“My father taught me that if you understand everyone, they can’t lie to you.” In life lessons, of course.
He whistles. “Dark. But I respect it.”
We sit in the dining hall, plates untouched.
Faulker rants about American wealth, New England nepotism, and the absurdity of legacy admissions.
“They’re all the same,” he says. “Rich in Russia, rich in Germany, rich in the U.S. All convinced the sun shines out of their trust funds.”
I stab my fork through a piece of chicken. “Most of the time they’re right.”
Faulker leans in. “You and I, Aleks—we’re outsiders. Infiltrators. We pretend to fit, but we survive because we don’t.”
I grin. “You talk too much.”
“And you talk too little,” he says. “It’s perfect. We’ll balance out.”
We do. For weeks, he has become the closest thing I have to a brother. But not that brother. Not the one buried under Moscow’s expectations. The one I left behind with hands that weren’t his own, gripping his shoulders.
I don’t talk about Mikhail. Not yet. But Faulker sees something anyway.
“You look at the ice like it stole something from you,” he says once after practice.
I shrug. “It did.”
The message comes on a cold November morning. I’m sitting in the dining hall again. Same seat. Same view of the window. Same plate of eggs I’m pretending to eat.
Faulker is across from me, complaining in three languages about an economics professor who “clearly hates joy.”
My phone buzzes. I glance at the screen. Unknown Russian number. My stomach drops before my thoughts do.
I open the text. It’s short. Five words.
Unknown:
Mikhail is gone. Training accident.
The world tilts quietly. Silently. As if sound has been removed from the room.
Faulker keeps talking. Students keep moving. Forks keep scraping plates.
Inside me, something detonates. I stare at the words again.
Gone. Training accident.
Not alive. Not coming back. Not skating. Not laughing. Not calling me peasant or complaining about his hair freezing or asking me to hit him harder.
Gone.
My hand curls into a fist on the table. I don’t notice until the pain registers.
Faulker stops talking mid-sentence.
“Aleks?”
I don’t look up.
“Aleks.”
