Page 13 of Blade
Then the tears, and the walk down the hall that turned to a run because the lights cast strange shadows. Opening the door slowly so itwouldn’t creak, tiptoeing across the room and curling up at the foot of Indy’s bed like a little baby.
“I’m sorry,” Ana said.
But Indy shrugged it off. “I don’t mind.” She was buzzing about in the morning light shining through the window. On the other side of the room were two unmade beds. Jo’s with the fuchsia comforter. Kayla’s with the brown wool blanket.
Ana swung her feet around and planted them on the floor.
She heard footsteps thumping from down the hall, then Kayla’s gruff voice as she returned from the bathroom. “Get up, dummy.”
Jolene was right behind her, dressed for the morning session.
And Indy, too, was almost ready to go. Black leggings, yellow sweatshirt. Hair combed and braided as she put on lip gloss in front of the mirror above a shared dresser.
Ana swallowed the panic left over from the dream but also from new thoughts creeping in about her lesson with Dawn. It was a big deal at The Palace. The Saturday morning session was reserved for the best skaters—the international champions, the Americans who had made it to Nationals, like Indy—and the boarders at Avery Hall.
To skate with the best in the world, and to have the first lesson from Dawn on that session, was evidence of her progress, in spite of the triple flip she couldn’t land. In spite of the dream. In spite of her being a big baby who missed home. She’d promised Jolene that very first day that this wouldn’t happen.
Indy was on the bed now, beside her, pulling on her sneakers. “Was it the same dream?” she asked with a grin.
Ana nodded.
“Did Dawn do a hockey stop and spray your face?” Her smile widened as she leaned closer.
“Yeah,” Ana answered. The dream was losing its power in the light of day.
“I keep waiting for her to skate right over your face, in front of everyone ...”
“Indy!”
“And there’s blood everywhere, shooting out of your neck.”
Ana let out a small laugh, though it felt like a betrayal of the woman who filled her dreams. And whose affection she’d started to crave.
Indy continued. “After Dawn skates over your head and kills you, you turn into a zombie.”
Her eyes lit up with amusement, her voice deep and theatrical. “You chase her through the stands, back to her office and into the training room. Your hands have turned into skates, and you swipe at her head with the blades ... and then she falls and starts crawling on her hands and knees, trying to get away from you, because you keep saying, in your zombie voice—Fight the fear, Dawn! Fight the fear!”
Now she was laughing, hard, not caring who joined her or didn’t.
“Jesus, Indy,” Kayla said. “That’s twisted. Even for you.” Indy let out one last burst of laughter, pleased with her story and the images of Dawn’s suffering. Her heart was filling with hatred for Dawn and The Palace, drop by drop, like a pail beneath a leaky pipe. It was almost imperceptible, until moments like this one.
Indy had been at The Palace for almost a year, and she was no closer to getting the rotation for the triple Axel. It was the only reason she was still here—at the insistence of her mother, Patrice Cunningham, Dawn’s nemesis.
She was here against her own will. Separated from Bobby Stark, her coach back home. It had become a matter of fixation for Indy, andGod, were they sick of hearing about it. Especially Jolene and Kayla. It had becomea symbol of her defiance, Jo said, because Bobby was the antithesis of Dawn, and the reason she’d gotten this far.
Indy swore that Bobby could help her get the triple Axel with his kindness and encouragement. Not a brutal course of falls and Fear Training.
No one, not even Indy, questioned that she needed the jump, failing to outscore others in her field, always finishing fourth or fifth, and for reasons no one could quite explain. If Indy had the triple Axel,she would be one of only four women in the world who could land it—becoming an irrefutable contender for a medal in the next Olympic cycle. And that was just eighteen months away. Her mother said she couldn’t come home until she landed one in competition—proof that she had itunder her belt. So Indy jumped and fell. Over and over. And let the drops of hate drip into her heart.
Indy grabbed Ana’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on.”
They went to Ana’s room down the hall, where she changed into her favorite dress and tights, a sweatshirt, sneakers. Next, to the bathroom to brush her teeth and pull her hair into a band, her mind shifting from where she was, nestled inside Avery Hall with the Orphans, her new family with the roles that had been firmly established, to where she was going, a knot forming in her stomach as she thought of Dawn and the dream and the triple flip.
Then outside, the four Orphans in rows of two, walking to the rink along the start of the access road, a quarter mile of mountain air and views that caused tourists to stop and take selfies. When had things like that stopped mattering one single bit? Ana’s focus was always ahead, to the ice inside, to The Palace. To Dawn. To the triple flip. To her dream.
They went in through the side door to the snack bar, and the familiar smells of burnt coffee and rubber mats, then pushed through the maze of mothers and local skaters who swarmed The Palace on the weekends but had to skate on the earlier sessions and were now having a breakfast of donuts and shitty coffee. They unlaced their skates, getting ready to yield the ice to the ones who mattered. Maybe that was harsh, but it was the truth.
They passed by the opening to the arena, and the break in the stands where the mothers liked to sit, in the bleachers around the edge of the boards, as the Zamboni made its oval sweeps, the engine loud, fumes rising, black to white all the way to the rafters. The sound of it, the smell of the gas triggered a pang of nerves. Every single time. Fresh ice. Time to perform.