Chapter 12
April and May passed for Alisa with cruel indifference. Summer fully came to the city, but inside her everything remained frozen somewhere in that arena in Boston.
Tora tried to write to her every week. Sometimes Alisa answered with a few dry words and sometimes she disappeared for whole weeks, burying herself in training.
She trained alone now, without a coach, without a partner.
For two months she skated only because her heart demanded it, because if she stopped she was afraid she would collapse completely.
No amount of training could silence her thoughts.
Lev sometimes came to the rink on crutches, his knee imprisoned in a heavy brace and cast. He would sit high in the stands or by the boards, silently watching her skate circles across the empty ice, and then leave without a word.
And Pike, Pike kept training pairs. Alisa would walk past the other rink and see her coach correcting someone’s posture, or someone’s hands in a lift, and it broke Alisa’s heart with humiliating clarity.
It felt as though she had been quietly pushed aside, shelved like a broken thing no one knew how to fix.
In Boston, she and Lev had fought. He had told her that she had gained weight, that he couldn’t lift her properly anymore at that day, that the extra kilos had ruined the final element.
He told her that she had stopped focusing, that ever since Tora came into her life she had become distracted, more interested in someone else than in skating in general.
And Alisa had shut down completely from everyone. After that, they both stopped texting each other or talk… In truth, Lev could not train for months, but even before that, they had already stopped crossing paths.
Pike told Alisa to take a break, but Alisa kept coming to the rink.
Sometimes she tried practicing alone the elements she and Lev used to do together.
Without a partner, the ice suddenly seemed bigger.
She attempted difficult jumps, the kind where a skater launches into the air, spinning three or four times before landing on a blade no wider than a finger, but she kept falling, over and over. Jumps in singles were so much harder.
Her body no longer trusted itself.
When she had skated with Lev, there had always been someone there to catch her. And now all alone every movement rested entirely on her own body. Moreover, it felt wrong, like trying to walk after forgetting where the ground was.
Still she kept hoping that maybe by summer, Lev would recover, maybe they would start training again, slowly, maybe they would apologize to each other or maybe everything would somehow become normal again.
But deep down, in the quiet place where she never lied to herself, Alisa already knew: the Olympics in 2026 were over.
They would never have enough time to build a new program and relearn trust.
So at five-thirty every morning, while the rink was still dark and nearly empty, she put on her headphones and stepped onto the ice alone.
Music filled her ears, usually it was something orchestral, aching and grand, and she let her body move without thinking. She stopped trying to skate for points or judges or quotas. She skated because something inside her still needed to speak.
She let the music pull her across the ice in long curves and sudden turns, her blades carving pale white lines into the frozen surface.
And then she jumped, fell, jumped, fell, doing it over and over again.
After nearly three hours without stopping, Alisa finally stepped off the ice trembling with exhaustion. She was starving, so hungry her hands shook and her vision blurred at the edges.
She pushed through the gate of the rink, headphones still around her head, the final notes of Ludwig Goransson — Can You Hear the Music (Oppenheimer) playing softly into the empty hallway.
Someone grabbed her shoulder and Alisa screamed and spun around, heart leaping into her throat.
Standing behind her was Arkadiy Orlovsky.
He wasn’t her coach, he had never even liked her much.
Arkadiy trained mostly boys and singles skaters, future champions with brutal discipline and impossible standards.
He and Pike had argued for years about methods and about whether a skater should be built with tenderness or broken and remade stronger.
Alisa immediately frowned, pulling one earphone away.
Now he’ll yell at me, she thought. He’ll say I distracted his athletes, that I have no business being here alone, that Pike has completely lost control of her strays.
But the look on Arkadiy’s face was serious and intent. And what he said next made Alisa forget how to breathe.
“Alisa, right? You’re on Valentina Dragunskaya’s team? You skated with Lev, and now you’re recovering?”
Alisa only nodded, listening so intently that her heart began to pound harder beneath her ribs.
“I’ve noticed you,” Arkadiy said, leaning one shoulder against the boards.
“The way you skate alone… your improvisation touches me every time I see you on the ice. I don’t know how you do it, but there’s something in it.
