Page 67 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

“Come on,” another boy said, taking her gently by the hand. “We’ll show you.”

And together they led her across their half of the rink.

The other half belonged to the girls, who were skating slowly with identical looks of irritation, peering suspiciously at the surface for deep scratches and holes left behind by hockey skates.

In summer the ice was always worse. The machine did not come out after every session or every break because there were too many people and too little time. Other arenas closed for the season, so everyone came here instead, cramming into one rink, one patch of ice, until the surface became worn and uneven beneath their blades.

From the boards Arkadiy shouted after them.

“Be careful with our girl, boys! Don’t hurt her!”

The boys laughed and saluted dramatically.

Then the practice began. They spread out into groups and started the warm-up together, one after another, gliding across the ice in long arcs, repeating the same exercises. Alisa knew them all by heart. She had learned them when she was small, before pairs, before Lev, before her whole life had narrowed down to being half of someone else.

And suddenly it felt as though she had returned to some forgotten part of herself.

Training in a group was strangely joyful. Everyone copied one another, repeated steps and stretches and movements in rhythm, blades scratching softly over the ice.

Then Arkadiy stepped onto the ice and immediately the atmosphere changed. The boys began repeating difficult elements after him, listening carefully to every correction.

Soon the first jumps began. Triple jumps first, then quads. Alisa slowed for a little bit. A familiar, ugly anxiety rose in her chest. She had not done a quadruple jump by herself in so long. A jump where you had to launch yourself into the air, spin four full times, sometimes four and a half, before you touched the ice again, and trust that your body still remembered how to land.

She stood there for a second too long, staring at the empty stretch of ice in front of her.

And suddenly she was terrified.

Arkadiy noticed it immediately and, without saying anything, skated over to the boards, then returned with a harness, the kind coaches used when teaching difficult jumps, with wide straps that went around the waist and under the arms, fitting tightly beneath the shoulders, while the long strap remained in the coach’s hands so that, during the jump, he could support the skater in the air and catch them if they fell, reducing the force of the fall and the risk of injury.

“Come here,” Arkadiy said quietly.

Alisa skated over to him and obediently let him fasten the harness on her, feeling awkward and ashamed that she needed it at all, but at the same time strangely relieved, because the fear in her chest had become almost unbearable.

“You’re afraid,” Arkadiy said simply as he tightened the straps under her arms.

Alisa lowered her gaze and nodded.

“That’s normal,” he answered immediately, not waiting for excuses from her. “After everything, after pair skating, after the falls, after all these months, of course you’re afraid. But that’s exactly why we’re going to do it again.”

And they began to practice.

At first it was terrible. Alisa jumped too early, then too late, then did not gather herself tightly enough in the air, and every time she lost the landing she fell, but softly, because Arkadiy held the strap tightly and did not let her hit the ice too hard, so instead of sharp pain there was only frustration and embarrassment, and the terrible feeling that her body no longer belonged to her the way it once had.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Arkadiy did not let her stop, and every time she wanted to say that she could not do it, that it was too difficult, that maybe he had been wrong about her after all, he only looked at her with those dark green eyes and said firmly.

“Higher.”

“Don’t think so much.”