“Well, I’m excited! I was trying to be patient. I was giving you space, I was letting you get there in your own time, I was being a very good sister-”
“You were,” I say, smiling.
“But Elida.” Her voice drops, sudden and fierce and certain. “That bastard took more than enough from you. He took your career for gods’ sake. Your confidence. He’s had enough.”
“I know.”
“I’m just very happy.”
“I know that too. Iris?”
“Yes?”
“Tell me it’s going to be okay.”
“It’s going to be okay,” she says. Without hesitation. “It’s going to be so much more than okay.”
19
Chapter 19
MATEO
She’s different.
I clock it the second I step onto the ice - she’s standing at the blue line with her chin up and an expression I haven’t seen before.
She seems - lit up. That’s the only word for it.
Skelly.
“Something different today,” she says to the group. “We’re going to work on an X stop.”
Barrett raises his hand. “A what?”
“An X stop,” she replies. “It’s a figure skating technique - one blade perpendicular to the other, full weight on the lead edge, the trailing blade dragging to create resistance and control the stop.” She demonstrates it slowly - the glide and positioning of the feet and then the clean controlled deceleration. Her skatesstop in an ‘X’ shape as she stops. “It’s not a technique you’ll use in a game. This isn’t functional for hockey in the way your normal stops are. What it is, is a precision exercise. It requires exact edge control, exact weight distribution, exact timing. Everything sloppy in your skating shows up in an X stop. It’s a diagnostic as much as anything.”
“More figure skating,” Mercer mutters, under his breath.
“You’re doing edge work,” she says pleasantly. “The fact that it’s from figure skating is your problem, not mine.”
She demonstrates it again, full speed this time. Her stop is precise and silent.
“Your turn. Don’t try to rush it. Don’t try to make it fancy. Find the edge.”
We all push off. It’s comically difficult.
Barrett overshoots on his first attempt. Two freshmen collide trying to find the positioning and end up in an undignified heap that she skates past with a helpful smile.
“Keep going,” she says cheerfully. “It’s going to feel wrong at first.”
I test out the technique and I watch her cheerfully correcting someone else. There’s a quality to her today that I can’t stop noticing - it’s almost like a quiet elation.
Whatever happened, something has changed.
I think about the text I sent.
You deserve good things, Elida.
