The bus home was sparsely populated. Not a lot of kids took the bus from Eaganville; most drove their own cars, or stayed after school in one of the millions of after-school activities that didn’t require sportsballs. It was early January, which was generally the worst time of the year in Minnesota. The sun sets at four in the afternoon, and when it is visible, it’s like a pale, apologetic sun that’s ashamed it’s unable to melt the mounds of ice and snow.
I watched out the window as we passed through the overdeveloped McMansions on the western side of Minneapolis. My home, such as it was, was at the Crestview Arms, a crumbling apartment complex that had been grandfathered into the school district. Mom and I had landed here after my parents divorced and our life imploded.
And by imploded, I mean where one parent goes to prison and the other one declares bankruptcy. Next-level imploded.
We used to live in neighborhoods like that, I thought, passing the places that had hired people to take their Christmas decorations down. Of course, even when we were in the nice house, with actual things we owned, there were problems. But they seem small once you’re forced to sell the car, sell the television, sell the jewelry, and hide the rest of the stuff in your cousin’s basement so you don’t have to declare it as an asset.
The bus stopped in front of the complex, a hive of eight three-story buildings that clustered together for warmth. I got out, pressed my little keycard to the gate that was designed either to keep people out or lock us in, and made my way through the snow to our apartment, keeping my chin down to my chest to brace against the cold.
My mom was already packing up our dinner when I walked through the front door. She was in the kitchenette area of the apartment, which was separated from the living room area by about nothing, really. It was all basically the same room. The carpet hadn’t been cleaned from the previous tenants, so it was best to never look at it or contemplate what might have gone on here previously.
“How was your first day at the new school, sweetie?”
“Um… interesting, I guess.” Apparently I have made some mortal enemies, but no worries.
Charlie, our bulldog, lumbered up to me, his giant tongue lolling sloppily out of the side of his cavernous mouth. I groaned under his weight as I picked him up, his stubby little legs pushing against me.
“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?! Charlie is! Yes he is!” Charlie’s rubbery tongue washed my face with slobber.
Charlie was an illegal occupant of our apartment, since we didn’t have the money to pay the pet deposit, which meant that I had to take him on very fast walks and occasionally pretend to enter different apartments with him if I spotted a Crestview employee.
“Does he need to go out?! Does Charlie need to go out?! Yes he does! Yes he does!” Charlie wiggled appreciatively as I went to get his sweater.
“Don’t put him in the pink one,” said Mom from the kitchen.
“I’m putting him in the pink one,” I said, going to get the pink one.
“Luke’s coming over later.”
I stopped. “I’m putting him in the tutu, then.”
I could sense my mom rolling her eyes from halfway across the room. “Sydney.”
“Why are you trying to fit him into a conformist model of gender identity? Besides, we’re all aware that you’re the one responsible for his lack of testicles.”
“Don’t say testicles. It’s gross. And he could’ve kept his testicles if he didn’t hump the entire universe, which he did.”
“Well… this is the glorious result, then. Behold him.” I patted Charlie on the head. “Who doesn’t have any testicles?! Charlie doesn’t! No he doesn’t! Charlie has no testicles!” Charlie vibrated with joy.
“Sydney. Please. Luke is coming over, and I don’t want him to get confused about the dog’s gender.”
“Have you considered the fact that if your boyfriend is confused by your dog’s gender, he might not be the guy for you?”
“Just do it.”
“Fine.” I scooped him up and headed for my closet-sized room. “I’ll put him in the Wonder Woman outfit.”
“We’re going ice-skating tonight, remember.”
I groaned.
Mom was having none of it. “Don’t go all teenagery on me. You said you would come along.”
“I hate ice-skating, and I don’t really want to spend a romantic evening with you and Luke.”
Luke had appeared like a malignant tumor sometime in October, after the divorce papers were fully signed. My mom decided to go on a health kick. She’d wake up each morning and go jogging—at first she tried to get me to go with, at which point I would moan, pull my hair over my face, and roll over like a majestic lion. (Seriously—have you been to a zoo? Those bastards sleep twenty hours a day and yet they also have time to be king of the jungle. #rolemodels)
Anyway, after the jogging didn’t produce the intended results, my mom joined a CrossFit gym/cult, where she met Luke, lord of fitness.
