My Sister Lucie

Written by Lauren Hartman

Photography by Noah Laroia-Nguyen

For as long as I can remember, being Lucie’s twin has been part of my identity. Identical down to the freckles dotting our noses, Lucie has always been a part of me, and I a part of her. We were raised doing everything together—from Mommy and Me music lessons to first ballet classes. We just don’t know any different.Figure skating is the other part of my identity and, naturally, Lucie has been entwined in that as well, a near-perfect replica of myself flitting through every memory I have of the sport. Sometimes I wonder who I would be if I wasn’t Lucie’s twin or had never laced up my first pair of figure skates.I can remember the exact moment when we stepped onto the ice for the first time.The Christmas right before our fifth birthday, our family was in Texas visiting our father’s side of the family. An overwhelming, boisterous bunch of seemingly endless cousins and great-uncles, they intimidated me with their too-tight hugs and raucous dinners.That holiday, one of the few I can remember spending with our father’s family, was honestly miserable. Even then, I was the timid sister, completely content to blend in with the crowd. I just didn’t feel comfortable surrounded by other children my age who weren’t, well, Lucie.Then we went ice skating.My mother carefully tied up the worn laces of our scratched rental skates, muttering to our father about the dangers of putting blades on the feet of four-year-olds, and then the four of us cautiously stepped onto the ice, Lucie’s hand a reassuring presence in mine.And it was perfect.For the first time during that vacation, I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the loudness of my extended family. I didn’t feel out of place amongst the other cousins our age. I didn’t feel uncomfortably hot at a time of year that should be cold and snowy. Everything just felt right.Thirteen years later, the bleachers are uncomfortable beneath me, their chill finding its way up to my chest. The ice rink feels colder on this side of the glass. It’s unfamiliar. Claustrophobic.My mother sits beside me, her long auburn hair pulled into a wavy ponytail, a thick red scarf wrapped around her neck. She slips an arm into mine, eyes scanning the waiting area beside the ice for Lucie, and murmurs, “It should be her turn any minute now.”I take a deep breath and try to watch the nameless girl twirling on the ice, her ruby red dress clinging to her strong shoulders, the skirt trailing behind her like a shadow, stark against the white arena. She fumbles a triple lutz, not leaping into the air soon enough and rotating too slowly once she eventually gets there, and loses her footing, sprawling across the ice. Panic slices across her face for barely a breath before she schools herself back into composure; she hauls herself up to finish the rest of her program, but I saw it. I know how it feels to lose everything in mere seconds.Lucie was always the memorable twin.We were identical—the exact same height, indistinguishable crooked smiles, similar slender yet athletic body types that made us natural figure skaters—but she was the one who captivated a room, somehow able to talk to everyone she met as though she had known them for years. Delighted laughter followed her wherever she went. I had never been bitter about it, having preferred to stay safely in the background anyway. But then we began figure skating, and suddenly I was the one in the spotlight.Our parents put us into figure skating lessons soon after that Christmas in Texas, and I excelled in a way that, truthfully, baffled everyone. My early coaches, chipper college girls who were used to having to practically beg their skittish students to toddle out onto the ice, told my parents that they had never seen another skater take to the ice in the effortless way I had. My parents observed me closely after that, watching as I quite literally skated circles around the other students in our class, my uneasiness forgotten.Lucie tagged along, always half a step behind. When she fell, knobby knees knocking into the ice painfully, I was at her side to help her up, telling jokes to make her chapped bottom lip stop trembling. During my turn to skate at the competitions, Lucie was an ever-present fixture in the stands, her shrieks of encouragement somehow reaching my ears above the rest of the crowd. In a sport so focused on the individual, we were a team.Even then, though, we competed against each other, fighting for our coach’s rare tight-lipped smiles, for the right to feel the gleaming gold medal hanging over our hearts. We were each other’s biggest cheerleaders but also each other’s toughest competition. It was a constant tug-of-war, a never-ending desire for the other to succeed, to finally land the latest jump in need of conquering.But I wanted to win.I see Lucie then, clad in a black warm-up jacket and a glittering purple dress, her dark hair slicked back into a tight bun. Our coach stands beside her, murmuring lowly in her ear as Lucie nods, not looking at her, and I can imagine exactly