Chapter 22 #4
Alisa only shrugged pitifully, shook herself off, and bent forward so her hair fell down, gathering it into a ponytail before straightening again. Anfisa was completely ready except for her makeup. She pulled her makeup bag closer and they sat across from each other on a bench.
“Want eyeliner?” Anfisa asked, and Alisa nodded.
“Combat makeup, huh? Okay, I get it… then let’s do it, panther.”
Alisa closed her eyes and waited while Anfisa drew sharp eyeliner across her lids, which only took a few seconds.
Alisa never really liked makeup, but for competitions someone always did it for her anyway, so she never worried about it much.
There was always someone around who understood it better than she did.
Then Anfisa added a soft blush to her cheeks and carefully colored her lips in a deeper shade. The makeup came out fierce, almost aggressive, which perfectly suited the short program Alisa had been skating for the last couple of weeks.
After waiting for Anfisa to finish her own makeup, they headed toward the arena, where they would perform together in the first group. Other athletes were already sitting in the stands, and even the hockey players had shown up, Hermann apparently dragging the entire team with him.
Anfisa’s expression changed immediately, her smile collapsing into a frown.
“Are they serious?” she muttered, opening her mouth in disbelief. “They came here to laugh around while everyone else is trying not to fucking die from stress?”
“Oh, come on, Anfisa… they’re here to support us…”
“Support us? Do you see that idiot blond guy smiling?”
“Hermann?” Alisa looked up at him and waved from below. The entire hockey team was sitting high in the stands, standing out painfully among the skaters, nervous parents, and other spectators who had come to watch the internal championship.
“Yes, him. He’s smiling like an idiot.”
“He’s smiling at me.”
“Pfft.” Anfisa snorted and turned away so she wouldn’t have to look at the annoying hockey players anymore.
They went to the front bench and sat down, waiting for the whole group to be called onto the ice.
The judges sat at their table, talking quietly and typing into their tablets, probably adjusting scoresheets or checking protocols before the performances began…
And then the announcer’s voice echoed through the arena speakers, calling out the first group and listing all their names one by one. The girls immediately stood up and began heading toward the ice in order.
“Warm-up — five minutes. Skating order: Anastasia first onto the ice, then Anita, Anna, Alisa, and Anfisa.”
After the acceleration lap, Alisa began skating backward, warming up her jumps, doing entrance triples and lighter jump combinations.
Then she went into a single jump just to feel the ice beneath her blades, and it seemed stable enough, but her spins worried her.
Today her body felt alien, foreign even and disconnected, as if she was spinning in the wrong direction entirely.
Her spatial orientation was fucked up from lack of sleep, and after the warm-up ended and she returned to the bench to watch Anastasia’s performance — since she was skating first — Alisa suddenly felt her knees weaken.
Something sharply clicked when she bent and straightened her leg.
Blyat’, that’s not good.
Alisa only grimaced at herself in disgust and pity, frowning harder and biting her lower lip until she tasted blood.
She had to skate well enough to get to the damn Olympics, no matter what.
She HAD to.
And when it was finally her turn to step onto the ice, her legs felt like cotton, numb and hollow beneath her.
Fuck! This is really bad.
But after inhaling deeply and exhaling through clenched teeth, she forced herself to move, skating around the rink before the performance and waving automatically to every side of the arena or, more accurately, to the one side actually filled with people, but tradition was tradition. You waved to every side anyway.
Then she stopped in the center of the rink.
The music began.
The first jump was… well, not a disaster, but definitely not good. She landed so hard she nearly collapsed, and to save herself from falling she transferred onto the other foot during the landing, which immediately ruined the element.
The second jump wasn’t much better either, though at least she stayed upright.
Her spins felt weak too, unstable, blurry around the edges, but somewhere halfway through the program something suddenly shifted inside her, like her body finally remembered what it was supposed to do.
Confidence returned in flashes. She jumped once cleanly, then twice, then another three or four successful elements in a row, her body finally surrendering to muscle memory instead of fear.
But by the final part of the program, exhaustion caught up with her again.
Her spins blurred together, and during the final element she tilted too far off-axis and almost fell completely. Somehow she managed to catch herself at the last second and force the spin back into place on the second rotation, though she no longer finished in time with the music.
