I felt dizzy. The world blacked out for a moment as the ice span around me. My lungs felt like they were on fire, or were being ripped in half— or both.
It had gotten harder and harder lately to perform that program like I’d used to. Now I knew why.
I grabbed a bottle of water at the boards and chugged it, to recover my strength. As I drank, I noticed someone standing in the corner of the rink near the stands.
He was around my age. He was pale and tall, with dark hair and dark eyes. He had a prominent nose and sharp facial features. Not to mention he was really fucking ugly. He wore a long black trench coat and was staring at me with a very intense look. His hooded eyelids didn’t give any perception of warmth. He reminded me of one of those predator dudes they tell you about on crime shows.
He’d been watching me perform my program. Weird.
Something in my gut told me this guy was no good. I was about to skate over there and confront him before he turned his back and vanished. He walked through the double doors that led to the rink and out of sight.
Remembering his gaze made shivers run down my spine. It had been creepy. No— worse than creepy. The guy had acted like he knew who I was. Like he had come here for a reason. Had a competitor sent her fugly-ass boyfriend here to spy on me?
Whatever. He was gone, so I didn’t need to worry about it. I wrapped up my practice session before I went back to the locker room to take my skates off and change. Once I stepped off the ice, a dark cloud settled over me, and the hollowness settled in my gut again.
I really wanted to go to the gym and do some yoga, distract myself further, but my body felt sore and I didn’t want to push it.
I got a phone call in the locker room. I answered it, feeling like I was about to drop a bomb on the world.
“Hey, Emmaline,” Mom said. “Are you out of the doctor’s yet?” Her voice was dripping with sweetness. She’d been nagging me to tell her the news the moment I heard. I didn’t call her right away, because I didn’t want to face the truth.
“I have it, Mom.” It hurt to say to her. More than it had hurt to hear the words myself.
“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.” Mom sounded genuinely upset. I hoped she didn’t cry about it. I hated when Mom cried.
“It’s okay. I’ll pull through it.” I didn’t want Mom to worry. This was just one more hurdle in my life I had to get over. No biggie. I could conquer this, too. I had everything else.
“Tell you what. How about we go to the Detroit Zoo tomorrow? Would that help?” Mom asked.
I loved the zoo. I’d wanted to study zoology before I’d lost my scholarship. I went there so often that I had a membership. “Sure,” I said.
“I have to get back to work. I just wanted to check up on you,” Mom said. I heard the busy clatter of the diner in the background. “How about I take you out to dinner after my shift?Antolli’stonight?”
Spaghetti was my favorite. “That sounds good, too. Thanks, Mom.”
I hung up. My hands were shaking. At least it was over with, and she knew. There was no one else in my life to break the news to. I didn’t have a father. Mom had told me I was the result of a one-night stand a long time ago, and she didn’t even know the guy’s name. There were no other relatives or grandparents to tell. It was just me and her.
I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I went home. I considered going to the bookstore and grabbing a book, but I didn’t have the extra money, and it was too hot out today to frequent the coffee shop I usually hung out at. I was quickly running out of distractions. It felt like the world was forcing me to confront my diagnosis, something I couldn’t handle.
I felt a sense of peace as I traveled up the gravel road. My house was pretty big, made of stone and set in the woods far back from the main road. My mom had money from running the diner, but despite putting her whole heart into the restaurant, the building she had bought was a money pit. She made enough to keep the doors open, pay the bills, and pay for ice skating and horse riding lessons for me growing up, but it certainly didn’t return enough income for a college fund.
I threw my bag on the couch and fell onto it. I channel-surfed for a minute, but nothing caught my attention.
I looked out the big window in the living room, to the trees outside. I couldn’t sit still. It was like I needed to move my body, just for something to do. If I didn’t, I felt like I was going to go insane. I just had to get rid of all this nervous energy. I was tired from practice, but I needed to go for a walk in the woods. To clear my head.
The woods were the one place that would calm me down. Whenever I was angry or upset, I’d go for a walk out here, and it was like all the bad stuff just slipped away. I felt nature’s soothing effect as the smell of pine trees wafted through my nostrils. My feet crunched upon the thin dirt path. My anxiety slowly ebbed, and I began to think more clearly. As I wandered through the forest, I tried giving myself a pep talk. I needed to buck up. I wasn’t dying… not yet, anyway. I was just… dying faster than the normal population.
It might be a painful existence, but still one worth living. My ancestors had dealt with stuff like this for thousands of years. It wasn’t that long ago that most people died young. Modern medicine and technology had saved us. We had it good in the modern era.
If I just kept thinking positively, it wouldn’t be so devastating—
I heard acrackin the woods behind me. I thought it was a deer, and barely glanced over my shoulder. But my eye caught sight of something terrifying… black fur.
My heart started beating rapidly. Could it be coyotes? But coyotes didn’t come out in the daytime to hunt, and whatever I had glimpsed had been huge. Was it a bear? I really hoped not. The last thing I needed was to face off with a bear after an already terrible day.
I quickened my steps. As I walked down the forest path, I heard footsteps behind me. Okay, I wasdefinitelybeing followed by something. Or hunted.
Then the most unbelievable thing happened. The air cooled, and the sunlight faded as clouds began gathering overhead. I saw small white snowflakes trail to the ground, dancing all around me in a precarious display.
