The Un-landed Everything

Chapter 2

“Hey Nana.” I said stepping into the front seat of her blue Toyota Camry, as she picked me up from school.

“Hey Carmenn. How’s everything going?” asked my Nana smiling from ear to ear as always.

“Fine.” I muttered. “How ‘bout you?” I said quickly trying to avoid the topic that school sucked, due to Prim’s absence.

“Swell, like always. After practice today I have decided you could use something sweet, so your mother agreed that we can grab a sugary bite to eat.”

“Awe, thanks so much Nana,” I said smiling for the first time that day.

“No problem. You deserve a small treat after all this training for Regional’s.”

“Speaking of Regional’s, Coach Patty says there’s a rumor going around that Nancy Kerrigan is the announcer, I’m so excited.”

“That’s so cool! I hope she pronounces your last name right.”

“I know right,” I said giggling a little.

“Well, here we are,” Nana said as she pulled into a parking spot at Northern-Boston Skating Academy.

“Feels good to be home. It’s been what a day?”

“Honestly you do spend so much time here it’s practically like your second home.” Nana replied handing me my paisley purple skate bag. “And yes, it’s been a day.”

“Yup,” I said walking towards the door. “My second home" I then said to myself, as i walked into the rink.

~

“BOO!” I said skating up behind Kasey.

“Carmenn!” Kasey shouted spinning around and hugging me tightly.

“Hey. One week no see?”

“Two actually, but it was worth it I was really sick,” Kasey said.

“So, the flu’s gone?” I asked.

“One-hundred percent. The flu left but this came…” she said suddenly smiling and revealing her new maroon braces.

“Oh my gosh! You look beautiful! I love the color!”

“Thanks, I’m a little sad that I can’t have popcorn because they will get stuck between the metal, but I’ll get over it.”

“I never liked popcorn.”

“OMG HOW?!”

“It just never tasted appealing to me…”

                We both laughed so hard and loudly, I just love how Kasey and I just crack-up at the most un-funniest moments. After about five minutes of giggling, Coach Patty skated over to start my lesson, and Kasey had to leave for her lesson and our laughter ended.

~

                My lesson was tough. Coach had me working hard. I practiced my program at least fifteen times, and she kept giving me pep talks about my performance at Regional’s in three weeks. Finally she had me do my triple axel. Honestly I wouldn’t say I even “do” a triple axel I fall so much.  It was more like a triple “fallxel”, a triple axel that you fall on. Coach really wants me to compete my axel at Nationals in January, personally I don’t want to. I think that when its going to be time to do the jump I’m going to totally lose my train of thought and do a triple “fallxel”. Although, I do tend to skate better at competitions. So maybe I would be able to land a triple axel at competition...

~

Nana did as promised and took me out for a sugary dinner. It turned out to be Dairy Queen, which is like my favorite fast food place. Their ice cream is D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!

I ordered my usual, the hot dog kid’s meal. Even at age 14 I still love the kid’s meal, maybe because it comes with a fifty cent ice cream bar, cone, or even better a blizzard.

                It took forever for our food to come so Nana and I sat down and talked about practice, I told her about coach’s pep talks, my “fallxel”, and how coach really wants me to compete my axel at Nationals.

“I think you should compete the axel too.” Nana replied avoiding my eyes.

“WHAT? DID YOU NOT SEE ME TODAY?” I shouted back immediately feeling embarrassed, due to some mother’s glare as she had to settle he baby back down again.

“Carmenn,” Nana said looking me in the eye this time. “You’re axel is beautiful, your only flaw…you don’t pull your leg up and out, because you are to focused on the rotation. I can see it in the way you fall and the look on your face. Trust me you got the rotation, you’re “the jumping queen”. You’re so strong you good probably give the jump a solid four rotations, so why freak out?”

“I...just feel like I under rotate every time.”

“You don’t. As a matter of fact you over rotate by a fourth.”

And then the food arrived…

~

That night I couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up watching some videos of Olympic figure skaters nail their triple axel, studying their every move carefully, and even pausing at the landing part to see how they do it.

It took me some time to realize, another cause of me falling on my axel is that I think too hard. I have to clear my thoughts.