Dana Mentink - Race for the Gold

She smiled, a big wide grin that seemed to light a candle in the depths of her pupils and ignite the shame deep down in his own gut.

“Then I’ll find out what He wants me to do next.”

He stood, agog, until she lifted on tiptoe and aimed a clumsy kiss that landed at the corner of his mouth. “I’m so relieved that you’re all right. You are more to me than the man who will help me stand on top of the podium.” Then, with the gentlest of caresses to his cheek, she moved away to greet her father.

He realized he was staring at her, so he gathered up his wits and joined Mr. Thompson, who listened to the whole story again, his face grave as the police finished their interviews and promised to check in the next day.

Laney reached a finger out and wiped at a grease stain from her father’s chin. “What did you get into, Dad? Were you working on the cabs?”

He swiped as the smudge. “Yeah. Got a loose belt that needed attention.”

“I thought Mike handled that for you.”

Mr. Thompson rolled his shoulders. “We all pitch in.”

Tanya emerged in the hallway, wrapped in a bathrobe, long brown hair neatly braided into two plaits. “What’s all the noise? I was going to get a snack from the kitchen.”

“In your track shoes?” Laney said.

Tanya looked down at her expensive trainers. “Since I stepped on a nail last season, I don’t go anywhere in bare feet.”

Beth and Jackie joined them and filled Tanya in on the events. Tanya poked a finger at Beth’s shoulder. “How’d you get involved in this? And where’d you go? Thought we were going to watch a movie.”

Max registered for the first time that Jackie and Beth were both dressed for going outside.

Beth waved a hand. “I wanted to talk to my boyfriend, Cy.” Her eyes narrowed, shifting slightly to Jackie. “There’s no privacy anywhere around here, so I went outside.”

Jackie’s lips thinned. “Arranging a meeting?”

“No,” Beth shot back. “I don’t want to get grounded again for sneaking out,” she snapped, words rich with sarcasm. “But I’m going to be twenty next week, and technically I’m a legal adult, and you’re not my mother.”

“You’re far from an adult,” Jackie said smoothly.

Beth flushed. Tanya took her by the arm. “Come back to the room and tell me what Cy said. I’ve got to live vicariously through you, you know, and the other girls are going to want to hear all about the skate-in-the-pond adventure.”

“Ten o’clock lights out,” Jackie said to their retreating backs. Neither girl turned to acknowledge the remark.

“Ten o’clock curfew,” Jackie called again.

“I know, I know,” Beth snapped.

“Then stop testing,” Jackie said, matching Beth’s volume and then some. “And don’t forget what you’re here for.”

“Doesn’t matter if I forget. You’ll remind me,” the girl said with bitterness before she allowed Tanya to lead her away.

Max could read nothing from Jackie’s expression. “Were you checking up on her?”

Jackie gave him a blank look. “What?”

“You were outside, too, during the pond incident. Were you checking up on her?”

Jackie sighed, shadows of fatigue darkening her skin. “She’s impulsive, immature. She needs a mother as much as a coach. I’m not very maternal.” Jackie spoke as if she was talking to herself. “Her mother is the CEO of the biggest mining company in the world. She gave Beth everything, but you can’t give somebody drive. You have to be hungry to have drive.”

Max knew exactly where his own hunger had come from. It was born in the antiseptic waiting room where he’d taken off his shoes and practiced his wobbly skating skills on the linoleum while his four-year-old brother Robby had endured treatments for leukemia. The disease had taken his life anyway, a few days before his fifth birthday.

Lap after lap had buried the need deeper. He would control his own body to the point where he was the best in the world, invincible. His own parents had means, but Beth’s mother had billions. And Laney’s birth mother? She’d had the need only to feed her habit, from what he’d learned. Maybe Jackie was right; they both hungered in their own way. He was not sure what to say, and he saw from the uncomfortable look on Laney and Mr. Thompson’s faces that they shared his unease.

“Beth’s going to do well,” Laney said softly. “She’ll dig down deep to get what she wants.”

“She wants a mother, not a coach,” Jackie said, still gazing down the darkened hallway. “But she’s not going to get that from me.” Jackie shook her head and seemed to rouse herself from her thoughts. “I had four brothers.”

“No kids?” Mr. Thompson asked.

She answered dreamily, “A son. He’s a trial lawyer.” She thumbed her phone to life and showed them the photo of a dark-haired, thick-browed man. “Lives with his dad. Fortunate for him, because mothers make their kids weak,” she said with a glance at Laney. “You’re better off without one.”

Max saw Laney flinch, and he frowned at the massive insensitivity, but Coach Jackie appeared not to notice.

Mr. Thompson put an arm around Laney. “She did have a mother, a good woman who loved her enough to let her be who she was meant to be.”

Jackie smiled. “And a father who didn’t let the mother get in the way.”

Dan’s face tightened and he squeezed Laney closer as Jackie said good-night and left.

“She’s harsh,” Max said, trying to gauge Laney’s reaction.

Laney broke into her customary smile. “Maybe we could learn from her.” She put on her best scowl. “It’s time for bed everyone. Especially all those who have recently jumped in freezing-cold ponds and such.”

He chuckled. “You taking over my job?”

“Of course, so go take your supplements, drink eight glasses of water and get to sleep fast so you’ll be your cheerful good self tomorrow at training.”

“Is that an order, Laney?” he teased.

“Absolutely,” she proclaimed, kissing her father, taking Max’s arm and propelling him toward the exit.

Max allowed himself to be swept along in the tide of Laney’s cheerful conversation, but he knew she must be wondering, as he was, who had taken her skate and tried so hard to get rid of it.

As they walked past the windows, he had an uncomfortable feeling that there were more problems waiting in the darkness.

* * *

The gray predawn did nothing to lighten the tiny bathroom as Laney ruefully consulted the little notes she’d taped to the bathroom mirror reminding her which of the taps in the shower was for the hot water. Many a scalding she’d endured before she’d swallowed her pride and wrote the messages to herself. Hot and cold, only two choices and it frustrated her to no end that she could not remember that simple detail, one even a child could manage.

So you need a note, Laney. So what? The needles of hot water soothed her muscles, still sore from the crash. A slight pain in her shoulder reminded her that the day had gone from a crash to a tackle, which seemed hard to believe as she greeted another morning. Whatever had happened, she was determined not to let it deflect one iota of mental energy from her training. Run the day or it will run you, Max always told her.

Somehow the image of Max disappearing under the water stubbornly refused to leave her head. At the moment he sank, she had not cared about anything else in the world but that he should resurface unharmed. He was her trainer and friend, she reminded herself. Of course she would feel that way. But something new and different circled inside her chest, a feeling that she’d not experienced in a very long time, irregular and delicate as a bird hopping from branch to branch. She pressed her hands to the wet tile and tried to refocus.