Gold Medal Winter Read online

  Not to mention, between my time on the ice and now, the following has occurred:

  Hunter has decided he wants to talk to me, but I won’t talk to him.

  Danny Morrison has stopped talking to me, but won’t tell me why.

  Meredith is also not really talking to me, even though she’s my roommate.

  Stacie talks to me all the time, but only to say mean things.

  The worst part is this little voice inside me that won’t shut up, which says that Stacie is right and I’m not on her level. And then it keeps reminding me that Mai Ling is attempting a quad too.

  I’m letting all this drama get the best of my Olympic dream.

  I look around at the gazillions of Americans. Out of the corner of my eye I see Hunter talking to Jason, probably about how awesome he skated last night for the Men’s Team Event Short Program. Danny is nowhere in my vicinity, though I avoid looking over at the mass of US hockey players, so maybe that’s why I don’t catch a glimpse of him.

  Then Tawny appears next to me. “Esperanza, why so glum?”

  “I’m not glum. Not exactly.”

  “Good, because you are about to participate in the Opening Ceremonies of your first Olympic Games! It’s going to be one of the most exciting and fun nights of your life so far. Don’t let anyone else ruin it for you.” She puts an arm around me. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I agree, but not in a very convincing way. “Though if it gets ruined, it’s my own fault. I skated abysmally this afternoon.”

  “Come on. Forget about that for now. This is going to be so wonderful! How about you and I walk in together?”

  This makes me smile. “I’d like that.”

  “Excellent. Especially since my partner is flirting with some skiing chick.”

  “Oh no! Are you upset?”

  “Nope. Not a bit. I told you: no more mixing business with pleasure. It’s a good rule to follow, especially since there’s enough Olympic drama without adding romance to the mix.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say.

  It’s almost time to start. The athletes from the Ukraine are ahead of us, dressed in bright yellow with blue stripes to match their flag, and a small group of Uzbeks are behind us in green. I’m not sure which among us drew the shortest straw as far as ridiculous costumes go, but the bright yellow pants of the Ukrainians might have our white velour beat.

  Tawny adjusts her thick scarf, which we have to wear even though the Ceremonies are indoors. “Hunter really set us up last night for the Team Event. Janie and Johnny did well too. The US is off to a great start.”

  I sigh. “We are.”

  “It’s a good thing, chica,” she says. “Now all the rest of us have to do is get on the ice and ride the momentum they started.”

  I laugh. “You make competing in the Olympics sound so easy.”

  “It is. Just don’t fall on your butt.”

  “Don’t worry, I never fall,” I say, then cover my mouth in horror.

  “What? What happened?”

  “I just jinxed myself!”

  Tawny is unfazed. She fixes her ponytail. “You did not.”

  “I said I won’t fall, and I’m superstitious.” I blink back disbelief. “I should never say ‘never.’”

  “You’re wrong about that, Esperanza,” she says, and brushes this off like it’s no big deal.

  But now I’m thinking about this jinx and about the Wang, which I’ll be wearing for the first time in competition — the first time I’ve ever not worn one of Coach’s altered costumes. Aside from yesterday, when I skated really well, every time I’ve worn the Wang things have gone either mediocre or flat-out horrible.

  What if I’m doubly jinxed now?

  “Let’s go,” Tawny says, nodding toward the organized line of Americans that’s forming. She leads me over to our place.

  I don’t have any more time to fret and stress, because the march into the arena has begun. The wide line of athletes surges forward a little and comes to a halt. Surge. Halt. Surge. Halt. There are a lot of us and the United States is at the very back of the line because the participating countries enter in alphabetical order. The only exceptions are Greece, which always enters first, and the host country, which always enters last.

  The closer we get to entering, the more the air around us crackles with excitement. It’s difficult not to get swept up in it, and so I do.

  “The Olympics are starting!” I whisper to Tawny.

  She smiles. “Isn’t this amazing?”

