Power Play

Chapter 2-2

Distractions. The girls in the crowd

don’t bother Dante—he waves at them when they call out his name,

gives them a smile to swoon over, and then it’s back to the race at

hand. Only today, when his gaze drifts over the stands he sees the

guy on the landing, strawberry blonde hair that’s parted straight

down the middle, hanging to the tops of his ears on either side of

his face, half in his eyes. A smattering of freckles across his

nose that probably gets worse in the sun, pale skin that looks like

porcelain from here. He’s sitting down, leaning onto the railing,

watching the race—Dante fancies he’s there to watch him,

that sends a thrill through his body, he’d like that. Knowing that

someone out there today is someone he’d be interested in, someone

he might want to meet afterwards, just to talk to the guy, get to

know him better. The only guy he knows is Bobby Trevor and he’s

almost ten years older than Dante is, not to mention he owns the

skate shop so he’s technically his boss—

The starting gun goes off.

Shit! Dante tears his thoughts away

from the boy on the landing and Bobby and everything else that

isn’t this race, the ice beneath his skates, the chill air against

his face. He’s the last off the line, dammit, that’s what he

gets for looking around. See? he tells himself as he hurries

to catch up with the others, his skates click click clicking

on the ice. This is why you don’t need to be messing around with

anyone right now, chico. Keep your mind on the heat. You have to at

least place second to make it to the next round and look at you,

trailing the pack.

Four and a half laps around the rink, that’s

all he gets. Around the first curve he slips in front of

Pennock—that wasn’t hard to do. The kid’s too damn big for this

sport anyway. When he pulls up from the turn he sees Pennock

stumble over one of the track blocks, he goes down on one knee,

comes back up, falls again. As Dante takes the next curve, he

notices Pennock skating to the edge of the ice, his helmet thrown

down in disgust. Pissed, and he’s not even giving himself a chance

just because he screwed up in the first lap. Dante can’t believe

that—he knows this sport well enough to know anything can happen,

anything at all. Quitting just because he might not win isn’t an

option.

For Dante, winning is the only

option.

The stands are a blur around him, the ice

speeds away, he watches for an opening up ahead but Dietrich and

Johnson are too close, one on the inside track, one going wide,

there’s no room to squeeze by. One lap down, two, and he tries to

pass Dietrich but the other skater sees him from the corner of his

eye and cuts him off. It’s an illegal move but Dante’s not going to

push it, he’ll wait for the referee’s call at the end of the race.

Instead he comes out of the next turn on the outside track, and

he’s just about to overtake Johnson when a hand touches his hip.

It’s Dietrich again, coming up too fast for either of them to pull

away. Dante feels the guy’s skate slip beneath his blade a second

before he’s thrown head first to the ice.

Somehow he manages to turn onto his back and

when he hits the boards, he hardly touches them before he’s

struggling to his feet again. The crowd’s roar is a deafening surge

in his ears as he regains the ice, but the other skaters are

already across the finish line, he’s out of the running for a

chance at the state competitions. Because you were slow off the

gun, he tells himself, gliding over the line. The crowd calls

out his name, even though he finished last. You weren’t paying

attention and you didn’t get the speed you needed from the start.

Distracted by a cute hombre—

“Johnson finishes first,” the

announcer is saying, and then, incredibly, “Espinosa second. Two

disqualifications, Dietrich and Pennock. Both skaters are out of

the heat. Johnson and Espinosa advance to the men’s

quarterfinals.”

Already unbuckling his helmet, Dante nods at

the fans as he skates to the sidelines. He leans against the

boards, laughs at Johnson’s thumbs up, nods again. He can’t speak,

he’s winded and it was a fast race, just under a minute—he looks up

at the scoreboard and winces at the number by his name, 00:55:03.

Definitely not his best time. Doesn’t have to be, he

reasons. It got you in the quarterfinals, didn’t it? You’ll do

better there. You’ll have to.

But that race isn’t until the weekend, and

he might have to ask Bobby to let him work over a few nights

between now and then to get up enough money to practice. His

skating fund is getting low—just a few crumpled bills wadded up

into an old Mason jar that he keeps in his closet, most of the

money in his jacket right now because he needs to pay half the rent

for his mom. “You’re out of school,” she told him last night, when

she came home from work in one of her evil moods, the kind he knows

to avoid. “You have a job, you’re not a little chivato any

more. You want to live here? That’s fine, but you have to help me

out, Tay. I can’t do this alone.”

He can do that, he thinks, slipping skate

covers over his blades. It’s cheaper than moving out on his own, at

any rate. One of the skaters on the women’s team, Josey Banks,

holds the small door open for him as he enters the player’s box.

“You were real good out there,” she says, leaning back against the

door to close it. Flipping her golden braid over one shoulder, she

adds, “Good form.”

Dante laughs. “Thanks.” He’s not interested

in talking about his form, though—the race is over and the results

are in, he’s not going to dwell on it any longer. He got what he

wanted, he’s in the quarterfinals now, still has a shot at State.

Already his mind is flitting back to what distracted him out there

on the ice, and he looks up to see if that guy with the light hair

is still on the landing above.

He is, and it may be Dante’s imagination but

he thinks the boy is still looking at him. There’s a camera in his

lap, a notebook on the seat beside him. A school project on

speedskating? A reporter for a local paper? Dante wants to find

out.

