Page 73 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

Maybe she likes girls too.

Alisa caught herself thinking that and smiled to herself.

Cherry moved a little closer to her, tightening the laces on her snow-white skates.

“What are you smiling about?”

“It’s just that you’re so funny in the morning, you made me feel less like shit after a workout where I failed every damn jump.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, baby! Everything will work out, practice and only practice! We can cross paths in the gym tonight for a dry workout and give you some practice on the jumps, or go to the cosmonauts’ room,” Cherry suggested.

They jokingly called the astronaut room the “cosmonauts’ room,” because in the corner stood a strange machine that lifted the skater into the air and held them by the waist, shoulders, even under the feet, and then spun them insanely fast, almost like they were floating in zero gravity, but it really helped with jump technique, especially with multiple rotations, which Alisa was struggling with right now, because she still didn’t have enough power to rotate properly or land cleanly on the right edge… and her legs and ankles still burned from every touch, she rubbed at the bruises and clenched her teeth, all her legs were covered in blue and purple marks, but she was stubborn, stronger than all of this, and she would achieve more than just gold at international competitions, she would go to the damn Olympics in Milan in 2026, and that was that.

“Let’s go for sure, see you at three o’clock?”

“Yes, come on girls, see you later!”

“Have a nice training!” Alisa wished Anfisa, and they hugged, and those girls left the locker room as if following their captain, Anfisa seemed to be their leader, well, maybe she was.

But when the girls were all gone and she was left alone, tears crept up on her unnoticed, stuck somewhere in her heart and then in her throat, as she began to cry softly because she felt like an idiot… she was afraid of not meeting the expectations of the new coach, but it was even worse to lose everything…

After a good fifteen minutes of a mental breakdown and an unofficial break to cry alone in the locker room, suffering through her life, Alisa took her phone out of her bag as she was already going outside, she tried to call a taxi, but there was no Internet.

“Blyat, this is unbelievable! I’m so fucking done, so fucking sick of this! All of these shut downs of the Internet! How can I order a fucking taxi here!?” Alisa was madly angry at the whole situation, and at all this politics in the world that prevented her from just fucking living, it was annoying, but most of all it was frightening, frightening that the day would come when everything would be completely closed and there would be no way out into the world ever… never… to stay here and rot in a country where, in general, you had nothing and no one? That was what scared her, but going somewhere else and starting from scratch… while she was still studying at university… was even more frightening.

In the end, she went to the subway… she hadn’t ridden it in a long time, but she had no choice.

Because there was no connection, not just in terms of the Internet, but it felt like a complete cut off from civilization… and Tora couldn’t write or call normally, sending text messages to another country was incredibly expensive… but she was also afraid that she wouldn’t reach her if something happened… that they could just stop communicating once and for all…

It was scary, very scary for Alisa.

* * *

After she rested and had breakfast at her favorite café, she went home to nap, because more than anything she wanted to rest at least a little, to hide under the blanket and stop thinking for a few hours, and then, after this small break, after several hours of heavy sleep and complete silence, she returned again to her favorite ice palace.

Since they had already choreographed the short program, now it was time for the free program, the longest one and the one on which almost everything depended, and it scared Alisa much more than she wanted to admit. But it was too late to cry now, because she had chosen this herself, she had agreed to transfer to another team herself.

Alisa was warming up on the ice with the guys when she noticed Dana coming out onto the ice and gliding toward her, holding her phone in her hand and waving at her with a smile, and her bright blond hair and impossibly blue eyes reminded Alisa too much of Tora, so much that for one second her heart hurt sharply and unpleasantly, because she missed her, even if she did not want to admit it to herself.

After days like this, where there were too many failed jumps and this terrible feeling that she was disappointing everyone around her, she wanted more than anything to find herself in Tora’s arms, to bury her face in her delicious breasts and hear her say that everything would be fine, but Tora was thousands of kilometers away from her, and the video calls that became fewer and fewer every week could not replace real hugs, real Tora, and Alisa hated this distance between them with all her heart.

“I was thinking,” Dana said seriously as they skated side by side along the boards at a slow pace, “for the free program we can take this track.”

She held out the phone to her, and on the screen Alisa saw the cover of the track: No Time for Caution by Hans Zimmer from Interstellar.

“It suits you,” Dana continued, smiling in that strange way of hers, as if she already knew something that Alisa herself did not know yet, “because there is something in it, something stubborn and desperate and beautiful at the same time, just like you, and besides, the music builds perfectly, we can fit all seven jumps into it exactly on the right beats, exactly where they will look the most powerful, and then you will win and take gold at the Olympics, hmm?”

Alisa looked at the phone for a few seconds longer than necessary and only then nodded, because she knew this music too well, she loved this film too much, and every time she heard Hans Zimmer’s music she felt goosebumps.

“I know this track,” she said quietly, trying not to smile too much. “Hans Zimmer writes incredible music, every time I hear it, I get all the feelings…”

But seven jumps?

Seven damn jumps in one program, and not just triple jumps, because if they really wanted high scores, then most of them would have to be quads, those same jumps that she still did not land perfectly. For a second it seemed to Alisa that Dana thought she was some kind of superwoman, and maybe that was why she was angry, not at Dana of course, but at herself, because she doubted herself again, there was still a small disgusting voice somewhere inside her that whispered that she would not be able to do it.

“You know what that means then,” Dana said, still looking at her with this stubborn confidence. “You need to skate to it, come on, let’s try, I’ll show you what I’ve come up with for you.”

“Come on,” Alisa nodded and skated to the edge of the arena, completely beyond the boards, to where the coaches and judges usually sat during competitions.