CHAPTER 106
Troy
“YOU AND VIOLET used to be friends?” I ask Ana, stunned.
“Yup,” she confirms, her voice heavy.
“I never saw you together.” I try and make sense of it as I’m driving her to her place from the recital. “You didn’t mention that anywhere in your diary.”
Granted, I’d see some comments here and there on social media about a feud between the two girls but I always took that with a grain of salt because it’s the Internet, though nothing this deep that would warrant a free skate takeover.
But now the bullying Ana described throughout her diary makes a lot more sense, why the two of them would always stare at each other at the rink, how they were always beyond tense the minute they’d run into the other.
“She tore those pages out,” Ana explains, looking out the passenger window. “Before she showed everyone else.”
“Did she ever give the pages back to you?” I ask.
“No. And I don’t ever want them back.” Removing a hand from the steering wheel, I pat Ana’s shoulders, knowing by the pain in her voice, she doesn’t mean that. And the gesture makes her sigh even deeper before she goes on, “We met when we were seven at the Lake.
“We clicked right away but mostly spent time either skating together or going to the novelty shops by Rudy’s.
Her mom didn’t want us to be friends, I don’t think.
Violet never said that but it explained how we always had to sneak around every time we hung out.
We were very close, told each other everything, but for some reason, I could tell she was hiding something.
Something about her family. I tried to push her about it but failed.
Then I started seeing her a lot less right before I got the invitation to our academy and when high school started, she pretended we’d never met. And I stupidly went along with it.”
I start retracing all the signs that point toward their falling out.
Violet growing more restless to outcompete Ana and Ethan after PyeongChang, but all along, it was about Ana?
Is that why she tried to kiss me before training season?
Is that why she decided to compete with Ethan this time?
But why leave us together when there’s hostility between her and Ana?
The puzzle makes even less sense with more pieces in my hands.
_________
Ana
“I couldn’t talk about it before,” I explain to Troy, feeling my hands grow shaky. “It’s why I had such an issue trusting anyone.”
I didn’t have a choice to trust my father. He was my father.
I chose to trust Violet, and well…I was wrong. And that was too painful to ever bring up again.
Years before the day of the backstabbing—before she took my diary and showed it to the Icy Trio to memorize all my weaknesses and use them against me one by one—before she shoved the booklet back to me, the pages all torn up without her chapters in my life…
Violet and I had been browsing around in a rustic bookstore, when I bought the journal that would become my diary. The diary that she suggested I pick a pale violet shade of to hold our friendship close.
A secret friendship her mother couldn’t know about (Violet’s words).
Maybe she knew her mom wouldn’t let us be friends once she found out I was training to be a competitive figure skater just like her daughter was. Then our bond would’ve been torn sooner.
And maybe that would’ve been better.
It would’ve spared me from the broken bounds of friendship. A heartache you’re expected to bounce back from far quicker than one that trails after a romance.
But it hurt. It really fucking hurt.
Despite everything I’ve confided with my therapist for the past two months, my ex-friendship with Violet was never once brought up.
I didn’t bring it up.
I couldn’t bring it up.
After everything she’s done, I couldn’t bring up all the awful memories, while I was still clinging onto the fond ones. The ones where Violet made me feel worthy of her attention, the attention from someone cool.
Before she made me feel worthless.
There are moments where I still pinch myself and think, was any of it real? I know she felt the same for me.
If she felt the same, then how could she do everything she’s done? Say all the things she’s said?
Maybe the game started sooner than I thought.
Keep your friends close. Enemies even closer.
The target pulling at my back was probably put there by her long before we met.
An alternative explanation can’t convince me otherwise.
Because no true friend would do that, no friend would go this far to erase all that you once were.
But erasing me wasn’t enough.
She had to destroy me too.