Satisfaction

• Lauren Tasker, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2013

I grinned happily, my lips perfect and pink, my teeth white and straight, perfectly aligned. My eyes twinkled, shiny with tears of happiness and pride, overwhelmed at my sudden achievement. My eye lids amazingly done up, in red and pink at the corner of my eye, branching out to a deep blue and a lace pattern in a slightly darker blue. Fake eyelashes, stick-on-skin rhinestones, and very dark black eyeliner on the very line of my eyelids. I could barely breathe at the start of my program, never mind the end. Now, my chest was expanding and retracting so fast and deeply I was sure my heart rate was over two hundred beats per minute.
I struck out from my position on the ice and felt a wave of familiarity with the glide, easing the shock in the new title that now accompanied my name. Kelsey Chittick, the Youngest Gold Olympic Medallist Figure Skater. The metallic grind beneath my blades, carving the patterns into the ice, I was perfectly at home. The girl who dropped out of school, the teen who was expelled, the juvenile detention kid, the teenager with no parents, the girl who rebelled against authority, the girl was hardly the expensive porcelain doll America called its Figure Skating Princess. The girl who was now reigning champ. Skating a clean program was always everyone’s objective, but not always achievable.
As I bent down to pluck one red rose from the ice that a fan had thrown out, I curtseyed, the beautiful jade-green skirt of my skating dress flowy. Sleeveless, with a sweetheart neckline of the sparkly jade green, gathered down the middle with strips of glitter, sequins and rhinestones along the edges, looking strapless with the skin-coloured mesh over my shoulders to hold it up over my barely curved chest.
I looked up to the commentators as their talking became audible in my ears.
‘This girl has it all…the musicality, the personality, the drive, the determination, the passion, the technique…all the goods! She’s the absolute F-S-P right now,’ the commentators cried.
I barely scowled. Princess? Me? Who cared?! Olympics… gold medal…reigning champ…sixteen years old…
I twirled again for the other side of the audience.