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Turin, Italy - She's not supposed to be here.
Kimmie Meissner's Olympic plan called for a showdown with the world's best figure skaters at the 2010 Winter Games.
Tear up the blueprint. She's ready now.
Like an escalator on full power, Meissner rose through the competition at each age level, stopping to win a title before surging past her peers. On Tuesday, she'll take the ice with skating's elite women, four years ahead of schedule.
It is, she says, "the cherry on top" of a short but sparkling career.
"I was just focusing on the next Olympics," she says, a wide grin spreading across her face. "What I really want to do is to skate across the [Olympic] logo on the ice. Then it will hit me."
Make no mistake, Meissner is no fluke.
After placing third at the national championships last year, she returned last month and secured a place on the U.S. team by finishing second to Sasha Cohen.
And in Olympic figure skating, where often the front-runners stumble and the winner comes from nowhere, Meissner has the right "Who, me?" attitude and sense of proportion that comes from three hard-to-impress brothers and parents who refuse to believe that skating is everything.
In a world of sequins and melodrama and divas, Meissner is just a kid who argues with her father about which DVD to watch, can text-message in her sleep and frets if she has to speak in front of classmates.
At 16, she is the youngest of four, the only girl and the only one still living at home.
Brother Nate, 27, is a Baltimore firefighter and paramedic; Adam, 24, is a mortgage company broker; and Luke, 20, is a Towson University student. All three played hockey.
"In our family, she's not the center of attention," says their mother, Judy Meissner. "The others were good at what they did. They just didn't get the attention she has."
Her brothers keep her grounded. It wasn't until last year, when she got a bigger Sports Illustrated photo spread than Michelle Kwan, and NBC's Katie Couric came calling, that they realized that their kid sister was exceptional.
The teasing has stopped, Meissner says with a smirk of satisfaction and her Tickle-Me-Elmo giggle. She skates better than her brothers do now, and because of her, they've had to get passports.
"She's an incredibly well-rounded kid. I've tried to give her a separate life outside skating," says Judy Meissner. "We've always made skating a privilege you earn."
Everyone agrees Meissner is addicted to her sport. But only in the nicest possible way.
"The ice rink is Kimmie's playground. A competition is like Disney World," says Pam Gregory, her coach. "She loves being out there, loves practice, loves competing. Our No. 1 rule is to have fun."
Meissner rises each morning at her Bel Air home before the sun comes up, eats breakfast and heads off to Fallston High School for five periods of classes.
At lunchtime, she jumps in her mother's SUV for an hour-long ride to the University of Delaware rink for six hours of practice.
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