Bittersweet Page 3

  Chapter Two

  Cupcakes of Destiny

  White chocolate cupcakes with pale blue vanilla icing formed into peaks and dusted with silver sprinkles

  Dear Hudson Avery:

  Lola Capriani knew a thing or two about chasing dreams.

  The daughter of poor Italian immigrants who settled right here in Western New York, Lola worked hard her entire life, overcoming obstacle after obstacle until she achieved her dream of becoming a professional figure skater. With four Olympic gold medals and nearly five decades as a top-level international competitor and entertainer, Lola returned home to follow a new dream: nurturing athletic talent in young skaters. Through her private coaching practice, she mentored girls like yourself as they worked toward their own dreams.

  Following Lola’s death last year, her family established The Lola Capriani Foundation for Winter Athletics to provide financial assistance to emerging athletes for training, equipment, travel, entry fees, and other costs associated with winter athletic competition. In honor of that undertaking, and in memory of Lola’s lifelong dedication and spirit, we are pleased to announce the Capriani Cup, an exciting new competition for junior and senior class female figure skaters in Erie County who wish to continue skating at the college level. Registered skaters will compete on Saturday, February 1st, for a $50,000 scholarship for collegiate studies and related skating expenses.

  As a former Lola Capriani student, you are encouraged to enter this rewarding competition. Additional information and registration forms are available online at caprianifoundation.org.

  We hope to see you on the ice soon, and we wish you success and happiness in all your endeavors, wherever your future takes you!

  Sincerely,

  Amy

  Amy Hains

  Director, Foundation Special Projects

  I was Bug’s age when I met the legendary Lola Capriani. She’d just nailed a triple-axel/triple-loop combo at the Buffalo Skate Club downtown, and I’d just ducked into the third stall of the ladies’ room to reconsider my career path (*cough* throw up). When I hobbled back out on my rubber skate guards, hair plastered across my forehead and skin as white as the ice, she was on the sidelines with my father, looking a whole lot meaner than she did in the posters on my bedroom wall.

  “I got four gold medals and two titanium joints older than you, greenblades,” she said to me then, slapping her gloves against her hip and nodding toward the bathroom where I’d just been. “I don’t know what that was all about, but you’d betta walk it off. Capisce?”

  I just about peed my pink leotard when she looked at me, but there’s something downright instinctive about yes-ma’am-ing a septuagenarian with a scorpion tattooed between her shoulder blades and an accent that says I don’t take crap from nobody—especially when she could still bang out gold-medaling moves like old Lola could. I nodded like a wooden puppet, head on a string, and followed her out onto the rink.

  She worked me for nearly two hours.

  I found out later it was an audition.

  I found out later I made the cut.

  My father seemed as humbled and starstruck as I felt. He didn’t say anything to me after the workout until we got into the car, and when he finally spoke, his voice was thick with wonder. “This Capriani woman … this is your chance, Hudson. Your ticket to greatness. If I can find a way to give you this shot, promise me you won’t let her down.”

  I smiled, and Dad started to glow from the inside out, like this was his dream, too. Maybe it was. I wasn’t sure what brought a globe-trotting ice princess like Lola Capriani back to a busted-up place like Watonka, but I knew what a big deal it was that she’d agreed to train a new student—especially since there was no way my parents could afford her regular fees.

  Six years later, after I quit the ice, I learned that she’d agreed to take me at half the cost because of what she saw when I finally shook off my nerves and auditioned that night: drive and potential. Unlimited, unjaded heart. A spark.

  When Dad looked at me from the driver’s seat with all the pride and hope in the world, asking me to make that one promise, I nodded, same as before.

  Head.

  On.

  A string.

  And I kept nodding, right up until the night of the Empire Games.

