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There’s a tree in one corner, stockings mounted on the walls, and a cardboard cutout Santa you can take a picture with.
“You want to put up a menorah? Scatter a few dreidels around?” I’m being facetious. It bothers me too, the assumption this time of year that everyone celebrates Christmas. That it’s an “American holiday” that means exactly nothing to my American family. As a kid, I couldn’t stand it when people said “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” It’s easy to be inclusive, and yet most people just don’t care.
“That’s not the point,” Adina says, huffing as we step onto the rink.
Truthfully, I’m on edge too. It’s the first day of winter break, and I haven’t heard from Johns Hopkins. My obsessive e-mail checking got my phone confiscated in AP Calculus last week. A few classmates stifled giggles—Tovah Siegel had never had anything confiscated before.
Clearly out of practice and uncertain on her skates, Adina clings to the walls. I skate backward in front of her as she pushes off, gliding a few feet on her own.
“You got it!” I tell her, and for a brief moment a real grin flashes across her face. She’s proud of herself.
Then she skids and the smile vanishes and her face scrunches back up like she’s concentrating very, very hard.
This is the magic of roller-skating: take anyone who has an atom of confidence and watch them struggle. Even Zack, who most of the time exudes bravery, wobbled on his skates on my birthday. I haven’t seen him outside of school since our movie date, and he’s visiting family in Portland over winter break. Every day this past week, though, he sat next to me at lunch. He always sits with our group, but suddenly it felt deliberate, the way he chose the chair closest to mine and sometimes knocked my foot with his and one time draped his arm across the back of my chair.
“What’s this music?” Adina asks, pulling me out of my Zack trance.
“Something from the eighties. Duran Duran, I think? It’s kind of charmingly bad, right?”
“Mor
e like grating, obnoxious, and lacking in creativity.”
I set my jaw. She doesn’t have to insult everything.
“Look,” I say because it can’t just be Great Skate bothering Adina, “I know things have been hard for you and you don’t have a lot of people to talk to. . . .”
She drags her toe to stop abruptly. “You said we wouldn’t talk about it.”
I phrased it wrong. “I know. I know. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out with Lindsay and me sometime. Maybe with Zack and Troy, too?”
“Zack,” Adina repeats.
“Yeah. Zack. Troy’s friend.”
“The way you said his name.” She smirks. “Is he maybe not just Troy’s friend?”
I stare down at my battered skates. “We’re . . . hanging out.”
“So you’re letting yourself date.”
“What?” A flash of panic, as though I’ve been found out.
“You haven’t dated anyone before, and now you are. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that you started doing it right after we took the test.”
“It’s . . . not,” I say flatly. There’s no point lying about it. “It’s not a coincidence. And I thought you didn’t want to talk about—”
“I don’t!” she says, her voice rising. Cracking—along with our tentative peace. “But that’s the thing. It infects every fucking part of our lives. It’s impossible to have a conversation without it.”
“I’m going to take a break,” I say, because if I stay here, I’m going to lash out at her, and I can’t let that happen. I skate off the rink without looking back at her. Let her fall and rip her tights. Let her look ridiculous. So far this night has confirmed what happened at the hotel was a fluke: something to do because we had nothing else to do.
I slump into a chair near where we stowed our shoes and pull out my phone, hoping for a text from Zack.
Instead, there’s an e-mail from Johns Hopkins University.
My lungs tighten. It’s about to happen. After all these years, it’s finally about to happen. When I got into Johns Hopkins, I’ll tell people, I was at Great Skate watching a bunch of little kids skate to “The Safety Dance.” We’ll all laugh about it.
Forcing out a deep breath, I open the e-mail.
