Page 36 of Darkness

“Yes, will you be able to talk to Logan about competitions?” I have to laugh at her. This is all she talks about, but she’s not ready.

“Now you know how he is-”

“But what about single competitions? No partner? He said no because of the boys.” For her age, she listens to everything and everyone. She’s going to be a handful for her parents.

“I have to find a competition first and at the moment, you’re not even half ready. If you want to be in competitions, it’s going to take a lot of work, and this once a week training won’t cut it-”

“What do I have to do?”

“Well, the first thing you have to do is get your posture straight. Come on. What have I told you? Stand straight, shoulders back, down the ice. Let me have a look if there are any competitions coming within the next year.”

“Promise?”

“Poppy, it will take easily a year for you to be ready to compete. Not to win, to win it will probably take a good two, three years. Now get going. Backwards.”

“I hate going backwards.” She places her hands on her hips.

“And there it is. The reason you’re not ready for competitions. You have to do flips, you have to do jumps in the air. You have to do a lot.” I love teaching Poppy. I really do. She’s eager. She reminds me of the arguments I used to have with my dad.

“Okay, Coach, give it to me.” This little girl is full of confidence, like nothing will stop her from getting what she wants.

“I want back straight, and you going backwards-”

“For how long?”

“To the end, and if you don’t have your back straight for the whole way, you come back here and redo it.” Moaning, she skates to the side. “Back straight, Poppy.” It’s probably one of the hardest things to do. Posture. Even a little off and you get points taken off you.

Skating over to her, I stand behind her. “Let’s do the little trick my dad used to do on me.” I skate off to the side and grab a stick, and get back to her. I slide it through the back of her arms. “This is what we’re going to be using for the next couple of weeks until you can do your posture without it.”

“It hurts.”

“It’s meant to hurt. That means your posture is not good. Now go, you can go forward for a bit.” She skates off and moans to herself. “Two laps, posture straight, head held high, like that.” I watch her moving around the ice as I skate over to Meadow. “She’s asking about competitions again.” The only reason I bring it up is because Logan’s not here yet.

“She mentioned it to me, too. What do you think?” Meadow asks me as I watch her moving on the ice.

“She’s not ready, Meadow. She will need to train more than once a week, maybe this time next year, but she needs more training sessions. Almost every day. Take a day break or something.”

She wants to compete in the big leagues. She needs to do more training.

“Really?”

“Yeah, she’s not ready. She doesn’t have a good posture. She can’t do the spins up in the air yet. You should have a look at YouTube. Type in kids her age in figure skating competition. Show her, show her what they’re doing, and she’ll realize how far behind she is from them.” Before she can answer, she stops when Logan arrives and says. “Morning.”

“Morning, you coming from practice?” I ask him.

“Yep, coach is probably going to kill us this season.” He jokes.

“Didn’t you have a whole season without losing?” I ask. I’ve never watched him play, but Meadow gives me the update on them.

“Yes, and now he wants it again this season.” I look at Logan really looking at him, knowing that he’s Cain’s half brother. Now that I’m really looking at him and having a clear picture of Cain in my head, you can kind of see it. There are small, little features that are similar to each other.

I’d love to know why they hate each other, but I remember Miles’ words. He will tell me everything when the time’s right.

Fifteen

Autumn-Rose

She hasn’t stopped staringat me since I walked in this morning. I’ve asked her what’s going on, and she replies with. ‘You know what!’ No, I don’t know what.

---