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“The lilac is fine,” I finally surrendered, the bickering about my outfit actually seeming to help soothe the tangles in my stomach.
One of the brightly dressed officials moved for me to get into position to head onto the ice.
Eli gave me one last nod.
“You’ve got this,” he said, probably attempting some kind of pep talk. “You can literally do this with your eyes closed. You’re a freak like that, remember?”
I hated when anyone brought up my quirky little habit, borne from watching my favorite childhood movie one too many times as a kid. I tried to never do it while others were watching, but no matter how hard I tried it seemed to spread amongst the figure skating people at the Complex.
“Not helping,” I told him curtly, removing my skate guards and handing them to him. “But thanks for trying.”
“Anything for you,” Eli said, holding his fist up for a bump, yet another thing that set the American coach apart from all the older stoney faced coaches we’d seen since arriving.
The official hurried me along, pointing aggressively to the edge of the ice.
“C’mon before the light turns green,” she told me in a thick Glaswegian accent as she pointed up at the red light shining on the other side of the arena. It would tell me when the announcers said my name and my information flashed onto the screen of the world’s televisions.
With one last half-wave to my coach, I sucked in a deep, steadying breath and put my hands on either side of the half wall.
It took another fifteen seconds and then the light flashed green.
Painting what I hoped was a cheerful, and as Eli would phrase it, approachable smile onto my face, I pulled myself onto the ice and skated into the middle where I posed and waited for my music to start.
I always struggled with my short program. With a free skate I always felt as if there was enough time to get comfortable on the ice and really show the judges and audience my flow, but with just under three minutes allotted for the short skate there was a lot to do in a very little amount of time.
It was technical in all the best ways, but at the same time it felt too rigid for me. The cantankerous old figure skating coach that used to teach classes at the ice rink the dads used to own in Minnesota would always scold me about it.
‘You’re far too loosey goosey for all of this, girl,’ she used to say in her thick Russian accent as she shook her cane at me from the sidelines of the rink. ‘It’s like trying to trap a hurricane inside of human skin. Impossible!’
It used to offend me as a child, but it has become my strength as an adult. While I may not have been skating since I was in diapers, I had what the dads liked to call a force while skating.
Lifting an arm over my head and slanting a glance down at the ice, creating a clean line of my body, I pointed the toe of one skate out as the first beats of Wait For It from the musical Hamilton began to fill the stadium.
I was off as Leslie Odom Jr. began to sing about his life, my mind already racing ahead to what I would need to do to make this the most perfect short program I’ve ever skated.
Four years ago the short program was the difference between my bronze and Chinese skater Fen Wú’s silver. Four points that would have put me just behind Brynn and her crazy ass gold medal performance.
If I closed my eyes I could see it behind my eyelids and hear the suck of breath from the crowd as my best friend made history as one of the few female skaters to attempt a triple axel at the Olympics and land it.
Speaking of an axel, I flipped around as the song ramped up to the first chorus. Sucking in a breath, my feet left the ice and I was in the air.
A double axel I could do in my sleep and the landing was clean, borne from the thousands of times I’d done it in practice.
Someone had once told me that a figure skating short program was like a sprint. Relentless and exhausting, a push to the finish line. If you flag or falter, you ruin your flow.
My breathing was already roughening, but I moved through the moves, the speed of the song spurring me along as my vision blurred.
There were so many things to do in a very short amount of time, so the next few requirements flowed from one to the other.
Two triple jumps to a camel spin that moved into a complicated step routine that had tripped me up more than once in practice when my feet tangled because I wasn’t focusing.
My body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as I left the ice again in a flying spin, landing a little roughly for my taste.
Slow down, don’t get ahead of yourself, I heard Aurelia whisper in my mind. You’ll arrive at your destination no matter what Ciara, but if you run headlong you’ll miss the journey.
She was in the crowd tonight. The last Olympics she’d stayed inside of the cottage, but she was here today to watch me and Brynn because she’d finally started to move past her anxiety thanks to her pack.
I would be damned if I screwed this up because I let myself panic when Aurelia was here to watch me.
