The Favorites: A Novel(2)
When Sheila and her partner, Kirk Lockwood, won their first U.S. title, she was still a teenager. Winning was a long shot for Heath and me, since we’d never been to Nationals before. We had qualified the previous season but didn’t have the means to travel to the competition venue in Salt Lake City. Luckily, the championships were in Cleveland this time, a comparably short and affordable Greyhound bus ride away. I was certain the competition would change everything for us.
I was right. Just not in the way I imagined.
Heath kissed my shoulder. “Well, I’m not nervous. I’m skating with Katarina Shaw.” He said my name slow, reverent, savoring the sound. “And there’s nothing she can’t do.”
We stared at each other in the shadows, so close we were sharing breath. Later, we’d become world famous for that: stretching out the moment before a kiss until it was almost unbearable, until every member of the audience felt the quickening of our pulses, the pure want reflected in our eyes.
But that was choreography. This was real.
Heath’s mouth finally met mine—soft, unhurried. We thought we had all night.
By the time we heard the footsteps, it was too late.
Nicole Bradford, a middle-aged blond woman wearing a sparkly cardigan and heavy makeup, sits at the center island in her white-on-white suburban dream kitchen.
Nicole Bradford (Figure Skating Coach): There’s always a surge after the Winter Olympics. All these girls who think they’re destined to become stars. Though they usually aren’t quite as intense about it as Katarina Shaw.
Family photos show Katarina as a little girl in various skating costumes. In one, she’s in front of a wall covered in pictures of Sheila Lin, imitating Sheila’s pose in the central image.
Nicole Bradford: At her first lesson, Katarina said she was going to be a famous ice dancer like Sheila Lin. The other girls hated her instantly.
Four-year-old Katarina skates alone with a serious expression, her hair in two messy pigtails.
Narrator: Though her name eventually became synonymous with ice dance, Katarina Shaw spent her early career as a singles skater, since no boys were available to partner with her.
Ellis Dean perches on a stool at a chic cocktail bar, holding a martini glass. He’s in his early forties, with an impish smile and carefully coiffed hair.
Ellis Dean (Former Ice Dancer): There are vanishingly few guys who want to do ice dance. At least pairs has jumps, plus hurling pretty girls into the air and catching them by the crotch. If you like that sort of thing.
Narrator: Ice dance is perhaps the least understood figure skating discipline.
Archival footage of skaters competing in the ice dance event at the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria—the first year ice dance was contested as an Olympic sport.
Narrator: Drawn from ballroom dancing, ice dance focuses on intricate footwork and close partnering between skaters, rather than the acrobatic lifts and athletic jumps seen in other events.
Ellis Dean: A lot of female ice dancers start out skating with their brothers, cause those are the only dudes they can manage to guilt into it. That was not an option for Kat Shaw.
Chapter 2
The door banged open, and my bedroom filled with the mingled stench of Marlboros, Jim Beam, and body odor.
My older brother, Lee.
Heath and I leapt up. My brother didn’t want Heath in the house, let alone in my room. Which only inspired us to find more creative ways to sneak him inside. If Lee was sober—an increasingly rare occurrence—he limited his objections to snide remarks, maybe the occasional inanimate object hurled against the wall.
When he was drunk? He had no limits at all.
“What the hell’s he doing here?” Lee staggered across the threshold. “I told you—”
“I told you to stay out of my room.”
I used to lock the door and leave the tarnished brass key in place, so Lee couldn’t spy on us through the keyhole either. Until he kicked the door in and busted the lock.
“It’s my house.” Lee jabbed a finger in Heath’s direction. “And he’s not welcome.”
Heath moved in front of me, smooth as a dance step, and smiled in a way we both knew would only incense Lee further. “Katarina wants me here,” he said. “And so did—”
Lee surged forward, seizing Heath by the arm and yanking him toward the hallway.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
Heath gripped the doorframe, fingernails sinking into the cracked trim. As a competitive athlete, he was in far better shape, but Lee had several inches of height and many pounds of bulk on him. One brutal wrench, and Heath was forced to let go.
“Lee! That’s enough.”
Not for the first time, I wished we had neighbors close enough to hear the commotion, to call the police. But our house was in the middle of nowhere, bordered only by old-growth forest and the cold expanse of Lake Michigan.
No one was coming to help us.
I chased after them, snatching at the collar of Lee’s shirt, pulling his greasy hair, anything I could think of to slow him down. He jabbed an elbow into my rib cage, knocking me back.
Heath made a valiant effort to stomp on Lee’s toes, and Lee slammed him into the banister. They were close—treacherously close—to the top of the staircase.
Gruesome images flashed through my mind: Heath, in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the steps, a pool of blood spreading. Bones protruding through skin, shattered so thoroughly he’d never be able to stand, let alone skate.