He slips on his leather jacket, the one with

l8r sk8r embroidered on the back—he couldn’t afford

something this nice but Bobby’s his only sponsor, and below the

skate shop’s logo reads, Anyone Else is a Poser. Good for

business, Bobby tells him, but Dante’s not too sure about that,

since his is one of the only shops in the city, and the only one to

cater to all skaters, inline or ice or hockey, even boarders.

Unconsciously he pats the inside pocket to make sure his money’s

still there—it is—and when Josey starts to say something else, he

cuts her off with a smile. “Thanks.”

She grins. “You going to hang around a bit?”

she wants to know. “I skate in the third heat.”

With a shrug, Dante grabs onto the railing

above the player box and hauls himself up into the stands. “I’ll be

around,” he says, swinging first one leg, then the other over the

railing. Leaning down, he snags his bag from the bench and

shoulders it. Then he flashes Josey another smile. “Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Her eyes say more. Dante’s

used to that lovesick look. He doesn’t think he’s all that,

really—it’s his hair mostly, thick black waves that fall to his

shoulders and frame his face, girls really seem to like it. And his

eyes, he’s been told he has pretty eyes, Bobby’s even mentioned it

once or twice, for all the good it’s done him. But Dante’s not

interested in Josey’s schoolgirl crush, or her girlfriends giggling

further down the bench.

Instead, he hurries to the end of the row,

his skates not as agile on the concrete stands as they are on the

ice. Up a short aisle to the back of this section and the landing

is right above him now. When he looks up, he sees the guy—reporter?

student?—bent over his notebook and studiously ignoring Dante. This

close Dante sees the steel brace around one of the boy’s legs, and

for the first time he notices the wheelchair.

Before he can change his mind, he jumps up,

grabs the railing with both hands, pulls himself up over it onto

the landing. Now the boy looks at him, surprised, and Dante

gives him a bright smile as he picks up the camera on the seat

beside the wheelchair. Then he sinks into the seat with an

exasperated sigh. He lets his bag slip to the floor between them

and toys with the camera. “God, what a race.” Offering his hand, he

says, “Dante Espinosa. You skate?”

The kid looks at the hand, at Dante, then at

the hand again as if wondering how to respond. Of course he

doesn’t skate, you i***t, Dante thinks. He’s in a

wheelchair. Open mouth, insert foot. When the boy looks at him

a second time, Dante whispers, “Don’t leave me hanging here, man. I

ain’t gonna bite you. Most anything else I’m willing to try at

least once but biting’s no fun.”

That gets him a laugh and a shy grin. “Ryan

Talonovich,” he says, shaking Dante’s hand. He has a firm grip that

belies the wheelchair and the brace on his leg. “You don’t think

biting can be fun?”

Now it’s Dante’s turn to laugh. He settles

back in his seat and props his feet up on the railing, his skates

reflecting the light from the ice below. “I don’t know,” he admits.

“I never really tried it.” Talonovich, that name sounds

familiar for some reason he can’t quite place. He should apologize

for that skating remark but doesn’t want to bring it back up again

if he can help it.

But Dante’s mouth is faster than his skating

sometimes, especially when he’s nervous, and this Ryan makes his

stomach flutter in a way Bobby only wishes he could. “I feel like I

should know you,” he says, tapping the arm of his seat to work out

the energy coursing through him after the race. “Talonovich…”

Ryan points out over the ice and Dante sees

it, a hockey jersey with that name written across the back, hung

above one end of the rink. “That you?” he asks, surprised. Ryan

simply nods. “What happened?”

Turning back to his notebook, Ryan tells

him, “Accident at practice just before the start of the season.

Another player ran me into the boards.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s an automatic reply,

something he says because he thinks it’s expected of him, but Ryan

just shrugs like it’s no big deal. There’s something Dante likes

about this boy, something he can’t quite put his finger on, maybe

the way his hair falls in front of his eyes, or the freckles across

his nose, or the hoop earring high up on his right ear, almost

hidden beneath his hair and so incongruous with everything else

about him. That earring hints that there’s more to this boy than

his twisted legs, his sad eyes. Dante waits for Ryan to look at

him—when he doesn’t, he leans closer and asks, “You’re not

paralyzed, are you?”

Ryan blinks quickly as if surprised. “I can

move my legs,” he says, almost defensive.

That touched a nerve. Dante senses Ryan’s

sullen anger and tries to think of some way to take it back, start

all over again. I don’t know why I like you, he thinks,

studying Ryan’s bunched jaw, but I do. This close, his skin

still looks flawless, and Dante fancies he can see faint blue lines

just below the surface. He thinks maybe Ryan needs to get out

more—he’s in a wheelchair, true, but he’s not dead. Looking

over Ryan’s shoulder as if he’s interested in the notebook in his

lap, Dante lowers his voice and whispers, “Can you still get it

up?”

Ryan’s eyes go wide and then he starts to

laugh, breathy giggles that make Dante grin. “No one’s asked me

that yet,” Ryan admits. Now he’s looking at Dante, finally,

really seeing him for the first time, and the ice, the skaters, the

crowd, even the race below all dissolve in the boys’ breathless

laughter.