Fire & Ice

by Rachel Spangler

  Callie launched a new stone, and this time, it didn’t curve much at all. It didn’t slow down as it barreled toward the rings either, striking one of the forward-most blue stones, sending it straight back into two others. The entirety of the rings and everything in them shuddered before settling.

  Callie caught up to the sweepers, and they all converged over the remaining rocks.

  “Not terrible,” Callie said, inspecting the damage.

  “If we assume the hammer, we sit at least one. Maybe two,” Brooke said in a tone suggesting agreement.

  “I wouldn’t play it if they had the hammer,” Callie said, looking back. “We stripped our own guard.”

  “So, the front one is the guard!” Max said, almost triumphantly.

  Ella shook her head. “Are you special?”

  “What?”

  “Seriously, are you a little slow, like mentally? Or do you really not know anything about the sport you’ve been sent here to promote?”

  “Cover,” she corrected, “not promote.”

  “Yeah, so I’ll take that as a no,” Brooke said.

  Max sighed. “I understand that you all have to land the spinning rock on the bull’s-eye for points, like in darts. Also, you use the brooms to change the direction of the rock to make it get closer or hit another rock.”

  They all stared at her, a mix of disbelief on their faces, except for Callie, who seemed more amused.

  “Wow.” Ella finally laughed. “Everything you said there was completely wrong.”

  “No wonder you have to write assassination pieces instead of real reports,” Brooke added. “Wouldn’t want anyone to know how terrible you actually are at meaningful commentary.”

  With that, she turned and headed back down the ice, pushing two stones in front of her. Layla and Ella both followed in similar fashion, and Callie turned away, using her broom to send the last two blue rocks down the sheet.

  Max’s face burned. “So that’s it? No explanation?”

  “They don’t like you,” Callie said. “That’s an explanation of sorts.”

  “Because I wrote a humor piece about curling?”

  Callie leveled that hypnotic hazel gaze at her. “Don’t add to the injury by trying to insult our intelligence.”

  Max stared at her feet, embarrassment washing over her. She’d never intended the piece to be good, harmless fun.

  “You broke their trust before you even earned it,” Callie said more softly. “It’s going to take time.”

  The panic swelled in her again. “I don’t have time. I’m working on a deadline, and I get that I’m partially responsible for cutting things close, but I’m trying to make up for my mistakes now, all of them.”

  Callie raised her eyebrows at the comment, but Max forged on.

  “I get that no one here liked my first piece, but blackballing the only reporter here to cover you won’t serve your interests either, and honestly, if you all want to prove to me that you’re serious, professional athletes, you need to start acting like it off the ice, too. You want the bright lights of TV coverage, then you need to grow skin thick enough to withstand the scrutiny that comes with being professional athletes.”

  Callie pressed her lips into a thin, white line, but the little flecks of gold in her eyes made Max wonder if she might actually be trying to hold back a smile. “I don’t actually disagree with your premise, but I’d like to turn it back around on you for a second, because for all your talk about us acting like professional athletes, you’ve yet to treat us that way.”

  “I already said I made some missteps with the article.”

  “I’m talking about right now. You’ve just interrupted our practice multiple times in the middle of a drill that requires both physical and mental focus. Would you do that with, say, a football team?”

  Max clenched her teeth.

  “Now who’s refusing to talk?” Callie’s tone was laced with both teasing and satisfaction. “Would you walk out onto the field unannounced in the middle of a Bills training camp to ask players how many points a kicker could get?”

  “No,” she admitted, “I probably would’ve gone through a press office, and then approached a coach or player rep.”

  “That’s me. I’m the coach, I’m the rep, I’m the coordinator for my team. They call us Team Mulligan for a reason.”

  “I’m sorry,” Max said, trying to hold the pouting in her voice to a minimum this time. “I don’t know the curling hierarchy.”

  “Maybe you should learn,” Callie said, “because the season has already started, and as far as I can tell, you haven’t written or recorded a damn thing since you slung mud a few weeks ago. From where I stand, it looks like you need us a lot more than we’ll need you next week.”

  Her stomach knotted at the truth of Callie’s pronouncement. She didn’t have the power here. She didn’t have it anywhere right now. She’d resisted this moment as long as possible, but as much as it nauseated her to admit, her name and her reputation weren’t going to open doors for her anymore. She had to revert to the skills she’d used to get her to the top in the first place. She cleared her throat. “You’re absolutely right.”

  Another raised eyebrow managed to convey both surprise and suspicion.

  “I haven’t shown you the respect generally afforded to someone in your position. I haven’t done my due diligence when it comes to researching curling. I’d like to remedy both of those things, and I’d greatly appreciate your professional insight.”

  “Thank you,” Callie said. “I understand it probably hurt your pride to say those things.”

  “A little bit, but I do care about my job, which is why I’d like to learn the rules of curling. Can you please tell me if I’m correct in my understanding that a guard is one of those rocks out in front of the rings.”

  “You’re correct.”

  “And can you explain to me the scoring system?”

  “No,” Callie said politely. “I’m still in the middle of a practice. I don’t have the time or energy to give you lessons while skipping my team.”

