Skating on Mars by Caroline Huntoon

Author:Caroline Huntoon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

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Confession: I don’t have an Instagram.

But chickening out in my conversation with Jade means that I have to make one if I want to talk to her through DMs.

Or I could just stalk her page for a minute.

Which I do as we drive home from practice. Mom’s got a David Bowie CD going.

Jade’s Instagram is one of those curated pages with a cultivated aesthetic. The most recent pictures are all of her skating or posing in her skates. But as I scroll back through her content, there are more pictures with other people. She makes a lot of peace signs in her photos with friends and is quick to make goofy faces. Where she normally looks serene and smooth on the ice, her photos with her friends feel silly and almost awkward at times.

I pause on a photo of her with a friend pressing her pink lips to Jade’s cheek. Jade’s eyes are open wide and looking off to the side of the frame in a kind of Isn’t this dreamy expression. Her hair, which I always picture in her tight skating bun, is hanging long past her shoulders, a black curtain. The caption reads: I <3 Love, with all of the emoji hearts in rainbow order.

I don’t know why, but something about the picture makes me think that I could tell Jade I’m nonbinary, and she wouldn’t question it. Wouldn’t ask me to explain more. That maybe she would just accept that as a part of me.

I keep scrolling. Back to the summer when she went to Lake Michigan with her family. There are photos of sunsets and pictures of her mounted on one of her brothers’ shoulders in the water. Snapshots of marshmallows roasting in a fire pit, and a photo where she’s waving a sparkler so the tail trails in the air.

When I click on a few photos to read the comment threads, I see that she has responded to most of them with a mix of emojis. All of her replies are joy in emoji form. I keep scrolling, and then I find a black-and-white photo of her resting her head on her arms in a deep windowsill. I click to read the caption:

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