Chapter 12: The Rush
The ice was a frozen lake under a colorless sky of stadium lights. Amber’s blades cut the first arc, a shallow trench that screamed into the silence of the empty seats.Her warm-up laps were done. Now, it was just the final run-through, the last mental map before the real thing tomorrow.
She launched into her step sequence, letting the programmed choreography dissolve for a moment.She practiced the feeling.The swing. It was absurd, trying to summon an emotion on cue, but that’s what she did with everything else. Why not this?Her body knew the routine. Her mind was supposed to be a quiet instrument, but today it was a storm. She spun, the world blurring into a carousel of white boards and dark portals. As she came out of the rotation, her eyes automatically scanned the seats where her father would be tomorrow.He was there today.
Her breath hitched, a tiny stumble in her footwork she covered with a quick crosscut.He wasn’t supposed to be here. His schedule said meetings until eleven.And he wasn’t alone.
Next to him, slouched comfortably in the plastic stadium seat like it was a living room recliner, was Y/n. She was leaning over, saying something that made Amber’s father tilt his head.Then, impossibly, he laughed. A short, sharp bark that echoed faintly in the vast space.
Amber’s legs carried her on autopilot.A flip, a landing, clean mechanics.
She looked again as she passed on the opposite side.Her father wasn’t reviewing a notepad.He was watching. Just watching.His hands were on his knees. As she completed a long glide, arms extended, she saw him nudge Y/n and point. Y/n nodded, then gave a slow, deliberate thumbs-up.Not to him.To Amber.
Then her father, Robert Glenn, architect of spreadsheets, curator of critiques, lifted his own hand and mimicked the gesture.A thumbs-up. His face, usually a mask of concentrated analysis, was split by a genuine, uncomplicated smile.
The ice became something else.Not a surface to conquer, but a medium to move through. The final jump sequence approached—the triple lutz, double toe.The one she’d mentioned. Her mind didn’t recite the checklist of her shoulder position, her edge quality, her checkmark trajectory. She just thought, This is the swing.She took off.
For a heartbeat, suspended in the air, there was no sound.No thought. Only the fierce, silent twist of her body and the certainty of the landing. She hit the ice with a solid thwack, the force traveling up her leg as pure, clean energy, and flowed seamlessly into the next rotation. It wasn’t perfect.It was better.It was hers.
She finished the routine, coming to a center-ice halt, her chest rising and falling in steady clouds of vapor. The only applause was the clapping of two pairs of hands, sharp and isolated in the cavernous arena. One pair was measured, rhythmic.The other was louder, enthusiastic.
She skated to the boards, the adrenaline making her fingers tremble as she reached for her skate guards. Her father was already walking down the steps, Y/n a step behind him.
“That landing on the flip was a half-inch too far forward,” her father said, but his tone was different.It was observational, not an indictment.
“I know,” Amber said, meeting his eyes. “I felt it.”
He nodded, as if her feeling it was the most important data point.“The combination, though. That was…” He searched for a word, abandoning his technical lexicon. “That was beautiful, Amber.”
Y/n hung back, hands in her jacket pockets, a faint smile on her face.
“Thank you, Dad.”
“Y/n here was just explaining to me the concept of athletic joy,” he said, gesturing vaguely beside him.“I thought it was a motivational poster slogan.But I saw it. Right there, on the combination.” He looked at Y/n.“You were right. It’s a different metric.”
Y/n shrugged.“Just calling it like I see it, Mr. Glenn.”
The moment was broken by the sharp entrance of Alysa and Isabeau, their own practice finished. They descended on Amber in a wave of synthetic fabric and excited chatter.“Glenn! That was insane!” Alysa said, throwing an arm around her shoulders.
“You looked… loose,” Isabeau added, a little wonder in her voice. “What did you eat for breakfast?”
Amber laughed, the sound feeling strange and light in her throat. “Just… trying something new.”
Her father watched the interaction, his usual instinct to pull her aside for debrief visibly reined in. He checked his watch.“Y/n, you said your event starts at ten?”
“Ten sharp. The semi-finals are a zoo.Faster turnover.”
“Then we should go,” her father said. He turned to Amber.“If you’d like to see it. I’d… like to see it. Understand the context.”
Amber was already pulling on her team jacket over her skating dress.“Yeah. Let’s go.”
The shift from the controlled, refrigerated silence of the figure skating arena to the raw, muddy chaos of the snowboarding venue was a shock to the system. The air smelled of wet earth, diesel from the snowcats, and frying food. The crowd here was younger, louder, a sea of brightly colored jackets and beanies. Music pounded from speakers, a heavy bassline you could feel in your molars.
They pushed through to a viewing area, jostling for space. Robert Glenn looked profoundly out of place in his crisp trench coat, but his eyes were fixed on the steep, sculpted halfpipe rising against the gray sky.
“There!” Amber pointed.
At the very top, a lone figure in a dark green jacket stood at the drop-in point. Y/n adjusted her goggles, stamped her board on the packed snow, and raised a hand to the judge’s booth. Even from this distance, her posture screamed a familiar, easy confidence.The loudspeaker crackled. “Next up, Y/n Skells, United States.”
Y/n didn’t hesitate.She dropped.It wasn’t like figure skating. There was no prolonged elegance, no sustained postures.It was a series of violent, beautiful eruptions. She launched skyward off the first wall, a spinning blur against the clouds, and slammed back down with a sound like a thunderclap. Immediately, she catapulted up the opposite side, higher, twisting her body into a complex shape of limbs and board before snapping it back straight for the landing.
Amber heard her father suck in a breath beside her. “The angular momentum alone…” he murmured, but it was awe, not analysis.
Y/n carved higher and faster, each hit more aggressive than the last. She wasn’t just completing tricks; she was attacking the pipe, using its walls as a springboard to defy gravity through sheer will. On her final hit, she soared so high a collective “ohhh” rose from the crowd. She executed a dizzying spin, grabbed the edge of her board, and seemed to hang in the air for an impossible moment before dropping, dropping, and landing with a deep, solid crunch, spraying a plume of snow as she rode out the transition to the flat bottom.The crowd roared.The music swelled.
Amber was clapping, her hands stinging.She looked at her father.His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly open. He was clapping too, slow and deliberate.
On the scoreboard, the numbers flashed: 94.80.First place, by a wide margin.She’d made the finals.
Y/n slid to a stop at the edge of the viewing area, unstrapping her bindings. Her face was flushed, her breathing heavy clouds in the cold air. She looked up, scanning the crowd, and locked eyes with Amber.A grin, wide and unreserved, split her face.
Amber felt her own smile break through, an unstoppable reflex. In that moment, surrounded by the pounding bass and the smell of snow and fuel, the victory wasn’t just the score. It was the shared, breathless understanding between them, across the noise and the distance, of what it meant to truly fly.