Yellow - A Figure Skating Story

Daniel Hunter

As Sunday afternoon rolls around, I am staring at my phone as I ponder how best to start a conversation with Anna over text. However, I can't think of anything, as I set my phone down with a sigh.

Being summer, the only sport available to watch is baseball, and my friend Connor has the Atlanta Braves and Red Sox game on the tv. Baseball isn't a sport that provides me any interest, so I have been spending most of the day scrolling through my social media accounts hoping to find something interesting to save me from my boredom. My many attempts have gone unsuccessful, but thankfully the game is reaching its end as the Braves are up four runs with the Rex Sox batting in the bottom of the fourth inning.

Connor, who had disappeared into his kitchen to grab a drink, returns and sits down on the couch next to me.

"I know you hate sports that aren't figure skating or football," he says, taking a sip of his Coke, "but I can tell there is something on your mind."

"It is nothing," I lie.

I have been struggling to come up with a way to continue the conversation that Anna and I had started the day before, despite having enjoyed every moment.

Connor chuckles. "It is about a girl again, right?"

Connor and I have known each other since fifth grade, and as such, he knows how to see right through any walls that I try to put up to defend myself.

Knowing that Connor will just badger me until I spill information, I decide to give in. "I met Anna Novikova yesterday at the rink."

"That figure skater girl you have plastered all over the walls of your room?"

Yep. That would be her. Most people will have one or two posters of their favorite athlete, movie star, singer, etc., but I have easily a dozen or more of just Anna in my room. You can call me obsessed, but when she was competing, there truly was no one like her on the ice, and according to the figure skating sub Reddit, I was far from the worst with idolizing her during the height of her popularity. But hey, when a skater has a gimmick like her yellow skating outfits, how could you not pay attention to her? Oh, at it was only my old room at my parents' house that I actually had all of them hung up. Now that I live in my apartment, you can actually see the walls of my bedroom for a change.

"Bingo," I say. "The one, the only, is here in our city and will work at the rink for the foreseeable future."

"I wish my favorite celebrity would randomly decide to work at my part-time job," Connor mumbles, causing me to laugh. "Did you two interact at all?"

"I mean, we interacted enough for her to feel safe providing me her phone number."

Not that I knew how to make use of it. I may be good at talking to someone in person, but I am the world's worst texter.

"And have you texted her anything?" Connor asks.

"Just a 'hi' so that we could properly add each other to our contacts." I shift my position on the couch as Connor glares at me like an idiot. Truthfully, I kinda felt like one for getting caught up on something as simple as this.

Connor shakes his head in disappointment, causing some of his blonde hair to fall into his face. "Fuck, man. You could at least try to get to know her better with all the fawning you do over her on social media."

I can feel my cheeks turn red as he mentions the things my past teenage obsessive self used to do. One upon a time all of my Instagram feed would be nothing but a post about Anna, and my current self finds it embarrassing that I was ever that obsessed over a single person. Thankfully, I have grown out of that phase and my Instagram feed is far more reasonable.