  I nod.

  Tawny takes my hand and squeezes it. “Remember this very moment, when we are about to walk in to the Opening Ceremonies. The slate is clean. Anything is possible, Espi. Anything. It’s all ahead of us, and our only job is to take it now that we are finally here. It’s our job to make history.”

  I squeeze her hand back. “This is such a dream.”

  “Well, get ready,” she says as we near the entrance, which is tall and wide and thick with athletes. “Because the dream is about to be a reality.”

  We crest the hill, and suddenly we are entering the arena, heading down the long, gently winding path in a giant parade of athletes from so many different countries. All of us are the best in the world at our sport.

  And somehow, I’m one of them.

  I take in the scene around me. Together we are a rainbow of color from our different flags and costumes, everyone obviously swelling with pride to be here and in awe that we are. “I can’t believe this!”

  The crowd goes wild with cheers and the camera flashes are blinding. So much is happening at once, plus the announcer is talking over all the noise from the audience and the live music blares from the center of the field, where we are headed. A woman with long black hair, dressed in sparkly white and blue, holds a microphone on the stage.

  I want to dance, I want to sing, I want to scream for joy. A lot of the athletes ahead of us are clapping and waving and blowing kisses at the fans.

  “I think we need to acknowledge our public,” I say to Tawny.

  She nods and the two of us whistle and wave and even skip a little bit when we can. “I could do this forever,” she says, grabbing my hand and lifting it high.

  “Me too.”

  “Do you feel it, Esperanza?”

  I stop waving a moment and look at Tawny. “Feel what?”

  “History calling out to us! History saying, ‘Come here, Tawny! Come here, Espi! I want to include you in the list of Olympic gold medalists!’”

  I laugh at the possibility. “My ears aren’t quite picking it up in all this craziness, but I trust you that history is making a plea.”

  “Good. Because it is.”

  I blow a kiss at the crowd, smiling bigger than I’ve ever smiled in my life. I imagine that my mother is watching me, that she is seeing this — seeing me — and I blow another kiss with her in mind.

  I hope she catches it.

  The thought makes my eyes sting with tears.

  “Hola, Mamá,” I say softly. “You’re right here with me in my heart.”

  Our grand entrance finally comes to an end as the athletes are directed to create a giant ring around the center stage and sit down on the glittery floor so we can enjoy the rest of the show. Once all the Americans are seated, I look around to see who is nearby. Meredith and Stacie are like two peas in a pod all over again, squished together and giggling. Danny Morrison is about ten people away and a few people back. I have a direct line of view to him, but he’s not looking at me, either because he doesn’t want to or because he doesn’t know I’m nearby. But I won’t let the quick sad flutter of my heart take over how I feel tonight. There are too many amazing things happening all around me to let this one small disappointment ruin the moment.

  As I continue to look around, I turn right into the staring eyes of Hunter on my other side, just a few feet away. Somehow, he still looks like a god in the ridiculous outfits we have on, and my heart flutters all over again. And when Hunter smiles wide at me, like he
’s never been happier to see me than right now at this very moment, I even smile back.

  How can I not?

  I’m so giddy I could fly away, like the hundreds of blue balloons floating up into the arena above us.

  The Olympics have officially begun!

  One of the places a person can fail most spectacularly in the entire world is at the Olympics. There are enormous crowds of people watching. Tons of press from every country across the globe. Your athletic peers, who are the best in their sport. To even land a spot in this show, you have to have reached a level of competition and a standard of performance that is not only beyond average but that reaches the stratosphere in terms of exactly how good you are. What’s more, you and your family have likely sacrificed for just about the entirety of your childhood and young adulthood for the mere opportunity to show your face in competition at the Olympic Games.

  Talk about pressure.

  Talk about anxiety.

  Talk about the possibility of astounding, tear-inducing triumph!

