Prologue
I was on my hands and knees on the ice again, with the entire world watching.
Get up, get up, get up, get up!
The way the music kept echoing around the auditorium felt like an insult. I was in agony, but the lark in the song was still joyfully soaring toward the clouds. It struck me how huge the disconnect was between my body and the performance part of my brain, because in my head I was still dutifully skating my choreography. The sweeping violin meant that I was supposed to be twisting in midair rightnow...then landing perfectly on one blade... into a step sequence... preparing for a triple lutz...
Get up.
I already had, twice.
I could hear murmurs from the crowd starting, and the vibe in the Olympic auditorium shifting. I was used to feeling embraced by the collective energy of audiences. Whatever was raining down on me now—disappointment? disbelief? anger?—was keeping me anchored to the ice.
It’s over, they told me.
Get up,the voice in my head demanded.
Eventually, I did.
I blinked back the tears pooling in my eyes, ignored the flames shooting up my leg, and tried to inhabit the final, floaty moments of the song. I’d never agreed with my coach thatThe LarkAscendingsounded wistful. To me, it was a mournful piece of music, and as I stretched my hand over my head on the last note, I might as well have been waving a white flag of surrender.
There was a pause of pin-drop silence after the music faded, while the audience collectively decided how to respond to their favorite Olympic hopeful crashing out before their eyes.
It didn’t matter if they gave me thunderous applause or golf claps, I couldn’t hear it. I was sobbing, hiding my face in my hands as I skated off the ice.
I kept my eyes down and refused to look at the camera poised behind the source of all my pain. Carol stood in the middle of the rink door, practically blocking me from leaving the ice, because she was about to play her part. To everyone watching, she was my concerned coach, taking me into her arms and whispering encouragement in my ear.
But what she’d actually said, raising her hand to cover her mouth so no lip-readers could catch it, was,Why the hell did you give up?
The resulting dagger to my chest hurt almost as badly as the pain radiating from my ankle.
I pushed past her and had no choice but to move on to Tricia. I was sure this hug looked more convincing, because she’d spent her life calibrating how she appeared.
Neither embrace comforted me in any way.
I put on my guards and walked to the postperformance waiting area called the kiss and cry with the two of them following behindme. We sat down and a camera pushed in close, forcing me to find other places to look, like down at my nails and up at the ceiling beams. I tried to force myself to stop crying, because I could already see the headlines beneath the close-ups of me. Tricia handed me a tissue and motioned that I needed to wipe my face because mascara was running down my cheeks.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t rush to follow her instruction.
I was devastated, and the two women whose opinions had formed the foundation of my skating career couldn’t even muster half-hearted support for me.
So I decided to let the world see what being broken looked like.
I finally raised my watery eyes and stared directly into the camera.
Chapter One
Zamboni Frank was my biggest fan.
Our rink’s adorable white-haired Zamboni driver thought I could do no wrong, so that meant I’d still hear him clapping even when I accidentally popped a jump or, worse, fell on my ass.
“You’ll get it next time, sweetheart,” he’d always yell from the entry to his cave. “Keep going!”
I didn’t love when people watched me practicing, but Frank’s stooped figure in the shadows was a good omen. I considered him the Phantom of the ice rink; always around, always watching, but never wanting to be the center of attention unless he was on his machine.
Like just now. My swingy takeoff on a triple axel resulted in me needing to touch my free foot to the ice when I landed. It was messy, but his applause still echoed around the rink. I gave him a little thank-you wave and he blew me a kiss.
It wasn’t the best place to end my session, but I felt fried, and nothing good happened on tired skates.
