Ice Bath

[Author's Note: This is a prompted piece, developed in the same way as "Oh, Spencer" in the previous week. Pick a book, roll two dice. One die is the 10's digit, one die is the 1's digit. Turn to that page in the book, and the last sentence or phrase is the start of your piece.]

ICE BATH

"It's not funny," Harriet grumbled as she picked herself up. What was this? Maybe the fifth or sixth time she had slipped and fallen on the ice. Based on Reggie's piercing, incessant laughter however, you would have thought it was the first time that night.

Lake Nicholas spread out before them: a glowing blue field that glimmered under the full moon. A bitter breeze was blowing, standing in as their only companion since sundown. By then, all the rest of the ice skaters had retired to their fireplaces and hot cocoas. Harriet was just about done with this joker, too.

"Oh, H!" Reggie called out. "How's that wet ass of yours feel out on the ice?" He guffawed once again. Reggie lunged forward on the ice, leaning in on Harriet's tired, irritated scowl. She imagined being in those old cartoons, where skating over the ice in overlapping circles eventually resulted in a slab of the frozen lake popping out of the icy surface, and the skater dropping in. How peaceful it would be if she were on that icy slab, floating away from the lake, floating away from Reggie.

He was so good at ice skating, thought Harriet. He was such a prick about it, too. Her doubts about dating the captain of the varsity hockey team were steadily growing, not just because she was a sophomore. He was an ice-skating, totally dreamy jerk, that every other girl hated her for snagging in the middle of March: just in time to be asked to Prom.

"Just a few more laps, H," Reggie shouted. "Let's see if you can make it, like, twenty feet without falling!"

Harriet grit her teeth and found her way upright, perched pigeon-toed on her skates. She felt and icy mist shower over her as Reggie barreled across the ice, carving out sharp turns and slaloms. She flinched reflexively, risking another fall with each grating scrape of his skate blades into the lake's frozen surface.

Harriet blocked the impressive sight of that total hunk out of her mind as best she could, and remembered her mother's words: bend your knees slightly, look where you want to go and not at your feet, and keep at least one of your skates under you at all times...

*CRACK!* and then *SPLASH!* Harriet ducked in surprise, looking across Lake Nicholas, to where a pitch-black, jagged tear now marred the once-flawless surface. At this tear's center was Reggie, squealing like a set of rusty brakes at a stop sign.

It was almost on auto-pilot the way Harriet moved. She dropped to her knees, stripped off her parka, and shuffled over to a spluttering Reggie. Digging her heels in the ice, she lunged backward, slinging the parka over her shoulder towards Reggie. As she grasped the parka sleeve, white-knuckled, and Reggie eventually lay down on the ice next to her, gasping, Harriet couldn't help but laugh.

"It's not funny," grumbled Reggie, his self-assured smirk finally wiped away.