind her.

  The clock in the office read 4 a.m. when she flipped on the main lights. The ice they illuminated lay shrouded in thigh-high mist. Lexa’s excitement rose the way it always did at the sight of that flawless surface. Her blades were brushes, the ice her canvas. Until she stepped onto that blank sheet and carved her first edge, everything was possible.

  Lacing her skates quickly, she strapped on her iPod and hit the ice. The air inside the rink felt nearly as cold as the frozen water beneath her feet, making each breath visible. She stroked brisk laps to warm up, pumping her arms with the music, dispersing the swirling fog. In an hour the furnace would cycle on, taking the edge off the chill before the paying students arrived, but fiddling with that timer was a sure way onto Blake’s blacklist. In ten minutes she’d be sweating anyway.

  Lexa’s muscles loosened gradually as she skated lap after lap. Unzipping her parka, she let it flap before peeling it off and tossing it over the rail. Nothing else in her life competed with the freedom of these solo sessions—no one there to judge her, correct her, or tell her what to skate next. Striking out to center ice, she strung together three single axels, stepping from one directly into th
e next, leaping as high and as far as she could. Single axels were dead easy for her now, playing around, pure joy. She stepped from the back outside edge of her third landing into a spread eagle and swooped around the curve at the end of the rink, her arms thrown wide to the empty risers.

  She had two programs to practice, short and free, and her triple lutz was seriously unreliable. Pushing all that out of her mind, Lexa simply skated, spontaneously interpreting the music as it flowed into her ears, jumping, spinning, and gliding straight from her heart. She remembered learning every move she knew: the thrill of her first successful attempt, who she’d been skating with at the time, the song on the PA, even the gloves she’d been wearing. Her life from the age of four on could be measured in the skills between Freestyle 1 and senior ladies, the competitions she had entered, the skating dresses she’d outgrown. Those milestones meant more to her than birthdays. She’d fought hard to achieve them. She was proud of every one.

  But sometimes she just wanted to skate.

  The playlist in her ears that morning wasn’t competition music. Songs with lyrics, songs with hard edges, songs she would never get past a judge played one after another as she gave herself an entire half-hour of improvisation, throwing down spontaneous footwork and gliding now and then to catch her breath. At the start of each new song, she gathered herself, launching into laybacks, spirals, and triple-double combinations. When the music synched perfectly with the moves she saw in her head, she didn’t feel her muscles ache or her lungs burn—all she felt was magic. Skating free was dancing, floating, and flying all rolled into one.

  The only thing better, she thought, would be to skate this way with a partner. She longed to cover heart-stopping stretches of ice in the assisted throw jumps of pairs, to soar aloft in lifts that would make her truly weightless.

  With a sigh, she skated to the boards and wiped the sweat from her face. There wasn’t any joy in her father’s methods for skating well, but if she didn’t want him all over her later, she needed to practice her short program.

  Then her long.

  Then her short again.

  Heaving another sigh, she got down to the joyless business of competition singles skating.

  —5—

  The rest of March ticked by in relentless blocks of skating, school, skating, work, conditioning, dance class, tutoring, and homework. The only break in Lexa’s routine came on weekends, when she worked additional hours and skated an extra session too. She knew she ought to be grateful for three on-ice sessions with a world-class coach, but trying to satisfy Blake was even less fun than mopping the rink’s bathrooms. At least when she was mopping, she had Jenni for company.

  “Can you believe Brittany Woodson is running for senior class president?” Jenni asked, simultaneously applying lip gloss in the cracked mirror over the sink. “That girl thinks an election is something to call the doctor about if lasts longer than four hours.”

  “Not exactly the brain trust,” Lexa agreed. Standing the mop in its bucket, she began loading a fresh stack of paper towels. “Still, you’ve got to give her points for courage.”

  Jenni shook her head. “Stupid people are never as scared as they should be. Hurry up! Bry must be here by now.”

  Lexa didn’t bother mentioning that she could move faster if Jenni helped. Jenni Kim did not mop. She also didn’t stock paper products, wipe counters, or take out trash. That’s what maids were for, she’d say, and Jenni would know—the Kim family had a staff of them. Jenni might fill the soap dispenser, but only to make sure it got the cherry-scented soap she liked, and only if it was her idea.

  “I can’t wait to hear how Everly looked in Civics today,” Jenni continued with relish. Unlike Lexa, she lived for her half days at Erie Shores High, the drama Lexa found draining her favorite soap opera. Neither of them doubted that if Jenni’s skating schedule allowed her to attend all six periods, hang out during lunch, and be active in school events, she’d be a queen of that social scene. As things stood, however, she had to content herself with obsessing from the sidelines and predicting the next big rumor.

  “Everybody’s saying Jacob dumped her for hooking up with Will Baker at Lucy Winston’s party,” Jenni reported happily. “I totally saw that break-up coming, remember? Head cheerleader, football player . . . can it get any more boring? If I were Everly Brooks, I’d have been looking out for some garage-band hottie action too.”

  “You’re looking out for some garage-band hottie action anyway.”

  “Ha! Guilty.” Jenni laughed and zipped the lip gloss into a pocket of her tight-fitting skating sweater. “Let’s get out there already. Maybe today we’ll witness the miracle of something cute walking in on public session.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Lexa advised, only to feel her own breath catch as they left the restroom together. Ian Wilde was on the ice, throwing warm-up triples.

