I was always a skater first. My parents had both been skaters, and I was raised in an environment where even the walls constantly seemed to whisper, “figure skating.” My father, James Carter, was the silver medalist in the US National Figure Skating Championships with his partner, Natalia Greshuk, in 1979. After that they retired and two years later he married my mother, Mary Quentin, and became a coach. My mom started skating a little bit later than most people do at age thirteen, and never skated competitively, but toured with the performing group Ice All Stars. She met my Dad while they were practicing in Lake Placid, New York.

I was born in 1981 in New Jersey, which is where I grew up. Three years later my little brother Joshua came a long, and lived to make my life miserable.
That same year my parents took me skating for the first time, but it scared me so much and I fell so often that I cried all the way home. My dad suggested that I take ballet lessons instead, but I refused. After a little while though, I tried again and didn’t fall as much, so I decided to stick with it.
I remember the first time I met Scott. He was quite tall for his age, with short brown hair and gentle green eyes. When he looked at me for the first time, my impression was that he would understand me—that was something about him—he was never quick to judge. We sat next to each other in awkward silence as we tied up our skates, and when we met my dad out on the ice, I was too shy to look at him. In those first few minutes, I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my skating career with Scott.
His family couldn’t be more different from mine. Scott’s parents met when his dad had a dental appointment at the office Scott’s mother worked in, and were inseparable ever since. Like me, Scott was born in New Jersey, but didn’t have a thought in his mind about skating until first grade.
Upon arriving to class, he shoved his super hero backpack in the cubby, and sat down at his desk just as the bell rang. He was waiting there quietly, when a bunch of the boys in his class whose dads were all buddies, came over to his table.
“Are you gonna twy out fow the hockey team dis yeaw, Scott?” asked one of them.
“Um, no,”
“What? That is so-o JANK!”
“What is ‘jank’?” one of the smaller ones chortled. He was the pudgiest kid in the class; the kind of kid whose cheeks you just want to pinch.
“You don’t know what ‘jank’ means?” the first boy asked scornfully. Clearly he already had the upper hand in this tidy little first grade group.
“Wew, I fink I actuwy hewd it once…” answered the pudgy kid, switching gears to avoid any possible shame. The first boy ignored him and turned back to Scott.
“Yow not goingta be cool if you don’t do hockey, Scott. My bwovew said dat awl da guwls like him because he pways vowsity!”
“I don’t really wanna play hockey,” explained Scott. The kid scowled at him in as menacing a way as a first grade jock could.
Scott could’ve pointed out that it wasn’t cool to pronounce your “r’s” like “w’s”, but instead he just repeated that he had no interest in hockey, and eventually they left him alone.
***
The fact that Scott couldn’t care less about what other people thought he should do was always something I admired about him. Instead, he asked his parents if he could try figure skating. He’d seen the 1984 winter Olympics in Sarajevo on TV, and he’d been amazed at the skaters’ ability to jump and spin without falling.
Both of us started taking separate lessons from my dad, and we were paired when a friend of my dad’s suggested that we try skating together. She said she’d been watching us in our private lessons, and thought we had the same knee action and rhythm when we skated. When I think about it now, it’s amazing that she noticed such little details when we were that young. But she must’ve had a great eye, because Scott and I have been skating as a pair ever since.

At our first practice when Scott and I held hands for the first time, I was so nervous that my palms were all sweaty and my heart was thumping so loudly, I thought everyone in the rink could probably hear it. The first thing my dad (who I then began to call “coach”) did, was have us practice stroking around and around the rink, moving at the same time. We’d push onto our left foot, then onto our right, then left, then right. The crisp air and the satisfying scraping sound as you glide across the surface has always been the most peaceful sound to me. Skating in unison got easier and easier, but both of us still felt too awkward to say anything or to make eye contact.
The hardest part about skating as a pair is that the skaters must strive to move like one person. They have to put a lot of trust in each other to be able to make a routine seem effortless and smooth. Both partners need to be strong, and the woman especially must be very courageous since she’s the one who will be lifted and thrown.
Learning to skate as a pair was awfully frustrating. I wasn’t an amazing single skater by any stretch of the imagination, but I could still do most of the required elements. But when I started skating with Scott, I had to re-learn everything: the entrance to spins changed, the way I aligned my body changed—there was some little detail for every element that Scott and I had to become accustomed to.
Those exhausting early morning and after school practices started the same morning my dad woke me up with the news that I had a partner. I know some people wonder, “Didn’t you ever get bored of it? I mean, you were there every day!” and the thing is, I didn’t.
Sure, there were days when I didn’t really feel like getting up, or I was frustrated with something that I just couldn’t master—and during the first month or two with Scott my nerves were really on edge, because I didn’t know him well, and I was so worried about letting him down if I messed up. But that wasn’t to say there were times when I didn’t want to skate—being on the ice was always where I felt most at home, and Scott was extremely patient with me whenever we were learning something new.
I was always a kind of serious, even slightly awkward girl, especially in elementary school where kids would have “play-dates,” and then in middle school where they’d talk about football and manicures; all while I rushed home to change and stretch before going back to skating. And I never thought that I was really beautiful or anything, either; just your average brown-haired and brown-eyed girl—no one to make a huge fuss about or put on the cover of a magazine. And that was how skating became my safe zone—it was full of people who were also bursting with passion for the same sport, and it made me feel like I was part of something that had a purpose. Part of something where people wouldn’t look at me and judge my talent by my physical appearance like they did at school; somehow, it was always Maddie O’Brien, the prettiest girl in the grade, who was “the best” at volley ball, even though she never hit the ball without shrieking and missing.
My most honest moment with myself was in my eighth grade language arts class, sometime in the middle of the school year. I remember coming into class, and there being one word scrawled across the chalkboard: “Purpose.” Mrs. Johansson, a chunky European woman with giant blue eyes and curly blond hair, asked us to take out a piece of lined paper and answer the question, “What is your purpose?” I jotted it down at the top of the page, and then stared at it for ten minutes, retracing the words with my pen until the ink was so dark it looked black instead of blue.
Still grasping the pen, I looked around the classroom. Mrs. Johansson was sitting at her desk, adjusting her cheetah print glasses and perusing a neat stack of papers. The rest of the class was already scribbling away; the kid next to me had a third of the page filled up. Finally I put the pen down. What is my purpose? I asked myself. After watching the second hand complete another round on the clock, I picked up the pen again and wrote: “to do what I’m meant to do.” Truth be told, I had no idea what I was meant to do—skate, I guess.
In that moment my life suddenly seemed so far away, yet there I was, living it.
I reread the question, and then stared at the phrase I’d just written; slowly admitting that I wasn’t comfortable with who I was inside.
I was never able to trust my instincts or do something because I wanted to. That’s one of the negatives of being raised as a skater—other people are always running your life even if they don’t mean to—scheduling practices, telling you when you will and won’t compete; the list goes on and on. It’s rare that you ever have a moment with yourself when you actually feel like you can make an important decision. And because I was always skating, I never had any close girlfriends to confide in or talk to about my hopes and fears and dreams, even though I did have Scott.
Yet being friends with him was never the same as what I thought it must be like to walk home with other girls my age, and giggle about boys and school and the latest music together. It’s a patch in my life I’ll never be able to fill.
But the moment I stepped into the rink and my ears were filled with the sound of early morning or afternoon chatter and Scott called, “Hey Andi,” all of my doubts about myself went away. I was happy just to be with him. There were some girls I knew who barely had a relationship with their “boyfriends”—every “date” was just physical entanglement; and in a way I felt sorry for them, because they didn’t know or understand the kind of true happiness that came with actually loving somebody for real. That was the thing about Scott—because he hadn’t been brought up in a family of skaters, he saw the rest of the world in a much more real way than I ever did—or even do now. He didn’t play games or mess around with someone for his own advantage. If he said something, he meant it.

While we were tying up our skates one morning, Scott caught me staring at one of the other pair skaters, Isabelle. A short, curvy girl with auburn hair and blue eyes, she was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful skaters at the rink. She was stretching by one of the benches by the window and chatting with her partner, Jake. They honestly weren’t the best skaters of all time, but even with her attractiveness, Isabelle was a true person at heart—one of the girls who had been the nicest to me during my whole skating career. But I couldn’t help envying her appearance.

As if reading my thoughts, Scott said, “Don’t worry about her looks, Andi. They really don’t mean that much.”

I sighed. “I guess. But she’s just so pretty and nice; both at the same time!”

“I think you’re pretty.” I shot him a skeptical look. “I do!” he insisted. “You’re prettier than Isabelle in your own way.”