  After all that it takes to get here, to this place that is every competitive athlete’s ultimate dream, to not to live up to all those hopes and expectations pretty much borders on Shakespearean tragedy.

  But it happens all the time during the course of Olympic competition.

  It has to, right?

  Only three people win, and the rest of us lose — and lose big.

  I think about all of this when I wake up the next morning in my narrow little bed after the glitter and gorgeousness of the Opening Ceremonies. It runs through my mind when Meredith snubs me first thing and stalks off to Stacie’s room, probably to psych her up for her participation in the Team Event today, and all through the early morning as the two girls proceed to ignore me. My brain goes over it while I’m brushing my teeth and looking in the mirror and remembering how I jinxed myself in conversation with Tawny.

  Why do I have to be so superstitious?

  I look at the clock and take a deep breath. Speaking of Tawny, she’s going to be skating soon. The Team Event has a busy schedule today: the Ice Dance short dance, the Pairs free skate, and the Women’s short program.

  It’s time to get to the rink to watch my fellow skaters go for gold, so I grab my stuff and head to meet Coach. She is already waiting for me outside the arena doors when I arrive.

  “I wonder if Tawny is nervous,” I say first thing.

  “Tawny has been around for a long time. She’ll do fine,” Coach says as we head inside, straight through the Mixed Zone to the place where teammates can watch each other backstage. The stadium is packed, the audience cheering the Canadian ice dancers now coming off the ice.

  We’re just in time to see Tawny and Malcolm skate out to the center of the rink to take their opening pose. When their music starts, their grace is immediately apparent, their footwork beautiful, and their lifts just stunning. I hold my breath as the crowd oohs and aahs each new element in their program. Even if Tawny isn’t nervous, I’m nervous for her.

  But it turns out I have no reason to worry. Coach is right. Tawny and Malcolm not only do fine — they do amazingly well.

  “Tawny! Malcolm!” I’m cheering as they wave to the crowd and get ready to come off the ice to the Kiss and Cry.

  While Coach is still clapping, she leans toward me. “The US is still in contention for a medal. Everyone is coming through so far.” Then she looks at me. “Do you feel better now that Tawny is done?”

  I smile and give another cheer before answering because Tawny and Malcolm’s scores are posted, and they’re excellent — enough to bump the US up to third place overall. “Definitely better. Fantastic!”

  “Now all Stacie and Janie and Johnny need to do is keep up the momentum, ideally the upward momentum.”

  When it’s time for the pairs to do their free skate, Janie and Johnny do well enough to keep the US in a holding pattern at third, but not enough that we move up in the rankings. Between my teammates’ programs, I spend time in the skaters’ lounge, picking at all the food, and hang around with Tawny once she’s done with her press interviews. At one point, she starts bouncing up and down on her toes and her eyes get big.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so excited,” I say, laughing, following the line of her gaze to see what the fuss is about. Then I know why she’s freaking out. “Is that Katarina Witt?”

  Tawny can barely speak. “Mm-hm.” She gathers herself before going on. “I love her. The way she skates — all that grace — she’s one of the reasons why I got into ice dancing.”

  “Should we go say hi?” I ask, even though obviously this is what we need to do.

  “I think I’m too nervous to talk to her.”

  “You? Nervous? Never,” I say with a laugh. “Come on.” I take her hand and drag her toward the small crowd around the famous East German Olympian, and we wait our turn to get her autograph.

  The next time I look at my watch, I realize we’re due to watch Stacie. It’s already time for her short program.

  “Stacie could really pull us up to silver, or even gold,” Tawny says, the hope obvious in her tone.

  “It’s kind of weird to root for Stacie,” I admit as we head back out to the place where athletes can watch their teammates again. We go stand next to Coach Chen, who nods at us briefly, then turns her attention back to the ice. “I’m used to rooting against her.”

  Tawny raises her eyebrows. “I think a lot of skaters are used to rooting against that girl, including her friends. If they actually show up.”