  If I’d known about Lola’s funeral in time, I would’ve gone. I wasn’t holding a grudge about what happened—it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t paid to be my friend or counselor, on the ice or off. She was there the night I threw the event—a sideline seat to the whole disaster. With that single act of unsportsmanlike defiance, I’d thumbed my nose at the ice and severed our arrangement. Left the competition. Walked away from the medals and roses and the promise of a bright future outside of this broken, rusted-out husk of a town. When I turned in my official resignation, Lola took the letter from my hands, nodded once, and walked away. There was nothing more she could do for me, and we both knew it. We never spoke again. I didn’t even know she died until I read about it online, three days after her funeral.

  But I didn’t come down to the beach in the dead of winter today to wallow. I came here to skate. And judging from the solid curtain of white stretched clear across Canada, I’ve got about two hours before that storm hits.

  I fold the letter into a tiny square, shove it to the bottom of my inside fleece pocket, and lace up.

  DANGER:

  THIN ICE ON LAKE!

  NO SKATING, SLEDDING, OR SNOWMOBILING

  —Watonka Department of Parks and Recreation

  I tap the base of the signpost with my toe pick as the white blanket of Lake Erie shifts and blows its bitter breath through my hair. Technically I’m not skating on the lake, just the runoff—a long, shallow slick that freezes over the beach, right near the abandoned Fillmore Steel Mill. It’s as close to perfect as an untended outdoor rink can be: level, mostly smooth, swept clear by the constant wind. The air is thick with industrial leftovers, but out here, invisible cancer-causing particles aside, I get to be alone.

  As I push off from the post, silver blades scrape against the ice like knives sharpening on an old stone. The memory of each movement is imprinted; bones and muscles and ligaments know exactly how to bend and twist, push and pull, stretch and snap to propel me across the ice. Back and forth, over and over, I engrave the makeshift rink with lines and figure eights. When I return next weekend, the wind will have erased them as though I was never here.

  After a solid warm-up, I stop for a hot chocolate break and unpack my thermos, gazing out over the vast stretch of nothingness that lies between here and Canada. They don’t make a warning sign for it, but that’s the real danger—that downright manic-depressive desolation. No joke—winter on the beaches of Watonka is about the emptiest thing you’ll ever see in your life. When you’re out here alone, contemplating all the things you didn’t do and the person you didn’t become … if you think about it too long—if you stand here and consider the great bleakness of it all—a hush seeps into the gray space, and the wind will hollow out your bones, and the purest kind of loneliness comes up from the inside to swallow you like an avalanche.

  I drop the thermos back into my bag and switch out damp gloves for a dry pair. Behind the smokestacks that stand guard around the old mill, the wind shifts, pushing out an invisible plume of burnt air. I tighten the scarf over my face to mute the rotten-egg smell and press on, one-two-three glide, one-two-three glide.

  Glide …

  Glide …

  Glide …

  I left a lot of things behind the night of my last competition, but not this part. I close my eyes and sail across the ice in the dead end of November, and when the wind rushes up to kiss me, I let it. I lick my lips and welcome it in, because the frigid bite reminds me that inside, I’m warm and alive. That inside, my heart still beats for something, calling me to the windburned shores of Lake Erie when fear and regret leave no other haven.

  I pump my legs to amp up my speed, closing in on the far edge of t
he runoff that meets the lake.

  Does Hudson Avery still have what it takes? Will she make the near-impossible turn, or will she hurtle across the outer reaches of the ice, destined for a watery, hypothermic death?

  The lake is coming up fast, everything around me a white blur. I push harder, legs tight and strong, and just before I cross onto the lake ice, I suck in a cool breath and hold it. I tilt my blades against the world and bank hard, looping around the bend, shooting up a spray of shaved ice. The sound is like a single wave shushing up the shore, a whisper falling out over a blue-white sea. I still hear it in my dreams.

  Phishhhh …

  I race back to the other end, arms out like a great blue heron about to take flight. I hold another deep breath, whip my leg around, and launch into a scratch spin, twirling like a top as I pull my arms tight against my chest. When I’m ready to stop, it’s that simple: I set my toe pick on the ice and the world around me halts, immediate, soundless, a snowflake alighting on the soft shoulders of November.