our coach’s voice, the fiery, biting tone she adopts before every competition. That should be me. My leg burns, but I refuse to look at the brace on it.Lucie shakes out her arms and jumps up and down. She has never been skittish about anything, but she would be crazy not to be anxious about this competition. If she skates well, executes her spins flawlessly and doesn’t miss a beat, she’ll have achieved the dream we have been racing towards for what feels like our entire lives. She’ll be on her way to the World Championships.It wasn’t until my father died that Lucie and I truly began skating competitively.He was killed in a car accident after being hit head-on by a drunk driver. The doctors said he died on impact and didn’t suffer. Lucie and I were nine.After that, none of us wanted to be at home. Our house felt too dark, too lonely. Cold in a way that no amount of heating could fix.In hindsight, even though Lucie and I shared the incomparable bond of twin sisters, our father’s death brought us even closer. No one else truly understood what we were going through. Our friends couldn’t imagine living in a home that was suddenly missing one essential person. Our mother felt the loss as well, of course, but it was different for her. She didn’t know the pain of losing a father, and we couldn’t begin to imagine the loss of a spouse. So, Lucie and I were driven even closer, our bond strengthened even more.After his death, we threw ourselves into skating to take our minds off the empty chair at our kitchen table. We were at the rink every day, and when we weren’t there we were practicing our jumps off the ice, or driving to the city to buy new skates, or watching iconic figure skating programs on YouTube on repeat. It gave us something to think about, something to distract us. My mom started working a second job to pay for the it all—ice time, coaching, new skates, warm-up jackets, gas to get to the rink and back. Figure skating consumed us.When we were eleven, Lucie and I began skating at a more competitive club, one whose coaches were former Olympians themselves and whose students were vicious competitors. It was Lucie’s idea to do so; I was convinced that we would be out of our depth, unable to compete with the other girls. As always, Lucie knew what she wanted. She made sure we got it.The crowd today is big, the largest I’ve ever seen at a figure skating competition. I can feel the energy in the rink, the jittery excitement of the girls’ mothers sipping their sugar-spiked coffees while the fathers obsessively keep track of the scores. The girls themselves flit through the arena, unable to sit still, faces serious and pale as they lace their skates and slip their earbuds in.This is the real deal, the competition Lucie and I have been working towards for the past thirteen years. The U.S. Championships. One of the final hurdles before the Olympic Games.We were both supposed to be skating today, and I was the one favored to eventually secure a spot on the Olympic team. My spins are tighter, my jumps higher. I have always been the better skater, and Lucie has forever been the one tagging along, just barely sliding into qualifying competitions.“When you jump,” my mother told me once, a blue Mankato Figure Skating Club tumbler of steaming hot chocolate between her fingers as we watched Lucie skate in yet another competition, in another ice rink that looked exactly the same as all the others, “I feel like I’m watching magic. It’s just… you just hang there, Penny. It’s like you’re flying, suspended in the air. I don’t even know how to describe it.”Then, one month ago, I fell.I was doing a triple loop, a jump that I have done hundreds of times, drilling it to precision as I counted down the days to the World Championships. Something was off, though, and I could feel it from the moment my feet left the ice. I was off-center, my feet tangled in a way they weren’t supposed to.My right ankle snapped on impact. The blade of my left skate sliced through my tights and into my right calf. My head cracked against the ice. Someone screamed.They had to carry me off the ice, partly because of my shredded leg, partly because of the sobs wracking my body. I didn’t feel any pain, but I had seen the blood, the way it coated the ice. I knew how long it would take to recover from an injury like that. I knew how many competitions I would miss, how behind I would be in practices.I knew my career was over.Lucie looks up into the stands, jaw tight, and somehow our eyes meet; she must have looked for us earlier to know where we would be sitting. I swallow the burgeoning jealousy, pushing it back into the sullen pit of my stomach, and force myself to nod at her, offering one last encouragement, one last affirmation. Even from the distance, I can see her chest rise with a deep breath, the dress shimmering under the harsh lighting, and I automatically inhale as well. We are perfectly in sync, even now, even with this uncontrollable envy teeming within me. What’s wrong with me?Lucie’s name rings through the rink, and she turns away, stepping onto the ice to the tune of