Madison nodded sternly. “I'm dead serious, ladies. If you aren't wearing the proper attire, you're done. Go home. Buh bye.” She blew her whistle,loudand long, until the ten or so incorrectly-dressed girls finally left the circle.
The outcast girls glided off the ice, coolly muttering to each other. I heard words likeughandcan't believe herandbitch. Madison grinned—she seemed to revel in it.
Yikes,I thought.Madison's kind of serious.
She blew her whistle again. “Alright! Let's start skating!”
***
That night, it was a frequent request heard echoing around the rink: “Smile, ladies!” “Smile—smile!” “Smiiiiile!”
Like I said. I was confident with all that. I smiled, I waved, I skated. The group of try-outs shrank, slowly but surely, as the weaker skaters tumbled to the ice and Madison seemed to derive a sense of joy in telling them to get lost.
After an hour, a group of seven was all that remained. Madison blew her whistle one last time.
“Congratulations, ladies, you made it to round two. We'll start interviews now.”
We followed her into the dressing room, where we took off our skates, and nervously waited for our interviews.
“Good luck,” I said to the first girl that Madison escorted out to a private room.
I looked around at the other girls. They were all … well … sort of in the same mold. The same type of girl as Madison—attractive in that classicAmerican beautyway. I wasn't nearly as tall or as thin or, hell,tonedas they were. They had golden tans, while Icouldn'ttan—I just fried. Looking at them and then looking at myself, I was the obvious odd-woman out.
Had I embarrassed myself to prove a point to Todd? And what point was I trying to make, exactly?
Er…that I'm attractive?Yeah, well, talk about a backfire! I didn't feel very pretty next to these girls.
When Madison called my name, I was the last girl to get interviewed. She took me to a conference room filled with fold-out chairs, all sitting in front of a big white-board that was still marked up with a mess of squiggled lines—the Blizzard's hockey strategy. I took a seat and Cora and Madison sat opposite me.
Madison looked at her clipboard. “So. Honor Bennett. That's an unusual name. Is that your real name?”
I smiled shyly. “Yeah. It's a family name.”
She smiled back. “I like it. Hopefully it means I can trust you.”
Her eyebrows arched, almost as if she were asking me a question. I laughed, a little uncomfortably—and so did Cora.
“Well—er—yeah, I think you can!”
Madison consulted her clipboard again. “Okay, Honor. Here's the thing. You were by far the strongest skater out there. Great eye contact, great smile. You have a skating background, I take it?”
“Sure do! I figure skated for five years.”
“I figured.” Madison pressed her lips together into a tight smile. “I was a cheerleader myself. But after four years of doing this, I can spot the figure skaters now. We've had a couple girls over the years who figure skated in the past, but you'd be the only one on the squad now. So what's your deal? I see you're 20 years old—are you a student?”
“No …” I trailed off. “I thought about going to art school for painting. But my boyfriend says it'd be a waste of time and money to get an arts degree. He wants me to work instead, and just pursue painting as a hobby. Who knows, he's probably right.”
Madison's eyebrow arched with interest. “You said you have a boyfriend?”
“Yeah. We actually just moved to Denver the other week from Minnesota.”
Her eyes and her smile both brightened, as if she suddenly liked me more. “Oh! Welcome to Colorado!”
“Thank you.”
“So you and your boyfriend live together, then?”
“Yup.”
