Dark Night

Results

John's long program completely stunned the commentators, the audience, and the judges, apparently, if the fourteen point margin of victory was any guide. He skated the Queen medley in a white outfit with a yellow jacket, like one of Freddie Mercury's costumes. And he looked pretty perfect. I congratulated him in calculus, but it was weird. He started to come to class right before the bell so there wasn't time for either talk or awkward silence.

I talked to my friends a little about it; they had the good fortune of not knowing Jeanne very well but they were solidly on my side. It didn't help much; I was getting the feeling that I'd overreacted and I wanted some unbiased thinking. Which I got from Marc, of all people.

One Friday when I didn't have a date, I was goofing around with some of my teammates and they suggested going up to the rink for some fun. Not wanting to be a wet blanket, I agreed, and we went up for public skating. Marc saw me on his way out, reversed course, and put on his skates again. I was thinking and he skated up beside me, startling me a little. We made small talk a bit, then he asked what was going on with John. "He's irritable. He and Jeanne make quite a pair. He should be happier after his first win this year."

"We had a fight," I said, keeping my eyes on the ice.

"Chin up, don't look at the ice. It will always be there," he said briskly, then drew the details out of the fight out of me.

"Yeah, you may have overreacted," was his analysis. "Sounds like you're jealous."

"I am jealous," I had to admit. "Time with my friend was hard to come by to begin with what with practice and school, and now it's pretty much gone."

"Huh," he said. "Well, you have options. Talk to him and explain, apologizing for whatever you feel like you should, or... not."

"I was hoping for some kind of magic solution," I said flippantly and he grinned.

"Magic's only in books, cherie," he said, then I shook off my bad mood and introduced him to my friends, who were bright and perky, interested in meeting the cute coach. And Marc wasn't immune to their attention; he stayed around and skated with us for a bit before saying good night. The girls judged that the introduction had made up for my mood, and I apologized to them, preparatory to eating a bigger, gamier crow.

But of course, when you want to bite the bullet, the other person is nowhere to be found and he came into English and calculus right before the bell the next Monday. So in a break where we were supposed to be working on calculus problem sets, I finally wrote a note and tucked it under his elbow on the desk.

I'm sorry. I'm just jealous that I don't get to spend much time with you anymore. I shouldn't have yelled at you, it's my problem.

It seemed to take him forever to wrote back, and I braced myself for bad news. He dropped the note onto my textbook.

I'm sorry too. I know that feeling overlooked is a sore spot for you and I didn't consider that. I miss my best friend.

I about melted with relief that I hadn't torched that particular bridge. As we were passing up the homework at the end of class, John turned around and smiled. "So are you doing anything on Friday? I was thinking we could do something."

I smiled back. The football team had an away game, no performance or pep rally to do and I didn't have plans with any of my friends yet. "That sounds great."

We ended up going to a coffee shop and just talking for a few hours. It was awesome. I told him about the tickets Grandpa had gotten for us at the Olympics--we were going to the men's figure skating, of course, but also some of the snowboard slopestyle, which I liked because it looked like skateboarding but with much bigger air. And with some trepidation, I told him about how Mr Petrov had asked me to analyze Jeanne's skating. He was silent a moment, sipping his chai.