  I look around. There are a lot of coaches and other skaters here, including most of the Americans, but a couple of people are conspicuously missing. “Hunter isn’t here,” I observe, though I’m not totally surprised. But there is someone whose absence does surprise me. “Meredith isn’t here either.”

  “Exactly,” Tawny says under her breath.

  Coach turns to me. “Don’t worry about that now. Stacie is about to start. Pay attention.”

  The crowd hushes. Everyone else near the entrance to the ice quiets down to watch.

  Stacie is going to nail this. I know she will. She might not be the nicest teammate in the world, but she’s going to wow the judges like she always does, and raise the US to gold for the Team Event.

  I would never admit this openly, but in this moment, as I look at Stacie out there at the center of the ice, all alone, waiting to begin, knowing that the entire world is watching her and that the entire US team is relying on her, a part of me is so glad — relieved, really — that it isn’t me with this responsibility.

  Being the alternate is kind of nice. You get to be number two, without all the pressure of being number one. It also means that you still get to be an underdog for the singles event, and have everyone rooting for you to come from behind to win.

  The initial bars to Stacie’s music fill the arena and she is off. But her trademark smile is missing, which is weird, and her strokes seem almost — I don’t know — sluggish?

  Maybe it’s just me, I think. Maybe I’m just being overly critical.

  But it isn’t long before something becomes clear — something no one could have predicted on Team USA, and something very unfortunate for all of us. Though I do remember a certain conversation about the value — or nonvalue — of the Team Event medal, according to a certain athlete named Stacie Grant. About how she couldn’t care less about a shared medal.

  Because here is the thing: Stacie looks as though she couldn’t care less about her short program either. She’s doing all the footwork and making all her jumps, but she’s going through the motions like a robot. There isn’t any glimpse of the charming skater who earned the nickname “America’s Darling on the Ice.” There’s only the nasty, selfish girl I’ve come to know over the last few weeks, who stabs her friends in the back and says mean things and obviously doesn’t intend to share a medal with anyone else.

  At least, that is what I see. And it isn’t just me.

  “How could she do th
is to everyone?” I say to Coach and Tawny, my mouth dropping wide as Stacie makes her way off the ice with only a very lukewarm reception from the crowd. She’s smirking and rolling her eyes like none of this matters. “It’s the Olympics!”

  “She obviously doesn’t care,” Tawny says in a small, disappointed voice.

  Coach Chen is shaking her head. “She did every element as though she couldn’t be bothered. I can’t get over the level that girl will stoop to. Her coach must be mortified.”

  In fact, Coach East has a look on her face I’ve never seen before — an angry one. She is livid. Her arms gesticulate wildly as she talks to Stacie, but Stacie doesn’t even seem to care. She barely even pays attention as the two of them sit down in the Kiss and Cry to wait for the monitor to flash confirmation of what everyone already knows: Stacie’s scores will be lackluster at best.

  But when they do come up, the disappointment still stings.

  “She knocked us back into fifth,” Tawny cries. “I can’t believe this!”

  Our eyes — and everyone else’s for that matter — are on Stacie in the Kiss and Cry, to watch for her reaction. What makes matters even worse is that all she does is shrug. Literally. Stacie shrugs off her scores, a smirk on her face the whole time. When she heads off to the Mixed Zone, where the press will definitely have questions for her after that performance, we follow after her.

  “I want to know what she has to say for herself,” Tawny says.

  It isn’t long before we find out.

  The press starts in right away. “Was there something on your mind tonight, Ms. Grant? Did something happen behind the scenes that’s distracting you?”

  Stacie rolls her eyes — she actually rolls her eyes. “Nope.”

  “Am I imagining this?” Tawny whispers. “Or is she actually acting this way on camera?”

  “You are absolutely not imagining this,” I whisper back. “It’s real and it’s live.”

  Another reporter’s voice rises above the rest. “How do you account for tonight’s … unusual performance for a skater of your caliber?”