Ice & Ivy' Hearts Collide

POV: Silver Preston

The ice is too white, like someone bottled up winter and slung it across the arena floor for my benefit.

I've skated on a variety of sheets in my time. Training facilities the size of a strip mall with sickly looking fluorescent lights that reminded me of wasps' nests. Frozen ponds in Vermont that groaned and complained as my skates cut through the thin ice. An Olympic sized oval in Colorado Springs where the air had been so thin I'd practically floated over the ice.

But here at Nationals it stretches before me, all highly polished glass that makes the whole room look like a Hollywood set.

Each overhead light reflects my image back at me in fractals and shards, a thousand tiny Silvers in sequined blue catching the lights. The sharp line of my ponytail that pulled so hard against my scalp. My eyes, which had watched so many skaters come and go since I was eight, since network news anchors gushed about "Georgia's golden girl" and my pre-teen face had been beamed across magazine spreads. A decade of doubts and misgivings tucked behind my carefully applied eye shadow and winning smile.

The crowd presses up against the boards, blurs of color and sound and incessant camera flashes. Parents clutching programs to their chests like sacred texts. Coaches scribbling frantic notes on clipboards, their scratching hands making enough noise that for a moment I think

I can hear them from the ice.

Beyond the lights, cameras wait. Snipers with telephoto lenses ready to frame my shattered moment for all the world to see.

My stomach tightens, a curl of ice deep in my gut.

Not nerves.

I've had decades to learn how to swallow those down.

Since I was eight, since network news anchors gushed about "Georgia's golden girl" and my pre-teen face had been beamed across magazine spreads.

My skates bite into the ice and for a moment I feel right, feel the music in my bones. Another decade of this, of pushing through the panic until it's just another part of me, another thing I can make disappear. I am so very good at making things disappear.

"Remember the lutz setup, Leona," I snap, not looking towards the coaching box where no doubt my mother's face is waiting. My jaw is tight, my whole body rigid with the need to make this right. "Low and forward, not up and back."

I don't need to look to know that Leona's crossed her arms over her chest in that stiff, disapproving way of hers. That her mouth is a tight line, her whole body braced to deliver another lecture about heart and soul and whatever other skating buzzwords were in fashion this week.

Leona Preston has worn many hats in her tenure as my coach, manager, media trainer, and general guardian angel. But mother is not a role she has ever worn with ease. Perhaps it is unfair of me to hold this against her, but it's not as if I have many other options to fill that particular niche in my life.

She'd nearly bent me over backwards during warmup, her hands white knuckled against my shoulders. "You don't get to fail," she'd hissed at me, her voice all clipped and clinical. "Not here. Not now. This is what we've worked for."

We , as if she were the one launching into flight and trusting in physics and muscle memory to bring her safely back down.

The music begins.

Leona knows what she is doing, always has. She chose the music with surgical precision, selecting the thunderous second piano concerto by Rachmaninoff for its emotive power. Senior-level competitions were all about the technical elements, the clean jumps and difficult spins, but she also knew how important the program components were. How many times had I seen judges' scores inflate simply because the music had drawn a particular emotion from the skater? I let the first few notes of the concerto wash over me, let the pounding heart of it lull me into a kind of half-trance. This was where all my doubts and misgivings and second-guessing needed to die. Where Silver Preston the skater could step out onto the ice and leave Silver Preston the self-absorbed child prodigy behind.

I push off, skates slicing the air in a clean high note that blends seamlessly with the music. The opening moves of the program are all familiar to me, a kind of comfort. Spiral into toe loop, all smooth and tripled, followed by a double axel with my arms slicing the air in sharp dramatic angles against the overhead lights.

It all flows together, a mixture of muscle memory and well-practiced precision.

The crowd snaps, cheers mixing into the blinding flashes of cameras. I catch glimpses of faces pressed against the boards, a little girl who looks like she's seen a ghost as I glide by. Then it is gone, the program moving on, and I am focused on something else entirely. Something bigger than myself. Something that has been drilled into me since I was twelve years old.

I move into the next set of moves, the heart of the program, the triple lutz. My money jump as the commentators liked to say. The jump that had gotten me three national junior titles and a reputation as the next big thing, my face beaming from every skating magazine in the country.

A clean triple lutz under ISU rules had nearly six points of base value, with the potential for an additional grade of execution. That meant the difference between first and fourth place, between Olympic hopeful and forgotten also-ran, between a lifetime of fame and fortune or returning to my father's dull little practice arena in Georgia. Leona had drilled the proper lutz setup into me since I was twelve, had made me skate it a thousand times in a thousand different rinks until it was muscle memory. I carve the ice, all proper edges and angles, and for a moment I feel like I am flying.

The crowd holds its breath, and I know they are picturing the jump in their heads as they always do, picturing me as I've always been. Watching every competition since I was ten. I see the jump in my mind, see myself take off, feel the weightlessness as my body tumbles end over end. Three perfect rotations and suddenly I am coming back down, landing with my skates slicing the ice at exactly the right angle. My heart pounds in my ears as I watch the crowd's collective gasp, feel the thrill of the moment as hundreds of eyes follow my every movement, the way a director might tell a camera to lead in the middle of a film. And then it is over. The crowd erupts, a cacophony of cheers and applause mixing into the blinding flashes of cameras. For a moment, I think I am going to die a happy woman.

My leg buckles.

My heart is beating impossibly fast as I realize what it is. There is no give in the ice as I fall, my landing skate sliding across it, unable to find purchase, my body folding over in the wrong direction. I hear a sickening pop as my knee bends at an impossible angle, and suddenly the world has turned sideways. My knee feels impossibly far from the rest of my body, and there is something truly disorienting about that. There is nothing to save me, no second chance, and suddenly the whole world is spinning faster than my skates as I plummet backwards onto the ice.

Pain blooms white-hot in my left knee as I hit the ice, shoulder first, my head snapping backwards in a way that makes my whole body feel like it's on fire. The impact steals every breath in my lungs at once, leaving behind a stunned silence that seems to stretch for eternity. The hushed gasps of the crowd hang in the air long enough for the microphones to pick up the sound and send it reverberating around the arena.

The music swells and dies behind me, leaving the stunned silence in its wake.

I try to get up. My left leg buckles beneath me as soon as I put weight on it, sending me sprawling sideways across the ice. My whole world is a blur of light and sound, of sharp smells and colors that I can't quite place. I taste copper where my teeth have scraped my lip, feel the sting of tears that I refuse to let fall smear the lights into fractured bits of color.

My head is still spinning when I see Leona. My mother stands in her coaching box, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, her mouth a tight line of disappointment.

I know that look, know that expression better than almost anything in this world.

"Get up," I whisper, only for my voice to be swallowed by the music. "Get up," I say again, louder this time. "Finish it."

My hands brush the ice, useless, as I try to push myself up, my knee screaming in protest. I see fractured, wobbling lights. My entire body is on fire, feeling too far away from my senses to matter at all. But somehow, I hear the little girl at the edge of the boards. I hear her crying, her voice swallowed up by the music.

The last thing I see before I black out is the ghost of a smile across my mother's face.

The last thing I hear is my own voice, saying something that none of them ever heard. That none of them will ever hear. That will drown in the music, in the cameras, in the lights and the noise and the roar of the crowd.

It can't end this way.

The arena lights blink out, one by one, until the whole world goes dark. And Silver Preston, America's sweetheart figure skater, gets to know first hand that the ice can win out in the end.