Ben's Bakery and the Hanukkah Miracle by Penelope Peters

Author:Penelope Peters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penelope Peters
Published: 2018-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

THEY TOOK OFF THE SKATES, put their own shoes back on. They turned them in, bought hot chocolates from the tiny kiosk, and went to sit on the park benches overlooking the rink.

The chocolate had only just cooled off enough for Adam to drink when Ben began to speak.

“I was a speed skater.”

Adam glanced at him, but Ben wasn’t looking at him. He wasn’t even drinking the hot chocolate, which he still held in both hands, sitting on his lap. “I know.”

Ben glanced at him quickly. “You do?”

“You told the kids,” Adam reminded him. “And... I might have seen the pictures on your wall.” And Sheldon mentioned it, he didn’t say, because he wasn’t entirely sure how well that would go over. I was pretty pissed at Farida for divulging my personal information. And even if Sheldon did the same thing... he meant well.

Maybe Farida did, too.

“Oh,” said Ben. “Yeah. I forgot they’re up.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” said Adam.

“You didn’t.”

“I don’t know much about speed skating, except that it’s fast.”

“Yeah.” Ben smiled. “That’s what I liked best about it. It was fast. I always wanted to go fast. I tried figure skating, and hated that every so often, you’d stop going fast in order to do something stupid, like spin in place or jump in the air. I couldn’t understand why people wanted to do anything but go fast.”

Adam chuckled. “How old were you?”

“Nine or ten. Old, really, for speed skating. Isn’t it crazy, how all sport demands you start before you even know how to read, practically? Anyway, I was lucky. The place where my mom finally got tenure, there was a fantastic training center. Not quite Salt Lake City level, but pretty close. Guess they saw something in me, as old as I was, and there was a coach who was willing to take me on.” Ben shrugged. “I loved it. I skated all the time. As much as I could.”

Tread carefully, thought Adam.

“Something happened,” he said quietly.

Ben sat back with a sigh. “Have you ever watched speed skating?”

“A little.”

“There’s a lot of crashes. Most of the time, you get back up again. It’s the first thing you learn how to do, you know. How to fall, how to get back up, how to finish.” Ben paused. “I couldn’t get back up. I never finished.”

“You were hurt.”

Ben’s laugh was hollow. “You saw the scar. It goes all the way from the back of my ankle to my kneecap.” Ben lifted the hot chocolate to his face, but didn’t drink. “The whole time my leg was healing, I was itching to get back on the ice. But the first day I was cleared to skate again – I couldn’t do it. I don’t even really remember what happened, exactly, just that everything went haywire. It felt like I was having a heart attack, like someone had reached right into my ribcage. They weren’t just ripping everything out. They were squeezing and twisting and replacing all my blood with battery acid.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.