It’s the Girls-Only skate when I first see you. You and your friend, leaning on the rail. You, with dark hair that you keep sweeping from your eyes. My cousin and I glide past you, again and again. Me with my American accent, my cousin’s English cadence, but you don’t know that yet. I see you watching us. I’m a good skater. I could fly around this rink, my hair streaming behind me. But that would be immature, and I’m fourteen. So I stay next to my cousin and glide along at the same speed as all the other girls. You and your friend are watching us, I can tell. You’re telling him something, and I think you’re making a kind of decision. I want you to choose me, but I know you won’t. My cousin is the pretty one. Small and delicate, with dark curls and green eyes. She has a boyfriend in London, where she lives. Me, I’ve never been chosen by anyone before. The song ends and the lights dim. The announcer says it’s time for the Couples Skate. You and your friend roll up to us. You reach out your hand. To me. We hold hands and we skate around and around and around as tiny lights spin like jewels in the darkness and Stevie Wonder sings “Isn’t She Lovely” and I think, for the first time, maybe I am. Lovely. And I know that tomorrow, on the long plane ride home, all I will think of is this moment, this song, the feel of my hand in yours, the way our skates seem to float just above the wooden floor, like gravity was nothing to us, like at any moment we might just fly away.
Melissa Fitzpatrick lives in the Los Angeles area. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as JMWW, The Mersey Review, Frazzled Lit, and Tiny Molecules. Find more of her work at melissa-fitzpatrick.com. Bluesky @melissafitz.bsky.social.
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