Blade

Chapter Nine Ana

Chapter Nine

Ana

Now

I watch Grace slip away, out of sight, then wait for a moment to follow her that won’t raise suspicion.

“We should go before the roads get bad,” I tell Artis and Westin. “I need to change.”

I leave the two men to sip their coffee and spin theories about Grace—and me and Jolene. I bound down the hallway, then up the stairs to Grace’s room. I knock. Once, twice. But she doesn’t answer. I try the knob, but it won’t turn. It’s locked from the inside. I hear the shower running.

Frustration takes hold, and I feel my body wanting to break down the door. First, those cryptic messages last night. And now this? The shhhh when Westin asked me about Jolene and why she left The Palace.

Panic rises as I force myself to remember that I am not a child alone in the dark.

Or out in the field. I’m not about to fall on a jump, or wait for Dawn to yell at me or dismiss me or surprise me with a hug and a good girl, try again, then dinner at her house, because she’s a skilled manipulator.

And then the night when Emile joined us. When she invited him.

I am a grown woman. An accomplished attorney. Getting the truth out of traumatized children is what I do for a living, but it is also my calling. And I’m damn good at it.

Deep breath, Ana. I can’t force it out of her.

I turn away, ready to head downstairs, dig some jeans from my suitcase. A fresh sweater. Maybe comb my hair. But then I hear music playing.

It’s coming from down the hall. From Jolene’s room.

Music I know.

I find her door cracked open and go inside to see Jolene sitting at a small desk, watching a video on a laptop.

It’s music that I remember well—Rhapsody in Blue, the Gershwin piece from 1924 that pairs a piano solo against the backdrop of a jazz band. Controversial in the day. Challenging the rules, blurring the line between classical and pop genres.

On the screen, a girl in a royal blue dress stands in a starting pose, right foot draped behind the left, bent knee, blade resting on its toe pick.

Her arms form a crescent on each side of her body.

Her head tilts down, eyes closed. Waiting to begin.

And then, suddenly, she opens her eyes, like a warrior called to battle, and pushes right into a layback spin.

I know this music—and this girl. I know the program—it’s mine! My music, my free skate from an exhibition the one year I made Nationals. I’m stunned.

“Where did you get this?” I ask as I step inside the room. She seems startled and then defensive. She hits pause.

“It’s on the website. The Palace has hundreds of programs . . . even ours.”

I walk closer, stand behind her. I can see the logo in the corner of the video. Then my name and the year. The music. On the right side of the screen are two paragraphs of text.

“What does that say?” I can’t read it, but I’m consumed now, with my image on the screen and the new facts worming their way inside me.

I knew Dawn recorded our performances. I remember watching them with her as she pointed out every flaw, or every moment of sheer brilliance.

Riding the waves of her affection. Drowning in them. Starving without them.

Jolene looks from me to the screen, clears her throat. And begins to read.

“A bold program with music to match, beginning with a layback spin rather than the triple combination . . .”

I can hear Dawn explaining the program to me as we stood together on the ice. The one o’clock session. It was fall. I had just started ninth grade.

I can see her skating in front of me as I follow her steps, copying the movements.

The layback here, right in the center . .

. then around the boards, crossovers and simple footwork, arm variations to match the music but nothing that might slow the speed going into the jump combination at the other end of the ice.

Jolene reads from the screen, about the placement of the jumps. Most skaters started with their most difficult jumps because they were harder to execute on tired legs. But if you could do them past the halfway mark, you’d increase your score.

The description of my program continues, and I find myself almost immobilized by what I’m seeing. Is this really me?

Jolene hits play, and I watch my scalloped skirt float like a ribbon, pulled away by the centrifugal force. My body bent backward, one leg stretched to the ice, spinning on the front of the blade, the other at a perfect ninety degrees. Ten perfect turns, then on to the jumping pass.

The triple here . . . land, right into the double, land and hold—two beats—did you hear that in the music? Hold the landing longer than they expect. A long hold made a statement about the jumps being solid, the body in perfect alignment on that outside edge. So perfect you could hold it forever.

And I see it now on the screen, my eyes focused on the stroking pass that set up the jump, backward around the corner, cutting into the center, then forward, stepping onto the left outside edge, a push into the three turn, then onto the back inside edge.

Right toe pick digs in, propelling me into the air.

Legs crossed at the ankles, arms over chest—it happens so fast, muscle memory in complete control, but then my foot is on the ice before I complete the three rotations.

I force the landing, then spring up again for a double loop, just making the rotations.

I’m on my feet but I know I’ve lost points.

Moving next into the double Axel, then a spiral sequence, combination spin.

One by one, I execute the elements, and each time I pass the end of the rink where the boards break into two swinging doors, closed tight during the program, there’s Dawn, her face taut with anticipation, her entire body from her scrunched shoulders to her fisted hands, holding the emotions that I am not allowed to feel—not until it’s over.

Then the music stops, and I skate to those doors, desperate to fall into Dawn’s arms.

I’m back there now, remembering how she would open her coat and fold me inside it, drawing me to her body, where I could feel her heart pounding with joy—for me and what I’d just accomplished.

I feel Jolene’s eyes upon me, waiting for a reaction. I don’t want to give her one, but I’m reeling. I can’t take my eyes from the girl now frozen on the screen, wondering if Dawn will hold her tight or turn away because the jump was cheated. A flaw in the program.

Jolene sighs. “You were a beautiful skater.”

