CHAPTER 88
Ana
“YOU KNOW APPLYING more lipstick isn’t going to get you the win, right?”
I swing to my left when a wave of that sour pitch stings into my ears from the opposite bench.
“If you think you stand a chance,” I snap, puckering my cherry-red lips at the golden fraud, “then why are you commenting on my makeup, Violet?”
Through the women’s locker room mirror, I watch that envied confidence of the Dupont begin to wither away, her hands smoothing along the edges of red chiffon swayed in a kaleidoscope of different-sized crystals, knocking off a single diamond-shaped prism from the costume.
The edge of her blades spears right through the shimmering fallen jewel, the echo crunching right into my throat when a foreign emotion casts over her face.
Shock.
That someone finally answered her.
That I finally did that.
As if almost testing if she misheard me, she baits, “After I said all those nice things about you to Pippa…”
“Oh please,” I snap, remembering the awful interview. “You were setting me up.”
She smiles because she knows that’s exactly what she did. “You know,” she goes on, “you’re only doing a bit better because Troy’s skating with you. And he’s only with you because I left.”
“And yet through all that you got Ethan and no one else. So I guess, thanks?”
“Careful.” Gemstone crumbles scatter over the slippery floor as she lifts to her feet. “You’d be nothing without me.”
I force a smile to my lips, but feel an unsettling kind of fear bloom underneath at the way her jaw tenses.
Like she meant the words with every bone in her body.
When she catches me staring at her vacantly, Violet abruptly blinks out the twitch that clenches around her eyes, regaining her focus the way I’ve just lost, shoving past me in her skates.
_________
Damn Ana looks good today.
Focus.
Ana’s a star!
Stop thinking about them.
As the announcer calls out our names, punching through the undetectable voices howling in my head, I grab onto Troy’s palm so quick—not realizing just how nervous I’ve gotten after the distraction from Violet, after having to adjust a piece of tape on my feet once it was starting to feel like I was walking on needles, after scanning the full crowds and already hearing them start to judge—I nearly knock him into the ice.
When I grow up I want to be just like Ana Petrov.
The instrumentation of “Once Upon a December” begins, and like a trained, perfect machine, everything melts—because it has to.
Steady, precise, calculated, the ice shapes into each movement we’ve worked countless nights to fucking perfect.
Few keys in, and the melody belts into a whole new sequence, elements that demand a very specific measure of concentration.
A focus where one misstep will cost us the entire routine, one mistake erasing hours, weeks, months of our effort.
I want to be just like you, Ana.
Would the little girl have said that if she knew?
If she knew my mascara was reapplied right before this performance.
My pain stabs into my heels at each turn, each spin, feeling how deep I swallow when Troy launches me into the air and I land our first throw jump, wanting to sink into a ball and hold my ankles tight instead.
You’re sick, Ana. And you need to rest.
When Troy pulls me closer to his hips for our death spiral near the end, even with his signature ruthless competition gaze, the same concern he overwhelmed me with this morning is written on his face.
It’s there for me to notice, there for me to be reminded that everything is falling apart—that I’m falling apart—but the thought escapes me when the edges of my navy costume hook onto the side of his skating pants.
The oxygen escapes my entire chest.
When I fall.
With just under thirty seconds left of our long program.
The realization smacks over me—skating too close to him before our triple twist lift just cost us this entire competition.
One squeeze, only a touch from Troy’s palm manages to trap more air back into my lungs, him raising me back up quicker than lightning speed, his tight grip on my wrist like he’s lifting up a tiny feather, him looking at me like he didn’t just see me fall—no hesitation slapped onto his face whatsoever—like the routine is going flawlessly.
And if he hadn’t done all that, I would’ve perished right against the ice from the mortification.
But the music hasn’t stopped so neither can my skates.
I glide alongside him before he’s throwing me into the air again for the last time, a final couple of notes before the music stops.
The crowd chants.
Troy squeezes my arm like everything is alright.
And I glare off to the side when I see her staring.
Violet, beside Ethan, right in front of a giant poster of her face by a fan in the bleachers.
A cold, small curve to the Dupont’s lips.
Like she’s thrilled by this outcome, but better, she suspected it all along.
_________
I scrambled away from the stands, away from Troy before every visible person was no longer in view before I started to limp, clawing my weight through the arena until reaching the bench of the women’s locker room.
Frantically, filled with a suffocating kind of shame and embarrassment, my laces finally manage to come undone, hissing when I pull one of my feet out from my boots.
Blood leaks from the edges of the tape, holding onto my heels to regulate the pain better, folding my whole chest over my belly to ease the grumble there.
But the typical fix no longer works.
Someone please push her already!
I shut my eyes to block out more of the voices, shedding off the hate that wouldn’t stop before the performance.
During it.
After it.
Somehow managing to hear it inside this room in the giant arena.
The hate someone else put in me.
You dumb bitch I hope you—
I’d never think that.
I’d never go there.
But it’s a cut I never had, and now it’s open, so what do I do?
How do I make it go away?
When there’s no bandage big enough.