Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The afternoon heat broke right on time for the party, as if Sheila had negotiated with the weather itself to ensure conditions would be ideal.

A snow-white convertible, the top lowered to reveal an interior the color of raw meat, idled in front of the building. Ellis Dean leaned against the car with his bare ankles crossed, bouncing the toes of his woven leather loafers.

Until he saw me approaching. Then he stood and pushed his sunglasses down.

“Well, look at you. ”

Arielle had offered to let me borrow something from her closet full of effortlessly chic French designer clothes. Which quickly turned into a full-fledged emergency makeover. Everything I had on, from the clips holding my updo in place to the lipstick that matched the rose pattern on the dress, belonged to her.

I’d felt glamorous when she showed me the finished product in the mirror. But I was already second-guessing. The dress had such thin straps, it was impossible to conceal a bra under it; but when I tried going braless, I looked obscene, especially with the slit on the skirt already displaying so much bare leg.

Until the Academy, I’d never spent much time thinking about my body aside from what it could do. When I was ten, another girl at North Shore told me I had thighs like tree trunks, and I genuinely didn’t get the insult. Trees were tall and strong and beautiful. Why wouldn’t I want to resemble one?

Ice dancers didn’t have to be petite little pixies like the pairs girls, or as prepubescently slim as the singles skaters. But my curves and muscular legs stood out, as did the fact that I was almost the same height as my partner. Surrounded by teams with more conventional body types and size differences, it was hard not to be self-conscious.

I tugged at the straps of my borrowed dress. “Is this okay?” I asked Ellis. “I wasn’t sure about the dress code.”

“Are you kidding? You look hot. Heath’s gonna lose his mind. Where is that man of yours anyway?”

I hadn’t seen Heath since practice the day before—the longest stretch of time we’d spent apart in years. Still, I couldn’t imagine him standing me up.

“He’ll be here any minute,” I assured Ellis.

“Good. Cause the later we leave, the worse the 10’s gonna get.”

Finally the glass doors swung open, and Heath emerged.

Whatever had delayed him, it certainly wasn’t primping for the party. He hadn’t shaved, and he was wearing a plain black T-shirt over broken-in jeans. Though neither of us owned many dressy clothes in those days, I knew he’d packed nicer things than that.

“Hey.” I reached for his hand; he kept it stuck in his pocket. “Ready to head out?”

Heath nodded without looking at me and climbed into the cramped backseat. His sneakers left a dusty smudge on the passenger door; I swiped it away before taking shotgun.

“Nice car, by the way,” I told Ellis. The sunbaked leather was hot enough to sear my skin, but even so, I couldn’t help caressing its buttery softness.

“Isn’t it?” Ellis stroked the steering wheel. “Josie’s Sweet Sixteen present. By her eighteenth birthday, she was sick of the color, so her parents bought her a blue BMW and gave me this one.”

“What does she get when she turns twenty-one?” Heath muttered. “A private jet?”

“I believe the traditional twenty-first birthday gift in Orange County is a penthouse with Pacific Ocean views. But what do I know, I’m mere Florida Panhandle trash.”

I wouldn’t have guessed Ellis was from Florida. For one thing, he was so pale he was almost translucent. And there was his accent—flat, generic American like mine, not a trace of Southern twang. It took me longer than it should have to see how much about Ellis Dean was a performance. Like all the best figure skaters, he made hard work appear effortless.

Ellis spun through the radio frequencies until he found a song worth turning up—“Try Again” by Aaliyah—and peeled away from the curb.

We’d been in Los Angeles for weeks, but hadn’t seen anything much beyond the airport and the Academy. After so much time in those sterile surroundings, the view from the car seemed almost too vivid to be real. Green palm tree fronds burst against the blue sky, and the violent magenta of bougainvillea blooms rambled over the red rock walls lining the road. The closer we got to the ocean, the cooler the breeze became.

After a few miles curving along the Pacific Coast Highway, Ellis switched on his turn signal. At first it looked like we were about to steer into a cliff—but then I saw the gate.

A uniformed security guard took our names and the license plate number before waving us through. On the other side, a white paver driveway wound up the side of a steep hill. It took a few more turns before Sheila Lin’s house loomed above us.

“Welcome to the Ice Palace,” Ellis said.