“Thanks, Scott.” I said, smiling at him. “I appreciate that.” And I really meant it. I don’t think he ever knew how much those words meant to me. Years later that conversation came back to me when I was feeling insecure again; after thinking about it for a moment, I found myself smiling.
***
As an athlete whose life was centered around a single sport right from birth, it wasn’t that I didn’t care about what went on in the outside world; it was just that I was kind of blind-folded to it. Scott was the one who cared enough to teach me to open my eyes to things and realize that progress takes time.
One day during a particular practice that seemed to drag on and on, I still could not land my arch-enemy jump: the double axel. I was so exhausted and frustrated with the progress I wasn’t making; I kicked the boards on the side of the rink, which Scott hated. He had his own set of rules for how to do what you need to do, that he usually kept to himself. But he shared a couple of things with me then.
“Andi, you only learned this jump a month ago—don’t beat yourself up about it!” He gently placed his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. “Have you ever watched a baby bird trying to fly for the first time? It’s not confident enough to spread its wings right away, but with patience it will eventually.” Wrapping his arms around me, Scott didn’t have to say anything else for me to feel better. I just rested against him, letting go of my anxieties.
After a moment he sighed, and then added, “And, I don’t mean to preach to you, but please don’t whine, because it doesn’t make practice any shorter.”
***
Even as a little girl, I had always thought of Scott as a better, more “worthy” person of going somewhere spectacular and meaningful than myself. He was good-looking, yes, but I never tried to gain his affections or impress him, like the other girls who sometimes flocked around him did. And over the years as our friendship grew stronger, when I looked it him it wasn’t good looks that I saw—it was the deepest kindness and care for anything and everything that was happening around him; whether he was affected by it, or not.
Once, during a synchro team practice, one of the little girls (who Marina liked to call “toddler torpedoes”) took a really hard fall while the coach was on the opposite side of the rink. She couldn’t get up; she just sat there crying in her ripped tights, while the other girls stood around her, murmuring in alarm. Scott, seeing that no one was doing anything, calmly skated over to her, picked her up carefully, and brought her safely to her mother who was able to get things under control.
There were times when I was jealous of Scott, because there were traits in him that I wished I had in myself. He was so patient and perceptive, while I was always impatient and completely oblivious to the finer points of life unless they were specifically pointed out to me. Sometimes at competitions he’d say something like, “That’s the same Zamboni driver as last year,” or, “Those boys were here with their mom last time, too.” Occasionally—especially as we competed at more advanced levels—he’d even remember individual fans!
And as we both got older, my feelings toward him slowly began to change. Not in a bad way, just in a different way.
The first time I thought of he and I as best friends was during our stay in Colorado Springs. It was our first trip to a competition outside of our state, and it gave us a chance to spend a lot more time together off the ice. Most of it was still off-ice conditioning like jogging and swimming to keep in shape, but we had fun just being together. When we were supposed to be swimming laps, if my dad wasn’t keeping a very watchful eye on us, Scott would pick me up and dunk me. I always shrieked and tried to get away, but he was much bigger than me so I always lost the battle.
We won the first competition, and two weeks before the second one, at the end of a late practice, Scott and I were running through our routine for the last time that night. My dad was on the sidelines with our choreographer (his friend who had suggested we skate together), Marina Valika, who was from St. Petersburg. Scott raised me into a star lift, and rotated one, two, three…on the third rotation, I felt a sudden jolt before the awful sensation of falling.
I hit the ice, and at first I didn’t feel anything. Then the pain was overwhelming and everything went black.
In the beginning I was really angry at Scott—blaming him completely for having to miss our second competition. I wouldn’t even speak to him when he came in to visit me, and I was already blaming him for the rest of the season which I assumed we would also miss…until Marina explained to me that it wasn’t his fault, after all. His blade had caught in a rut in the ice and Scott hadn’t been able to control the end of the lift.
I never remember seeing him more upset than he was then—sitting silently in a chair beside my bed with his head in his hands and the flowers he’d brought me on my bedside table, or pacing up and down in the hospital corridor. I was awed in a way, to see him so tormented by something. He had always seemed so in control of what he was doing; mentally, emotionally, and physically.
For hours he sat next to me holding my hand, asking me how I was feeling and if I needed anything. Holding Scott’s hand felt nice—I’d always liked his hands; they were big and warm and soft—but I didn’t think anything of it at the time, as we always held hands on the ice anyway.
A week or so later, after I’d been let out of the hospital, I went to watch Scott at a practice. I remember the pained feeling in my heart as I watched him land jump after jump. Never was I so aware of how much I relied on skating, and now, I couldn’t. I had to stand around thinking about it all the time, every moment becoming more and more frustrated, and bored out of my mind. Skating was my life—I didn’t know what to do with myself when I had to leave it for a while. After a few minutes he noticed me standing there, and he glided over, a small, affectionate smile on his face.
“So I guess you want to skate?” he asked.
“Of course I want to skate,” I replied, glancing subconsciously down at my bandaged ankle.
“Then let’s skate,” he said. Puzzled, I let him take my hand and lift me into his arms. He carried me through our routine, inventing his own movements here and there. I felt entirely at peace and safe while he was holding me—it was the first time I knew with certainty that I needed him.

The first full conversation Scott and I ever had was about skate guards—yup, skate guards. At the time we were in elementary school and had just begun skating as a pair. Even though we spent so much time together on the ice, before then, we’d only exchanged shy “hello’s” and “What’s up’s” and “goodbye’s”—all of the lame greetings that you use on people you don’t really know. Because that’s how our relationship was at first—it took at least a few months for us to feel comfortable chatting normally with each other.
Both of us had the fuzzy kind of skate guards, because they absorb the moisture better than the plastic ones, and they don’t crack like the plastic ones do. Scott’s had completely stretched out, so I went with him and his mom to the pro shop off in a corner of the rink to pick up a new pair. At first most of the talking was done by Mrs. Allen, who had a habit of asking questions out loud and then answering them herself before anyone else could speak.
“Now, should we stick to the soft skate guards, or try the plastic ones this time…or maybe rubber?” she mused. “No—the soft ones are fine…Oh dear, I do hope I brought my credit card because I don’t have enough change…Uh-oh! I didn’t bring it—oh, but I do have enough change, so that’s fine then. Scott, honey—”
Scott blushed. “Mom, do you have to call me ‘honey’ in the store? I’m seven years old; I’m not a little boy!”
“Sorry pumpkin,” she replied absentmindedly, tucking her wallet safely back into her purse. Scott stuffed his hands into his pockets and frowned down at his Spiderman sneakers.
“She’s so embarrassing,” he grumbled.
“Scott, which skate guards do you think we should get you, hmm?”
“The cloth ones! I already told you that a million times!”
“I’m sorry sweets, but I forgot!” Scott’s mother pulled a pair of rainbow skate guards of the shelf. “What about these?” she asked, smiling. “I think they’re kind of pretty.”
“Mo-om! I don’t want pretty skate guards!” he griped. “I just need plain, black ones, okay?” He turned around to grab a different pair from off the shelf behind him and accidentally bumped into me. “Sorry Andi,” he said.
“It’s ok.”
“Can you gimme those ones next to you?”
“Sure.” I picked them up and handed them to Scott.
“Thanks.” His mother’s back was still turned, and he leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Don’t you think these ones are so much better? I wish my mom would just shut up and let me get the ones I want!”
I giggled quietly, mostly because I knew Mrs. Allen said that “shut up” was a bad word. “Yeah,” I answered. “These ones are better.” Actually, I didn’t really care which skate guards Scott wanted, but since he liked the black ones better I said that I did, too. There was a pause, and then he added brightly,
“I like skating with you, Andi.”
“Me too,” I said.

