Dark Night

Another confrontation

"Why don't you go flirt with some girls and leave me alone?" I hissed at him. "Go be the champion somewhere else. I don't want to be here any more than you want me to be here, sullying the sacred precincts with my lack of skill."

"When did you get so sarcastic?" he asked, frowning again.

"About the same time you turned into an entitled dick with an inflated sense of importance," I snapped.

"You used to like to skate," he said, exasperated.

"Until it became your thing. Mom and Dad discouraged me from going once I outgrew my first pair of boots. Rentals, ice time, and you started siphoning the available funds early on." I kept my voice down. "Will you just leave me alone?"

"Will you get over it?" he hissed. "I can't do anything about how mom and dad chose to spend their money."

"I don't have to get over anything," I snapped. "I can be angry and resentful as much as I want."

"Are you jealous that I'm the champion, Delia?" he asked, smirking.

"I'm jealous that you got all the attention and all the opportunity to do what you wanted." He was still smirking, acting superior, and something inside me cracked. I stopped, and, perforce, he did too, in the center of the ice where a couple of classmates were attempting wobbly two-footed spins. They're harder than they look. "You know what? Enjoy that you're famous in a sport that gets attention once every four years. Five years from now, you'll be out of amateur competition, because your body won't be able to keep it up for long enough to go for two Olympics. And then you'll just be a footnote, the quad quad brought up as trivia when the TV announcers have to fill in the silence. You'll be forgotten," I hissed.

His face went white, then red, and he reached forward and pushed me. It wasn't a really hard push, but I wasn't ready for it, and I fell on my backside when my skates went out from under me.

"Knight!" A male voice bellowed, and we both looked around reflexively. But it wasn't my coach, it was Mr Petrov, who skated up to us. He stopped and offered me a hand, and I got to my feet. My own coach faded back. "You're Stan's sister, yes?" I nodded. "With the class?" I nodded. "They're here for a grade," Petrov said to my brother. "You need to let the students do their own work. Weren't you going to work on your cardio? You also need to spend time on your artistic expression. I don't care if you want to or not," he said, rolling over my brother's attempt to interject a comment. "Miss Knight," he said to me, then towed my brother off.

My coach mercifully kept his distance after I started skating again. One thing skating around and around was good for is inducing a feeling of serenity, one that lasted until it was time to return our skates and get back on the buses.

Predictably, later that night I was summoned to my parents, who'd heard about the incident. Lounging in the chair was the skater, smirking again. I was a little surprised that they didn't just start in with the yelling. "So let's hear your side," Dad said to me.

"We have to go to the rink for two weeks," I said grimly. "It's not like I have a choice to be there." I jerked my chin at the skater. "I asked him once, maybe twice, to leave me alone. He didn't. Then he was doing his 'oh, I'm the champion' schtick, which, seriously? Enough already. " I shrugged.

"It's a real accomplishment, Delia," Mom said. "You were happy for him last year."

"Not denying it's an accomplishment. It'd be a lot easier to be happier if he wasn't an overinflated popinjay." Yay. I'd learned something from English.

"Delia, your attitude is getting old," the skater said.

"So's yours." I flared up. "Even when you told me I was an accident, all you said was that you might have gone too far. 'Might?'"

"Wait, what's this?" Dad asked me, and I told him.

"Constantine!" he barked, and my brother glared at me hatefully. "Why am I just hearing about this now?" he asked me. I shrugged. Mom looked guilty. I deliberated about what to say next, because I didn't want to give away how much I could hear through the thin walls, and decided to stay silent.

"Delia, your mom and I had always wanted two kids," Dad said, rubbing his face, then looking at me. "Neither of us has siblings, and we didn't want that for our family. You came along sooner than expected, but there was no question that we were thrilled by the news and you were always wanted and loved." With a massive effort, I kept from rolling my eyes or doing something teenagerish.

"I'd love to believe that," I said finally.

"Come on, Delia, we're trying," Dad said. "Why can't you try too?"

"I've been trying," I said, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. "I've been trying for a long time. And I'm so sorry that what, a month, of learning how I feel is so uncomfortable for you." My voice got sharp.

"Delia--" Mom said, sighing.

"No. I get that nobody likes to keep having their nose rubbed in their mistakes. I know that, because I know how negative emotions over a long time feels. Everybody gets defensive about it. But what I don't think I've heard once, since this blew up, was that anybody is sorry about it. Any of it. Ignoring me, raiding my college fund, any of it. And I did tell you before, Dad, the night I asked why you'd taken my money. And you blew it off then too. Everybody expects me to see their side, as if that lets them off the hook, but nobody is willing to see my side, let alone issue a sincere apology, let alone trying to make up for it. And I've tried. My guidance counselor talked with me about burning bridges, but to carry that metaphor forward, is it arson if the bridge is rotting anyway? I thought Grandpa moving down would be a great thing, at least he listens to me, but he also wants family harmony, and apparently that entails me giving in. Nobody's willing to meet me halfway," I said, unable to keep the despair out of my voice. "So no, I don't want to be seen in public with you," I said to my brother. "You cannot have everything you want."

My brother, finally, had something on his face besides smugness. "What? You used to be interested. You were so cute when you were trying to say 'trapezius' when I hurt it that first time."

I rolled my eyes. "I was trying, because back then I thought my opinion mattered. That somehow I could be supportive by learning the body parts so I could understand what you were going through. Then, later, when you learning your first quad jump, I learned the physics of jumping and spinning, and figured out what stresses they were putting on your body." My lips twisted. "But that was when you were at least pretending to care." I shoved off the wall and went to my room. The urge to slam it had passed, at least. I shut it gently, connected my earbuds with my phone, and listened to the soothing playlist I'd made to help me when I was stressed out or angry. It was comprised of water sounds: rivers, the ocean, rain. The sound helped me calm down, my muscles relax, my heart slow down. I fell asleep listening to the rain.