Donutheart by Sue Stauffacher Read Free Book Online Page A

of slanty-sideways glances from hovering mothers. Distracting the skaters was frowned upon. I started down the bleacher steps.
    “Where you know what’s going to happen…remember?” Sarah said as we met at the opening of the rink.
    When Sarah Kervick played outfield for Pelican View Elementary’s Modern Hardware Team, I enjoyed predicting—and then conveying to her via agreed-upon hand signals—in what direction and how far the ball would travel, so that she could be waiting to meet it when it fell to the ground.
    Still, I didn’t see how knowing she would fall helped her. “It happens in an instant. There’s no time to warn you.”
    Sarah tugged at the sleeves of her warm-up jacket. “Right. But I’ll get smarter, see? If you teach me?”
    I nodded. I did.
    She tossed me the jacket and held out her hand. “Partners. Okay?”
    We shook on it and I returned to my seat in the bleachers.
    So, while my mother sweated it out in the locker room, I got my own share of cardiovascular exercise, running down the bleachers to confer with Sarah Kervick at the opening of the rink.
    It wasn’t the same thing we did in baseball. Our baseball strategy was about Sarah meeting the ball. Now she was applying what I taught her about physics to what she felt when she skated.
    “You’re not getting enough momentum on that inside Mohawk because you’re waiting too long to change feet,” I would tell her. “As soon as your shoulders have turned as far as they can go, you need to reverse them and change your feet at the same time. If you wait too long, you’ll lose momentum.”
    I demonstrated from the safety of the rubber matting: “You’re making the T shape, you’re bringing your free leg up along the skating foot, you’re turning your upper body…now! Reverse from top to bottom in one motion.”
    After a few more practice sessions, Sarah would achieve what I’d shown her. It was a funny thing. Unlike in school, Sarah had no problem listening to lectures about skating. She kept her head down and twirled a piece of her hair, concentrating intensely. Then, more often than not, she’d hand me a piece of her clothing and head back to the rink.
    The girls began practice in tights, skirts or warm-up pants, sweaters, gloves, hats, and jackets. But all during the practice, they peeled away layer after layer of clothing until they were down to little more than a sleeveless shirt and a skirt. Sarah Kervick had not minded wearing a skirt in the early months. My guess was she would have worn a bodysuit woven of horsehair and nettles as long as they let her on the ice.
    No, her decision to stop wearing skating skirts had come about six weeks ago. She’d shown up for practice in baggy warm-up pants, and nothing my mother could say would convince her to go above the ankle. This wasn’t merely a fashion whim. Sarah was going against one of Debbi’s rules of professionalism. The girls Debbi coached—the girls who were serious about skating—wore skirts, not yoga pants, not warm-ups,
definitely
not jeans. There was a long conference between Debbi and Sarah in the locker room. When they emerged, Sarah took to the ice again…in her pants. It appeared, for the time being anyway, that Sarah had won.
    But won what? There was nothing Sarah Kervick wanted more than to skate. Practice, exhibition, competition, she didn’t care. Just put her on the ice. She knew what skaters wore when she got into this business.
    And I knew her well enough to know she was hiding something. I wanted to ask her about it, but I didn’t know how. The laws of mathematics and physics are consistent and logical. Girls, I have found, are neither.
    And they don’t grow out of it, either. As proof, I will offer up my own mother.
    When she dropped us off at Pelican View Elementary after Sarah’s practice, she said: “I’m heading back to the rink. I’ll pick you up at five-thirty. Oh, and Franklin, I hope you don’t mind. I borrowed your dishwashing