Our first competition as a pair was at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. It was a short, two-minute number to “You Got A Friend In Me.” I was nervous about the competition part, but really excited about wearing my first skating dress. For practice I’d wear a boring leotard with a matching skirt, but for our competition I had a pink velvet dress that my mom and I had picked out, and Scott had a button-down shirt and special pants with straps to go around his skates.
“Here now, representing the RJ Cody Figure Skating Club,” sang the announcer in an effort to sound cheerful and enthusiastic, “Please welcome Scott Allen and Andrea Carter!” A weak round of applause and a lingering cheer or two filled the arena, and my legs felt like jello as we took our starting positions. Scott’s face gave nothing away as to how he was feeling, though he certainly didn’t look nervous; just a pleasant expression that gave me the sense he was ready.
Although we managed to complete everything at the same time, looking back, we didn’t skate very well at all. Both of us were still pretty wobbly, and our spins were slow and tentative. There was so much pressure, so many people staring at me; and I wasn’t used to doing a routine in front of them all—I was so worried about falling that I did fall on one of the jumps because I was thinking about it so much. I don’t remember much of what went through my mind while we were skating, but I do remember saying to myself, “Don’t fall! Don’t fall! Don’t fall!”
But our death spiral—an element where the male skater drags the female skater around in a circle—was done perfectly. During practices it had been our most frustrating move. We’d try it over and over, each time collapsing into a pile, looking up only to find my dad with his head in his hands. Death spirals look simple when they’re done properly, but in reality they’re really difficult. Both partners need to have the same tension in their arms, and the woman’s abs have to be rigid the entire time.
In many ways, our presence on the ice was almost comical to the onlookers—I was always very petite for my age, but Scott was so much taller than me, that the contrast was very funny to behold. As time went on, we would become known as the “one and a half” team, because I was so much smaller than he.
However, I guess compared to the other teams in that first competition, Scott and I weren’t the worst—we ended up in third place on the podium, our bronze medals glinting in the light of my mom’s flashing camera. To me it was all kind of a blur, although I recognized that we’d achieved what we were trying to, so at the time I was perfectly happy with the way we’d skated.
For the rest of our first competitive season, Scott and I performed the same routine five more times, winning the last two competitions. In one year, we’d become more confident as skaters, and our style as a pair was much more clear and developed.

After four years of being paired, I was twelve and Scott was eleven. For whatever reason, my dad decided that we could use a challenge, and he began pushing us harder than usual at practices. The previous season, we’d skated to a medley of Michael Jackson songs, complete with the hats, and everything. Everybody said how “incredibly cute” it was (which made me mad because I hated being called “cute”), and we got first place in every competition except one, in which I fell on every jump because the night before I’d pulled my calf muscle in my sleep. Don’t ask me how I managed that.

My dad was surprised at how quickly we were passing each level, and he enlisted us in the Junior Nationals. There we got second place, with a routine to a medley of Renaissance music. Even though it had a fancy name, the Junior Nationals weren’t all that different from the competitions we’d been in so far. There were about twice as many people there, but to be honest, it didn’t really bother me. I was just excited that we had the opportunity, and we all were hoping that it would open more doors for our skating career.
It did.
Two years later, after going back to the Junior Nationals and winning, Marina created our routine to “Tosca” and we earned first place for the second time. Then we found out from the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) that we were eligible for the Junior Worlds, which was the competition in Colorado Springs. We won that competition, and there was a second, smaller one involving only pairs in the US within the next couple of weeks, but we didn’t participate in that one because of my injury.
Those three years were a time of major progress for both our skating, and our friendship. Scott and I spent all of our off-ice time together, whether it was skating related, or not. We went for walks in the park and talked and enjoyed each others’ company. Our favorite spot was the old wooden bench next to the maple tree by the pond. What I liked most about it, was how “wise” it seemed—I know that sounds odd, but the maple tree must’ve been there forever, as had the bench, and the area just seemed to whisper words from the past. We’d sit, sometimes silently, and watch the ducks stick their heads under the water, sending ripples across the surface. I knew I was lucky that Scott was my best friend, even if I didn’t think I could ever be more than his friend. We also mastered all of the elements required in high-level amateur competitions such as the Olympics. So that year, Marina and my dad decided we should go for the US Nationals, the first rung of the amateur ladder.
That took me a while to register. I’d gotten used to the lame spectators at our usual competitions, most of who would rather be anywhere else in the world and were just holding it out so support a sibling or other family member. The rest of the spectators were coaches who were only interested in prepping their students. Skating in front of them had become easier and more natural (considering that they weren’t really paying attention anyway), and Scott and I had begun to mature as skaters, so our routines were less robotic and had more expression than before.

But as I stood in the lobby next to Scott envisioning what was suddenly ahead of us, I was paralyzed all over again. I felt like I’d just become settled in to where I was and what was happening, and now I had to start from scratch again. But Scott didn’t seem to mind; in fact, he seemed almost grateful and excited for something new, something bigger to work towards. He was like that—he always savored the process of preparing for a challenge. While he enjoyed winning—who doesn’t—he didn’t care where we placed in competitions, as long as he was satisfied with his own efforts.

Our music for the upcoming season was Vocalise by Rachmaninoff. Marina chose it for us, but she let us listen to it to make sure we felt it was right for us, too. That’s why she was such an awesome choreographer—she didn’t just pick music and then make us skate to it even if we hated it—her experiences had taught her that if the skaters don’t connect with the music, the audience won’t connect with their performance, which is essentially what you want to happen. At this point, I was a sophomore and Scott was a freshman in high school. We both automatically agreed that we loved it. The music had such a feel of genuine passion and love for something, yet twinges of sadness at the same time. Never before had I heard a piece that captured such a sense of emptiness that was once joy.
Marina was a tall, not very shapely woman, with a strong body and curly, dyed-blond hair that almost reached her waist. She had a sort of pretty face with small brown eyes, and almost never wore makeup. She got along so well with Scott and I, because all three of us had the same idea of what skating in itself was, and what a routine should be. We skated—and Marina used to skate—because it was a way to express ourselves through movements in rhythm. The routine should reflect all of those emotions and express something to the audience; it should create a certain mood, or tell a story, even.

At the start of each season, when Marina had picked out our music and was in the process of creating our routine, after practices we’d sit with her in front of a mirror while she asked us to portray different things to her. She might describe a pose or position and have us recreate it, or she’d say something like, “Show me how you would be sad,” or, “show me how you would let someone know you were excited about something.” We would literally sit making faces at each other, sometimes for hours. Scott and I had fun doing it—it was like charades—trying to give someone a message without using words.
We also took ballet lessons with Madame Bates at La Danse studio; Marina said that learning dance was one of the best ways to encourage grace, balance, and strength on the ice. Ballet was especially helpful for spinning positions, but Scott and I also increased our jumping ability. Every day for ten minutes, we’d bend down and jump up as high as possible, pulling in our arms and then releasing them again as we came down to imitate jumping on the ice. We did that over and over and over and over—and after a while, we were able to jump higher and more powerfully.
We’d stretch—one of my favorite activities—do footwork exercises, and practice holding positions, which built up strength and flexibility. Scott never complained about the amount of time Madame Bates would make us stretch, but I knew he wished we did less of it—probably because girls are generally more flexible than guys, so it was easier and didn’t hurt as much for me after fifteen minutes in a position against the wall.
But he never grumbled about the fact that we had to take ballet, he never got mad at me when I couldn’t land a throw or jump—he was so understanding, and instead of yelling at me when I didn’t do something right, he’d try to help me with it. Some pairs didn’t even get a long and only “stayed in the game to win it”; I’d heard of multiple guys who would purposely drop their partners out of anger. But I knew how fortunate I was that Scott would never even dream of doing that.
In school—especially junior high—during the rare occasions when I’d interact with other guys my age, I was always so disgusted with the way they acted and the crude things that came out of their mouths, because I was used to Scott and his maturity. I’d never heard him curse, and his mind certainly wasn’t wrapped up in girls wearing tiny outfits.
I honestly could never figure out what it was in Scott’s mentality that made him different than other guys—which figures, since I never seemed to notice anything—but he just didn’t waste time with the sort of crap that they did—he thought about the “then” and not just the “now.” Most teenagers are totally self-centered and only think about what’s happening right here, right now; never thinking ahead or being concerned for the future.
He didn’t mind being different; in his opinion, it made him his own person, and not just somebody who was made up of layers that were copied from other people, like some sort of printing press. I think he looked around and saw what he didn’t like in other people, then made sure he didn’t make the same mistakes himself.
***

Once Marina had a story or central idea that she based our routine off of, our practices turned into types of “rehearsals” where we’d focus on incorporating all of the required elements into it while still telling the audience something. Our Vocalise routine was telling the story of a girl who lost her true love and was still trying to hold on to him. So I became the lonesome girl who was afraid of the future and scarred from her past, while Scott became the man who deserts her. In a way it was much like acting—the key is to feel who your “character” is, and then make a connection to the story you’re trying to tell. If you’re not connected, the spectators won’t be, either.

In the beginning of the routine, the lovers are still together; for our starting position we’re in each others’ arms, content with the present. As the music comes on, we skate together as one until the middle, when we start to break away; Scott drifts as I try to follow him. By the end of the routine, as the music closes, I’m lost in my despair and Scott is has finally untied the last binding string and is reaching ahead. The routine was a dramatic one, though tragic no less. The first time I heard the music, I was drawn to its emotion; and while I skated, I could feel it bringing the emotions out in me.