  Max sighed and, lifting her arms slightly, allowed them to fall back to her sides with a flap.

  “I will, however,” Callie continued, “allow you to stay on the platform and observe. Afterward you can tell me what you’ve figured out, and I’ll let you know if you’re on the right track.”

  She started to shake her head and then caught herself. This wasn’t a negotiation. It was an offering, the only one on the table. Lifting her hands in surrender, she said, “I’ll take what I can get.”

  The next two hours were a blur of rocks and brooms. No one spoke to her. None of the players even looked at her, but as they moved through various scenarios, she did notice that after each of her final throws in a simulation, Callie would call out a score. She hadn’t been doing that before, and Max leaned a little closer as if inspecting a puzzle.

  Red had one in the middle. They got one point. Maybe the middle meant one point.

  But then blue had one in the middle and got two points, even though their other one was in the bigger, white ring. She scowled. How many points were the other rings worth?

  Then the red team had one in the middle of two blue ones, and Callie knocked it clean out.

  Three points. That didn’t make sense. Maybe the rings weren’t point-based at all. Maybe it came down to the number of stones the throwing team got in the rings. One rock, one point? That seemed democratic enough.

  And yet after a few more rounds, or what did she call them—ends?—she noticed Callie only called out the points for one team, even when both teams had rocks on the rings. Her frustration rose, and she began to pace around the back of the sheet looking at different angles.

  Finally, after clearing another set of rocks, Callie smiled mischievously at her.

  “Figure it out yet?”

  “It’s not a point system like darts,” Max said, not quite answering the question. “The rings aren’t like three points for center, two
for red, one for white.”

  “Correct.”

  “It’s not points per rock either, because only one team is scoring in each end.”

  Callie nodded her affirmation. “That’s as far as you’ve gotten?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And that annoys you, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe.”

  Callie laughed.

  The sound didn’t grate on Max’s nerves. If anything, it loosened some of the tension from her shoulders, but she didn’t want Callie to know. “You enjoy tormenting people or something?”

  “What you call torment, I call motivation. You like to know what’s going on.” Callie stepped a little closer. “You’re not the only one figuring things out today, Max.”

  “Oh?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll lose interest. If I make you figure it out, you’ll stay engaged, and I want you engaged.”

  Max swallowed the emotions that the comment and Callie’s lower tone sparked in her as she fought to stay present in this moment. “Sounds manipulative to me.”

  Callie shrugged. “I’m the skip. It’s my job to figure out what makes my people tick and use that to our mutual advantage.”

  Sirens went off in her brain, and the edges of her vision tinged red, but Callie didn’t seem to notice. She just pushed off back down the ice once more, leaving Max to battle the demons crawling at her again. She had to hold them at bay. She had to anchor herself to this spot. Not to Callie, not to any person.

  She forced her eyesight back into focus and onto the rocks. Two red stones right next to each other in the center. Two blue ones opposite them in different sides of the red ring, and Callie threw again to park a blue just inside the white.

  “That’s two for blue,” she called.

  Understanding sparked through Max as the final piece slid into place just like the last stone. She had it. Straightening up, she smiled broadly, all the panic that had nearly consumed her mere minutes ago fading as something finally made sense.

  “You have it,” Callie stated, as she came back to the other end.

  She nodded. “Only one team can score per end. That’s the team closest to the center of the rings.”

  “The ‘button.’ Yes, but how do we get more than one point?”

  “You get a point for every additional rock that’s closer than the other team’s closest one.”

  Callie grinned.

  “In this end, you had two blue ones closer to the button than the closest red stone.”

  “And what about all those other stones?” She indicated several farther away than the blue ones.

  “No points for them, only the ones closer than any of the opponent’s rocks. Only the winning team’s closest rocks score points.”

  The grin grew, and it warmed Max so much, she briefly worried she might begin to melt the ice around her.

  “All right,” Callie called down to her teammates. “Good end. Let’s call it a day.”

  They all sagged with apparent relief and pushed off the ice, collecting their gear as they went. Callie turned to join them, but Max reached out, catching her arm.

  “Wait.”

  Callie glanced down at where Max’s fingers curled around her firm biceps.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, momentarily thrown off. She didn’t usually touch the people she interviewed, and she certainly didn’t touch women who hadn’t indicated their interest. She didn’t know what had come over her, nor what was stirring in her now that she’d felt those impressive muscles flex beneath her palm. “I just . . . well . . . did you keep practice going for everyone until I caught up?”

  Callie laughed that same lilting ring that echoed off the ice. “You’re a long way from caught up.”

  Then she slid away, leaving Max to stand there in the cold, trying to reconcile the fact that Callie totally had her pegged.

  Chapter Six

  “I’m at a tournament called the Canadian Beef Masters,” Max said aloud, to no one in particular. No one else seemed to find it odd anyway. Maybe it wasn’t odd in this strange world of curling, but for all the middle-of-nowhere, low-budget sporting events she’d covered on her way up the reporting ladder, she’d never been to one named for a generalized dead animal product. And she’d thought the Tostitos Bowl had been a silly name when she’d covered it last year. What she wouldn’t give to be back in Phoenix instead of freezing her ass off in Nova Scotia. Seriously, she’d had to look at Nova Scotia on a map just to make sure she actually knew where it was, and the geography wasn’t the only thing she’d been unsure of during this tournament. In fact, it had been the least of them.