  “You have a thing for Captain Cranky!” Jenni exclaimed, following Lexa’s gaze.

  “No,” Lexa said, embarrassed.

  “You don’t have to deny it. He’s damn fine to look at.” Jenni’s eyes twinkled in a way that always made Lexa fear what might happen next.

  “I’d just like to skate with him, all right?” she said, trying to head Jenni off. “Skate, not have his baby. Don’t get any of your crazy ideas.”

  Jenni’s brow crinkled, then stretched into something like horror. “Skate with him . . . as in pairs?”

  Lexa cringed. “Can you maybe yell it louder so Blake can disown me?”

  “But. Lexa.” Jenni, rarely speechless, had to work to find a word. “Pairs?”

  “Stop saying that like it’s dirty.”

  “But—”

  “Stop saying it, period, okay? It’s never going to happen. It was just a random thought.”

  “It’s not going to happen! Forget about your dad’s issues—Ian’s even more Olympics-obsessed than Blake. He’d never risk an injury to fool around playing pairs with you.”

  “Didn’t I just say that?” Lexa didn’t bother clarifying that she hadn’t meant playing. Any talk of pairs was wasted breath, even with her best friend. “Look, there’s Bry. The Everly saga continues.”

  “Bry!” Jenni squealed.

  Lexa watched them run to each other on the toes of their skate guards, camping it up like B-movie lovers. People stared openly, which was the whole point. With a full-time audience of hero-worshipping younger skaters tracking their every move, Jenni and Bry liked to put on a show. Air kisses complete, they grabbed seats on a riser at rinkside and the gossiping began. Jenni was supposed to be warming up for her session with her longtime coach, Stella Peters, but lately she’d been postponing skating until the last possible second. Lexa watched them only a moment, Jenni’s dark pixie against Bry’s blond brush-top, before rolling her mop bucket toward the back storage area.

  The music for Ian’s short program started. He began skating his first run-through, giving even this unimportant practice performance all of the intensity Blake could only beg for from Lexa. The few other skaters allowed on ice during Blake’s privates cleared Ian’s route as much out of self-preservation as courtesy. His body language promised he wouldn’t hold back even to avoid a collision.

  Lexa paused to lean on her mop. Everything about Ian fascinated her. The two of them were so different: he dark, powerful, intense; she blond, petite, and trained to smile no matter how she felt. As a pair, they’d have it all, the full complement of opposites that made the best partnerships more than the sum of their halves.

  Maybe Jenni’s right, Lexa thought with a sigh. Maybe I do have a thing for him. It’s not like I’d mind having a boyfriend.

  There were lots of guys she’d be happy to date, though, and only one she fantasized about doing star lifts with. If by some miracle she ever got to choose between Ian as a boyfriend and Ian as a pairs partner, her decision was already made.

  —6—

  Lexa hit Pause on the ancient VCR, her body tensed to listen. The sound of cru
nching gravel outside her bedroom window faded, then disappeared. The tires she’d heard weren’t Blake’s, just those of some lost car turning around in their driveway. Heart rate slowing to normal, she pressed Play.

  Ice filled Lexa’s TV screen. The couple near its center resumed a synchronized blur of perfect side-by-side spins. The tape was old and jerky, its resolution poor, but Blake and Kaitlin shone through the outdated technology, their smiles conveying their happiness all the way to the back of the packed arena. Lexa’s breath caught as her parents joined hands for a famously tough footwork sequence, stepping through it flawlessly, their eyes never leaving each other’s. The crowd surged to its feet as Blake launched Kaitlin directly from her last rocker into a throw triple loop so huge the camera missed the top of her arc. She shouldn’t have been able to land it, but she did, Blake right at her side to catch her hand and show her off to their cheering fans. Kaitlin’s smile was incandescent, otherworldly.

  A tear rolled unnoticed down Lexa’s cheek. She knew every step of each senior program her parents had ever competed—had secretly practiced them all herself, to the extent she could as a single—and she still always cried at this part, the moment Lennox and Walker clinched their first national championship before the music even ended. Lexa hadn’t been conceived of yet, let alone conceived. Blake and Kaitlin were so young, far too young to be as accomplished as they were, but already there was that obvious connection between them, the undeniable chemistry that made their wins seem almost beside the point. They were there for the competition, the glory, the opportunities . . . but most of all, they were there for each other. With all her heart, Lexa longed to connect with somebody that way. As her parents hit their final pose—Blake’s arms enfolding Kaitlin, her lips brushing his jaw—their future daughter watched them with an ache that never went away.

  The camera zoomed in tight on flushed faces and heaving chests. Kaitlin’s cross and skate pendants glinted through the flesh-colored mesh filling the neckline of her dress. Lexa reached to touch those charms, hanging from her own neck now, as the ice on her television screen became a sea of tossed flowers and toys. The camera pulled out to show Kaitlin and Blake waving broadly, still hand in hand as they skated off. Lexa fast-forwarded through the kiss-and-cry and old-school scores of perfect 6.0’s, freezing the stuttering tape at the moment her parents first heard it confirmed that they were national champions. Kaitlin didn’t look to the judges, the stands, or even their coach, the legendary Weston Kirk. She looked directly to Blake, and the love in his eyes in return nearly broke Lexa’s heart. She had never seen that expression on her father’s face anywhere but on tape.