Dark Night

Results

The next day I had work and I spent time at the skate park, reveling in not having to study. My brother and John were going to catch a plane later in the afternoon to fly to Sophia in Bulgaria for the World Championships. Maybe I shouldn't be that upset that I'd never gotten the opportunity to be serious about skating. It felt amazing just to have a few hours with no worries. My friends were there too, and we did a minimum of test post mortem. We couldn't do anything about it now, and today was beautiful and perfect to enjoy.

Tuesday was a big day for me. Grandpa officially bought his house and I got my SAT scores. I was so het up that the numbers didn't mean anything to me right away, so I looked frantically for the percentile: I'd scored in the top 93rd percentile. I took a moment to let that sink in, let me calm down some. Then the other scores made more sense; my essay had scored the highest in analysis but nothing was poor, and on the test test, I'd done best with reading, edging out math slightly, and the writing and language portion not far behind that. Then I texted my friends. Keshondra was also in the 93rd percentile, Zayna in the 91st, and the others were in the high to mid 80s. Everybody seemed pleased and relieved. I didn't hear from John for awhile, not that I expected to with him in Bulgaria, but he had scored in the 94th percentile. Good news all around. I couldn't help wondering what I could have done better to inch up a percentile. I'm a lot more competitive than I thought. 

But in the mean time, I went over to Grandpa's new house before work and, emboldened by his ownership, poked around in the yard until he drove up. He'd gotten another Ioniq, this one red, though, and I helped him unload gallons of primer and painting supplies as well as a little fleet of little pots of colored paint so he could see what they would look like on the actual walls in the light. He presented me with a key and I took some rolls of tape to start masking off windows and the baseboards, which would be painted white-white all through the house for consistency. I had some time before work, so we talked about my test scores as he gave me a little tour of the house. The top had been popped up in a modern expansion, creating a loft area that he wanted to use as a library. The rest of the house had a lot of original character, but the tile in the master bathroom was in bad shape. He'd found tiles that he liked and he already knew how to do the work, so he enlisted my help for the weekend in popping the tiles off the wall. I like demolition. He had new white tile like the original, but in place of the black accent tile he was using silver metal tiles. This would keep the look of the 20's aesthetic but modernize it a bit. There was also a guestroom.

"Things are going pretty well at home," he said, putting an arm around my shoulders. "I'm proud of both you and your parents. But there might be times when you could use a little space, so I'm always happy to have you visit, punkin. Maybe this weekend you could help me pick out some furniture."

Then the deliveries rolled started to roll up, and I started taping, using a razor blade for quick, easy, and precise cuts as Grandpa directed the placement of the appliances. The fridge was a tighter fit than it should have been, based on the measurements, but it worked. The new washer and dryer had what seemed like half a million cycles and features, including steam. Grandpa frowned at the tile in the kitchen. He'd liked it, but now it didn't look quite right with the new appliances. "There were some glass tiles that I liked," he said. "And now I don't think I like the countertops. They're also tile, but I worry that the grout will get gunky when I make bread."

"So just priming for now," I said, and he sighed before laughing.

"I guess so, punkin. Better to get it done now than before I get settled in." We chatted and ordered pizza for dinner as we discussed what he could do with the yard. Because it was an older house, the lot was pretty big.

The next night they aired the men's short program. Because the rink was a pretty big deal in town, even if it didn't employ a lot of people, the town was supportive of the skaters that trained there and the library always showed the competitions in the evening in the meeting room. The library director didn't mind if we popped in and out so long as we didn't stay forever, so I usually watched my brother and John skate. John had already made some adaptions to his skating and was working on his expression, plus he'd added some deeper edges to his footwork. There wasn't any point in really messing with a really good program now at the end of the season, but John is a pretty private person, and I knew that sharing his emotions wouldn't be the easiest thing for him. He'd probably prefer to stick in an extra jump, but there were limits to how many they could do. That addition, coupled with my brother's accidental conversion of his quad-quad to a quad-triple, left John in first place by six points. Nice, but not insurmountable in the long program. It's less of a deduction, for some reason, to fall on a jump than not complete all the planned revolutions. Judging is weird. The commentators picked up on John's increased expression and liked it, but failed to assign importance to the slight changes in his footwork. They also noticed my brother's attempt (doomed) to add some artistic expression. It wasn't graceful or pretty, more like a penguin trying to box. I laughed to myself and went back to work.