Rosie Rinkstar

By Janet Rosina West

Rosie loves to skate: she has found her element and truly believes that there is no life without skating. She thinks it; lives it; dreams it - accepts its challenges and turns to it for solace.
However, having a bratty little sister who is rapidly becoming recognised as a talented gymnast, a mum who already has two jobs to make ends meet and a threat to her lifts to the ice rink, it looks as if Rosie's skating days are numbered.
Growing worries over her beloved Nan, the emergence of an unexpected enemy and a school project which takes on a mind of its own, all contribute to changing Rosie's world forever and lead to the realisation of her most secret dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781291549027

Book preview

Rosie Rinkstar

ROSIE RINKSTAR

By Janet Rosina West

ROSIE RINKSTAR

By Janet Rosina West

Illustrations by Nomi Everall

© 2013 Janet Rosina West. All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-291-52758-2

For Rosies everywhere - keep skating!

THE TESTS - January

Mum was shaking me and hissing in my ear. I could swear that I’d only just got off to sleep but she was hissing: It is quarter past four, get up and don’t wake Bernice for goodness sake!

Bernice is my six-year-old sister, she’s OK but she talks, all the time, about nothing, it drives you mad. She even talks in her sleep which was one reason that I couldn’t sleep last night. The other was the tests. She bounces as well does Bernice, never walks, if she’s ever still it’s because she’s hanging upside down. Yes, I will definitely be quiet because Bernice, this morning, I could not stand. I’ve felt sick for three days and had a black cloud hanging over me ever since the letter arrived; Mum was all excited – tests through at last – whoopee!

Maybe I would have felt better if it was a warm summer morning, all full of sunshine and promise (does the sun shine at quarter past four, even in summer?), anyway it wasn’t, it was January, black as night – well it was night - and the heating doesn’t come on till six.

I grabbed what I thought was a bundle of the right clothes and shivered my way down to the kitchen where I dressed as close as I could to this tiny thing that blows out warm air.

Now Mum was on about a ‘good breakfast’. I told her that I felt sick and that she had told me that when she was pregnant she’d felt sick every morning for six months and all she could manage was a dry cracker. We didn’t argue much over it, she is at her weakest before seven o’clock so anything I want, I go for then; after that – no chance. We get on OK in the mornings really, neither of us wants to talk and we get on with our own thing. I had sorted my school bag the night before and gave it a quick check over: note to say the reason I was late; maths stuff, going back to double maths was a downer and hockey most of the afternoon was a killer after an early morning. Ice rink cold I can cope with – playing field cold is quite different.

Before we left my Nan came creeping downstairs. She was staying over so that she could get Bernice off to school. Last time we had to get the girl next door to stay but it cost and although Mum never says anything, I know that what with lessons and costumes and skates and tests and stuff it isn’t easy. Nan is good at times like this. She is little and round and comforting and she always says the same thing: Well you can only do your best dear, and when it all goes wrong she criticises the judges or the other competitors and doesn’t even seem to understand that it was me that stacked it. Sometimes I pass a test or get on the rostrum and her face goes all pink with pride and she tells all her friends in the sheltered accommodation where she lives. I know because every time she introduces me to someone new they say: So you’re the little skater then, I’ve heard all about you. I sort of squirm but I like it really.

It takes an hour to get to the rink. Mum would like to move closer but it costs a lot to move and the schools are better round here and it’s near Nan. She tells me to go to sleep in the car but I can’t. I failed one of these tests last time - however you dress up the ‘fail’ word - and I’m scared of it happening again. Mum puts the money in and Dan, my coach, is fantastic. He is so patient and he believes in me. That’s good but it is a bit of a burden at times like this. I never want to give up that feeling you get when you skate and everything else just floats away so it’s just you and the ice and the music but you have to pay for that feeling and there is an installment due this morning.

*

Our rink is grotty, its old and kind of wet all the time; they say that it is going to be replaced by a fantastic ice and leisure centre, sometimes it’s something to do with a supermarket and sometimes it’s a Russian millionaire. Whatever it is, the rumours have been doing the rounds since I started at learn-to-skate classes there about six years ago (a sort of present for putting up with being landed with the awful Bernice). On test mornings it is even more depressing because you notice it. Usually you are chatting and rushing to get on the ice but on test mornings people are kind of muted and walking around trying to find out what’s happening.

Apparently one of the judges is stuck in traffic, I bet he’s just got up, and the other is cocooned in the pro’s room where they have something that blasts heat out while the rest of us silently freeze. No one seems to know which judge is in there but I don’t want to know anyway. There are a couple of judges that everyone dreads getting, they fail everyone, well it seems like that. Unfortunately we seem to be one of the rinks on their patch and if judges don’t have patches they must be irresistibly drawn here to see who they can get next.

There is supposed to be heating at the rink but it doesn’t come through till about midday, I look at my dress and shudder, lycra is so cold when you first put it on and it doesn’t cover an awful lot of me. A friend comes up behind me: Oh your Mum bought it did she? We put it in the sale because the neck never fitted properly; I failed my level three in that and fell in the club comp. I used to think it was unlucky. She saw my face and, being a friend, added lamely: I expect it will be alright for you though. Then she drew in a sharp breath and I followed her gaze to the door.

It was ‘the Frog’. Now I know that is unkind but there are some people that it is very hard to be kind about and ‘the Frog’ is one of them. It is a pity really because I think that her daughter (‘the Princess’ – not said unkindly, she is a really beautiful but not allowed to talk to us lot) is a nice girl. The Frog is very short and wide, not round in a sort of solid Babushka sort of way like my Nan, but ‘flumpy’ if you know what I mean. There is a sort of raised up viewing bit with a low wall at the end of the ice and the Frog has her own place where she stands and sprawls and watches. She has big, bulbous eyes that miss nothing and it freaks you out. The most off putting thing is that she pretends to be really friendly to everyone. It’s ‘ello darlin’, ‘ow are you?, every time you pass, which is very often as she is always there ready to push the poor Princess back on to the ice even if the poor girl only wants to go for a wee. When she isn’t there she is head to head (ugh!) with ‘her coach’, brought over from the country which she smugly tells us ‘only coach the best skaters’. She turns up at tests even when the Princess isn’t skating and she takes notes.

I was just thinking that it could not possibly get any worse when the late judge arrives – it was him, tall, big hat, shiny briefcase, big strides to the pro’s room and then out pops the Bonnie to his Clyde, tiny, masses of blond hair and a mean streak.

*

The thing starts at last, field moves, the place is so quiet it’s unnerving, just the scratch, scratch, scratch of blade on ice. I have the usual indecision about warming up, one field move test to do but loads to go before me according to the bit of paper that has just been stuck up, then elements (not my problem this time), then free but plenty before my turn.

There is nowhere to go while you wait, except the unsavory loos or the damp changing room that is now packed with girls in various stages of undress or hysterics (some even both).

I go off in to a corner to warm up and get away from the tension; I hate it when you have to stand with your coach while the judges write things and discuss your performance in voices you just can’t hear and the bit where they talk to you and you know that everyone is trying to lip read and waiting to see whether you get your hand shaken, and they can clap, or whether you go off with your tail between your legs and they wonder what to say to you afterwards. What makes it even worse is that you know, deep down, that at least half of them did not want you to pass anyway.

To take my mind off it all I think about the maths I was having trouble with last night. I want the tests to be over, but if they do take a long time I might at least miss enough of the lesson not to have to be questioned on what I did