Chapter Five

KATYA

I ’m furious.

Actually, I’m—what’s the word— livid . I can feel the anger threatening to burst from where it’s boiling under my skin.

I stomp around, pace back and forth up and down the same hallway I’ve been circling. This woman, this committee, they practically begged me to come skate here. And now, not only are they forcing me into pairs skating , but they’re trying to give me a partner who, judging by the fact that I have never even heard of a skater named Bryan Young, is completely and utterly useless?

This is ridiculous, I think, for the millionth time. No matter how much time passes, I still can’t get over the fact that this is happening, and it isn’t some strange nightmare where everything is just unbelievable enough that the fear doesn’t fully set in. Yes, I am actually here, considering skating for the United States. If someone had told me three weeks ago I’d be in this situation, I would have laughed in their face.

I resist the urge to tear my hair out and force myself to keep walking around this complex, exploring, trying to distract myself from the urge to scream, just like I’ve been doing since I left the meeting. Maybe I shouldn’t have stormed out like I did, but can you blame me? I went into one competition the second-best skater in the world and left the building with my life turned upside down. Now these people are holding my career for ransom.

I let out a wide yawn despite myself, and I blink a few times to try and keep myself awake. I’m eight hours behind my usual time—it’s practically midnight in Moscow—and I already know it’s going to hit me like a truck when I try to get back to training tomorrow. I barely slept at all on the plane, even after taking two pills. At least now I can blame the time difference. No one will question it if they think I’m adjusting.

Training . It won’t be what I’m used to. And that’s if I even agree, which, despite what I said back there in that office, I’m still not sold on.

God, I don’t want to be here. I just want to get on a plane and return to my country, to my coaches—my team. Only they aren’t my team anymore, are they? They don’t want me. They were so anxious to be rid of me that they actually agreed to pass me over to the U.S. Ridiculously quickly, too—it usually takes at least a year to approve athlete transfers. Longer if they feel like having a bit of fun. Instead, they punt me halfway across the world like a football.

Is this worth it? A familiar voice in my head whispers. Is it worth moving to another continent, away from your family, your friends, everything you’ve ever known?

I’ve dedicated my life to this sport since the moment I first stepped onto the little frozen pond at the edge of Dedushka’s backyard back home. For the first time since then, I have doubts.

My head starts to hurt again at the thought of my grandfather, and all the times Mama would leave me with him while she worked those long hours to pay for our livelihoods (and all that ice time later on). I miss them. If I can’t go back to my team, I wish I could go back to his house and sit there at the breakfast table, both of us sipping steaming black tea straight from the ancient samovar that survived two world wars and countless bitter days without so much as a scratch, save the dent right under the spout—which Dedushka had always insisted had been caused by his mother whacking a Nazi soldier in the head with it.

“Just imagine!” my grandfather would always cackle. “A big German boy with a gun the size of this old Jew lady, and he runs the second she starts waving her teapot at him!”

He’d be crying laughing about cowardly fashisty for hours after that. And I can see him turning to me. “Katyusha, your great-grandmother scared the enemy off from her kids with nothing but a lump of metal, and you’re thinking about quitting because things haven’t gone your way for once?”

He’d kill me if he knew I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself like this. Dmitriy Andreyev has zero patience for whining and even less for ungrateful fools . Then again, he’ll probably have a coronary when he finds out I’m being forced to compete under the American flag. I snort just thinking about it—poor Mama. She’s going to have her work cut out for her, trying to keep the old man from boarding a plane to Moscow to bully whoever he needs to bully in order to get my spot back.

I’m about to laugh and pull out my phone to call. But then that smell washes over me—the one so familiar to me that I can recognize it across oceans, across borders. I might be five thousand miles away from everything I know, but if there’s one thing that I can recognize like my own reflection, it’s that smell; or more importantly, its source. It stays the same, no matter the circumstances. That’s one of the things I’ve always appreciated about it.

Chemicals. Cold. It draws me in, which is how I find myself walking around with no idea of where I’m going. A girl clomps past in skate guards, and I pounce before she can get away. “Excuse me, where is the ice?”

She takes out an earphone, gesturing behind her. “USA rink’s that way. ‘32’s got a bunch of hockey players on it right now if you’re looking for them, though.”

“Thank you.” I edge past her, heading in the direction she’d come from, and perking up at the unmistakable sounds of blade edges ripping. It’s stupid, but it makes me feel at home, even in this shitty little village in the middle of nowhere. Especially since it almost got taken away from me for good.

I push down the unfamiliar feeling gnawing at the pit of my stomach—and the reminder that it still could be taken away. I don’t want to agree with that lunatic coach, but she was right that this is my last shot. At least for now. I’m sure I can convince the Americans that I belong in singles. All I need is the quads, and I’m golden—literally. It’s only one extra revolution, right? And that way, not only will I have a fighting chance at beating out Polina and whatever new girl shows up between now and next year’s Olympics in Helsinki, but I’ll have more support here than I would back home, because I’d be the AFSC’s best bet at taking home a medal in the women’s event.

The only problem is that… boy . It’s one thing having to prove myself, but if I have to do it with someone else, then it can easily become problematic. I was only in regular education up until right before I was supposed to move up to middle school—I joined my teammates in the center’s in-house program after that—but it was long enough to know how much I hate working in groups.

Call me uptight. I don’t care. There’s a reason I’m in an individual sport; I need control over my own chances of success. And that boy in the office looked—well, aside from being entirely unfamiliar to me (and I know every name worth knowing in this sport, so that’s a bad start), he looked lazy. And messy. And all too relaxed . In short, a far cry from all the male skaters at my camp, who were all wound up like tin soldiers. And for good reason—you need the fear drilled into you, otherwise you have no incentive.

