Up to This Pointe - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JENNIFER LONGO was a ballerina from ages eight to eighteen, until she eventually (reluctantly) admitted her talent for writing exceeded her talent for dance. The author of Six Feet Over It, she holds an MFA in Writing for Theater from Humboldt State University, where her obsessive love of Antarctica produced her thesis play about Antarctica’s Age of Exploration. Jennifer lives in Seattle with her husband and daughter and writes about writing at jenlongo.com.

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1

Antarctica

The thing about Antarctica that surprises me most? The condoms. They’re absolutely everywhere.

I’ve been in Antarctica a total of eighty-three minutes, so I’m positive more exciting surprises will probably (hopefully) reveal themselves, but for now, the most intriguing thing about McMurdo, the American science station, is all the condoms.

They’re on all the tables, shelves, and bathroom sinks. Their abundance, combined with McMurdo’s abandoned mining-town/ski-lodge ambience, is giving the place a real frat-house-during-spring-break kind of feel instead of the for-the-betterment-of-the-world vibe the scientists might be aiming for.

I have come here to understand how I got here. Retrace my steps. Sort of metaphorically but, then again, no--actual steps. Every step I’ve taken since I was three years old and first walked onto a dance floor. Since the day I tied my first pair of pointe shoes on my soon-to-be-thrashed feet.

Apparently I’ve been walking all my life on shifting ice, falling snow covering any trace of thepath I’ve made, so now I look back and I’m panicked because I’ve left no trail. I’m frozen, paralyzed, no clue behind me to find the way back. How did I get so horribly lost? How, when I was never alone? All this time, people have beenbeside me, helping me walk straight into this blizzard.

How did I get here?

I told a lie and got on a plane. Four planes. Ninety minutes from San Francisco to LAX. Fifteen hoursfrom Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. The National Science Foundation sprang for Virgin Atlantic, so I had Seinfeld episodes on the tiny seat-back screen the whole way. Then three more hours to Christchurch, New Zealand. No . . . sleep . . . till Christchurch. Overnight in a nice hotel, and the next morning, they handed out sack lunches of cheese sticks and granola bars for the five-hour cargo plane flight to The Ice.

We landed inland, far from the water, on the solid polar ice cap. (Less solid every day. Thanks, Global Warming.) Five hours of roaring engines whined to a stop, and our ears rang. We breathed a future-familiar jet-fuel smell and stepped out onto The Ice. And it was quiet.

Deep, heavy, loud silence in a world of white and blue and black and red. White-blue sky, white snow and ice, black mountains, and our huge shocking-red National Science Foundation parkas.

We slipped and slid all over the ice. Treacherous grooves carved into the ice as texture for the landing strip were so wide I tripped in one and nearly broke my ankle. Weeks ago that would have been a tragedy, but now it wouldn’t matter at all. Now I can sprain all the joints and break all the bones I want. Bring it, Ice.

An hour-long ride in a giant red Terra Bus to McMurdo and we stepped onto The Ice once more, and aprecise spot of pain, otherworldly cold, flared in my forehead. Oh my God, it’s like being stabbed with an icicle. Yes, I know--Antarctica, so what did I expect?--but I’m telling you, this is not regular cold. This is . . . it is unreal.

McMurdo is a town. Buildings, muddy roads, tractors, snowplows, trucks, and metal sheds. A winter population of two hundred. The scientists (Beakers, they’re called here) go their way, and I am ushered into bright royal-blue Building 155 with the other support staff. We are janitors, line cooks, research assistants, and flightschedulers. We support the important people. We are mostly Americans and New Zealanders. Kiwis? All this slang I’m picking up already from eavesdropping, and I am the lowest of us all. I am a fingy. (Fucking New Guy. Charming.)

We’re here together for six months. Soon we will watch the sun disappear into the gray cold of the Ross Sea. No planes in or out. No way on or off The Ice until winter ends in September. Which is why we have all undergone stringent medical and dental exams before arriving, and explains all the condoms; conditions like this surely encourage certain warmth-inducing indoor activities, and getting knocked up here in winter would be a dicey, life-threatening thing to do.

Two hundred people at the frozen, dark bottom of Earth: scientists, researchers, support staff.

Me.

I am one of three pioneers: high school students, seventeen and barely allowed on The Ice but for a coveted National Science Foundation grant for high school seniors looking to enrich our scientific education. (The aforementioned airplane lie.) We are Wintering Over. We are the Winter Overers. On purpose. We have willingly given our two hundred lives to The Ice and the dark for two hundred reasons. Ninety-nine problems, what?!

See, I’m already delirious.

The huge mittens encasing my hands make it a chore to pull out my earbuds blasting hits from the London Symphony Orchestra, the music of My People, but I do when a McMurdo staff member walks forward to shake our hands. Everyone but me seems to know eachother, and no one else looks seventeen. They’re hugging and laughing and talking, and I suddenly really want to lie down.

“Scott!” the guy in charge calls through a humongous beard. “Harper Scott. Scott.” The party is quiet as I raise my huge down-encased arm.

“Scott?”

I nod.

“Scott Scott?” someone calls from the assembled mass. All dudes. Bunch of dudes and me. The three women we flew in with must be scientists, already off to their science dormbuilding. Beard nods, and I think he smiles, but I can’t tell, because giant beard.

Now everyone turns and looks at me.

So much for not being known.

“All righty then, Scott. Let’s find your room. . . .” He flips through the stack of papers on his clipboard and hands me a key stamped 1123. “Right here, main building, second floor. All yours. Bathrooms near the stairs in each hallway. They’ll bring your stuff up later. Welcome Dinner’s at six, so you’ve got a couple of hours. You’ll meet your supervisor then. You’re with . . .” He searches the pages again.

“Charlotte,” I say. She is a marine biology grad student who was once Mom’s research assistant, a favor called in to get me here. Bunch of lying liars who lie. For me.

“Charlotte, right. So I’m Ben, Building One Fifty-Five gatekeeper, personal point person, security. Check in with me when you’re in or out. Here if you need anything whenever. Whatever. Want me to take you up?”

All the dudes are just standing here, listening.

I shake my head. “Thank you.”

I walk to the door marked stairs, and some of the guys take no care to whisper, “Amundsen’s straight-up grandkids were here last year” and “Never heard of her.”

Yes, being a Scott helped the lie along; I applied late. Not the strongest science résumé. Okay, noscience résumé. But I’m here now, so screw off!

Delirious and cranky.

I follow Beard’s directions to the concrete stairwell lit with fluorescent bulbs to another long, dingy hall to the door marked 1123. Home. For six months. Tiny dorm room with a three-drawer dresser and a small desk with a CD player on it...