“Why are you watching this?” I ask her.

She shrugs, not sure how to answer.

“I . . . I don’t know. I suppose I was curious.”

I feel the anger stir.

“Curious? About what?”

Again with the shrug. “About what happened to you here. Why you see this place so differently.”

A gust of wind thick with snow rattles the window, and we both turn our heads.

It clears to reveal the gray sky and the white coating over the parking lot, cars, garbage bins.

I search for the outline of the mountain and then the lights of The Palace, the access road, the fifth house. The clearing that is the field.

“You know what happened,” I remind her.

Jolene stands, takes my wrists in her hands and pulls them together so we are arm in arm, unified in our mission.

“Do I?” she asks.

I try to pull away from her, but this only makes her hold on tighter. The way she used to do when we were girls.

“What happened?” she asks again, her voice quivering. “What happened after we left?”

She stares at me, searching for answers.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell her. But she won’t relent.

“You were so excited to be here. I remember the day you arrived.” She gives my arms one last squeeze before letting them go.

“Of course I was,” I admit. “Because I had no idea what was coming.”

This memory is right there for me to see and feel. The way I saw and felt it then, but also now, after fourteen years of close examination, intentional and unintentional healing. From my years racking up achievements to replace the dream I’d left behind.

My entire life has been defined by the days, weeks, months, years that came after I was dropped off at Avery Hall.

“Don’t you remember when I used to cry in the closet—down in the basement? And how I would sneak into Indy’s bed when Mio was traveling? How I couldn’t be alone?”

Jolene’s face grows curious. Perplexed, even. “I thought that was because you missed home. And then your mother got sick . . .”

I shake my head. “No—it was more than that,” I try to explain, though in my mind they all knew. The Orphans—me, Indy, Jolene, and Kayla. They all felt the same way about this place. How alone we were. How ill-prepared for this world.

Jolene walks the carpet, back and forth. “You stopped doing all of that—the crying and sleeping in Indy’s bed. I remember, Ana! You grew up—we all did.”

“It’s not normal, Jo,” I tell her, desperate for her to share our history. “It’s not really growing up—I know that now. I’ve studied it. I . . .”

I look at the computer on the desk and the girl frozen on the screen.

The blue dress with the low scoop neck. The tight bun.

Bright lipstick and dark eyeliner. I think about that program and how it made me feel.

The longing I carried in my body, not for my family, or even for my dream anymore.

I can feel it now, seeing that girl. Living on scraps of what I was taught to crave.

It makes me want to punch my fist through the screen.

Jolene skips forward to the very end, when I finish the program and skate back to the boards, where Dawn is waiting.

But with a sinking feeling, I realize it’s not just Dawn.

She freezes the frame at the point when my head stops turning. When my eyes can’t find Dawn because she’s turned away, angry about the underrotation of the triple flip, the cheat that will reduce my score, they land on the man standing beside her who was always there to pick up the pieces.

“Do you see that? The way you’re looking for him. And the way your face changes when you see him? This is what I was searching for.”

I pretend not to know.

“That’s Emile Dresiér,” she says quietly.

Jolene looks back at me now. “That’s the piece none of us knew about, isn’t it?” She pauses, waiting to see if I’ll volunteer an answer. When I don’t, she tries again. “Ana—tell me what happened after we left?”

I step toward the door, deflect us both away from the past. My past.

“What matters for Grace is what happened to her. She was seeing Dr. Westin. Did you know about that?”

Jolene nods. “I didn’t think it would do any harm—he’s a joke, right? Indy always said so. And Kayla—my God. She tore him to shreds, the way he tried to therapize her over her childhood. Her mean grandmother—remember?”

Of course I do. I can see Kayla’s face imitating his concerned stare. The way he draped one leg over the other and pinched his chin with his thumb and forefinger. She had his voice down too.

“Well,” I tell Jolene, “sometimes a hack therapist can do damage. Grace looked pretty angry in that video—it’s the worst piece of evidence, in my opinion.”

“You think Westin taught her that? In their sessions?”

“That’s what he used to do. Turn fear into rage that could be channeled into action—on the ice.”

I can hear the mantra in my head.

Fight the fear.

When he told me to get up from the chair. To close my eyes.

Christ. The things he would say—about Dawn leaving me. About my mother, my family sending me away.

“Are you sad, Ana? Does that make you angry? Where do you feel it in your body? Where does it live in your mind?”

And now, where did it go, I wonder?

“Westin is how I knew you were in Aspen the night Emile disappeared.”

She wipes the tears from her cheeks and steadies her gaze as I choke on the air I’ve just sucked into my lungs.

“He told me you’d been there for five days.”

“Yes,” I admit. “And he told me you’ve been here since Christmas.”

We lock eyes for a brief moment. Both thinking the same thing. Until, finally, Jolene says it.

“Jesus, Ana. Emile is dead. He’s dead, Ana—and the way he was killed . . .”

“I know . . . with the blade . . .”

“We were both there when Indy told that story.”

Jolene shakes her head. “Oh, fuck him. Dr. Fear,” she says in a mocking tone. “Fucking mindfucker, right.”

I nod, see a flash of Kayla’s face.

Jolene stands, walks to me, and pulls me close, her hand cradling the back of my head.

“You changed that night—after what happened in the field. We never talked about it again.”

I shake my head as I hold back tears. That night was the start of everything.

“You turned out to be the strongest of us all.”

“No,” I tell her. “That wasn’t strength. It was terror.”