Power Play

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Dante Espinosa. He’s a few inches shy of six

feet and hell on skates. The crowds love him, the girls

especially—they swoon over his dark eyes, his wavy hair, his quick

smile. He’s always smiling, it seems, in the midst of a race or

when he’s the first across the finish line. Magic on ice, that’s

what he is. The fans know it, he knows it, and it’s the only thing

he’s counting on anymore to get him somewhere in this world.

Eighteen, graduated last May from a local

high school in the bad part of town, one of those places where the

latest budget included metal detectors at all exits. He’s too short

for basketball, too small for football, and the only thing that

kept him out of the gangs and the drugs and the trouble was

skating. He can outrace the wind itself on a good day. When someone

asks how he got so fast, he tells them it’s from outrunning bullies

on the way home from school. He’s only half kidding.

If life were fair, he’d be able to skate

24/7, round the clock, day in and day out and there would be

nothing he couldn’t do on the ice. He was born with skates on, he’s

almost sure of it, though his mother tells him not to be

loco. It’s just the two of them, and she works long hours at

the da’s office as a legal assistant, something she hates and can’t

quite describe when Dante asks her what exactly it is she does for

a living. He’s raised himself since middle school, came home

afternoons and cooked his own dinner of Ramen noodles or Chef

Boyardee, cleaned up the dishes without being told, tucked himself

into bed at night. Graduating from high school was sort of

anti-climatic after that. It’s the same things, only he’s at the

skate shop full-time now, twelve to nine most every day, longer

hours if there’s a meet coming up and he needs the extra cash. He

pays for the training himself, pays for the club, fifteen dollars

each time he gets to the rink just to participate. If the rent’s

due or his mom can’t afford food one week, he gives her money from

his skating fund and has to train twice as hard the next time he

gets on the ice.

But it’s what he wants to do. College? No,

not really, not unless they offer short track programs, which they

don’t. None of the local ones do anyway, and he can’t afford to go

out of state. Maybe further up north, but he was born and raised in

New Jersey and if he goes anywhere else, it’ll be Lake Placid,

that’s it. That’s his dream…well, one of them, to train with other

athletes and make the Olympics one day. He knows it’s probably

futile—he’s already getting too old for the sport, most short track

skaters burn out before they’re even twenty-five—but it’s his

dream, even if it never comes true. He’ll strive to reach it until

it slips completely out of his grasp.

He’s got another year or so before he can go

out for the us team, though—it’s only the end of January, and the

next Winter Olympics aren’t for another two years. He hopes to be

in Lake Placid by then, skating rings around the judges. His best

race is the five hundred, he’s great at short distances, and he’s

not too shabby with the relay, either. Just give him some good

teammates, let him skate anchor, and he can almost taste the

victory and the gold.

Before that, though, State championships,

and he’s a sure win for the club’s nomination. This is his second

meet today, the club’s third but he had to miss the last one

because his mom needed his fifteen bucks to help pay the water when

the city came around to cut it off. Dante’s been practicing though,

worked over at the skate shop each night last week, came to the

rink first thing every morning, even before the hockey team claimed

the ice. At the shop Bobby likes him, really likes him,

Dante should take up fencing for all the warding off he’s done of

that man. He’s in his late twenties, an old school skateboarder who

still sports thick dreadlocks and wears his pants down low. He

tells Dante if he ever needs a few extra bucks, he can show him how

to make it. Off the clock too, under the table, it’ll be good for

both of them. Worth his while, Bobby promises.

Dante always says no.

It’s not that he’s not interested, because

he likes boys and Bobby’s not hard on the eyes, he’s even toyed

with the idea of maybe hooking up with him later on down the road,

but right now someone steady will distract him from skating and

that’s the last thing Dante needs. He’s easily distracted as it is,

the first off the ice after a race, wins and losses are all the

same to him. It’s the speed he likes, the freedom, the sense that

if he goes fast enough, if he pushes himself just a little more,

he’ll somehow manage to slip free of the brownstone projects where

he lives with his mom, he’ll break out of this sedentary life that

tries to suffocate him, he’ll soar with the best.

That’s all he thinks about when he skates.

He wants to be the best.