polite applause. I can picture exactly how smooth the ice must feel beneath her feet, how she must feel safer, more herself than she does with the firmness of the earth beneath her feet. How everything about the arena—the chattering of the audience, the neon posters waving in their mitten-covered hands, the obtrusive television cameras at all corners of the ice—fades into the background.Lucie takes a lap around the rink, and somehow I can hear the blades of her skates slicing cleanly through the ice. It’s a sound I have heard thousands of times, one that has always soothed to my nerves. It doesn’t have that effect this time.Lucie sticks one toepick into the ice, rests one hand on her hip and raises the other to the ceiling. She takes a deep breath, pulling her chin upwards. This is it. Her music begins, the faint sound of an orchestra crooning through the speakers, and she skates.Every jump, every spin is executed in a smooth, effortless way that I have never seen my sister skate before. She leaps higher into the air, spins faster, glides through her footwork more gracefully. I keep waiting for her to fall, to stumble on a landing, but she doesn’t. With each jump she takes, resentment clenches at my chest while disbelieving pride simultaneous flushes through my cheeks. How can this be happening?She finishes perfectly in time to the music. For the smallest moment, the arena is silent, awed, and all I can hear is the steady thumping of blood in my ears. But then the moment disappears as quickly as it came, the crowd roaring in a way that they haven’t for any other skater, and my mother leaps to her feet, whistling and wiping tears off her cheeks. My heart sinks.“She did it, Penny,” she gasps, not taking her eyes off Lucie as she curtsies, a triumphant grin on her face.She’s done it, and she knows it. I know it.My twin sister is going to the World Championships. What does it say about me that I wish she had fallen, that I wish she had fumbled her program? That I wish it was me out there, waving to the crowd as I skate off the ice towards our coach, knowing that I had finally accomplished what I had been working towards for so long? That I wish she had been the one who had broken her ankle, whose blood had seeped through the ice, staining it crimson for days afterwards? What does that say about me?I gave up so much for this sport.I traded the butterflies of first love and the crisp fall air of Friday night high school football games for lonely online classes and countless identical ice rink locker rooms, the strong smell of sweat and hairspray clinging to every surface. I never went to a homecoming dance; instead of the clichéd memories of doing my friends’ hair, giggling as we zipped up each other’s gaudy dresses, my head is filled with memories of too-dark ice makeup, of hair pulled into a tight bun at the nape of my neck, of the burning itch of sequins digging into my collarbone.That night, Lucie crawls into bed with me. She used to have nightmares after our dad died, and she would creep into my room under the cover of darkness, afraid to sleep alone. I would wake in the morning to find her curled around me, our skin hot and sticky where we were pressed together.“I’m so sorry, Penny,” she whispers. Her eyes look black in the dim lighting of my room. “It should have been you.”I take a deep, shuddery breath. We cry together, arms and legs tangled until I can’t tell where my limbs end and hers begin. Our eyes are dry, cheeks no longer salty, when she speaks again, voice quavering, “This is as much your accomplishment as it is mine. I’m doing this for you, Penny. I’m going to win it for you.”My chest still aches, exhausted and drained, but fondness creeps up my chest and into my throat at her words, eating away at the rancorous jealousy that paralyzes me. She may have stolen my glory, taken what should have been my accomplishment out from under my nose, but she’s right. We’ve made it this far together. No matter what happens, if she wins the gold or chokes under the pressure of the eyes of the world on her, she’s doing it for us.As I lie there, Lucie curled into my side, her unblemished leg a faint pressure on the gruesome, bandage-covered stitches on my right calf, I wonder who I am. I am no longer a figure skater, and likely never will be again. Not in the same way that I was.But maybe it’s not such a bad thing to be defined as Lucie’s Twin. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to be defined as the girl whose sister fell to her knees beside her limp body on the ice, the girl whose sister used her own jacket to try to staunch the blood until the EMTs arrived, panicked tears dripping onto her trembling fingers. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to be defined as the girl whose sister always pushed them to do better, who helped her see past her doubts and fears.I turn to look at her, our faces inches apart. She has fallen asleep, her eyes swollen and cheeks splotchy. She doesn’t look like the fiercely competitive athlete she is. She looks like my sweet, brave, determined, charismatic twin. My sister Lucie.