Clearly he has none, otherwise his coach wouldn’t be so eager to switch things up for him. Back home we don’t have that luxury. There are always plenty of skaters lined up behind you, waiting to take your place at any given moment.

Although, who the hell am I to talk? When that’s exactly what just happened to me?

I swallow a sigh and just keep walking, and when I finally find the rink, I sit down on the bleachers closest to the boards, stuffing my hands in my jacket pockets. And I watch.

A little girl, maybe eight or nine, zooms by the big Plexiglass dividers right in front of me before setting her position and leaping into a Lutz jump. It’s shaky, and far from perfect, but the huge grin that takes over her face as she lands takes me back to when I used to be like her. Excited about the sport. Right now, it feels like an addiction. Less of a want than a need, something I dread but can’t stay away from.

If I can land that combination, I might actually look forward to getting on the ice again.

I just need to land it. Then everything will be fine.

My phone buzzes, and I dig through my purse and pull it out, clicking accept the second I see the Russian country code. “ Allo ?” I say, heart pounding.

“Katyusha? Is that you?”

Disappointment fills my mouth, but only for a split second, because then I start smiling. “ Privyet , Dedushka.”

“Ha! It can’t be you, vnuchka , or else I wouldn’t be racking up obscene telephone bills right now. Who are you, and what have you done with my granddaughter?”

“Nice to hear from you too,” I joke, and the old man huffs.

“Nice to hear from you too,” he mocks. “It was nice to hear from the television that you’re in America right now. I would appreciate being kept in the loop of my granddaughter’s business.”

“Sorry,” I mumble abashedly, like I’m a kid in trouble. “There wasn’t much time. It all happened so fast.”

That’s enough to get him back onto the real target of his frustration, and I smile to myself as I hear the tell-tale signs of a Dmitriy Antonovich Andreyev rant coming on—huffing, puffing, and increasing amounts of out-of-date cursing.

“I just can’t believe they cut you out. You’re the best skater they have.”

I sigh. “Tell the Federation that.”

“The federatsiya can go fly a kite. All those politicians, they’ve been a pain in our ass since the dinosaurs. You’re my granddaughter, which automatically means you’re exceptional. Trust me, it's a very good sign if the bureaucrats don’t like you.”

I have to laugh. He’s always been good at getting me to do that. “Touché.”

“Damn right.” His laugh is hoarse and scratchy from sixty years of cigarettes. “Have you talked to your mother?”

I haven’t spoken to her outside of text messages since she and Mikhail drove me to the airport. Today, or yesterday, whatever. I’m already giving up on keeping track of the time zones. “No,” I say. “Have you?”

“She went straight back to the office. You know Lyudmila. “

I do know Lyudmila. I laugh, but it’s more of a sigh, and I wipe my hand across my face, feeling the ache strengthen in my chest. I just pray it doesn’t spread, because the last thing I need right now is a migraine. At this rate, I’ll be out of my prescription in a week. “I’m tired, Dedushka. I want…” God, what do I want? What do I want? I can’t finish the sentence. The usual answers aren’t springing to mind.

He sighs on the other end of the line, like he can sense my thoughts, long and drawn out, and that’s how I know what’s coming. “Ay, little girl. What did I always tell you?”

I fight the urge to cry. “Don’t let them kill you,” I say, repeating the words I’ve heard all my life.

“Don’t let them kill you, Katyusha. Don’t let them stomp that fire out. You’re special, malyshka , and I don’t just say it because you’re my granddaughter. You have something they don’t. Use it. Don’t tell anyone I said this, but if skating for the U.S.A. is what you need to do, then I’ll buy a star-spangled banner and wave it at your competitions.”

I choke out a laugh, wiping at my face before anyone can see. “I would pay to see that.”

Dedushka snorts. “The universe is playing a joke on me. All those times I could’ve left to work for them, for a hell of a lot more cash, and the unfortunate matter of my morals stopped me. Just for this to happen.”

He's trying to get me to laugh again, which almost makes it worse. I might actually burst into tears on these stupid bleachers in front of all these people. It washes over me, the tightness in my throat, the ache burning stronger. For once I wish I had no clue of who I am, what I’m supposed to be doing. Because it feels like, once I cross this line, there’s no going back—to the way things were, to my team and my home. Not only would it make my expulsion official, but it would also be the end of everything I know, and the beginning of something unfamiliar. Something absolutely terrifying.

“Dedushka,” I say, my voice shaking only once before I force myself to calm down. I take a deep breath before continuing. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Yes, you do. You always do.”

I squeeze my eyes as tightly shut as I can, until I’m sure there aren’t any tears coming, and even when the danger’s passed I keep them closed. You always do. You always do.

“It’s late for me, Katya. I’m going to go now.”

Just like that? “Wait, but—”

“Goodbye, moya svezda. Get back to work.”

And then he clicks off before I can protest. Just like that. And with the nickname he always used to call me as a little girl— my star . Always golden, always exceptional. Just like my mother was, before she got pregnant and had to leave her dreams at the door of the train station bathroom stall the test came back positive in. I always had to do it for her. For both of them. Always.

“Katya!”

I whip around, and I see Lian Chen standing at the top of the bleachers, looking down at me with her eyebrows slightly raised.

“Practice starts at eight sharp.”

My loathing for this entire situation must bleed into my expression, because the woman stares me down, a challenge in her eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Dedushka’s voice floats back into my mind. You have something they don’t. Use it.

I may not have brought Baba’s samovar with me on the plane, but I do have my skates, and they’re all I’ve ever needed.

These people have no idea what they’re up against.