Sabrina: Look at what his skaters say about him.
I’d scrolled through the testimonials with the skepticism of someone who’d heard coaches say all the right things before. But Miller seemed different. He’d taken a handful of skaters to the Olympics but he wasn’t chasing medals the way Renaud was. His philosophy seemed almost radical in its simplicity: skating should be something you love.
Sabrina had texted his contact information with two words,Call him.
I had saved the contact but I still had not worked up the nerve to call him.
My mother had called me three times since I landed. Three calls, three voicemails I hadn’t listened to. I had sent her a single text—I’m here, not dead—and she had responded with a string of emojis that I also hadn’t fully processed.
I was busy. Obviously. I was busy running on a squeaking treadmill in a depressing basement at 7 a.m., punishing myself for curry.
It wasn’t Avery’s fault. I knew that. He hadn’t asked to be 6’1”, hadn’t engineered his own easygoing nature, hadn’t chosen to be the kind of person that rooms organized themselves around without any effort on his part. People had been comparing us ever since I could remember.Avery’s so big for his age. Avery’s so fast. You can already tell he’s going to be something special.I had learned to smile and agree and then go find a patch of ice somewhere and skate until my legs gave out.
Everything came easily to him. I had to fight for every inch, clawing my way up through sheer accumulation of hours, discipline, control. And I did claw far enough. I reached the level where the comparisons stopped making sense because weweren’t even in the same world anymore—he was hockey, I was figure skating, the metrics didn’t translate.
A national title at 19.
World Championship bronze at 20.
And then I burned it all down.
Not all at once. That was the thing nobody understood from the outside. It looked sudden—the withdrawal from competition, the exile to Chicago with two suitcases. But it had been accumulating for years, quiet and invisible beneath the surface, the way structural damage works. I’d been so focused on gaining ground that I never stopped to look at what I was using to do it.
The Adderall had started as a practical solution. Focus during off-season training, sharper retention of choreography notes, a way to compress ten hours of work into six. No one—not my coach, not my mom, not the other skaters I trained with—ever questioned my energy levels. They attributed it to maturity and dedication. I attributed it to necessity.
The eating had followed a different logic or what felt like logic at the time. Figure skating’s relationship with weight was not a secret—not discussed openly, but present in every room, in every glance at the monitor during run throughs, in the way certain conversations stopped when you entered them. I was slight to begin with. I told myself I was just being precise. Intentional. I was an athlete optimizing performance variables.
I was 21 years old and some mornings I couldn’t get off the bathroom floor. Thirty-eight minutes. The treadmill squeaked. My lungs burned in a way that felt correct, felt earned, felt like something I deserved. I turned the speed up and ran.
5. Derek
After afternoon skate, Avery and I pushed through the doors toward the parking garage, my gear bag biting into my shoulder.
Someone was waiting just outside.
Slight. Dark haired. Pale in the way that suggested he hadn’t seen much sun recently or maybe just naturally held the light differently than other people. He was looking down at his phone with a bored expression, his other hand tucked in his pocket.
Big eyes. Dark, serious, framed by the kind of lashes that seemed almost unfair. He had a sharp jaw and a mouth that looked like it defaulted to disapproval. He was wearing a long sleeve t-shirt despite the heat, loose cargo pants, nothing remarkable about any of it, and somehow the overall effect was—
I wasn’t sure what the word was.Strikingfelt too aggressive for someone who looked like that. There was something almost ethereal about him. Delicate, in a way that had nothing to do with fragility and everything to do with the particular quality of his stillness.
He looked almost nothing like Avery, which shouldn’t have surprised me. Avery was all tattoos and ripped shirts and the kind of physical presence that announced itself from across a room. Standing next to his brother, he looked like a different species entirely.
“Hey—Mathéo. Sorry. Théo.” Avery corrected himself like he was still rewiring old habits. “This is Sully. Derek Sullivan. He’s our alternate captain, been with the team seven years, basicallytaught me everything I know.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Best guy on the roster. Sully, my brother Théo.”
I felt my neck heat at the introduction. Avery meant well but it was hard to feel like the best guy on the roster when the person in front of me looked profoundly unimpressed.
Théo’s gaze moved over me. Direct. Measuring without being unfriendly, though it stopped well short of warm.
“Derek Sullivan.” I kept my smile easy anyway and offered my hand. “Nice to meet you, Théo. Welcome to Chicago.”
He hesitantly took his hand out of his pocket and shook mine. Firm grip. Cold hand. His eyes didn’t soften.
“Thanks,” he said. One word.Oh-kay.
I’d met a lot of teammates’ family members over the years. Most of them were eager to chat—nervous, even, wanting to make a good impression. Théo looked like he was waiting for me to leave.
“You settling in okay? Chicago’s a lot at first.”
