Here’s what I do remember about our first national final: the way my body took over as soon as I heard those familiar synthesized strings. The sensation of Heath’s breath against my neck as we wound ourselvesaround each other in a sinuous combination spin. The burning in my legs as we entered the last minute of the program, and how it felt more like pleasure than pain.
We ended with a standing spin that left us facing each other, Heath’s hands around my waist. The crowd cheered as the final note faded—and cheered louder when we gave each other a quick, chaste kiss. Well, chaste compared to the way we kissed when we were older anyway.
As we made our way off the ice, I couldn’t stop smiling. We’d done it. I hadn’t let the pain hold me back; in fact, I could barely even feel it anymore. That was the best we’d ever skated. It had to be enough to put us into fourth. Maybe even higher.
No one had thrown flowers for us during the first two events, but now they were raining down. Heath bent to sweep up a single red rose and handed it to me.
We were the only team at Nationals without a coach in attendance, so we sat alone as we awaited our scores. I’d felt awkward about it at first, but now I was glad. I knew Nicole would have tried to stop us from skating, and she would have been wrong. We were going to stand on the national podium like I’d dreamed about since I was four years old, and this competition would be the beginning for us, not the end.
Our technical marks displayed first. No 6.0s, but several high fives. I clutched the rose with one hand, Heath’s knee with the other. We almost always scored higher on the artistic side.
The technical score is scientific—especially nowadays, with the impenetrably complex scoring system the International Skating Union has implemented. But the artistic score is pure magic. That’s what the crowd responds to. Your passion, your connection, the way you interpret every single note of the music with the most dramatic extensions of your limbs and the subtlest tilts of your chin. If you can make every person in the arena, from the front row to the nosebleeds, feel something real? That’s how you win.
“And now, the marks for artistic impression.”
I held my breath. Heath tightened his arm around my shoulders.
Then the first number appeared, and I forgot how to breathe.
Ellis Dean:They were robbed. I’m the one they would’ve knocked off the podium, and I can admit that.
Jane Currer:Their performance was engaging, but this was Nationals, not the Ice Capades.
A clip from the 2000 U.S. Nationals broadcast of Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha’s “Frozen” program plays, slowed down and zoomed in to show their facial expressions. Even during complicated elements, they never take their eyes off each other.
Nicole Bradford:I can understand why some judges might not have responded to their style. Skating to a Madonna song, the dress Kat wore—it was a little edgier than what the other teams were doing.
Jane Currer:Presentation is important, and that includes hair, makeup, costumes. The whole package.
Ellis Dean:I mean, yeah, that was the ugliest effing dress I’d ever seen. But she wore it for the original dance too, and they didn’t ding her then.
Katarina and Heath react to their artistic presentation scores. She looks like she wants to break something. He squeezes her hand. There are a few scattered boos from the crowd.
Jane Currer:I would call figure skating a conservative sport, and I don’t see why that’s a negative thing. The young athletes who win U.S. medals go out into the world as ambassadors of our great country. We have to be sure they’ll act appropriately. Onandoff the ice.
Ellis Dean:They looked at Kat Shaw and saw white trash, and they looked at Heath Rocha and saw a foreigner. Never mind that he was as American as any of those snobby-ass judges.
Jane Currer:As I said, I stand by my scores, and my decisions. At 2000 Nationals, and every competition thereafter.
Producer(Offscreen): What about your decision regarding th—
Jane Currer:Next question, please.
Chapter 9
The best skate of our lives so far, and we slid back to sixth place.
The Lins took silver, right behind the reigning national champs Elizabeth Parry and Brian Alcona. Reed and Branwell got the bronze, Hayworth and Dean the pewter.
Heath didn’t ask if I wanted to stay to watch the medal ceremony. It was just a matter of time before I lost control of the emotions I’d been holding in since our dismal artistic marks flashed across the screen, and we both wanted to be on the road home before that happened.
Home, where my brother might actually kill us for taking his truck without permission. I almost wished he would, because otherwise I somehow had to survive until my eighteenth birthday, stripped of the one thing I’d been living for this entire time.
With those scores, no one better than Nicole would want to coach us. No sponsors would look twice. No one would remember us at all.
The snow had started up again, so Heath offered to go get the truck while I waited in the lobby. My hip was shrieking in protest after everything I’d put it through, but that pain was nothing compared to the humiliation gnawing a hole in my chest. I slouched against the wall, burying my hands in my coat pockets, blinking fast to keep the tears at bay.
I wasn’t a champion. I wasn’t special. I was nothing.