“If you gave him a chance, you might like him,” said my mom, following me into my tiny bedroom. “And I have tonight off and I want to spend some time with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you and want to spend time with you. Jeez,” she said, trying to smooth her auburn hair behind her ears. Her roots, which were a mixture of gray and brown, hadn’t been done in two months, another result of our post-divorce collapse. “I know that things have been… crazy, and I thought it would be good for us to have some fun together, okay? With Luke. I know… he’s sometimes very… intense, but can you please give him a chance?”
I put my head in my hands. “Yes, I will give him a chance, but I also want you to consider the possibility that he sucks. Will you do that? Objectively evaluate him and see if he sucks?”
“Fine,” she said, wrapping me in a hug.
“Maybe we should come up with a rubric or something.”
Luke looked like he had stepped out of a J.Crew catalog, except not quite as attractive. He stepped out of J.Crew’s less attractive cousin’s catalog. He was white, but he had spent most of his existence tanning, so his skin was best described as caramel, but not like tasty caramel, more like caramel that you find glued to the floor of a movie theater. His smile was a little messed up, he had one tooth that kind of jutted out, and there was something about his eyes that made you think he had been dropped on his head a lot.
The rest of Luke was muscle, and obviously, that’s where his appeal lay. I get it. I’m not stupid. My mom was going through a midlife crisis. And here he was in all his snaggletoothed, tan, and meaty glory.
Even his knock was annoying. He rapped on our door too forcefully, as if to say, Here I am, the gym biscuit of your dreams, blessed with an unfortunate amount of self-confidence.
Mom had finished packing the dinner for our “picnic on ice,” which sounded disturbingly romantic, and yet also extremely impractical.
“All right!” She tittered, opening the door for Luke.
“Hell yeah!” said Luke, embracing my mom and lifting her off the ground just to show off that he was good at lifting things. “We’re gonna have trouble in this ice rink ’cause you’re so hot you’re gonna melt the ice.” It was clear Luke had been practicing that on the car ride over.
“You remember Sydney,” she said, gesturing in my direction.
“What’s up, Syd?!” He put his hand up for a high five. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
I gave him a moderate five.
Charlie had his usual reaction to anyone coming over, which is to say that he lost his damn mind. He scrabbled over the faux hardwood floor, his little legs moving faster than his body could compensate for—he charged Luke, missed, and slid into the wall with a thump. He was not the most coordinated animal, but made up for it by being completely invulnerable. He shook off the collision and tried to jump on Luke’s leg.
“All right, troops,” said Luke, adjusting the Minnesota Wild jersey under his parka. “Let’s rock and roll.”
“Oh God,” I muttered, not ready to rock or roll.
It’s not that I didn’t know how to skate. Obviously, I could skate. I grew up here, after all. I just didn’t know how to skate well. And whenever I seemed to be getting better at it, I would backslide to the uncoordinated person I naturally was.
I remember the times when Dad would take me to the rink, and we’d manage a few circuits around the ice before stopping to warm up with hot cocoa. I always thought the best part of skating was when you weren’t skating. My dad was a terrible skater, too, and we bonded over the fact that we always enjoyed stopping. There’s a strange odor of frosty funk that permeates an ice rink—a combination of foot sweat barely masked by whatever deodorizer they’ve found, and the tears of a million bruised children that have hit the ice. It was basically a frosty hell.
We went to the Edina Ice Rink, which was far enough away from Eaganville that it was still affordable. Luke paid for himself; my mom paid for both of us.
It was a Monday night, so it wasn’t crowded. There was a slow circuit of mediocre skaters wobbling their way around the rink in a clockwise fashion—my people. A gang of ten-year-old boys in hockey jerseys was sprinting over the ice like madmen, weaving in and out of the old people, about to die at any moment. Luke’s people. Every so often they would get too close to a slow-moving adult, and the adult would collapse in a heap of pain while the boys would race away like evil icy leprechauns.
Luke, of course, was good at skating.
“He’s so coordinated,” marveled Mom, getting on the ice and joining the slow-motion clockwise parade.
I teetered next to her, trying to keep moving in a straight line. My ankles hurt immediately, which meant that I hadn’t tied my skates tight enough, but I gritted my teeth and kept going. I didn’t want Luke to see me flailing and think it was his role to offer me advice.
Too late. Luke veered close to us, sliding to a halt and sending a spray of icy mist into the air. “This is great for the quads,” he said, patting his rock-hard thighs. “Yeah, just push into it. You feel it, right?”
“Oh man, this is great,” said my mom, working her quads.
