Page 79 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

Exhale.

And then she left the arena to go drink coffee with Lev and Hermann, because tomorrow would be terrible anyway, and tonight she did not want to think about it anymore.

* * *

In the free program Alisa skated somewhere in the middle, and because of that the tension was a little less, because she did not have to sit for hours waiting for her turn and driving herself crazy, she skated at two in the afternoon, which was generally even the perfect time for her, because by then she had already woken up properly, warmed up, gotten used to the arena and the noise and stopped trembling quite so much.

Before the program, when all six girls had finished the warm-up and were slowly leaving the ice one by one, Arkadiy stopped beside her for a second and leaned closer.

“The Olympics are very, very close, Alisa,” he said quietly into her ear, but with such a huge smile that her heart immediately began beating faster.

“Game on then,” Alisa answered, and after that she pushed off with her skate and glided toward the center of the rink.

She was absolutely serious now.

The first triple axel went perfectly, at least that was how it felt to Alisa. She entered it confidently, without hesitation, pushed off from the right edge and landed exactly where she needed to, and for one bright second inside her chest everything seemed to light up.

She did it.

Really did it.

But the program was still too new. Alisa still did not feel it fully with her body, she had to think too much about everything. She probably felt only sixty-five percent sure of herself. And sixty-five percent was not enough for a free skate like this.

Then came the middle of the program.

The quadruple lutz. Alisa entered it, pushed off, and immediately understood that something was wrong. There was too little height and too little rotation. For one terrible second she already knew she would not save it.

She fell.

Hard.

The entire arena gasped at once. Alisa hit the ice with her hip and her hand, and for a second the pain flashed through her whole body so sharply that it almost knocked all the air out of her lungs, but she immediately got back up, because there was no time to lie there.

The music continued, so she continued too, but inside her everything immediately went cold with horror. She screamed with pain… There will be no fucking points for this jump. Only a deduction and a ruined jump, almost a ruined program.

She jumped again, another attempt to go into the quadruple lutz. And for a few endless seconds there was nothing except the air, the four and a half rotations and the frantic beating of her own heart somewhere in her throat, and then she landed, but the inertia threw her so far forward that she bent almost in half, her head dropping so low that for one terrible instant it seemed she was about to smash her forehead straight into the ice, but she somehow held onand rolled out of the jump with such a murderous look fixed on the ice beneath her skates as if she was ready to kill it for almost betraying her.

By the time she reached the final step sequence her legs were already shaking from exhaustion, and after the last little half-split jump in the choreography she entered the final spin with a smile that almost hurt to hold on her face.

She sat into a low camel spin, then pulled herself higher, stretching into the Biellmann position, and at that exact second pain shot through her knee so sharply that her vision almost went white. Her knee hurt terribly.

Maybe it is nothing serious.

But it hurt so much that tears instantly came to her eyes. Alisa clenched her teeth harder and continued to spin through the pain.

When the music reached its final chord, she somehow still finished the program.

Alisa froze in the final pose for one second, breathing so hard that her chest burned, then quickly bowed and almost ran off the ice.

Arkadiy was already waiting for her by the boards. The second she reached him, Alisa finally felt the tears spill over. Arkadiy immediately wrapped his arms around her as if he was a protective shield from the world’s loud chaos and pulled her close, patting her on the back with care, trying to calm her down.

“Well, that’s enough, enough,” he said quietly. “Nothing is perfect the first time, especially not a program like this. You did almost everything, the triple jumps were good, the quadruple didn’t work perfectly, yes, but that’s all right, Alisa, we’ll work on it, we’ll fix it.”

“But I fell…” Alisa whispered miserably.

“You fell once,” Arkadiy answered firmly. “And then you got up and finished the whole program. Do you understand? Most skaters would have fallen apart after that. You didn’t.”

Alisa only pressed her lips together harder.