Page 5 of Ice Princesses
It started as something to pass the time after I retired, just hanging out in the rink for longer periods week overweek, until someone gave me something meaningful to do. Five years later, it’s a full system I can move with several hundred emails, a handful of daily phone calls, and conversations in the building’s hallways.
But above all else, Lake Jasper Training Center taught me that figure skating is a machine that rewards certainty, and that my job, as an elite skater, was to become inevitable inside of it. I learned how to execute under pressure and how to speak without saying too much. I learned how to smile when my ankle was swollen and my back was screaming and my coach was counting rotations like they were the only thing that mattered.
Then I retired and everyone acted like the next step was obvious.
My parents have said the wordinfluencelike a blessing and a threat.
“You become the next association president and influence the sport,” my dad said once at brunch three years ago, when I told them I was going to work full-time at the training center that made me and they deemed it completely unacceptable for anathlete of my caliber. “The person at the head of the table. Imagine, Princess, the things you could do with that much power.”
I’m in my mid-thirties now and still, sometimes, feel sixteen in a dress my mother picked out, sitting at a dinner I didn’t ask to attend, learning how to be charming instead of honest.
That’s the problem with being raised inside a legacy: you don’t always notice the chains until you try to move a little.
On my desk, the Ascend Skating Foundation binder sits open like a dare.
It started here. In this office, between scheduling and budget meetings and conversations about injuries and pilates lessons.
It has all the bylaws. Oversight. A robust, influential board. A mission statement I revised six times until it didn’t sound like charity or like a teenager rebelling against her parents, either.
Access. Infrastructure. Opportunity for athletes who don’t have a federation that can float them without blinking.
This is the first thing that feels mine in a very long time.
And I can already hear my father’s voice, calm and disappointed. “Your job, Princess, is influence,” he would say. “Not disruption.”
I drag my thumb along the edge of the paper until the sharp corner dulls.
The movement of the door is what finally snaps me out of it.
My sister doesn’t knock. Nina has never knocked once in her life. She pushes the office door open with her hip, coffee in one hand and an impatient stare on her face, and she looks exactly like the version of me our mother never managed to fully polish.
Her hair is cut shorter than mine and it’s always a little wild, like it refuses to stay where it’s told. Her eyes are green—warm where mine are icy blue—and she has this way of holding herself like she’s both amused and ready to bite. Nina grew up like any sibling of an elite athlete did: in thebleachers while I was on the ice, a little shadow our parents insisted on keeping in frame whenever the cameras widened.Family, like it was a brand we needed to protect. Nina learned early on how to stand adjacent to the spotlight without letting it carve her into something else. I never had that option.
She clocks my expression in one glance.
“You’ve been here for three hours,” she says.
“I’m working.”
“I think you’re spiraling, actually.”
I don’t bother denying it. Denial is a waste of energy with Nina. There’s so much hinging on this program that we developed together and she knows all of the implications. With our parents, with the skating association, with other athletes.
She sets her coffee down on the corner of my desk with too much confidence, like this room belongs to her, too.
My mouth moves before my brain catches up. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, and I cringe because I recognize the people pleaser inside of me. The one I was trained to be by my parents.
Nina’s mouth quirks. “I mean… You funded an international placement a month after you publicly questioned infrastructure on national television, Izzy. That’s not wrong, but we had it coming.”
The way she says it makes it sound like I ran out onto the ice and lit a match.
I sit back, forcing my shoulders to drop. “It was a comment.”
“It was a comment fromyou.” Nina leans forward, palmson my desk, like she’s trying to pin this reality in place. “You don’t get to be the most decorated skater inhistoryand pretend the words you say can slide with no consequence.”
I don’t respond. Because she’s right and I hate she’s right, and hating it doesn’t change anything.
Nina points at the binder. “Mom called me.”