During the process of actually making the routine, Marina let us have a lot of input on the way it unfolded—after all, Scott and I would be the ones performing it. She might have us do a certain jump in one part of the routine, and Scott would say, “That jump doesn’t go there.” And he would be right. It was the little details of things that he noticed that always amazed me—and yet, it was those very details that made something complete. I would just look at something for what it appeared to be, and not dig deeper unless someone specifically told me to. In that, it was always difficult for me to understand how Scott saw the things that he did—but it was through that that he taught me to be more accepting and open.

As the Nationals approached, Scott seemed to be a magnet to the ice; he would stay on to practice even when Marina said we could take a ten minute break. His dedication seeped into me, and I began to do the same.
The frustrating part of a practice is that you know you have a limited amount of time to get something right before a competition, and it’s in that time that you have to perfect the elements that you’re most irritated with. While normal practices seemed to drag by on some occasions, the practices before the Nationals seemed to fly by. I’d look at the clock and it would be three forty-five. We’d practice a lift or two, and a minute later I’d look back at the clock and it would be four ten. It was like I blinked and twenty-five minutes disappeared.

Two days before the Nationals, Scott and I skipped school—much to the displeasure of my math professor—so we could have a full day of drumming every last element into our brains. But it was during practices such as those—aggravating as they may have been—where I spent my most memorable times with Scott. Pondering our next input to the routine, spinning, jumping, lifting, throwing—everything. But all of it without the stress of a crowd watching us.
It wasn’t that I didn’t feel the same around Scott at a competition setting versus a practice, but practices always felt more sentimental and important than competitions. You might think that the competitions are the most important events, but it was the practices that decided whether or not we bombed a competition. The sentimental side came from scraping noise of blades on ice, every echo of someone landing a jump or throw. I could completely be myself at those practices without someone having criticism for every little move. It was during those practices where we would create who we would later be on the ice—really take the time to imagine the things that an audience would want to see. During competitions it’s all show to the public eye; but they don’t see the layers that go into making that happen.
I guess it might sound awkward with my dad being the coach and everything, but he just helped us with the technical side of it all; for the most part we worked with Marina, and in her mind the change in our relationship made things ten times better, because it gave her a wider range of story-telling in the routines she never ceased to make up.

The morning of the Nationals, I awoke to the sound of birds beginning to sing, and the first rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon. The hotel was almost deathly silent as I crept across the carpeted floor, yawning and rubbing my eyes. We’d arrived there in Cincinnati with Scott and our families the day before. After we’d gotten settled into our rooms, we drove a couple of blocks to check out the arena and get accustomed to the ice size. It was absolutely enormous. Well, at least compared to the rinks we’d skated in so far.

In the front of the building near the road was an electronic sign with a flashing message that read: “Cincinnati Olympic Ice Arena.” The words changed colors a couple of times and a new message swirled onto the screen: “US National Figure Skating Championships This Saturday! We Look Forward to Seeing You There!” I gulped as I thought about how many pairs of eyes would be watching me the next day.

The lobby was so huge and empty one literally could’ve heard a pin drop. None of us said anything as we walked in—we just gawked at the mirror-like floors and information desks that lined the walls; surrounding us so they could close in for the kill. In the background I could hear the distant, steady hum of the machines that kept the ice at the right temperature, and the clashing of hockey sticks and pucks through the doors to my right.

The ice looked so smooth and white—so white it was almost too white. None of the circles and lines that were painted in any of the other rinks existed here; probably too cute and immature for them, I thought. Instead, there was an image of two skaters’ silhouettes, a male and a female, in the center of the ice. They seemed to be reaching out to something. But I was used to the friendly painted lines and the circles from spins woven across the surface. This new, professional atmosphere made me feel unwelcome, despite the welcoming sign out front.

It was quiet, too; just like at the rink back home. But somehow the silence here seemed less comforting and more intimidating. As the buzzer for the end of the hockey practice in one of the two rinks sounded, all of us jumped at its angry noise. The receptionist at the counter seemed to notice our presence for the first time: she looked up and smiled warmly at us.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Scott and I exchanged glances and then stepped forward.

“Yeah, um—we’re competing here tomorrow in pairs…” I began.

“Oh! Are you really?” she exclaimed. “Wonderful! What are your names, please?”

“Andrea Carter and Scott Allen.”

She hit a few buttons on the computer keyboard. “Okay…aha! Here we are! Okay—so you’ll need these ID passes when you check in before the competition tomorrow,” she said, handing a card to me and a card to Scott (both of which included horrendous pictures of us). “And it says here you’ll be skating third, which will be at about…oh, seven o’clock tomorrow evening. You’ll have to be here at five thirty the latest, and the warm-up starts at a quarter to six. Any questions?”

“We can just go in there and practice right now, right?” asked Scott. “Our choreographer is already here, I think.”

“Absolutely! Just keep in mind that we shut down for the night at eleven.” She smiled again. “Alrighty—good luck!”

We thanked her, tucking the ridiculous ID cards safely into our bags, and stepped through the doors and onto the familiar turf that covers the floor outside every rink. Marina jogged over to us, clipboard in hand, and sat down to chat while we stretched and practiced our lifts off-ice.

Scott and I were the first pair on the ice, but soon we were joined by other very professional-looking teams. I stroked over to the picture of the two skaters, and spun around really slowly; taking it all in. The rows of seats seemed un-ending, the lights so bright I could get whole summer’s tan in a few minutes, the ice so sparkly and perfect. It seemed like I was the only one in the building with glitches in my system—Scott had his game plan and he almost never made a mistake. I gulped as I realized I was the one who had to concentrate on being perfect the most.

So as I did my best to wake up the day of, all I had on my mind was, Do not mess up! Do not mess up! I hoped I wouldn’t over-think it like I did at our very first competition. Stretching, I climbed out of bed and shivered at the difference in temperature once I was outside my mountain of blankets. My makeshift closet for my stay in Cincinnati was not large by any means, but it fit my traveling needs for a few days. I pulled out two pairs of tights (an extra in case one pair ripped) and two skating dresses—one for our program later that night, and an extra one.

I ran my fingers over the fabric; it was scarlet, with a thin silver lining across the top and tiny white sequins embedded around the chest area. I’d only worn it once before, when I tried it on at Jill’s Ice Accessories shop to make sure it fit ok. I tossed my PJ’s back into my suitcase, and yanked on a pair of tights. My dad always told me to wear my skating dress at the last couple practices before a competition so I’d be used to skating the routine in them.
When I was all dressed, I took a peek at my reflection in the mirror. I’d pulled my boring brown hair into a ponytail, figuring it would just get messed up during practice and I could make it look nicer later. I actually admitted to myself that I looked quite nice, considering it was pretty difficult for me to look nice at all, by my standards. I knew that the Nationals were that night, but somehow that thought didn’t make my stomach flutter like I’d expected it to—I hoped I could sustain my feeling calmness all day, but inside I knew better.

We had a satisfying, but relatively quick breakfast in the hotel’s miniature café right next to the lobby. The hostess smiled at us as we walked out, and Scott and I chuckled as my mom told my dad not to take so many mints from the bowl on the counter. The rink was much livelier than the previous day: teams of maintenance workers scurrying around making sure every last flaw was—or at least appeared to be—perfect. The chatter in various languages floated through the lobby as coaches, choreographers, and skaters went about their business preparing for the competition. After showing the guard our ID, Scott, both sets of parents, and Marina were allowed into the vicinity of the rink. I took one look at the number of skaters on the ice and thought, how the heck are we supposed to be able to practice a routine with all of these people in our way? Then I remembered that each team was given a chance to run through their routine with music one time before the competition, in the order that they’d be performing.

The ladies’ singles competition had been two days earlier, and the mens’ singles had been the day before, so now it was just left to the pairs and synchro teams who would be going in the next few days.

