Free The Big Lie by Julie Mayhew Page B

her. No, she kissed me.
    No – we kissed each other.

APRIL 2013
    Clementine got suspended.
    Dad told me when I came home for breakfast after skating that I wasn’t to knock for her as she wouldn’t be going to school.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because the school needs some time to decide on a suitable punishment.’
    ‘How do you know?’ I asked.
    ‘I’m not sure I like your tone of voice, young lady,’ he replied.
    I hadn’t slept.
    I’d tripped over my own skates at least three times at the rink that morning. In the build-up to that blasted camel spin, I’d caught my toe pick in the ice and bent both hands backwards as I tried to break my fall.
    ‘Verdammt, Jessika!’ Ingrid raged from the benches. ‘Since when do you land like that?’ She leapt onto the rink, struck over to me in short, angry thrusts, stopping messily on purpose, spitting ice over my legs. I pulled myself up onto my elbows and tried to move my wrists but they were numb, fixed like concrete.
Please don’t let them be broken
, I was willing.
Please don’t let them be broken.
    ‘Answer me!’ Ingrid snapped. ‘Antworte mir!’
    The pain was coursing through the cold now, forcing hot tears onto my cheeks. I hadn’t realised there was a question; I couldn’t answer her.
    ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Ingrid sighed, crouching down and making a grab for one of my hands. But I snatched it away.
    ‘Don’t!’ I barked.
    ‘I was only going to …’
    ‘Don’t touch me!’
    Ingrid recoiled. I think I had really upset her. She placed her knees onto the ice and sat back on her heels.
    ‘I just don’t want anyone to touch me,’ I said, trying to make it sound calmer now, more reasoned. It was the truth though. Nothing good came from physical contact.
    She stared at me, her eyelashes batting at her long fringe. Each blink a thought.
    ‘And why’s that?’ Her voice had lowered like mine. ‘Why are you crying, Jessika?’
    If this had been Coach Dorothea, she would have smacked my ear for speaking to her like that, for showing emotion after a fall. I think I would have appreciated it.
Smack!
That’s for how you enjoy being touched, by boys, by girls, fingers, lips, skin … For letting your tongue slip so easily into GG’s mouth without anyone telling you to put it there.
Smack!
That’s for being helpless to stop your best friend from having her insides sliced out.
    ‘Come on, I need to examine your wrists, Jessika.’ Ingrid offered me her open palms, as if beckoning a toddler. ‘You know that’s not how you save yourself.’
    I did know. (
Anticipate the fall, bend your legs to get closer to the ice, roll forwards and to the side, keep the arms in.
) But what if you can’t anticipate the fall? What if you don’t see it coming?
    I gave in. I put my wrists onto the warmth of Ingrid’s gloves. She nodded herself a point won.
    ‘Please don’t make the last ten years a total waste of time,’ she muttered as she slowly rotated my left wrist, her fingers interlocked with mine. ‘I’m talking about myself, of course.’ She smirked, though I understood it was no joke. ‘Please don’t make
my
last ten years a total waste of time.’
    I was Ingrid’s first ever student. I was the first girl she had secured a place for at skate camp.
    ‘Will you get a medal when I go?’ I asked.
    ‘Bloody deserve one!’ she scoffed.
    She looked for the smile and I gave it to her. Another nod, another point won. She started work on my other wrist, loosening the joint. I had only jarred them. I would be all right. The worst I’d have would be bruising, some pain when extending my hands for expression.
    ‘I don’t care about any medals,’ she said, shaking her head, slowly for emphasis. ‘I just want you to always have this in your life.’ Her eyes flickered upwards and caught mine. ‘Because where else can you be truly free,’ she whispered, ‘except on the ice?’
    I hadn’t slept because I had been trying to work out a solution, a way to