  Hudson Avery, ladies and gentlemen! Straight from the frozen shores of Lake Erie to the international hall of champions, skating through a shower of roses to take her well-earned place in the winner’s circle….

  Behind me, the imaginary crowd fades as the smokestacks rise up, wind whipping through the iron belly of the mill, moaning like a ghost. The chain-link fence around it shudders as if to laugh, and that great bleakness hovers above my skin, reminding me as always that three years ago, I walked away from the roses. The cheering crowds. The winner’s circles.

  Last weekend, alone on this desolate beach, I was certain the ice-skating part of me would stay locked in the closet forever. Certain I’d torn up my so-called ticket to greatness and burned all the bridges on the path there. Certain that while the rest of the world moved on, I’d be stuck in my mother’s old diner, rusting like the gates of Watonka, bound forever to these shores as my bones turned to ice.

  But now?

  I look back over the lake and take a swallow of air, lungs burning with cold and pollution. Generally speaking, I don’t like to spend my work break standing out in the bleached, bone-numbing cold of Watonka daydreaming about all the shoulda-coulda-wouldas.

  But I can’t stop thinking about the letter. The second chance. Fifty thousand dollars …

  I lift my face to the bright part of the sky where the sun should be, and in my mind, I hear a new version of that old saying about trees falling in the forest: If a girl spends every weekend sneaking off to the lake in the dead of winter and no one is around to see her, is she really skating at all?

  Twenty feet offshore, an ice volcano erupts, a spout of water shot high in the sky.

  Phishhhhhhhhh …

  It’s been a long time since I’ve run a competitive program. Even with months of dedicated practice, there’s no guarantee I’d be good enough to win—especially without a coach. And what about my mother? How could I tell her?

  For Mom, my skating was never a career track or even a once-in-a-lifetime shot at something great. It was a hobby. Something to dry off and put away in the closet with the tap shoes, the clarinet, and the Barbie dolls as soon as I was old enough/smart enough/tired enough/broke enough to move on. Now my skates are just another reminder that I used to have a dad around to encourage me, and she used to have a husband to brush the snow from her car and bring her a cup of hot coffee with two sugars every morning before he left for work, and now we don’t.

  I tighten my legs and propel backward, feet scissoring over the ice, mind drifting into my parallel life—the one where I didn’t throw that event, killing my reputation as a top competitor and losing Kara Shipley and my other skating friends. In my parallel life, I don’t live in Watonka anymore. I’m a real competitor, always on the road, sending Mom and Bug postcards from beautiful cities as I win medal after medal, title after title. I’m cool and confident, toughened by the difficulties of my childhood but still optimistic as I perform a perfect program for the World Figure Skating Championships. One by one, the judges rise in applause. They’ve never seen anything like it. They shout to be heard over the cheers, and then a voice cuts sharply through the din …

  “Hey! Look out!”

  I’m cold and horizontal, helplessly pinned beneath a boy. A cute one. Our skates are all tangled up and our hearts are knocking against each other like they’re ready to take this outside. His fingers cradle the back of my head just over the cement-hard ice; with his free hand, he brushes the hair from my eyes and I blink.

  Josh Blackthorn, co-captain of the Watonka Wolves varsity hockey team, stares down at me, breath mingling with mine in a thin white soup.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. His touch across my forehead makes me shiver. I blink again, trying to piece together the evidence. My head hurts, Josh is holding me, and all I can think is …

  I didn’t wash my hair this morning. I totally smell like last night’s bacon burger special.

  “Can you hear me?” Josh waves his fingers in front of my eyes, his face twisted with worry. Perfect. First time I’m this close to a really cute guy in years—and by years I mean ever—and save for my adorable pink leg warmers and the lip balm I slicked on when I got here, I’m ninety-two percent hygienically unprepared. He probably thinks I’m a pig farmer or a pig wrestler or some other person who regularly interacts with pork products … and I probably have a concussion.

  “I hear you.” I pull myself into a sitting position to put some space between the co-captain’s nose and my bacon-infused hair. “I’m okay. Just … what happened?”