About an hour went by before Scott and I were finally able to practice our routine without worrying about taking anybody out. Marina and my dad stood on the sidelines, observing every step closely, and shouting something at us now and then. The practices weren’t a huge deal for the public, although there were a few journalists there so they could incorporate the status of our routine during practice versus during the actual performance into their stories. And of course, it gave the other pairs a chance to see what our program was like and think about whether or not they could beat us and if not, what they had to work on in order to do so. I slipped on my double axel and almost fell, but managed to catch it. That was the element I was most worried about for later.
***

“They are two-time Junior National Champions, and Junior World Champions! Representing the Richard J. Cody Figure Skating Club: Scott Allen and Andrea Carter!”
I barely heard the arena erupting into cheers as I took a deep breath to try to calm the pounding of my heart. I felt Scott squeeze my hand, and we were on the ice in our starting positions.
The music began softly at first: a gentle melody that only a flute can capture, hung in the air as I let go of Scott and skated around him, reaching out once more to take his hand. As the music continued, we completed a split triple twist, double axels, and a combination spin. Next, we did a star platter lift followed by a death spiral. Our second spin combination wasn’t done together in order to show that Scott is beginning to drift from me; letting go and finding his own way in the world. As we skated, I found that Scott and I were both smiling subconsciously. I knew that his smile was subconscious, because he wasn’t looking me directly in the eyes; he looked slightly dazed in a good way. I think we were both savoring our first time in front of that large of an audience, even if it was a terrifying thing to do.
We ended the program with one last throw—a throw double Salchow—and finished in lunge positions opposite each other; Scott facing away from me and reaching into the distance, and me reaching toward him still. Our only mistake was that the unison of our spins was slightly off at one point. Other than that, I even managed to pull of the double axel!
As we took our bows, everything was still rather blurry, though this time I was fully aware of the fact that most of the crowd were on their feet.
We sat down with my dad and Marina in the “kiss and cry” area, where we waited for our scores. Marina was actually getting teary because she put so much effort into the routine, and my dad couldn’t stop grinning. Suddenly I smelled something really, really strong. I looked at my dad suspiciously.
“Are you wearing that nasty cologne again?” I whispered in his ear. He looked at me almost sheepishly. “Well, I, ah…” I rolled my eyes and turned back to the screen where our scores would appear.
“And now the technical scores for Scott Allen and Andrea Carter!” The entire arena seemed to hold their breath a long with us. “Five point nine, five point nine, five point nine, six,” the crowd cheered. “Five point eight,” the crowd booed. “Five point nine, five point nine, five point nine.” The crowd roared! Only one perfect six, but nothing to complain about! “And the scores for artistic impression…” The arena grew silent again. “Six, five point nine, six, six, six, five point nine, five point nine, six, six.” The crowd went wild!
***
Standing on the podium a little while later, hundreds of camera flashes—not just my mom’s—glinted off of our gold medals as we shook hands with the silver and bronze medalists who offered their congratulations. I looked at Scott and he grinned broadly.
“We did it,” he mouthed happily, squeezing my hand again. And I knew for sure a few days later when he handed me a soft pretzel and kissed me for the first time, that I was so lucky I was not a lonely maiden whose lover would only betray her.

The next year, we won the Nationals again but placed second at the Worlds. I had known right from the time my Dad started pushing us to win the Junior Nationals that he and Marina would want us to go for the next winter Olympics, as they were just happening when we started competing seriously. By the time we’d won the US Nationals twice and competed in the Worlds twice, all of us knew that we were capable of an Olympic routine—but could we actually win or come close to winning?

What’s nice about a season of figure skating is that you only need two routines for the entire season: a short program, and a long program. Skaters perform the same two routines at all of the competitions they go to. Then the next season, they create two new routines, and so on. When the Olympics occur, it’s the final competition of the season; so that gives skaters both the National and World Championships to help prepare them before they finally compete at the Olympics.

That year, Marina picked Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven for our short program and Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky for our long program, which is an expression of young love. After winning the Nationals and the Worlds, Scott and I were feeling pretty confident about the Olympics. I don’t know how he felt about how we would place, but I for one wasn’t convinced that we could win, although I was pretty sure we could at least get bronze or fourth place.
“Andi, are you worried about the Olympics?” Scott asked me one day as we were leaving the rink. At this point we had both been driving for a while, so it was less of a burden on our parents who up until that point had to drive us to and from skating.
“No…” I replied. He raised his eyebrows and smiled slightly. “Well I’m not worried…that much…”
Scott laughed softly. “Andi, it’s ok if you’re nervous!”
“Are you nervous?” I asked.
He shrugged. “A little bit, but I just don’t want to mess up.”
“You never mess up!”
“Yes I do. I always try to concentrate, but sometimes I can’t help getting distracted.”
“By what? You can’t even see anyone’s face clearly! It’s just like, a blur of colors that cheer or boo when they feel like it!”
Scott smiled at me. “I get distracted by you sometimes.” I stared at him incredulously.
“What…?”
He leaned against the side of the car, his arms folded leisurely across his chest. He seemed to have something on his mind that he wasn’t letting on. “I can see your face more clearly than anything—and you’re always smiling, and…Andi, you’re so beautiful; I just can’t stop looking at you.” He paused and took my hand. I didn’t even realize I was tearing up until I felt something wet starting to trickle down my cheeks. I took a deep breath, trying to control my emotions.
“You always say the right things when I need to talk to you, you always look so happy, you skate with every ounce of your heart, and…I just…” his voice trailed off, and I made an effort to wipe away my tears, but they kept coming. He looked directly into my eyes. I couldn’t have torn my gaze away from his even if I’d wanted to. “Andi, I hope you know that I love you more than anything or anyone.”
“I love you too,” I managed to choke. It was the first time I said those words to him.
“Every time I see you I’m always so much happier than when I’m by myself, and I can’t stop thinking about you—even when I’m out helping my mom and dad with stuff around the house or trying to fall asleep,” he went on.
“Andi, I have to ask you something.” I was sure I was about to start sobbing like a baby at any second—I could not believe what I was hearing. This time Scott took a deep breath. “Will you marry me?” He held up a gold ring with a twinkling emerald in the center. Not even bothering to wipe my face this time, I nodded and he slipped the ring onto my finger, folding me into a kiss right there in the parking lot. But I didn’t even care if anybody was watching. The kiss was so intimate I thought the world must have stopped spinning while it lasted. All I could think was that I needed him more than anything else.