” He smiled, and his dark green eyes flashed with interest. “I happen to have room for one more athlete, and when I saw you training alone, I thought maybe this was my chance to steal you for my team.”
Alisa stared at him, stunned, her lips parting before she could stop herself.
“M-me?” she stammered, even pointing a hand toward her own chest, as though she still suspected he meant someone standing behind her.
“Well, yes, you, Alisa.” Arkadiy’s smile only widened. “You lack confidence in your jumps when you skate alone, but that’s normal. After pair skating, you have to learn how to trust yourself again. Returning to singles isn’t easy, but it’s possible.”
He turned suddenly toward the ice and shouted across the rink.
“Higher, Axel! Lift the knee! Better! And watch the edge, Sasha!”
A boy of about fourteen pushed himself into the air again, his body spinning so fast that he blurred for a second before landing cleanly.
A quadruple jump. Alisa watched with a small smile, the first real smile in weeks, as the boys kept flying across the ice, falling and getting up and trying again.
Then she looked back at Arkadiy and frowned slightly. “But… you only coach boys, don’t you?”
He returned his attention to her, leaving the skaters to continue on their own for a moment. “Mostly, yes,” he admitted. “But I know you can jump quads too, and I only coach athletes when I see the potential in them to win gold, to reach something higher.”
Alisa pressed her lips together, trying not to smile too obviously. Did he really think that? Did he really believe I still could do things?
Then she nodded, letting out a shaky breath. “I’d be glad if you took over my training, Arkadiy Andreevich.”
She lowered her head politely, but Arkadiy only smiled and held out his hand to her. Alisa took it, his grip was warm and firm.
“Then welcome to the Olympic team. Can you make it to the second practice at eleven?”
“Yes, of course,” Alisa said at once, and suddenly she was smiling so brightly it almost hurt. Something bloomed inside her chest, like the first snowdrops breaking through frozen ground after a long winter, reaching stubbornly toward the sun.
Arkadiy nodded once more, already turning back toward the ice.
“All right, again! Come on, let’s go, let’s go!” he shouted, clapping his hands loudly as the boys launched themselves into the air once more.
Alisa turned and headed toward the locker room.
When she stepped into the shower room, it was empty. Thank God. Every time she walked in there now, she remembered that moment in Norway with Tora. It did not matter that she knew mostly all the girls here, that no one would look at her strangely. The memory still lived under her skin.
Tora had changed so much in her life for Alisa not to think about her now. Alisa wanted to tell her something good.
The messengers had been working badly again all morning, stuttering and freezing because the VPN kept disconnecting, but eventually the messages went through.
Alisa: Hey, good morning, champion.
Tora: Wow. Are you in a good mood, Slavic girl?
Alisa: I’m being… recruited to another team.
Tora: Really? That’s incredible! Are they preparing you for singles?
Alisa: I don’t know yet, but… I’m going to train with guys. Only guys.
Tora: I’m already jealous.
Alisa: Don’t be. Their boobies will never compare to yours.
Tora: ?? Oh, right.
Alisa: Can we have a call tonight? Maybe play PS5? And just… talk.
Tora: Of course. But then you have to tell me everything about the first practice with your new coach.
Alisa: Deal.
“The season is over,” Alisa whispered softly to herself as she dried her hair and looked at her reflection in the mirror. “Time for a new me. Literally. A new me in singles.”
Then she called a taxi and left the arena, heading toward her favorite coffee shop for breakfast.
* * *
Alisa arrived for the second ice session at eleven in the morning with a smile on her face. It was the first real smile in two months.
Outside, summer had already settled over the city.
June heat shimmered above the pavement, the morning already warm, the air smelling faintly of asphalt and sunburnt grass.
It was barely eleven and already twenty-five degrees, and for the first time in weeks, Alisa was glad to push open the doors of the arena and step back into the familiar cold.
She sat on the bench in the locker room, pulling the laces of her Edea skates tight around her ankles until they almost hurt, smoothing the folds of her black training dress over her hips, tying her hair back one more time than necessary because her hands needed something to do.
Then she stepped out onto the arena.