Alisa closed her eyes immediately after the ending pose, grabbing her head as if she could physically hold herself together.
With a devastated expression, she skated toward the bench, where Anfisa instantly wrapped her arms around her.
“You did well! Everything’s fine!”
But Alisa only wanted to cry.
She felt it in her bones that with a skate like this she wouldn’t make it to the Olympics.
Maybe the others would do worse.
Maybe.
All she could do now was pray for it, because her skate had not been her best, and Arkadiy looked disappointed too, patting her on the back as he muttered:
“It could’ve been better, you know.”
“Yes, Coach,” Alisa answered quietly.
Then she climbed up into the stands toward the hockey players. Hermann immediately pulled her into a hug, and that was it, she broke completely, crying into his shoulder while he held her tightly.
And she stayed beside him until the very end of the event, wrapped in his warm jacket because she was trembling nonstop like some miserable little Chihuahua from stress, cold, and what already felt to her like defeat.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. Alisa could barely remember the routines or the other skaters who performed after her.
By the end of it, she was completely drained, her knees aching so badly that she took another painkiller just so she wouldn’t have to think about the pain, let alone actually feel it.
She felt frustrated, hollowed out from the inside, and asked Hermann to stay with her at the apartment while they waited for the final results of the 2026 Olympic selection.
They ordered pizza, Alisa’s favorite: ham, pineapple, and chicken.
Yes, Italians everywhere would probably scream in horror, but she loved the combination of salty and sweet, especially a week before her period…
and today she allowed herself everything.
Honestly, she felt like she could eat twenty pizzas like that without even blinking.
They sat mostly in silence, listening to the rain drumming against the windowsill and tapping softly against the glass…
Alisa put down her phone, trying to distract herself for at least a minute, although she had been refreshing the page literally every second, desperate to see the results of who had been chosen and who would go to the Olympics.
The official results were supposed to be announced at 8 a.m., but she knew, she sensed, that they would post them during the night, and she had to know whether she was going to the Olympics or not before she went to bed.
Except there was no sleep in either eye, and her finger already hurt from endlessly refreshing that damn judges’ results table and staring at the empty space where the names of the three figure skaters chosen by the committee to represent their national team at the 2026 Olympics were supposed to appear.
“Breathe, baby… otherwise you’re gonna lose your mind. Want a Coke Zero?” Hermann suggested while devouring what looked like his second barbecue beef pizza of the night — his favorite.
They were sitting in the living room in front of a black TV screen, sunk into a soft gray couch.
Alisa was exhausted beyond words. She wanted to just wrap herself in the fluffy white blanket and disappear into sleep for a long, long time… maybe even without knowing the final results at all.
Hermann walked to the refrigerator and came back holding two cans of cola with metal straws already sticking out of them.
“Thanks,” Alisa muttered sadly.
And immediately reached for her phone again.
Hermann let out a heavy sigh.
“Alisa…”
“Hermann…” she copied his irritated tone perfectly.
But she still opened the website again.
And…
And then she refreshed the page and noticed the table was no longer empty.
Her heartbeat instantly spiked.
She refreshed again, just in case…
Anfisa was in first place.
Alisa was in third.
And second place belonged to some young junior skater she barely even recognized. Honestly, Alisa barely remembered half the performances at all, she had been too trapped inside her own thoughts and anxiety to properly focus on anyone else’s choreography.
But none of that mattered anymore.
Alisa had made it through.
She was going to the Olympics.
“Blyat’…” Alisa whispered in disbelief. “I’m really gonna have to compete against Anfisa?”
She didn’t want to think too much about that part. Somewhere deep inside, she only hoped the Olympics wouldn’t destroy the strange, beautiful friendship they had somehow managed to build over the summer.
“You made it?” Hermann clapped loudly and immediately wrapped his arms around her in a crushing hug.
“Yes… I made it.” Alisa hugged him back tightly, still staring somewhere through space, unable to fully process it yet.
But now she understood one thing for certain.
There was no backing out anymore.
She was going to the Olympics.
Even if it cost her absolutely everything.