A few days after the Worlds, Scott mentioned that he’d begun to feel increasingly intense pain in his right shoulder. When he couldn’t lift me at practice one day, my dad finally said that he absolutely needed to see a doctor.
Dr. Burns’ office was a few towns away from ours, in one of those buildings consisting of a few medical offices. His suite was very clean and well-organized; it didn’t smell unsanitary, or have dirty carpets and nasty garbage pails with pieces of gum sticking to the inside.
The walls were a pale yellow, with framed pictures of different animals and a clock that had a stethoscope pendulum swinging back and forth. There was no carpet, but a tiled floor that didn’t sparkle quite as much as the one at the Nationals rink, but it sparkled more than the hospital I’d been in for my injury where the floor looked brown, not grey. So gross. A few cushioned chairs lined one side of the wall, and a wooden table in the middle had a stack of magazines on top. I did a double take when I noticed a picture of Scott and I at the Worlds in the lower right-hand corner of People magazine. I elbowed him, gesturing toward the table, and he nodded, looking surprised. The office was cheery enough, and I liked it as much as I could like a doctor’s office.
Once we were settled in a little room down the hall from the reception desk, a nurse came in and said the doctor would be with us shortly. A few minutes later, a tall, middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a slight tummy walked briskly into the room, clipboard tucked under one arm, pen behind his ear.
“Good afternoon,” he greeted us. The doctor had a professional tone and manner that invited confidence, but didn’t suggest sentimentality. “I’m Doctor Burns.” He shook each of our hands, and set his clipboard down on the table, the wax paper crackling loudly as he did so. He gestured to a chair next to the table. “Please be seated,” he indicated to Scott. Scott sat down and the doctor motioned for my dad and me to do the same.
“So, tell me Scott,” Dr. Burns began, glancing at his paperwork. “I hear your shoulder has been bothering you?”
“Yeah.”
“For how long?”
“Less than a month.”
Dr. Burns rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and then whipped his pen out from behind his ear, and began jotting down Scott’s answers. The questioning went on for a while, until Dr. Burns and some nurses sent me and my dad out so he could do some freaky scan, or something. Nobody explained it to me, because they knew I’d lose my mind if I knew exactly what was going on behind that closed door. But needless to say, I played anxiously with my ring the entire time.
The following afternoon, the three of us returned to the office, this time accompanied by Scott’s mother as well, and sat down in the same room as the previous day. Dr. Burns sat down in front of us with a stack of pictures which, when he held them up, made me cringe awfully. Scott seemed to notice my discomfort, and patted my leg.
“So,” Dr. Burns said, turning to Scott. “Looks to me like you’ve torn your rotator cuff.” I heard Mrs. Allen draw in a sharp breath. “Luckily,” he continued, “we found it early, and it is not in terrible condition. I’m able to operate next week if you’re ready.” He paused, looking Scott in the eye. “It won’t be a super long surgery, but you’ll need to stay in the hospital for a day or two afterwards. Now, if we operate next week and you take care of it properly,” he paused again, and again I shifted uncomfortably, not sure if I wanted to hear what he’d say next. “You will be able to skate in the Olympics as long as you’ve done therapy and I’ve approved your progress.” I held my breath. “If you do not take care of it properly, you will only make matters much, much worse than they are.”
“So how long after the operation until I can skate again?” asked Scott.
The doctor sighed. “Well, if you’re making good progress, then you’ll be able to skate about three weeks after. But no lifting or throwing for at least a month.” I felt like my heart had suddenly turned into a rock and was plummeting into the pit of my stomach. I glanced at Scott and my dad, and we seemed to read each others’ thoughts. A whole month? We only have three months until the Olympics!
***
The day after Scott’s operation, I went to the hospital to visit him in the closet they’d stuck him in. Mr. and Mrs. Allen had been there with him all night, but left to get lunch and a shower. His room, as I said, felt like the size of a closet, but it was split in half to fit two patients, so it was more like half a closet with grey walls and a grey floor that looked as if the last time they’d been cleaned was during the Revolutionary War. There was a window next to his bed that gave way to a gorgeous hospital roof view, and a dim lamp and a helpless-looking plant on a table next to his IV. It reminded me a little too much of a jail cell where one might store a criminal before their execution.
I was relieved to see that Scott looked halfway decent. His eyes were still twinkling as they usually were, and he gave me a bright, though slightly tired smile.
“How are you feeling?” I asked him softly, not wanting to disrupt the sleeping woman on the other side of the room.
“Ok,” he mumbled. “Not bad at all, actually. Just tired. Doctor says it’s from the medication. But I’ll be ok soon,” he added reassuringly.
“Does it hurt at all?”
“Only if I move it a lot. But I don’t need to move it because I’m just lying here.”
I rubbed his hand that was resting on top of the sheet. “You wish you could skate, don’t you.” Instead of replying, Scott rubbed my hand back and looked at me in the most deeply apologetic way. His eyes seemed to repeat, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, over and over again. “Scott.” I said. And I could feel myself getting choked up. I finally knew what it was like for him when my ankle was fractured. “I can practice on my own; I’ll make sure my double axel is absolutely perfect, and we will dominate at the Olympics!”
Scott sighed. “Not if I can’t lift you.”
“Scott. You will be able to! The doctor said that if you don’t stress your shoulder, you’ll be able to!”
“Yeah, well, I guess maybe we’ll be ok.” He seemed to gain a little bit of confidence back.
“I’m sorry I’m too small to carry you through our routine.”
“No worries,” he answered, laughing quietly. “Not everyone is as strong and good-looking as me.”
“I didn’t say anything about looks,” I replied.
“Well, you know—it’s all factored together,” he grinned. I was glad to see some of the Scott I knew returning.

A little less than a month before the Olympics, Dr. Burns said that it was ok for Scott to skate normally again. But he warned us that if he felt any pain at all, that he was to stop immediately. We prayed that we’d be able to pull it off. It wasn’t the throws we were most worried about, since he didn’t have to help me finish them. It was the lifts. What if he suddenly felt pain and dropped me? What if during the Olympics he couldn’t lift me at all and we skipped an element? Missing an element, especially in an Olympic routine, is a huge deal—it could be the difference between winning and losing. Say you’re jumping and you just barely land it—that’s still much better than not attempting it at all, points wise.
In order to make up for all the time that we’d lost during the time Scott was recovering, we literally practiced all day, every day! The only breaks we took were for lunch, and when the ice was getting resurfaced. We lived at the rink. But the good part was that it wasn’t like we didn’t know the routine—we’d performed it at competitions all season, so it was just a matter of perfecting it. As I had promised Scott, I could finally do my double axel without really worrying about falling. Marina told us, “Just fill up the ice with yourself!” So I tried to. Every day I’d try to make myself feel as if I covered the entire ice surface with every stroke of my blade. I transferred all of my nervousness into energy with which I used to push into every movement.
Marina and my dad were quite pleased with how Scott was coming back into the routine—neither throwing nor lifting seemed to be a problem, and of course he was next to perfect at everything else. My dad must have asked him at least twenty times a day if his shoulder was bothering him at all, but each time Scott would reply,
“Nope, Coach—it’s fine.” And my dad would look relieved.
Finally, the week before the Olympics, we packed up and flew to Calgary, Canada. When we arrived at the rink where the competition would be held, the size or prestigious air of it didn’t jangle my nerves like it had at our first US Nationals competition. I was still understandably nervous about the competition itself, but I didn’t feel intimidated—I felt ready.
***
I don’t like skating third at events. I like skating second. If you skate third or later than third, you get your skates on, and then you have to stand around in them for like, fifteen minutes, which gets a little uncomfortable, plus the fact that I’m generally an impatient person. I like skating second, because you’re not stuck right at the beginning, and you don’t have to tie up your skates and then stand in them, waiting and waiting to skate. It gives you a chance to kind of take an extra breath without rushing onto the ice or overly stressing out until your moment comes.
So, of course, where did Scott and I get put for our short program? Third. So we stood there, our stomachs churning, waiting for the second pair to finish. As the crowd applauded their performance, I suddenly felt sick. I wasn’t worried about Scott’s shoulder—it hadn’t bothered him once since he’d returned to skating. I couldn’t explain what I was nervous about…but everything around me seemed to be blurred and in fast-forward mode. During the warm-up, my mind was completely numb and blank. The clock said “five minutes”, and I looked at it thinking, five minutes have passed, or five minutes remain?
My emotions were confused: I was confident about being able to skate the routine, but…I guess it was the crowd itself that made me uncomfortable. Never are your nerves more on edge than when you’re waiting to begin; when every person is watching you. You’ll lose your mind if you think about the crowd too much, though—even if they want to help you, it’s very seldom that they can bring you energy.
I don’t even remember Scott’s facial expression as we were announced and took our starting position. Beginning to skate, I felt robotic and oblivious to the notes of Moonlight Sonata that I usually loved to hear. My movements came without thinking, yet without feeling, either. I felt the cold air on my face and arms, the slight vibration of landing a jump—but I wasn’t truly feeling—my skating wasn’t packed with emotions like I’d promised myself it would be. I felt like I’d been programmed only to do. But the odd thing about it is that if I’d been skating at an entirely different moment, it would have been an entirely different performance, though with the same routine. Skating is like that: one day you’re “on,” and another day you’re “off.”
We skated perfectly, with the exception of a slightly unbalanced check on the landing of my double axel. Ugh! But I barely remembered what I had just done as we waited in the “kiss and cry” and received seven sixes and two five point nine’s. I unconsciously told Scott “good job,” but didn’t hear his reply or my dad and Marina’s congratulations. I felt like those inferi in Harry Potter.
***
The rhythmic thumping of my heart seemed to echo through me like a warning, and a shiver went down my spine as I took a deep breath of frosty air and waited. I looked up at Scott; his face was calm, ready. His green eyes were set and alert, yet they had a soft look to them, as always. The arena quieted, and in the sudden silence, I closed my eyes and the rest of the world faded away. All I was aware of was the warmth of Scott’s hand holding mine, and when I opened them again, everything was just the way it had been a few seconds ago.
Standing there, I felt very small—as if what Scott and I were about to do was insignificant compared to the tiniest whisper of those seated above us, waiting to see what we could or couldn’t do. Too far away to make out their face, too far away to meet their eyes. My mind was clearer than the day before: I was aware of the warm-up, and I didn’t just see a blur wherever I looked.

