"OH MY GOD." My hands are flapping. Literally flapping at my sides like a bird attempting takeoff, my body channeling the surplus of emotion into the only physical outlet available. "What do I say? What is the protocol? Is there a speech? Do I bow? Do I curtsy? What is the figure skating equivalent of an acceptance speech? Raphaël, HELP."
He chuckles, the sound rich and resonant and carrying the particular fondness of a man watching someone he cares about experience a joy they had stopped believing was possible.
"You say yes, I would like in, and then you say thank you," he offers. "In that order. It is not a Nobel Prize ceremony, Mae. It is an acceptance. Use your words. The ones you used to dismantle an entire locker room last night should be more than sufficient for this."
"Those were angry words! These are happy words! They use different muscles!"
I try to kick him in the shin for the sarcasm, but he sidesteps the attempt with the reflexes of a man who has been anticipating retaliatory violence from me all week and has incorporated evasion into his resting posture. He laughs as my blade swipes empty air, the sound bouncing off the rink boards.
"Do not waste the judges' time," he says, nodding toward the four evaluators who are watching our exchange with expressionsthat range from amused to delighted. "Accept before they reconsider."
"Oh! Right!"
I spin back toward the judges, my cheeks burning with a blush that could probably be detected by satellite. I clasp my hands in front of me, attempt a bow that is somewhere between formal respect and an involuntary buckle of my overwhelmed knees, and say, with every ounce of composure I can gather from the scattered remains of my dignity:
"I accept. Completely. Wholeheartedly. With my entire chest and also my legs, which are shaking, and my arms, which will not stop flapping, and every other body part that is currently experiencing emotions I do not have names for. Thank you. Truly. I accept."
The lead judge smiles warmly and extends her hand, which I shake with both of mine because one hand does not feel sufficient for the magnitude of this moment.
Cheers erupt.
The sound crashes into the rink from the direction of the tunnel entrance, and I whip around to see the hockey team. They have not gone to the showers. Not a single one. They are crowded in the entrance to the rink, still in their practice gear, still drenched in sweat from seven and a half hours of Raphaël's training regimen, and they are waving their towels above their heads like flags at a championship victory parade.
Henderson is whistling through his fingers. The freshman rookie is jumping up and down, his earlier face-down-on-the-mat exhaustion apparently cured by the spectacle unfolding on the ice. Collins and Marchetti are clapping in a synchronized rhythm that the rest of the team picks up until the tunnel reverberates with a percussive celebration that makes the boards rattle.
They stayed to watch.
All of them. The players who showed up at dawn for a brutal practice led by a captain they chose forty-eight hours ago, who endured every drill and every circuit and every formation Raphaël devised, stayed after dismissal because they wanted to see the woman who threw papers at their former captain and called them pathetic get her moment on the ice.
My chest cracks open.
Not with pain. With the violent, overwhelming expansion of a heart that has spent years in a cage of its own construction and is now being offered a world large enough to hold everything it contains.
Sage, Archie, and Jace come barreling onto the ice.
Sage reaches me first, her dark ponytail flying behind her as she slides across the surface in her sneakers with the reckless disregard of a woman who does not care about traction when celebration is at stake. She collides with me in a hug that nearly takes us both down, her arms locking around my shoulders, her voice in my ear shouting words that blur together into a continuous stream of joy.
"YOU DID IT! YOU DID IT YOU DID IT YOU DID IT! I KNEW IT! I TOLD JACE IN THE TUNNEL, I SAID SHE IS GOING TO GET IN, AND HE SAID OBVIOUSLY, AND ARCHIE SAID DUH, AND WE WERE ALL RIGHT! MAE! YOU DID IT!"
Archie arrives next, wrapping his long arms around both of us from the side, his grin so wide it looks like it might reach his ears.
"The quad spin was INSANE!" he says, shaking us both with an enthusiasm that compromises our collective balance. "The landing was clean! I have been trying to land a single spin for three weeks and you just threw a quad like it was Tuesday! Which it is! It is literally Tuesday and you just threw a quad on a Tuesday! The symbolism writes itself!"
Jace, who is the most composed of the three but whose eyes are suspiciously bright, claps me on the shoulder with a firm grip.
"Your father would be proud of you, Mae," he says quietly.
The words cut through the noise with the precision of a blade, finding the exact center of the emotion I have been trying to contain. My composure, which has been held together by adrenaline and disbelief and the sheer velocity of events, finally gives way.
I cry.
Not delicately. Not the single-tear-rolling-down-the-cheek variety that looks elegant in movies. I cry with my whole body, the sobs erupting from a place so deep inside me that they carry the accumulated weight of years. Years of being told I was not enough. Years of watching my dreams dissolve into the mundane architecture of survival. Years of walking past ice rinks and feeling the phantom pull of blades I had convinced myself I was not allowed to wear.
Sage holds me tighter. Archie rubs my back. Jace keeps his hand on my shoulder, steady and anchoring, the three of them forming a barrier around my grief and my joy and the messy, indistinguishable place where the two collide.
The lead judge presses a folder into my hands once the tears subside enough for me to function. Inside is the registration information, the team schedule, the competition timeline, and a welcome letter that I will read seventeen times tonight before I fall asleep clutching it like a child with a stuffed animal.
"We will be in touch with further details," she says warmly. "Go celebrate. You have earned it."
