Chapter Twenty-Three Ana
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ana
Before—One Year at The Palace
Ana and Indy stood beside her bed, assessing the situation. There were three neat stacks of clothing and costumes but just one suitcase. The limit imposed by the airline. But that wasn’t the biggest problem.
“I wish you were coming with me,” Indy said.
She was headed to Phoenix for Nationals—without Ana.
Ana had placed sixth in the junior division at Midwesterns, one spot short of making it to the last and most important of the domestic competitions. With few exceptions, Nationals would determine which skaters would compete on the international stage.
It wasn’t a bad outcome for her first year at The Palace.
In fact, it set her up nicely for the next season if she could get the remaining triples in the coming months.
That was the only thing holding her back.
It was right there in the scoring. She just needed the triples to get into the higher range of awarded points.
“Indy—we have to figure this out,” Ana said.
Ana held the bottle of DMSO in her hand, examining it for labels, instructions, anything that would indicate what was inside.
“Look,” Indy said. “There’s nothing on it.”
“But that’s even worse,” Ana replied. “If they search your bag, they’ll wonder what it is, and then they might confiscate it. And then test it. And then . . .”
Indy grabbed it back. “Well, it has to come with me to Nationals.”
The bruise on Indy’s hip had turned a yellow brown over the late fall and then the holidays—better, but still not gone by mid-January.
It was a battle now, between the falls and the liquid in that bottle.
Each fall caused a new injury. Indy would rub the liquid into her skin at night, and the DMSO would speed up the healing, and the morphine would kill the pain.
It never healed and never got worse. None of them wondered what this might be doing to the rest of her.
Hugo told them the morphine made it illegal, so now they were freaking out over the security at the airport.
Indy started to wrap the bottle in a warm-up jacket.
“This will hide it,” she said. But Ana shook her head.
“That’s not how the screening machines work. They’ll see it’s a bottle of liquid.”
“I’ll tell them it’s shampoo.”
“Wait!” Ana had an idea. She walked over to Jolene’s closet, where she kept a basket of toiletries, and grabbed a bottle.
“If we put it in here, they’ll think it really is shampoo!”
Indy smiled, her eyes lighting up. “You are a genius!”
They set the DMSO and shampoo aside and got to work on the clothing.
This can go, this can stay, every decision another step closer to Indy leaving, her bed empty.
This entire room empty except for Jolene, but she’d spent every night sneaking off to be with Hugo until he’d gone back to Spain for the holidays.
And now she moped around because he hadn’t returned.
“How many of these do you need?” Ana asked, holding up a practice dress from The Palace. The light blue with yellow butterflies. Dawn made them wear the dress on the practice sessions so everyone would see her prowess. A sea of blue dresses. An army of skaters at Nationals.
But out of nowhere, Indy snatched the dress from her hands. She held it up by the sleeves and looked it over. Top to bottom. Disgust creeping over her face.
“I hate these stupid dresses,” she said.
Indy threw the dress on the floor, then dug through the pile for the others like it. She had three in total, each of them landing on the beige carpet by her feet.
“What are you doing?” Ana asked.
“I’m not bringing them.”
“But it’s Nationals. Dawn will be so mad.” Ana felt the words stick in her throat as she thought about Dawn and her anger. And, in particular, that night at her house when Ana had tried to tell her about Indy’s bruise. The way she’d pressed the heel of her blade against Ana’s throat. Then her head.
The message had been clear. Indy was Dawn’s business, not hers, and this had created an impossible tug-of-war inside her.
Every day, Ana prayed that Indy would land the triple Axel so she would stop falling.
But every day she fell, over and over, then rubbed the DMSO into her skin. She was so close.
Indy had become resigned to the training.
She’d stopped believing she could go home if she landed it.
Which meant she’d stopped believing her mother cared more about her than her skating.
Just like those bleacher bees. This made Bobby Stark grow even more important, the one grown-up she could trust. But she was stuck here, with Dawn and these small rebellions.
“I’ll tell her I forgot them,” Indy said with a smile. “What can she do to me?”
“Indy . . . don’t,” Ana pleaded, feeling that blade against her skin. What could Dawn do? What would Dawn do? The truth was, Ana had no idea. And she didn’t want to find out.
