“Why don’t you want to skate, Bettie? What are you afraid of?”
I try to scowl. I do. But Hall’s standing so close, analyzing me without meanness, without a biting remark waiting. I don’t have to wonder what’s brewing in the back of his mind. Don’t have to be careful. All he wants is for me to skate with my family and enjoy myself. (And then probably carve an ice sculpture later. He’s obsessed with them.)
“I don’t want to fall down in front of them. They’ll tease me until I die.”
“I won’t let you fall.”
“I’m not any good at skating.”
“Aren’t you?” he asks, a sly sparkle to his eyes. “You should try it, just to be sure.”
His hand in mine, we tread to the perimeter of the ice and... I feel it. A pull of magic.
You can do anything, it whispers.
The magic has Hall’s voice, his peppermint scent. It feels exactly like a warm, conspiratorial smile pressed to my cheek, a steady hand on my back, which shouldn’t make me shiver like it does. Even as he glides backward, one sure foot behind the other, away from me, I feel his hands. They’re everywhere I need them: gripping mine, leading me; on my back, hovering just behind my shoulders. One very near my hip, but not quite touching. An invisible thumb pushes a wayward lock of hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear.
He watches my reaction as I test the magic, discovering how firmly it holds me. Grins when my eyes widen in disbelief, either of my arms outstretched, gliding along on one leg. He laughs at my astonishment when I try a spin, which I shouldn’t be able to pull off, and the spinning doesn’t stop until I tell it to. However I want to leap and twist and spin, I leap and twist and spin.
Kaia hoots, her dozens of bracelets clinking together as she claps. “Look at you, Betts!”
It’s not me, it’s the magic, but I still soak up her praise. I close my eyes and tilt my face toward the sun like a flower, the best at something for once. All I want to do is race as fast as I can, spraying sparks behind me like comets. Quicker, quicker, wind-stung skin, digits numb, hair flying. Athena intercepts me and grips my arm, using my momentum to fling me toward Grandpa, who chuckles throatily as he catches me and flings me back again. Athena playfully tugs on my hat—an infinitesimal tweak—as mymomentum curbs. I stare after her as she skates away, silvery-blond hair swishing back and forth like a unicorn’s tail.
“Incoming!” a nephew cries, whooshing by. They’re all a little faster, a little better coordinated than they ought to be, which I think is the reason we stay out on the ice as long as we do. The only thing better than being good at something is being good at something while other people watch. Or maybe that’s just my mindset.
Dad, who resolutely told us all no, he wouldnotget on the ice, has given in. Twirling my mother, admiring her skills with a besotted softness to his eyes until too many of us notice and he glares it into submission. The pair of them are night and day: she’s quite verbose about her affection for him, whereas he photographs his feelings when he can’t give them voice, leaving snapshots of her smile, his wedding ring, the dining room doorway where he notched the height of their kids every year, in places where she’ll discover them and smile, clutching the pictures to her heart.
Athena and Felix are racing side by side as the kids scream, egging them on. Felix plays dirty, jabbing her with an elbow. Athena plays dirtier, closing him in until he topples off the rink’s edge.
“Ragh!” Felix growls, tugging a scarf from around his neck. He’s got another around his waist like a belt. The second he gets rid of it, the wind brings it right back like a boomerang and the fabric attaches itself to him with static cling. I ought to magic up some banana peels as punishment for him leaking pictures of me, but I don’t have the heart. My brother’s clueless and he’s about to start over yet again, another spiral followed by a New and Improved Incarnation of Felix. It won’t stop him from remarrying again in two years, though, promising his undying devotion to someone who won’t keep it.
The magic eventually says goodbye to my family. I watch it leave them one by one—the children complain that they’re cold and hungry. Grandma has three voicemail messages. Grandpa’s missing a game on TV. Dad’s knees are bothering him. Athena and Mom are the last holdouts, the former giving up only after she jumps and comes back down wobbly. Casting left and right to see if anyone witnessed the bumble, she shrugs and exits on stiff legs.
Mom’s on fire. She doesn’t need magic. She does trick after trick, arms extended in smooth lines, skates a blur. Dad, I can’t help but notice, is lingering at the top of the hill where the base of the driveway begins, watching. Whenever she falls, she pushes herself right back up and keeps skating. She waves whenever she gets close to me, but mostly keeps to herself, doing her own thing. I bet they’re both remembering the days when she wanted to be a dancer.
The sun is setting, firecracker orange wrapping around treetops, then their middles, sinking along the ground as if swirling the drain. Twilight marbles the ice, flashing new colors every few seconds, until I wonder if the ice has always been dusty rose or deep heliotrope. The magic rink is a vivid flame for the span of one minute; then the sun slips lower, lower, over to the opposite side of the world to clock in for its other shift, and now the ice is a mirror for starlight. I turn to ask Hall if he’s ready to go back up the mountain, but he says, “One last go-round?”
I’m going to miss being an expert ice skater. Wonder what else he could make me miraculously excel at? I should take the bar exam.
I lace my fingers in his. Even through the cotton of our gloves, he gives off a shocking warmth. It pumps straight to my heart, turning me into a light, glowing from within.
I’m a force of merriment and cheer, he’d said.A feeling. That’s how it feels to be in proximity to Hall, too.
Hand in hand, we glide, breathing in the frost. Hall’s ears and nose are tinged pink, hair ruffling. “What’s it like?” I ask. “Being in a body after so long without one?”
“Like my magic is more compact, more concentrated. You’d think I’d find the body cumbersome, but I actually feel like a feather now. I’m all right here”—he gestures to himself—“instead of spread out, stretching around the world.”
There’s no nice way of putting this. I’ll have to be blunt.
“Ice skating isn’t going to make me a good person, if that’s your goal.”
“You’re already a good person. I have X-ray vision, I can see it. We’re only doingthisto have fun.” His hand squeezes mine gently, and I could be imagining it, but I think the rink is growing. Broadening by the minute, so that our one last go-round stretches on. I glance over my shoulder at the Watson house, a tiny speck now on its piney ridge, shining with Christmas lights. Snow falls softly all around, but not directly over us. I ask Hall why that is.
He reddens, snowflakes belatedly speckling his hair as if, until now, they’d simply forgotten to.
“It wasn’t intentional. Sometimes the magic responds to my subconscious.”
“Why would you subconsciously not want it to snow over the skating rink?”
