Chapter 7: She Doesn’t Want Another Champion

Nora’s POV

The coach at the near boards looked at my badge and shifted sideways, leaving just enough room for me at the rail.

He kept his coffee where it was.

I clipped the badge more securely to my coat. TRIAL COACH, in letters smaller than my name.

It was 5:58.

Ivy Morgan was already on the ice.

She wore the gray practice dress from the recording. One corner of the sponsor’s patch had come loose. She worked through slow backward crossovers, arms at her sides, and didn’t look up when I came in.

Eight minutes. Julian had written it on the sheet himself.

Supervised. Far sheet. Within the six-to-seven session.

When Ivy finally came to the boards, she looked at my skates, then my badge.

“You were on the wall. Third row.”

“Fourth from the left.”

“My mom showed me your video. She makes me watch it.”

I hadn’t expected that.

“Nineteen something,” she added.

“Twenty-fourteen.”

“Sure.”

She pushed away before I could ask which program.

“We have eight minutes,” I said. “Show me the entry from the far corner.”

“I already did it.”

“Then do it again.”

She turned without answering.

Her left shoulder stayed lower than her right. The same slight drop I had watched at Celeste’s desk.

She set her arms, approached the corner and added a fourth stroke where three should have carried her through.

“Again.”

She did it.

Same extra stroke. Same place.

“I’ve done it twice.”

“Once more.”

She came back hard enough to throw snow against the boards.

I counted quietly as she set up. Then I stepped away from the rail and pointed to the ice beside her left heel.

“Stay there. Put your weight where it was when you started the turn.”

She looked at my hand.

“Don’t touch my skates.”

“I’m not touching them.”

“You’re pointing at them.”

“At the ice.”

“Same thing.”

She backed away and moved to another section of the boards. Then she bent over a lace that hadn’t come loose.

I lowered my hand.

Three repetitions. An instruction about her feet. Me counting under my breath.

I had watched all that footage and still begun with the things she already hated.

“Which part don’t you want me to change?”

She looked up.

“What?”

“Something in that program matters to you. Tell me what you want left alone.”

“You’re the fifth person to ask me that.”

“Then tell me.”

She straightened slowly.

“The turn.”

I waited.

“Everybody wants to fix the turn.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s wrong.” She said it quickly, as if I ought to know. “They show me the landing forty times. Then they say, ‘Ivy, just commit.’”

Her voice changed on the last two words. Bright. Patient. Awful.

“So I commit. And I land on my hip.”

“Do you want to change the turn?”

“I want to be able to do it.”

I looked at her hand gripping the rail.

“All right.”

“Whatever.”

She glanced down the ice, then back at me.

“Don’t touch the turn. And don’t stand there counting.”

For the rest of the time she gave me, she chose the work.

Crossovers. Edges. Forward outside three-turns she could have done without instruction.

They were clean. Controlled.

Every time she approached the entry I’d asked for, she turned away.

At 6:44, she stepped off the ice.

Julian stood by the gate with a clipboard. He made a note as she passed.

“Four minutes,” he said.

“Five.”

“Four. She left early.”

He capped the pen.

“What did you get?”

“She won’t let me near the turn.”

He waited.

“That’s all?”

I looked toward the gate Ivy had gone through.

“For a first session, it’s something.”

He glanced at the sheet again.

I almost asked whether it was enough to keep me here.

I put the question away.

Antoinette Morgan was waiting upstairs in the viewing area, her phone faceup beside a coffee.

Her eyes went straight to my badge.

“You’re the trial.”

“Nora Bennett.”

“Antoinette Morgan. Sit down. I want to discuss the plan.”

She didn’t offer her hand.

“I’ve heard a lot of talking this year. I’m still waiting for a plan. Every month, I write a check that could pay a mortgage in Yonkers.”

I sat.

“What would you like to know?”

“She’s cleared. The doctor signed off in September. When does the triple go back in?”

“When we understand what’s happening with her left side.”

“The doctor cleared her.”

“For the work she’s permitted to do. I need to know whether that includes what you’re asking for now.”

“She can jump.”

“I’ve seen the recordings.”

“Then you know.”

“I know she adds a stroke before the turn. I know she keeps dropping that shoulder. I want sports medicine to assess it.”

Antoinette put down her cup.

“She was landing triples at fourteen. Now she’s sixteen, doing crossovers with someone who’s been out of the sport for six years.”

I felt that one. I kept my bag in my lap so she wouldn’t see me grip it.

“No offense,” she added.

I let her continue.

“Five coaches have told me she’s talented and difficult. I know she’s talented. Difficult, I can live with.”

She leaned forward.

“What I can’t do is pay for another year of this. She doesn’t get that year back. Neither do I.”

“I understand.”

“Then put the jump in.”

“No.”

Her hand stopped beside the phone.

I had spent the morning hoping Julian would give me the work. Now I had it, and this woman could help take it away.

“She isn’t adding that jump this week,” I said. “Not before someone has assessed her shoulder and clarified what’s safe.”

“Julian said you’d be supervised.”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Have him supervise the jump.”

“That doesn’t answer the medical question.”

She picked up her phone, looked at the screen without unlocking it, then set it down again.

“I want today recorded accurately. Crossovers. That’s what she did.”

“And edges. And turns. It’ll all be there.”

“If I don’t see a jump on that sheet in seven days, I’m taking it to Julian. We’ll find someone who wants to coach her.”

I looked at the phone between us.

Seven days. My clearances had barely been approved, and already I was being asked how quickly I could justify the trouble of hiring me.

“You’ll have the assessment request this morning,” I said. “And you’ll receive the same information I do.”

“Seven days, Nora.”

“I heard you.”

“I’m not trying to be cruel. I’m being practical. You, of all people, should understand.”

I wanted to ask what she thought she knew about me.

Instead, I kept my voice level.

“The request will be in the record.”

She stood and took her coat from the chair.

“Everyone told me you used to be somebody. I thought that would help.”

I looked down at the badge clipped to my coat.

“It doesn’t make me her coach.”

“No.”

She dropped the phone into her bag.

“It really doesn’t.”

I waited until the stairwell door closed before moving into the chair she’d left pulled out.

The appointment book was still open on the table.

Antoinette Morgan. Twice a week. Paid through November.

I read the entry twice.

Then I looked up.

Ivy stood by the water fountain at the end of the corridor, her bag over one shoulder.

I didn’t know how long she’d been there.

“Your mom wants the jump,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Do you?”

She adjusted the strap. Her eyes went past me to the ice.

“People keep asking how I fell.”

I stayed where I was.

“They want the whole thing. Where my foot was. What I was thinking. Whether I knew I was going to fall.”

Her fingers tightened around the strap.

“Then they tell me what I did wrong.”

She headed for the stairs. I let her go.

At the door, she stopped without turning around.

“I don’t want to meet one more person who wants to know how I fell.”

The door closed behind her.

I sat back down and pulled the session sheet toward me.

Date. Time. Four minutes.

I wrote down what I’d asked her to do, where she’d refused, and that I had counted aloud before she told me to stop.

Then, in the box marked Medical referral, I wrote her name.