  “We crashed.” Josh kneels on the ice in front of me. “I sort of … sorry. It’s my fault.” He manages a weak smile. I’ve never seen his eyes up close before, and when he looks at me full on, I notice all the color in them. Gray-blue with an outer ring of dark purple, flecks of gold near the center. Beneath the left one, there’s a tiny freckle hidden behind a row of soft, dark lashes.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, breaking through the fog in my head. “How long have you been out here? How do you even know this place?”

  Josh pulls off his knit hat and rubs his head, ears going red in the cold. His hair is short and dark, not quite black, and one side sticks out a little funny from the hat. There’s a scar near his temple, a tiny white V where the hair doesn’t grow. Probably some puck-diving, two-seconds-left-in-the-big-game, one-chance-to-save-it-all kind of injury from his last school.

  “I come here to think sometimes. Skate,” he says, looking out over the lake. “Get away, you know? I’m Josh Blackthorn, by the way. Hudson, right?” He turns back to me and smiles, his lips an inch closer than they were a moment ago.

  “Yeah,” I say as if I’m not totally shocked he knows my name and thinks I don’t know his. “Avery. I’ve never seen you out here, though. I never see anyone out here.”

  “No? I’ve seen you once or twice. But I’m not, like, stalking you or anything. If you’re on the ice when I get here, I usually bail. Today I just thought I’d … I don’t know. Say hi or something. Be less … um … creepy?” He raises his eyebrows and gives me another smile, tentative, like he’s waiting for confirmation.

  No, dude. You’re not creepy. You’re, like, the opposite of creepy. In fact, you’re kind of …

  My stomach fills with a swarm of bees. As far as stalkers go, Josh would definitely be a good one to have. But I don’t do spectators—not anymore. I don’t like to be spectated, inspected, spectacular, or even a spectacle. I just want to be a speck. A tiny, anonymous speck in an indiscernible sea of white.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I nod as another breeze unfurls over the ice. His jaw tightens, firm and strong as he braces against the chill. We laugh together when the cold hits again, harder this time, our mutual shivering enough to bond us in shared discomfort. In all this frigid whiteness, his mouth looks red and warm, and my eyes trace the curve of his lips as the laughter fades. He watches me, too. When the air stills, his eyes hold mine a millisecond too long
.

  And right before it becomes, like, I’m-about-to-kiss-you awkward, he looks away.

  “I thought you saw me over there.” He nods toward the edge of the ice where he must’ve been standing earlier. Watching. Spectating. “I skated this way, but then you were just speeding up. I tried to warn you, but … impact.” He slams his hands together to demonstrate, startling a seagull out from behind a nearby snowbank.

  “I didn’t see you,” I say.

  “You sure you’re okay? No dizziness or anything?” He gets to his feet and reaches down to help me.

  “Don’t worry about it.” I stand and straighten my fleece, ignoring his outstretched hand. “Seriously. But I need to get back to work.” I smile a little, even though the mortification meter is exploding off the charts.

  “You do? I mean, okay, that’s cool.” He looks at me straight on again, his crazy-beautiful blue-gray eyes bright and clear beneath the colorless sky, and Parallel Life Hudson goes off on another fantasy. I imagine her sitting at some cozy little café table with Josh, sipping hot chocolate with those irresistible baby marshmallows on top, laughing about their head-on collision. He smiles and tells her she’s got chocolate on the corner of her mouth, and she pretends to be embarrassed as he erases it gently with his thumb. There are sparks and laughs and flirty little jokes with lots of subtext, and later, after he walks her back to work, he pulls her into a passionate kiss in the parking lot. The word “bliss” appears in a cloud over her head, surrounded by red and pink hearts, and from that moment on, the frothy feel of hot chocolate against her lips will bring her back to the day they …

  “So, yeah, I should head out,” I tell him, before my fantasyland mind starts naming our unborn children. “Storm’s coming, and I’m … I’ll be late.”