But why is he here today?
And why is hewatching me?
My stomach clenches. A sharp, hollow pain that I’ve learned to ignore. I press a hand against it briefly, then catch myself.Never show weakness. Never show need.
My coach levels a look at me, and I clear my throat. I can do this. I know I can.
I inhale. Then exhale and glide out effortlessly onto the ice. I’ve done this so many times that it’s like muscle memory. My movements blend with grace and precision as the music swells and flows, each note pulling something beautiful from deep inside me…something they haven’t been able to touch yet.
Out here, for these precious minutes, I am not nothing. I am flight personified.
My breath leaves me in a soft pant before I move into the triple axel, soaring high—higher than fear, higher than their words—before landing with a perfect whisper-quiet slide.
My adrenaline soars. Without missing a beat, I spin. A fast, tighttwirl as my body becomes pure poetry. I hit each position with perfect alignment, feeling that rare moment of rightness where everything in the world makes sense.
And for just this moment, I remember what it feels like to fly.
A smile pulls my lips up, my cheeks flushing as I move into the next move: the Beillmann spin. My back aches as I arch and pull my leg above my head. But it’s a good ache—the kind that means I’m pushing past what they said I could never do.
Another sequence of jumps, each one higher and more challenging. I feel like I can defy gravity as I twist in midair, challenging not just physics but every cruel prediction they’ve made about my future. Every leap nailed. Every turn controlled and sharp.
In this moment, I am more than they will ever be.
I finish the final spin, one I’ve practiced for hours on end, my body bent nearly in half as I spin low, arms locked. And the world becomes a beautiful blur of ice and light.
Slowing to a stop and breathing heavily, I allow a small moment of pride—something I’ll have to hide in just seconds, but for now, it’s mine.
It was perfect. And it wasall mine.
My arms shake from the effort, but I smile brightly as I’ve been taught to, my head pounding from the adrenaline and that strange floating feeling that’s been coming more often lately.
Silence follows.
The high I’m riding slowly dissipates as my coach motions me over. The beautiful spell breaks, and I’m just a girl again. A girl with holes in her tights and bruises she tries to hide.
I swallow.
From the corner of my green eyes, I see Gennady, his figure looming as he moves toward me. His presence is like a cold shadow that seems to swallow up everything around it. All the light, all the air, and all the hope.
My breath stills in my throat as he faces me. I can smell the stench of stale tobacco on him, see the cruel satisfaction already forming in the slits of his eyes.
“Why are you here,you stupid cunt?!” he roars.
The words hit me like a deluge of ice water. I swallow back the bile rising fast in my throat. They’re just words, I tell myself.Just sounds.
“You are fucking wasting my time with that routine!”
I freeze. My heart thuds harder, the familiar dread rushing through my veins like a poison. My hands shake at my sides. “I-I thought…the routine went well,” I stammer, desperately praying he’s not going to punish me. Not today. Not when I finally felt like I was flying.
His lip curls into a cruel sneer. “You are fucking pathetic! I’ve seen seven-year-olds do better. You are nothing but auseless bitch!” The words are like bullets. Each taking me down one after the other. Each one designed to kill something inside me. “You think you’ll ever amount to anything with a routine like that? I don’t know why we waste our time on fucking peasants like you.”
Peasants.The word sticks like a barb. Because that’s what I am, aren’t I? No family to speak of. No one to care if I disappear tomorrow. Just a girl they plucked from nowhere—and could return to nowhere just as easily.
My stomach churns with that hollow, gnawing feeling that’s become my constant companion, and my cheeks burn with humiliation. Despite the harshness of life here at the facility, I love to skate. It’s the only thing they’ve given me that feels like itbelongs to me. But he makes it clear that even this, even this thing I do better than breathing, is a dream I don’tdeserveto have.
His brutal words keep coming, each one razor-sharp and calculated as they rip apart my self-esteem, tearing down any small ounce of confidence and strength I’ve tried to build around myself like armor.
I want to protest, to tell him that I’ll do better. But the words stick in my throat like sawdust. Instead, I stand there, frozen like prey, trying to shrink into myself in the futile hope that he’ll stop noticing me and leave me alone.