My quads were less appreciative of being roused from their slumber. I felt like a scarecrow, scraping my skates against the ground and trying to gather a bit of momentum. I managed a bit of speed, realized I was shit at turning, and rammed into the sidewall. I caught my gloves on the wall, slipped, and dropped on my butt.
Luke hovered near me, lent me a hand, and nearly lifted me in the air to get me back on my feet.
“The key to turning is in the glutes,” he said, rapping his knuckles on his ass.
“Good to know,” I said, resuming my awkward, lonely turn around the rink.
Luke did a spin, then skated backward near me.
“Have you ever thought about working out?”
“Um… that’s not really my thing.”
“Uh-huh, I hear what you’re saying, but also—you know, the best time to start a journey is today.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Definitely not tomorrow. You doing any sports in school?”
“Nope.”
He nodded sadly, then did another spin before returning to me with a new thought.
“You know what’s awesome for brain activity? Exercise.”
“My brain’s fine, thanks.”
“With your frame, you might want to try swimming. I think there’s a lot of toning that could happen with your arms—”
“I’m thinking about carrying ropes,” I said, trying to remember all of the ridiculous CrossFit exercises that my mom was always going on about. “That way, I could flap them up and down if there was ever a need for it, which I’m sure there will be.”
Luke pouted his lips, lost in what I guess you could call thought. Was I making fun of him? You could almost see my comment working through the flowchart that stood in for his brain. Ultimately it landed on “suggest workout options,” which is where his brain flowchart always landed. “I mean… you can start with the triceps if you want, but I’m thinking like a full-body regimen would be best, though. Just do some sculpting.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I’m gonna pass on the sculpting for now, but thanks for your advice.”
“Anytime. High five!”
“Nope.”
He looked momentarily sad, then fist-bumped me before skating off. Damn it.
I launched my way back into the sad stream of poor skaters, waving my arms to keep my balance like a toddler. I managed to turn the corner this time, using a series of spastic foot movements to navigate the curve. Success. I was getting better at this.
Too late I spotted the two letter jackets from Edina High School.
Shit.
The ice rink was awfully close to my old high school. I recognized the girls: Emily and Chandler. I barely knew Emily, but Chandler had been in my math class—we had hung out a few times. We were sort-of friends until ninth grade or so and then started drifting apart. My father’s spectacular implosion, which led to local newspaper headlines, had been enough to push me from being merely unpopular to being full-blown outcast. Part of that was my own fault, though; I stopped going to class, I stopped talking to people, even the ones who might’ve been sympathetic.
“Oh my God, Sydney!”
Crap.
“Chandler! Heyyyyy!”
Emily, who was a weaker skater than Chandler, snorted slightly as she kept waggling her arms to keep skating around the ring.
“How are you?” Chandler was a Minnesotan blonde, of common Norwegian stock, slightly ruddy in the face, but with long straight hair that never needed an iron. She wore an aqua-blue headband over her ears and generally looked amazing with no effort whatsoever.
“I’m good.”
“Good.” She drifted nearer to me, unsure of what to say. “Where are you going to school now?”
“Eaganville.”
Chandler’s eyes went wide. “I hear that’s a freak show.”
“Yeah, it’s a little weird.”
“Cool. But probably like filled with supersmart people.”
“I guess.”
Emily wobbled slightly on her skates. “How long is your dad in prison for?”
Chandler elbowed her. “Don’t ask her that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s rude. Jesus.”
“All right fine whatever,” said Emily, raising her eyebrows in annoyance.
“No, it’s cool,” I said. “Um… it’s fine. Two more years, if you want to get super personal.”
Chandler tried to nod. “Cool.”
Cool?
I guess it’s not every day you learn how long somebody’s dad is in prison, so most people aren’t good at forming a proper reaction.
She looked like she was about to say something else, but a ten-year-old in hockey gear blitzed in between us, ducking under my arm, then swerving past a few old people. Three other little maniacs followed him like a biker gang, spreading havoc and ruin.
“I should go,” I said. “Lots of skating to do, I guess. You don’t have to pretend to care about shit if you don’t.” I tried to skate away without looking back, but unfortunately I was too slow to get away quickly. I made a slow, ungainly exit, leaving both of them openmouthed and exasperated.
Later, when it was time for the skating to be over, I sat on a bench on the outside of the rink, shivering in my coat, eating some cold meat loaf. Mom and Luke were still skating around the ice, and I watched through the Plexiglas shield, following them and the people with happy families around the ice. We had been a happy family once. It was hard to imagine ever being that happy again.