Page 68 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

“You can do it.”

“Again.”

By the end of training, Alisa was exhausted, her whole body ached, her hair stuck to her neck from sweat, her knees and hips would definitely be covered in bruises tomorrow, and she was sure that she no longer had any strength left at all, but then Arkadiy told her to do it one last time, only once more, and she obeyed.

She accelerated.

Pushed off.

Rose into the air.

For one second she was terribly afraid again, and then suddenly she was not afraid at all, because her body remembered before her mind did, remembered how to tighten, how to turn, how to hold itself in the air—

And she landed a quadruple jump!

Not perfectly, not without Arkadiy still holding the harness and helping her through the last fraction of the landing, but she landed the quadruple Axel.

Alisa immediately jumped onto the ice like a happy child and burst into a smile so bright that it seemed to light up her whole face. She even laughed, not believing it herself, while Arkadiy only grinned broadly and held out both hands to her, and she slapped them with both of hers at once in a clumsy, joyful high five.

They were the last to leave the ice. The arena had already become almost empty, only the cleaners were somewhere far away in the corridors, and the noise of the other skaters had long since disappeared. Alisa sat on the bench and carefully wiped the blades of her skates dry from the ice that had frozen to them during training, and Arkadiy sat down next to her.

“Not bad overall, Alisa.” He patted her lightly on the shoulder. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, of course, but the main thing is that we have the base and the right technique, and everything else we will build little by little.”

He smiled at her again.

Honestly, wasn’t he the most smiling coach in the whole school?

Alisa only exhaled nervously and nodded, continuing to wipe the blades with the cloth.

“As for the choreography, we’ll start next week, when Dana comes back from vacation, and we’ll make absolutely anything you want, to any music, in any style, so think about what exactly you want and tell me.”

Alisa immediately thought of dozens of different ideas, different music, different stories that she might tell on the ice, because she still had time, a whole week to think about what she wanted to become.

She nodded with a smile.

“Great. Then I’ll have time to think about it this week.”

“Think seriously,” Arkadiy answered, “because we’ll be preparing for the internal qualifiers for the second Beijing quota championship.”

Alisa immediately looked at him in complete astonishment and even opened her mouth slightly.

“You want me there? But I don’t think that I—”

She did not have time to finish, because Arkadiy interrupted her and put his hand on her shoulder.

“You can do anything, Alisa,” he said quietly. “I believe in you, and I know that you can win the internal qualifiers and earn that quota for Beijing.”

Alisa suddenly wanted to cry because of how much he believed in her when she herself had long since stopped believing.

A tear rolled down her cheek by itself.

Arkadiy carefully wiped it away with his thumb and cupped her cheek with his palm, and Alisa closed her eyes for a second.

“You are capable of so much,” he said softly. “You’re our little star.”

And those words only made everything hurt more sharply and warmly at once, because that was exactly what her grandmother had called her.

Little star.