But I wished my legs would wake up—I couldn’t quite feel them yet. It was as if they existed, but had no tangible function. The images of our routine were running through the back of my mind—a constant undercurrent and reminder of the moment we were waiting for. The only part of my body I could feel were my feet—after a while, my skates sort of became a part of me. I rocked back and forth on my blades, trying to relieve the anxiety.
“On the ice, representing the United States of America: Andrea Carter and Scott Allen!” The arena erupted into cheers and without a word, we glided onto the ice. From our spot at center ice, I was uncomfortably aware of every sound, every movement, yet I was not nervous. It’s a feeling I can’t accurately explain. At that moment, as we took our starting positions, I didn’t consciously know what I was about to do. All I knew was that Scott was looking into my eyes, and suddenly, I could feel every part of me come to life.
The first notes of Romeo and Juliet began to play, and I felt myself actually beginning to be lost in the music and the routine—something I’d been trying to make myself do since I began skating…but never could. Now, suddenly, I was able to do it without really even trying. What I like most about Romeo and Juliet is that the music builds—it starts out with one or two different instruments, and by the end, has blossomed into this grand treasure of harmonization and splendor. My skating came naturally; as if the passion and emotion had been hiding inside me all a long, and were just searching for the right moment to come out.
As I moved across the ice, the “size” of the Olympic games seemed to shrink smaller and smaller—they’re made up to be this huge event that’s could mean the difference between life and death or something, but on the ice, it’s all the same. It suddenly seemed so remarkably simple to me. Every skater there had been trained to land the same jumps, complete the same spins, and stretch into the same spirals, on ice that was no different than the ice here. Sure—it was physically larger and perhaps painted more neatly and professionally than practice ice, but it was still ice! So, really, the Olympics were no different than any other competition…they were just built up to seem different. It was weird: one day, I’m freaking out about a routine that Scott and I both knew perfectly well and had performed multiple times, and the next, I’m totally calm and collected.
Unlike previous competitions where I’d worried about what or who to look at while I skated, this time Scott and I just looked at each other. We literally created the story together. One of my favorite things to do on the ice is a spiral: an element where the skater glides on one leg with his or her free leg and arms extended as high as possible. This part of the routine, where Scott and I performed a spiral together, was my favorite. We did a combination spin, a throw triple loop, a star lift, a one-armed press lift—all with ease. No sign of Scott’s troublesome shoulder. Ha! Landed the double axel! I thought triumphantly as I made contact with the ice and breezed into our final element, the death spiral.
W ended the routine with me looking up at Scott, our hands almost touching. As the crowd cheered and held up supportive signs, I didn’t know what to do with myself except catch my breath and smile. We had done it!
***
A couple hours later, we stepped up onto the podium in between the silver and bronze medalists, where each of us shook hands with the president of the ISU (International Skating Union) and were presented with a bouquet of flowers and our medals. A skating routine is much like a lifetime: in the beginning there’s something new beginning; the music is only just starting to play. In the middle, there are all of these elements coming at you, one after the next, and you’re under a lot of pressure to complete them all perfectly. By the end, the music is coming to a close, and you can finally rest, out of breath.
The Olympics, the competition that we’d prepared our whole career for, was over. I can’t say I was upset about it—a lot of pressure had been lifted off of my shoulders—but at the same time, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I wanted to hold on to the moment forever.

My mother and Mrs. Allen planned most of our wedding. After all, they knew us better than anyone, and Scott and I were way too busy during the day to spend time calling people and booking reservations, especially because we got engaged just before the Olympics. The only thing I did was choose the dresses for me and for my cousin Elizabeth, who was my maid of honor.
Honestly, I didn’t really care about fancy-shmancy shenanigans and a billion guests walking into a huge, lit ballroom covered in decorations—it really wasn’t my style. Something simple yet memorable, was all I required. We decided on a date in late April; a low-key wedding with only a few guests—mostly family and a few close friends, and of course Marina and her son, Alexander.
The ceremony took place in a small chapel on the outskirts of town, where we were married by the pastor there. I wore a simple, white gown with a slightly long train, and Elizabeth’s dress was strapless and a shade of light pink. Unlike while I was skating, I decided to let my hair down, and my mom curled it and put a couple of white flowers on the side. Scott chose his dad to be his best man, and they wore plain black suits with white flowers on their lapels that matched the ones in my hair. The ceremony was very intimate, just like I’d wanted, and though he tried in vain to hide it, I could see my dad wiping his eyes in the corner of the room.
Scott didn’t cry as we said our vows—I, on the other hand, was a walking waterfall—but afterwards everyone said what a “sappy smile he had on his face.”
Afterwards, everyone came back to my house where my mother and Mrs. Allen had set up a giant tent with tables where caterers had delivered food. Our cake wasn’t anything super fancy, either; it was chocolate mousse—Scott’s favorite—covered in white icing with little figurines of a bride and groom on the top. I have to say, it was quite delicious! When most people were finished eating, Scott and I had to dance a waltz, which, to our embarrassment, neither of us knew how to do. But either we managed to look like we knew what we were doing, or everyone just pretended not to notice that we were terrible, because nobody laughed at us or pointed out that we couldn’t dance for our lives.
Later that night, when everybody had left and we were cleaning up the remnants of food and other such clutter, I hugged my parents and Scott’s parents, thanking them for all of their work. We wouldn’t have had a wedding if it hadn’t been for them—we probably would’ve eloped to some little island where some native priest performed the marriage. Then we drove home to the little house we’d bought with our competition money, and hand in hand, we slept more soundly than we ever had in either of our lives.

Late one afternoon, almost a year after we’d been married, I was at my parents’ house waiting for Scott to come back from Shop Rite. It was Mr. Allen’s fifty-fourth birthday, and he’d gone out to pick up some party favors. My mom and I were in the kitchen getting dinner ready, and I lost track of time. When I glanced at the clock, an hour passed and he still wasn’t back, so I gave him a call on his cell phone. It rang and rang, but no answer. Whatever, I thought. It’s probably buried in his pocket on silent, or something. So I waited another half hour, telling myself to be patient, but Scott still did not return. Finally my mom called the Allens, but they said that they thought he was at our house. As the minutes ticked by, I stuck the apple pie in the oven, and sat on the couch in our living room, twisting my rings and staring out the window, hoping to see his car pull up. But it didn’t. Where was he?
Suddenly the phone rang, and I jumped, shaken out of my trance. I heard my mother’s voice rise in concern as she spoke to the person on the other end of the phone. When she finally emerged from the kitchen, there was a worried frown on her usually content face.
“Andi, honey,” she spoke in a soft, careful tone that said something negative was about to be hurled at me. “Scott’s been in an accident.”
***
Scott’s back was to me when I entered the hospital room, but he turned over gingerly, grimacing slightly as he did so, and offered a weak smile as I sat down next to him. I purposefully avoided letting my eyes wander to the needle stuck in his left hand, instead focusing on his pale, exhausted face. My heart skipped a beat—seeing him like that frightened me. I wasn’t awed like I was when he’d paced up and down the corridors when I’d been injured; that was different—he’d been fully awake, and moving, and thinking then. But now, lying quietly in his hospital bed, he looked helpless and almost unaware of what was going on around him. His eyes had lost their twinkle, though they weren’t blank-looking, for which I was relieved.
“Andi,” he whispered, reaching out to me. I took his hand and it was warm, yet his grip was fragile and he didn’t squeeze my hand like he usually would have. To my horror, I noticed that there were awful bruises going up his arm. “I’m ok—really.” Typical. If Scott had fallen out of a plane and was barely alive, he still probably would’ve said that he was absolutely fine.
“How did it happen?” was all I could ask.
“Car behind me…driver getting something and the car veered off the road…knocked me into the highway divider…” his voice was the faintest whisper. I didn’t want to know the answer to my next question, but I asked it anyway.
“Are you in pain?”
Scott looked as if he didn’t want me to know the answer either. “A little,” he finally admitted. “Doctor said no traumatic or head injuries, but one broken leg…and…oh, Andi,” he said. “They don’t think I can skate again.”
Surprisingly, this information didn’t leave me stunned or helpless; I found myself almost expecting to hear it.
“It’s ok, Scott,” I whispered back.
“No it’s not.”
“Yes it is!” I was speaking to him almost imploringly. “I wouldn’t have been able to skate much longer, anyway.”
Scott looked at me, confused. “What? Of course you would have!” I could see a lot of the life going back into him as he began one of his pep talks that was already a losing battle. “We could have won a second Olympic medal, and turned professional, and—”
I stopped him. “Scott, I have to tell you something.” I realized I was crying. “We’re having a baby.”
“What?” he gasped. He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to be happy or shocked or both. I nodded.
“I found out yesterday, and I was going to tell you after dinner.”
And what happened next is something I will never, ever forget. A tear rolled down his cheek. “Really?” his voice was no longer a whisper, but it was so quiet I could barely hear him. I nodded again, my heart still thumping—I had never seen Scott cry.
Leaning over, I kissed him softly on the forehead. “In November,” I said.

