On top of the world

Emotion

I put on my headphones, turned up my Imagine Dragons playlist, and began to warm up off ice. Daniil promised he'd be here for me during my 6 minute warm up and short program today, but he was still on his way over from the other smaller rink where his juvenile ice dance team was competing earlier today.

"Lyubov! I'm on time, right?" Daniil burst into the warm up room as I was finishing up some stretching.

"Thanks for coming." I gave him a hug. "At least tomorrow you won't have to make a mad dash between two rinks."

I laced up my skates quickly, and then Daniil and I headed to the area where the other coaches and skaters in my warm up group were waiting. 

"Welcome back to the junior ladies short program segment of the 2014 US Figure Skating Championships. Will the following skaters please take the ice..."

I would be the fourth to skate in this group. I felt fortunate that Lexi Paganini stayed in novice this year because I had always found her my most difficult competition while I competed in novice. But the competition in junior level surely wouldn't go easy on me either. 

Brian told me he would be livestreaming my performance at nationals, even during his boys' practice. I imagined him, Javi, Yuzuru, and Nam all huddled around his laptop watching me skate and I laughed out loud a little as I went to the boards to grab a drink.

"What's so funny?" Daniil inquired.

I gulped down my water. "Well...I just can't believe I'm finally here!" 

I went for a triple Lutz + triple toe and landed it cleanly. It would be the first time I tried it in competition. This was nationals, so I had to pull out the big guns. The risk with adding more difficult elements into my programs barely was an afterthought. Regionals and sectionals was where I played it safe. I was not about to hold anything back here at nationals.

I set myself up for a triple Axel, which I wasn't about to attempt in my actual short program, but I rather just wanted to see how it was doing. I landed it, but it was underrotated and I had to put my hand down. Then I did a double Axel in my program set up. Feeling satisfied with my warm-up, I glided off the ice with confidence after the announcer told us to leave the ice.

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Finally, I was called to the ice.

My cheering section consisted of my family and some friends from school and the rink. I also knew Katya, Brian, and the boys (Javi, Yuzuru, and Nam) would be watching my performance on a livestream. 

I reminded myself to treat this competition--nationals--like any other competition I've attended: treat it like practice time. That, plus my deep breathing techniques, helped to qualm my nerves as I waited in my starting position.

The music began. I began to skate. I tried my best to emote, to make the judges and audience feel my emotions with me, while also pumping my legs hard enough to carry me across the ice to execute the difficult elements. Figure skating is a delicate balance of artistry and athleticism. 

When I struck my ending pose, the audience applauded my performance, and some stuffed animals and roses flew from my cheering section onto the ice. 

Daniil handed me my skate guards, and we waited in the kiss and cry for my scores. I ended up with a season's best short program score, and that put me in second place going into the freeskate. 

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Something quite tragic happened during the warm-up before the freeskate in my group.

The lady who was in first after the short program fell flat on her stomach, and it absolutely knocked the wind out of her. When she was carried of the ice, we heard that she would still try to skate because she was slated to skate last in the starting order of our group, so she would have some time to recover.

While I was thinking now that I could have a shot at becoming the junior national champion this year, I also felt bad for the lady and even a little sick to my stomach as well, but I kept my insides in check. I am both lucky and unfortunate for being an empath; in high stress situations like these, I find this quality of mine to be distracting at best and destructive at worst. 

A couple years back, at a competition, I accidentally jabbed my blade into the calf of another skater during the warm up period. It wasn't deep, but I could feel the pain shooting up her leg like it was my own. As soon as I felt my blade hit her leg and heard her cry out in pain, tears spilled out of my own eyes involuntarily. I had thought to myself then: Doesn't everyone feel the emotions of others? 

Since that incident, I've chosen more often than not to try to suppress my empath ability, or rather, disability. Too much sensitivity towards other people's problems on a day like this was bound to be a recipe for disaster. But I guess the high-stress environment of nationals caused me to loosen my grip on my emotions, or rather, the emotions of those around me.

When my turn came to skate, I felt more nervous than usual, but I tried my best to channel those nerves into more emotion for my very emotional freeskate music.

I performed a clean program. No falls or stumbles anywhere. I was pleased with my performance and I thought it could launch me up to first, but there was still one more skater who would compete. She still appeared a bit shaken up, but I was absolutely in awe of her bravery. "Good luck," I told her. She smiled politely and nodded in response, and then she took the ice.

The announcer read out my score, another season's best, which would put me currently in first for the freeskate and for the overall score. My program components score, which grades the artistic performance of the routine overall, was much higher than usual. That made me very pleased. Then, he introduced the final skater.

"She comes to us from the Broadmoor Skating Club, please welcome to the ice Olive Jenkins!"

When she came off the ice, I quickly congratulated her before she went with her coaches to the kiss and cry area to wait for her scores. Because I was guaranteed at least silver now, I had to keep my skates on for the medal ceremony. 

"The freeskate score for Olive Jenkins is..."

Konichiwa peeps.

This is a deleted line from this chapter. Kinda nerdy and doesn't really fit in well, but I hope you appreciate it:

This sheet of ice only have six gas molecules zipping around on it with no collisions between them. The ideal gas. Perfect. We don't want any collisions here today (or any day).

Thank you all for your reads and votes! And I finally watched Spirited Away; it was kind of strange and I hate Chihiro's parents...but it was a wonderful movie and I would absolutely recommend watching it.

Also shoutout and thank you to @tedy2626 for making a Wattpad account just to read my story, and to @zakilou and to @omegahoon for supporting my efforts and putting out good work as well! <3

P.S: Sorry I have not been writing so much lately; I've had to proofread and also I've had some writer's block recently. I'm sad to say I am just starting a new semester at college now so it may be a while before the next chapter comes out, but I will try my best! And good luck to everyone at the US Nationals this week! :D