I was born holding my breath, my first brought water into my lungs, and the first time I opened my eyes they burned.
I figure this might be the reason I have always been fascinated with water of all kinds. The lakes that still form algae, the rivers that rush to escape themselves, the oceans that are strongenough to give life and merciless enough to drown it away, the rain and how it poured down so relentlessly. And yet, no other was more captivating to me than the ice.
I admired it for many reasons, but most of all I envied how it was able to remain solid in nature but melt when necessary. I wanted to be able to have the kind of balance the ice did, to be able to change state so effortlessly without having to remake its composition. No matter what state water was in, it was always one hydrogen atom and two oxygen atoms.
All my life, I was certain of one thing and one thing alone; that I would always be near the water and that I never wanted to part from it.
The first time I fell for the ice, I broke my nose. I fell face first onto a frozen lake and watched the blood seep out and between the cracks. I didn’t shed a tear even at seven years old because pain to me has always been a revelation of sorts. There wasn’t an ounce of regret in my body even as my mother screamed in distress and my father called an ambulance and Beck covered her eyes.
I was never one to shield my eyes, I looked at everything head-on because I learned very early on that there were no rose-coloured glasses in real life.
The doctor told my mother that my nose was definitely broken and needed surgery to be fixed. When I woke up after the procedure with a black eye and a killer headache, I realised that I had a completely different nose. It was much straighter, my bridge was higher and it took a while to heal properly. But ever since then, I kept insisting that my mother took me back to the ice over the lake. At first, she couldn’t understand why, but I spent most of my time as a child at the aquarium watching the sea life in their own little world. Iwantedthat. My own little world.
Eventually, the ice and all the lakes across Nottingham had melted as the spring blossomed through. Now the lakes had lily pads and leaves floating on the top instead of icicles. I couldn’t help but feel betrayed first—I’m aware of how foolish it must be to feel as though the seasons are a traitor to you. But it was how I felt nevertheless, and so in my mother’s attempt to satiate me, she took me to the ice rink to watch the hockey players. But I couldn’t find it within myself to care for the sport, it looked far too harsh and aggressive.
She figured it was a lost cause until, just as we were about to leave, the figure skaters came on to practice, and I was beyond mesmerized. I begged her to let us stay just a little while longer. We bought snacks from the vending machine and watched till the sun set. The very next week, she signed me up for classes to learn for myself and in her own words she’dnever seen a seven-year-old so dedicated to something in her entire life.I went from beginner to intermediate classes within a few months.
I will spare you all the humility gymnastics and tell you that there are people in this world who were just born to do one thing, and that thing would be their calling for the rest of their life. I knew very early on that I was going to be a great figure skater. I knew that I wasn’t going to stop until I was cemented in history until the end of time. I knew right from the start that I would go down in the hall of fame and I wouldn’t rest until the echoing sound of screaming crowds was of no difference to me than the gulls that soared across the sky in the early mornings.
I worked nonstop from that point onwards, competing in any local competitions that would let me. By the time I was nine, I participated in Skate UK Passport (Bronze, Silver, and Gold). I did a few private club competitions as well, competing in regionals when I was eleven, then countrywide competitions from thirteen onwards. But there were competitions all over the world I had to chase and my family did too. And so we movedconstantly, existing in a permanent state of uprooting. I knew this was not easy on them, especially on my sisters, who often wished to make friends. But it was what it was, and there was no changing it. I was hungry, borderlineravenous, for this one dream that I wasn’t willing to let go.
I often grew up being told that it was clear as day and certain in the snow that I hadonlysisters and grew up the only boy in the house. At first, I despised being told that I was of striking resemblance to the girls. I wanted so deeply to be my own person in every right, perhaps that’s why I took up figure skating as well. It was the one thing that could be mine and mine alone. Whether it was in my mannerisms, the way I spoke to people, or my nature within itself. At every return, I was told that I would always be the kind of boy who would be surrounded by women. I grew up to realize that that was not a bad thing, and it might just be the greatest gift of my entire life.
When we were a bit younger, Beck was always coined the leader of our bunch, perhaps, because she was the oldest and it was expected. Jiwon and Bae were the kind of people you just needed to keep an eye out for at all times, not that they were incompetent in any way, but just that there are people in the world who are born to lean and those who were born to be the shoulders they can rest on. Iwantedmy sisters to rest. I didn’t want them to ever have to be the leaves on the trees the wind assailed, to have to endure thunderstorms and hurricanes. I would be their umbrella, be their shelter.
But I am only fifteen at the moment at which I write this and I’m still trying to prove to Beck that she doesn’t have to be so strong all the time. But Rebecca, who’d shortened her name to Beck a few years back, thought it sounded more mature, more fitting for the new persona she had built up for herself.
“I figure it’s time I’m more grown up, don’t you think?” she’d brought up to me one night as we sat in the dim lighting of the living room eating leftover kimbap.
“I figure you’re only fourteen,” I’d told her at the time.
But the nickname stuck and all of a sudden she was no longer Rebecca Kyujin Kwon—pigtails, fairy lights, and sticky cotton candy fingers from the town fair. She wasjustBeck—slicked back buns, neat handwriting, self-help books, and secrecy.
“Beck’s different now, Daddy, she doesn’t want to play Barbies anymore!” Jiwon would whine all the time to our father, hugging her patchwork bunny close to her chest, seated on his lap. “She’s changed.”
“Girls do that sometimes,” my father informed her. “Try to imagine it as though it is a necessity of nature, just as the seasons shift from frigid winters to blossoming springs so the harvests can grow. We do not mourn the seasons that we leave behind because we know that wemustand we know that there is better to come.”
“Maybe I liked spring Rebecca just as she was,” Jiwon insisted in her twelve-year-old fit.
“We have to love Beck through all her seasons, Wony, throughallher seasons, frost and all,” I assured her. I like to believe that she understood then.
I was set to compete in Skate America by the end of my fifteenth summer, the biggest national competition I’d entered yet. As a component of the ISU Grand Prix Figure Skating series, Skate America is an international senior figure skating tournament. The location is altered every year. Four categories have medals: ice dance, pair skating, men’s and women’s singles. I had been training nonstop for six months.
So when our father bought the beach house in California it would force I, his prematurely workaholic fifteen-year-old son, to do the one thing that I dreaded most in this life.To stand still.To be still.To remain unmoving. At least for the summertime, I promised my father, promised my sisters.
“This past year has been a lot for you and the girls.” My father sat me down the day he bought the house. “You’ve worked exceptionally hard, Wyn.”
“And yet,” I responded plainly.
“And yet?” he wondered, equally perplexed.
“And yet hard work doesn’t guarantee success, does it? You can give everything you’ve got and work all the days of your life and still have it amount to nothing, no?” I reminded him, unusually pessimistic.
“You know what I know?” He sighed, placing a hand on my shoulder with a warm smile and kind eyes. “I know that there is no possible universe out there in which all your efforts amount to nothing. I believe with all my heart that in every existence of yours, you are a star.”
“A curious existence it is, to be only fifteen and burning on ice,” Beck said as she placed two steaming cups of hot chocolate at the table in front of us both. “A curious one indeed.”
“What’s even more peculiar is to be so self-assured and certain of yourself at only sixteen,” I countered with a hint of humor in my tone, and so she gave me a knowing glance, a shadow of a smile behind her eyes.
