Blade

Chapter Six Ana #2

A group of skaters was in the TV room at the dorm, and even though the decor has changed, the layout appears to be exactly as it was when I lived there.

The TV on the wall to the right, the couch under the window that faces the front yard.

A few chairs along the path to the dining room, the kitchen, and the boys’ wing on the left.

In the video, Grace screams at Tammy—“You’re a liar!”—her face bright red. Tammy whispers something inaudible, then tries to leave, but Grace lunges forward and grabs a fistful of her hair. The other skaters gasp. A few are caught on the screen, hands covering their mouths.

Grace, who stands a foot below Tammy, dominates her with this one fistful of hair, pulling her to the ground, climbing over her in a straddle. She’s wearing the dress from The Palace, blue with yellow butterflies. Light-beige tights. Puffy boots.

I can’t see her face in the video, just the back of her head and her prisoner, trapped between her powerful thighs, beginning to cry as she yields control of her body.

“I’m sorry! Let me go!”

Grace climbs off her, slow and steady like she’s made of steel. Like nothing can break her.

Finally, she turns, sees the phone filming her, grabs it, and throws it to the ground. That’s where the video ends, on a frame of her face that holds an expression I’ve only seen once before. The complex intersection of defiance and despair that belonged to my best friend. Indy Cunningham.

“Jesus,” Artis says. “That’s gonna kill us. She left with Emile right after that. Demanded to see him.”

Westin spins his thumbs, his hands folded in his lap.

“I know how it looks,” I tell them. “But she’s a child.”

I stop myself from leaning on my script. I’m an advocate for minors—I know the arguments and the science behind them, about brain development and decision-making and emotional maturation.

But those are just conjecture until we know what actually happened. To this girl. In this place.

“Why were you seeing her?” I ask now. I picture Grace, sitting across from Westin in the office next to Dawn’s. Two chairs in the center of the room. His deep, soft voice. Tugging on her brain like a puppeteer.

Fear into rage. Rage into action.

He looks at me with curiosity. “Oh, nothing out of the ordinary—sports conditioning. I use many of the new techniques for mindfulness,” he says with a casual shrug.

“The thing is—these athletes are on a different trajectory. The discipline, the drive, the exposure to complex feelings and relationships. I don’t think we can compare them to other adolescents.

They aren’t like most children their age.

But that doesn’t mean what they’re going through is somehow damaging them or turning them violent. ”

He takes a sip of the coffee. “Do you have any theories—from your experience here, and your work with young criminals, that might help us understand the face we both saw in that video? Because”—he pauses for a moment—“that looks like a girl who could kill someone.”

He stares at me like I should know—and not from my work. But from the time I spent here. With him.

Artis answers before me. “Shannon told Jolene that Grace was an angel. Up at five a.m., going to the morning sessions. She took her bike unless it was pouring rain or sheet ice. Got straight A’s in school.”

I remember my own schedule now. I also rode my bike to The Palace in the dark of morning and then home in the dark of night.

I sat on the same bench, pulling on nylon laces with raw fingers, drawing blood from the cracks in brittle skin that refused to heal, licking them dry.

The blood in my mouth, the ache in my muscles and joints and bones.

The sting of Dawn’s words after that first fall.

And the second. And the third. Thousands of falls.

Every skater has done the same.

Westin shifts gears. “You know that Grace’s stepfather left them.”

“Yes—Jolene told me.”

Artis stands up. He needs more coffee. The second he’s gone, Westin lowers his voice, leans closer to me.

“You know,” he says. “It reminds me a bit of your situation.”

I look at him with surprise.

“You didn’t feel like you had a home to go back to either. Remember?”

I’m about to answer but then stop. This is a trap.

“When you first arrived and learned your mother was sick, right?” Westin reminds me. “You would cry in a closet—in the basement, if I recall correctly. Your father kept you away from her, away from home, so you wouldn’t have to see it.”

It took years of therapy for me to understand my parents’ decision. To forgive them for it. Being away from my mother didn’t make it any easier for me. But they couldn’t have known this.

How I would stifle tears anytime I called and heard my mother’s voice. How my brain clung to the attachments that, as a child, I still desperately needed. I don’t remember when I turned instead to what was in front of me.

When I became a scavenger for affection.

They couldn’t have known what this place was like.

The place they’d sent me to live at thirteen so I wouldn’t have to watch the progression of my mother’s illness.

She would lose her speech, her mobility, her memory as her tumor grew.

The treatments to cure her would wreck her body.

Hair loss. Weight loss. The skin on her face would turn gray and hang loosely around the bones.

But—wait. I feel a wave of adrenaline, waking me up before I walk into the trap Westin’s set.

“How is this relevant to Grace?” I ask.

“You were very attached to Dawn,” Westin says. “Grace was as well. Dawn tried to fill that void for girls like you and Grace. The so-called Orphans. But maybe it wasn’t enough.”

His gaze wanders off toward the ceiling. “The video—the rage it exposes.” Now a sigh. “The training we do—it can’t be blamed,” he says. “Otherwise, the place would be overrun with this kind of behavior.”

There it is—the party line rearing its ugly head. Of course, I think. That’s what this is.

Westin has been here forever. Dr. Fear. The Fear Training. Indy used to make up stories about him and Dawn being lovers, painting vivid images of them in bed together, Dawn screaming her favorite mantra when she came—Fight the fear! She would send us into fits of laughter, none louder than hers.

