Aaron wants to say something but is interrupted by Gwen walking in. Her face is very red, and her hair is disheveled. “Hey, people.” The covers of her training tights shuffle behind her as she waddles her way toward us on her heels. She looks like a duck. “I went jogging for two hours and havetheworst blisters! You wouldn’t believe it. No idea how I’m supposed to make it through training if I…” She stops when her glance falls on the paper. “Oh. You’ve read it already.”
“Yeah,” I say bitterly. “And it’s nonsense. We fell asleep in the stall, nothing else.”
Gwen plumps down onto the chair next to Levi and begins making circles in the air with her feet. “Sure. But what about what Amanda Dubois is saying?”
Amanda Dubois. The sound of her name alone makes my blood boil. It was only after the dinner that I learned her father was a big shot at Red Bull and that his daughter regularly did fashion shoots for famous designers. Admittedly, Dubois did a clever job of getting the ball rolling without going into the nitty-gritty. When a reporter asked him if he had anything to say about a great Red Bull event, he said that, sadly, that evening he’d been at a catastrophic sponsors’ dinner at Knox Winterbottom’s. He didn’t care to give further details, but, naturally, the press immediately went to find his daughter. And she couldn’t wait to spill her guts.
“Knox is a terrible person,” she said. “Arrogant and unfriendly. He attacked me verbally when I attempted to start a polite conversation with his girlfriend, and totally lost his cool. It is hard for me to say this publicly, but I was truly afraid of him. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to have gone after me. Thankfully my father was there.” When the reporter asked whether she really thought Knox Winterbottom would hit a woman she said, “Oh, yeah, definitely.”
After that, the headlines came flooding in. Every paper had some kind of story, one more ridiculous than the other. No ideahow Knox is taking it all. It’s been three days since the whole affair, and I’ve hardly caught a glimpse of him since. Naturally, his father reacted immediately and engaged Jennet to beat all the advertising drums and have Knox release one statement after another. It’s all degenerated into a mudslinging match. As far as I know, the only sponsors he has left are Big Po and some other guy.
“Amanda’s full of it,” I say, responding to Gwen’s question. “Really, the woman’s nuts. There is nothing to her words at all.”
“So he didn’t insult her?” Levi asks, sipping his isotonic drink.
“Not really. He just didn’t want her to order me around.”
Gwen looks confused. “So he didn’t verbally attack her?”
I think for a moment. “No. It was obvious that the two couldn’t stand each other. It was pretty mutual, you know? An exchange of words. At times him, at times her.” I am overcome by the insane need to defend Knox. “And she’s lying. He wasn’t going to hit her, Knox isn’t a woman beater. Never.”
The thought makes my nerves start to tingle in an uncomfortable way. A voice in my head keeps whispering words that make my heartbeat increase.You were gullible before. And where did it get you? Are you sure you want to make the same mistake again? Aren’t you afraid? You should be. You really should be.
Aaron shakes his head. “Enough about Knox, people. It’s getting to a point where I can’t even stand to hear his name.” He looks at me and lifts the right corner of his mouth. “Don’t worry, Paisley. No one knows you. The whole thing doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
I nod, but his words don’t calm me down. Again and again, my thoughts whirl around what consequences there would be if I ended up in the public eye. My future at iSkate would be history. For no one outside of me and Ivan Petrov know that I’m not even supposed to be here. If he finds out where I am, it’s all over.
Gwen swings her feet over the balustrade and sighs. Although she’s been jogging, she seems restless. She is fidgety, she keeps drumming her fingers against her thighs and wriggling around. Itlooks like her body is about to start vibrating. I frown, but right when I’m about to say something, she pulls back her head and looks out onto the ice. “We should get down there. Polina’s staring at us.”
I risk a quick glance and see my trainer across from us in the stands. “Indeed.”
Levi makes a face. “Heavens. Sometimes she’s really creepy, isn’t she?”
Aaron laughs. “Sometimes? All of my worst dreams have her in them, chasing me across the ice.”
“We’re the Avengers, and she’s Thanos,” Gwen mumbles, tosses her head back, and attempts a scary laugh that, to me, ends up sounding more like Gargamel fromThe Smurfs.
“And even if she was…” I stand up, toss Knox’s face into the trash, and down my coffee in one go, “she’s taking me to the Olympics. As far as I’m concerned, she could be the spawn of Pennywise and I wouldn’t care.”
Gwen shivers after me. For a moment, she gets caught on one of the table legs, but holds on to me and gets free. “You’ve got a terrible imagination, Paisley.”
Levi and Aaron laugh, and for one lighthearted moment I even manage a laugh myself. I feel happy and free.
“Tension!” Polina’s voice echoes across the ice and in my ears as I stretch out my leg and jump. I press my arms close to my body and manage two and a half twists before gravity pulls me back down to the ice and screws up my triple axel—once again. My legs buckle, and for a millisecond I wobble like a five-year-old trying to find their balance on their ice skates for the first time.
I smack my palms against my thighs in frustration and look at Polina. Her lips are a thin line, as always, her face shows no emotion. In the meantime, I’ve come to believe that the last time I pulled offthis jump was due to pure chance.
“How many times was that now?”
“Twenty-seven. And only four of those were a two-and-a-half turn.”
“Okay. One more time.”
Polina nods sharply as if she wouldn’t have accepted anything else, although regular training has been over for an hour already, and, aside from the two of us, no one else is out on the ice. I wipe the sweat off my forehead and take out a hairpin in order to tuck a few loose strands of hair back into my bun. Skate America is getting closer every day, and last week Polina said that she was thinking of only allowing me to do the double axel. Needless to say, as a result, my ambition shot up even higher. A double axel means fewer points—not what I’m after. I want to be the best. I want to make it through the roof, to become the next Polina Danilov and show everyone what a hungry, roach girl from Minneapolis was able to achieve.
“I got this,” I say to myself, little clouds of frost forming before my mouth. “I got this, if it’s the last thing I do.” Even if I hit the ground a hundred more times, ripping open my knees. I’m not giving up. Cause this thing here, this dance on the ice, carried by the melody of my passion, this here is what I was born for. My feet are bound to the ice and when I jump, my heart grows wings. Every. Single. Time.
“Pay attention to your movement when you come up,” Polina says. “You’ve got to have the tension under control. Then you’ll automatically be smoother in your finish.”