A twinge of pain shot through my abdomen, and I woke up suddenly, peering over at the clock on my bedside table. Three-thirty am. Groan. I closed my eyes once more, willing myself to go back to sleep. I laughed to myself, listening to Scott snoring softly. Probably dreaming about chocolate bars raining down on him, or something, I thought. Just as I was almost back in sleep-land, pain shot through me again, this time worse. A small whimper escaped my lips, despite my efforts to keep it inside.
“Andi?” Scott mumbled. “You ok?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m just going to run to the bathroom.”
“K.” I could already hear him beginning to snore again as I entered the bathroom. Opening one of the cabinets, I pulled out one of the pamphlets my mom had given me about pregnancy, and began to read. I had scanned it quickly a while ago, but never really retained anything it said. I felt another twinge of pain, this one even worse than the last one. Ugh, I was afraid of this. My heartbeat quickening, I waddled back into our room, and called Scott’s name softly.
“Scott,”
“Mmmm?”
“We have to go to the hospital.”
“What? Now? It’s only like, a quarter to four!” he moaned. Just then another contraction swept over me, and I grabbed my stomach, waiting for it to pass. Suddenly Scott was wide awake. “Andi! What is wrong with you?” He looked thoroughly alarmed.
“I think I’m in labor.” I don’t even know if Scott knew the meaning of the phrase “in labor,” but he obviously understood that I wasn’t joking around, and began fussing about what to bring with us. “Don’t worry about it,” I insisted, as Scott grabbed two months’ worth of clothing. “Just hurry up and take me!”
The whole car ride, he kept asking me the same questions over and over.
“Are you ok?” “Does it hurt?” “Should I call the doctor again?” “Are you sure you’re ok?”
When we arrived at the hospital, a swarm of nurses rushed over and wheeled me away. After they’d gotten me settled into the delivery room and made sure I was as comfy as possible, they started bombarding me with paperwork. Each contraction was more painful than the last, and I couldn’t believe I had to fill out all of these papers just to get a stupid shot! I didn’t even read what they said—I just signed everything and handed it back to the nurse. Give me this shot! I thought. Finally they did, and for once in my lifetime I couldn’t have been happier that a needle was being stuck into me. In less than a minute, all of the pain had gone away, and Scott came in and sat down next to me. The first words out of his mouth:
“Are you ok?” It was all I could do not to chuckle. Oh well, he was uncomfortable—what was to be expected? I’d never seen him nervous like this before a competition.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Do you still have pain?”
“No.” Actually, after they’d given me the shot I couldn’t feel anything at all, which I guess was a good thing. But I left that part out in my answer to Scott. Then the doctor came in and told me to push as hard as I could. It was the strangest thing I have ever experienced. It was like everything from my neck down was suddenly gone, and in its place was a real, living, breathing baby girl. The whole time I’d been pregnant, I never really thought, “oh, hey, there’s an actual person in me!” It was more like, a being that was sort of…sharing my space. So strange.
“Name?” the asked nurse pleasantly.
“Katarina Maria,” I answered. It had been Marina’s suggestion.
“What a beautiful name!” she exclaimed, smiling. At that moment, another nurse handed me a bundle of blankets with a little face peeping out from the top. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and her face was tiny and pink. I could see a little tuft of brown hair sticking out at the top—hehe, kind of like Scott when he wakes up in the morning, I thought. And though I’d thought that my brother was extremely ugly when he was born, looking down at my baby, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on. Scott, on the other hand, had never been so quiet in his life. He sat there with a camera, grinning like a kid in a candy shop, and staring at Katarina like she was the coolest thing since sliced bread.
After a few minutes the realization that I was exhausted came over me, and I asked Scott if he wanted to hold her before the nurse came back to take her for a check-up. Still gawking, Scott picked her up like she was a fragile piece of glass, and held her carefully in his arms. The contrast in size between the two of them was almost comical, as it had been between the two of us at our first competition. The last thing I saw before falling asleep was father and daughter, sitting cozily in a chair beside my bed.

During the first year of Katarina’s life, Scott had recovered so well from his car accident that you wouldn’t even be able to tell that he’d been injured at all unless you watched him very closely. He walked with the slightest, almost unnoticeable limp for a few months, but when our daughter turned two, even I couldn’t see it anymore. A few years earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine a life without figure skating every day—but now I didn’t mind at all. Scott and I had Katarina to take care of and play with, and I wouldn’t have been comfortable being alone on the ice without him, anyway. So we didn’t go skating once for two years.
One day, as I sat on a swing in the park next to Scott who was pushing Katarina in one of the kiddy swings, he said randomly, “We should take Katia skating.” Katia was our nickname for Katarina. It was a peaceful, early summer day, and a slight breeze broke the heat of the sun as we relaxed beneath the clouds. I raised my head, a little surprised. Scott seemed to know what I was thinking. “I know the doctor said I wouldn’t be able to skate again, but they expected me to be much worse than I am—he told me so last week. He said he doesn’t really get why I recovered so well.” That was true, I thought, but I still wasn’t so sure if skating was the best idea. “No lifts or throws or anything,” he persisted. “Just the simple stuff so Katia will know what it’s like.”
I looked at Katia, sitting there happily in her pink dress which had been a gift from Mrs. Allen, her little legs swinging back and forth contentedly. She still didn’t have a whole lot of hair, but it was starting to curl slightly at the end. Her bright green eyes flicked around, taking in her surroundings; seeming to enjoy what she saw. She saw me watching her and grinned a toothless baby grin and kicked her legs excitedly, as if to say, Hey mommy, look at me in the swing! She then proceeded to stick her fingers back into her mouth. She had Scott’s eyes, and his smile, too.
“Alright,” I said sighing. “If you really think it’s a safe thing to do.”
“C’mon, Andi. I won’t try anything drastic—just go around a few times. It’s not like Katia is going to learn anything fancy her first time, anyway.” I felt like we were teenagers again; Scott was an immature boy trying to pressure me into doing something ridiculous, and the doctors were the cops that would get us both in trouble for it.
“You really expect Katia to skate? She’s two and a half years old!”
“Yeah, but we can just hold her hands or carry her so she gets the idea. Then, when she’s a little older we’ll let her try it by herself.” I was still rather wary of the whole idea, but Scott seemed to think it was fine, so I finally gave in. The next day we drove to the rink, Katia buckled in behind us in her little car seat. It was strange to be back in the place where Scott and I had first met as I thought about how far we had come. I glanced at the pro-shop door and could almost hear Scott whining, “But mo-om! I don’t want pretty skate guards!” It’s funny how when you leave a place for a long time and then go back to it, you remember so many things that you barely thought about each time you were there before.
We sat Katia on one of the benches a long side the wall and she peered curiously at the tiny skates that I tied onto her feet. It was funny—I didn’t even know skates came in such a small size! Scott and I then put our skates on, and she looked at us with an expression that seemed to say, Oh, you have them too! Wow, they’re much bigger than mine! It’s interesting how babies can communicate so well without words, sometimes. Scott picked her up and we walked out to the ice. He carried her around a couple times so she wouldn’t be frightened, and then we each took hold of one of her hands and set her gently down on the ice. At first she looked baffled, and then she began to smile as her feet slid in all directions. She looked up at me first, and then at Scott, laughing with glee as if to say, I can do what you can do! After a little while, Scott picked her up again, holding her under her arms, and suspended her between his legs as if she was flying. This time Scott was the one who looked at me and smiled, as if to say, I told you it would be ok. So I watched the two of them gliding a long, and enjoyed seeing Katia’s first experience in the place that Scott and I knew so well.

And now, years later, as I sit here and finish writing this, I look through the window of my small cottage, and watch the water in the creek trickle through the rocks and out of sight. It’s early spring, and a few tulips are beginning to bloom a long side of it. Scott told me once that life is like a stream: you can drink from it if it’s clean, but it keeps moving until it runs dry.
After we retired, we would often sit by this window reading, or watching skating, or talking about our past and what might happen in the future. We had no worries except the hands of time; yet it didn’t bother Scott, as he knew that the end of one thing was only the beginning of something else.
So I listen to the peaceful sound of moving water and it reminds me of Scott, and how peaceful he looked as he lay sleeping when the life left him forever. The skating rink where our story began still stands only a few minutes away, and our daughter gives lessons to her children there, except for one of them who teaches second grade.
I still wear the emerald ring Scott gave me on the day we got engaged—I’ve never had the slightest urge to take it off. I no longer worry about myself and who I am; I know that I’m a better person because of Scott; and on our last anniversary, as I placed a bouquet of flowers on his grave, I felt a sudden rush of memories and I knew that I had to share them. So I sat down in front of this window with a blank piece of paper and a blue pen, and I wrote, “When I was seventeen, Scott Allen told me he loved me…”