Westin reaches into his bag, resting on the floor by the chair, and pulls out a copy of Dawn’s book. I glance at the title, Making Champions—the Power of Psychological Training to Conquer Fear and Win, struggling not to roll my eyes.

“They were selling it at the conference,” he tells me.

Wait . . .

“You were there?” I ask.

Westin smiles. It’s more of a smirk. “Yes. I saw your speech. You have great compassion for troubled children.”

My mouth is bone dry as I try to carry on.

“It’s science—that’s all. I’m sure you’ve kept up on the advancements that have been made in the study of trauma.”

Westin sighs. Leans back again like a Cheshire cat. “There’s always a new study, isn’t there? I couldn’t keep track of them all at the conference.”

Now a pause. “I didn’t see you on the second day,” he says. “I thought for sure you would join the workshop on youth sports.”

I think back on the five days before I came here. I was at the opening reception. I gave a talk on the last day, in the morning. Then I got the call from Jolene.

I try to remember when I got the text message on my phone. The one I didn’t understand and still don’t. The number was a burner. The message was just one picture. An emoji of a skating blade.

I thought it was someone at the conference who remembered me from Echo. It was a shock, being pulled back for the first time.

Was that the second day? I know I was there. And I also know that I didn’t see Dr. Westin.

“Here’s the thing,” Artis says, returning from the kitchen. “All we need is a story. That’s it,” he tells us.

I shake Westin off me and launch into the first line of defense we’re going to use.

“Grace didn’t kill Emile. Someone else did, and they’re framing her. That’s it. Simple.”

“Okay. So who wanted Emile dead?”

“He was a damaged man when I was here. I doubt he changed.”

Westin knows the story. How Emile had been struggling with a quad toe loop in the middle of competition season.

How Dawn was training him to stay on his feet no matter how he came down from the air.

There was an automatic point deduction for a fall.

He had to fight his body, make it bend to his will.

Another rendition of her theme song. He went up for a quad toe, then came down twisted, fighting his body, which needed to fall.

Then pop. And just like that, his knee was wrecked, and his career was over.

Emile lost his everything with that one fall. And he blamed Dawn and the way she’d trained him. But then she turned around and saved him, taking him on as a coach, giving him a place to stay.

“Emile was damaged when his career ended,” I remind Westin. “And damaged people . . .”

“Damage people.” We finish his thought in unison. It’s a common expression in the field of trauma psychology.

Westin lets out a slight laugh. “The profession could use some new material.”

“It is true, though.”

“Well,” Westin says, shrugging this off.

“The skaters all loved him. And he was an asset to Dawn and the program. I think we have to consider the possibility that Emile got in the sights of a deeply disturbed young woman. I know you want to believe she’s innocent, but the truth is, Ana, we haven’t had any issues at The Palace since you were here. Until now—with Jolene’s daughter.”

And then he says, “I was surprised when Artis told me you’d agreed to come.”

“Of course I came. Jolene and I were very close.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Westin says, his hands patting the air like he’s soothing a small child. “And Jolene has been here for two weeks—visiting Grace while she trained for Nationals. Celebrating the holidays with her.”

A burst of wind smacks the window, drawing our attention outside, where an army of gray clouds has gathered.

I grip the arms of the chair as I try to follow his train of thought.

I was just five hours away when Emile was killed in that field. Jolene was here, in Echo. So was Grace, and she was the last person seen with Emile. And what did he just say? Damaged young woman.

My eyes return to the book. It’s a new cover from when I first read it years ago. Something about it had caught my eye, and I see it now, at the bottom. A line of print that says, With a foreword by renowned sports psychologist Dr. Gerard Westin.

Westin’s entire career, his life’s work, is tied to Dawn and The Palace.

To the training methods he implemented. This all makes sense.

And so does the new conclusion that I arrive at—Westin shouldn’t be anywhere near Grace or her defense team.

Maybe he’s thinking the same thing about me—I could be a suspect.

Or Jolene. He was subtle when he slipped that pin from his grenade.

“We’re expecting half a foot of snow,” Westin says, filling the uncomfortable silence between us. “I hope you and Artis can get where you need to go. Plows notwithstanding, we could easily get snowed in here.”

And now I think, here—in this condo. With Grace and Jolene. With Westin. A dead coach. A murder investigation. The truth hidden behind a young girl’s silence. Clues to that truth maybe buried somewhere in mine. Roads about to close. Keeping all of us, all of this, here. Here.

Grace’s words come back to my mind. “It’s not safe.” That was the part that sounded an alarm. But it wasn’t just that.

What she actually said was—

“It’s not safe here.”

Here, at The Palace? In Echo? That’s what I thought.

Or here—in this condo?

Westin notices the change on my face. “I’m wondering if Grace had any issues before arriving. Maybe because of her childhood. You spoke about it at the conference—about inherited trauma. Jolene left The Palace before you did.”

He pauses, draws a breath. Then tilts his head as he pulls the pin from another grenade.

“Do you know something about her time here, or why she left, that might shed some light? Maybe even from one of your famous theories that help get kids off the hook for violent crimes?”

I slowly place the book back on the table.

I’m about to answer, but then something catches my eye. I’m facing the doorway that leads to the foyer, so I’m the only one who sees her standing there, half of her body hidden behind the wall.

Grace. How long has she been listening?

“Ana?” Westin says when I don’t answer.

Right then, Grace lifts her finger to her lips, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed with panic.

And I swear I can hear it from across the room.

The whisper. “Shhh.”