  “Whoa, Max Laurens,” a man said in a thick Minnesota accent, or maybe the accent was Canadian. She didn’t know the difference. “Didn’t expect to see you all the way up here.”

  “Me either,” Max said, stepping up onto a platform only about a foot higher than the ice.

  “You’re not covering Team Mulligan, are you?”

  “I am.” She searched the man’s features, from his rosy cheeks to his full red beard. Nothing about him sparked recognition, and he must have seen it.

  “I’m Tim Mathis. We both covered the World Junior Championship tournament in Reykjavik a few years back.”

  “Oh.” She still didn’t remember him, and if she’d been covering junior sports, it had to have been more than a few years ago.

  “Yeah.” He laughed easily. “You ran circles around all of us even back then. You could pronounce the names of even the third-string players on the Slavic teams. Shoulda known you’d climb the ladder.”

  “And yet, here we both are at the Canadian”—she cleared her throat—“Beef Masters.”

  “Oh yeah, well, Grand Slam curling isn’t the NFL, but it’s got its charms.”

  “If you say so.” She took the seat next to him and slid her mic a little closer.

  Tim shifted over a little bit, almost nervously. “I’m sure you’ve got lots of great stuff prepared. I could do play-by-play if you want to do commentary.”

  “You know,” she said, “I’m still a bit new to the sport. Why don’t I just follow your lead today?”

  He puffed up his chest a bit. “Sure thing. It’d be an honor.”

  She should’ve been relieved. Most other reporters treated her like she had cooties these days. Still, she couldn’t manage to summon any of her social charms as she watched Callie and her team take turns sliding out of the hack and down the ice.

  “Your gals have had a stellar tournament,” Tim cut back in.

  “Have they?” She supposed it never hurt to be a semifinalist, but she didn’t know enough yet to tell if they’d played well or if the competition had been subpar. Most of Callie’s team still wasn’t speaking to her, and even Callie had been distracted over the last forty-eight hours. Or maybe distracted wasn’t the right word, as she’d been focused on the tournament, playing two matches a day since arriving, but all her focus on her job had meant she didn’t have time to focus on answering questions. Max had been forced to watch from the stands, trying to make sense of a game that often seemed to defy logic. She’d even resorted to watching YouTube videos to pick up some terms. She pulled out some papers on which she’d scribbled the terms and definitions.

  “Yeah, when I heard they’d even made this event, I was a little surprised. Looks good for American curling, though, to have our second-place team eke their way into the top fifteen.”

  She stopped shuffling her papers. “Second place?”

  “Yeah, they’re team two of the American cohort,” Tim said, then furrowed his brow. “But, you knew that, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said quickly. “I mean, they were seeded fifteen in this tournament.”

  “That’d be their world ranking then, wouldn’t it?”

  “Right,” she said, even as she wondered why she hadn’t thought of that. Fifteenth in the world wouldn’t be the top American team. That’s why they were playing another American team today. Why had she assumed her team
was the only national team? Oh yeah, because that’s how national teams generally worked. America didn’t have three national hockey teams or three national soccer teams, and those were real sports. Why the hell would there be three national curling teams, and perhaps more embarrassing, why wasn’t she covering the top one?

  Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply and slowly through her nose and blew it out her month.

  “They really have overachieved so far,” Tim said cheerily. “Who knows where they’ll end up the season?”

  “And your team? Team . . .?” She glanced at her notes. “Team Dawes?”

  “First-place American team,” he supplied.

  “No, I knew that.” She lied. “I meant, how are they playing this year?”

  His smile widened. “Rocking the house.”

  “Of course they are.” She’d tried to sound congenial, but it only came off as tired. Tired of being out of the loop, tired of not knowing, tired of getting scooped by two-bit local reporters like Tim Mathis. How had this guy been picked to cover the top team when she got relegated to the second tier of a cut-rate game?

  Sadly, by the third end she thought she had her answer as he corrected her for the twelfth time. “Actually, that’s not a takeout. That’s called a tick shot.”

  “Right, right.” She tried to cover, though anyone with half a brain and a working set of ears had clearly seen through that charade two ends ago. “And can you explain the difference between a tick and a takeout for the casual viewer at home?”

  “Certainly,” Tim obliged, ever the professional, and made to look even more so by her gross ineptitude, “since you can’t move a guard.”

  “A guard being a stone in front of the rings.” She cut in with the only part of this she understood.

  “Yes, and you can’t move them out of play until the fifth stone of any end,” he continued, stating a rule she hadn’t known. “Sometimes the lead player has to play what’s called a tick, and Layla Abrams just did so beautifully there, because she managed to move her opponent’s guard over enough that it’s not in her way without taking it completely out of play, or leaving her own rock in its place.”