Ana saw Indy off on that Saturday afternoon, the DMSO hidden in Jolene’s shampoo bottle.
She had her gray dress for the free skate, the emerald dress for the short program, and a dozen practice outfits—including the three blue ones with the yellow butterflies.
Ana had shoved them into her suitcase when Indy was in the shower.
An hour later, Ana went to the rink, dead quiet now that Dawn was on her way to Phoenix with Indy and the other skaters who’d made it to Nationals.
The Palace felt deflated. Like a balloon after a party.
For the first time since she’d been here, there were no bleacher bees.
No coaches. No international skaters. Everyone was slacking off, licking their wounds from the last round of competitions.
And in this quiet, dead space, Ana felt lost.
She didn’t finish her last session. She skated off the ice and went to the locker room as if it didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do. Because it didn’t, actually, matter. No one even tried to stop her or ask her why she was giving up for the day.
Sitting on the bench, unlacing her skates, her hands began to tremble, and her fingers grew stiff as they pulled the nylon loose.
She could have cried right then and there.
And how was that possible? Indy had only been gone for a few hours, but this was how it seemed to go.
The year divided into comings and goings, not just people, but feelings too.
Adrenaline in the fall, longing in the spring.
The summer a blur of excitement. Nothing was ever here to stay.
Her heart was in her throat, the ground shifting beneath her with a tremor that threatened to bring down the world she had begun to rebuild after that night in the field, and Kayla leaving, and her mother being in bed most of the time she was home for Christmas, saying she was getting better.
That she was just resting. Like Ana couldn’t see what was happening.
Not even Tim would tell her the truth. They’d talked again about treatments and trials.
Carl said it would all be fine, even though Connie was forgetting words and looking right through her.
They both told her she should focus on her skating, and Tim should focus on school, and they all needed to live their lives.
Still, before she’d left, she’d crawled into bed next to her mother and buried her face against her shoulder while she slept, a blue scarf around her head and dark, hollow circles under her eyes.
And it was a horrible feeling because she knew they were all lying and there was nothing she could do.
No one wanted her there. Not even her mother. “Go live your life.”
As if that life was no longer there, with them.
The silence of the locker room buzzed in her ears as these thoughts filled the space between them.
But before the tears could come, she heard someone around the corner, in the bathroom. Coughing. Or, puking, maybe.
She pulled off the skates and left them on the rubber mat.
“Hello?” she asked, walking to the partition. Then she peeked her head around.
No one answered. Then another cough. A gag. And then a cry.
She recognized the phone with the pink sequined case on the sink counter, then saw the closed door, then Jolene’s black leggings tucked into her white sneakers under the stall. She’d wondered why Jolene hadn’t been on the session, and why she hadn’t come back to Avery Hall to say goodbye to Indy.
Ana knocked. “Jo?”
“Ana,” she said, her voice trembling. “I couldn’t make it to the ice.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Ana’s blood surged with worry.
“Can you find Hugo?”
“I thought he wasn’t back.” As far as Ana knew, Hugo was still in Spain.
Jolene had been spinning fantasies about their romantic reunion since he’d left five weeks ago for the holidays. It cheered her up when she missed him, and that was pretty much all day, every day.
“He was supposed to get back last night,” Jo said. “But no one knows where he is, and he won’t answer his phone.”
Ana pushed on the door, and it swung open, revealing her friend on her knees, leaning over the toilet, hands holding on to either side as she puked again into the bowl.
Ana kneeled behind her and grabbed her shoulder as Jolene slid to one side, then slumped down with her knees to her chest. Her face was bright red. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Are you sick?” Ana asked, even as facts began to creep from the back of her mind to the front.
Like the way Jolene had stopped coming to breakfast. Stopped making the morning sessions.
How she went to bed early now, curled up in a little ball.
Ana had thought she was lovesick, missing Hugo. But this wasn’t that.
“I know you’ve heard the bleacher bees talking,” Jolene said. “Everybody has.”
And that was also true. The bleacher bees had been buzzing about “Jolene having sex” and “does her mother know” and “maybe someone should tell Dawn” and “it’s none of our business” and “she needs to be on the pill,” and then, in a chorus, “she’s such a little slut.”
All the pieces suddenly formed a picture.