Page 18 of Blade
Westin takes out his phone and opens the video, turning it so we can all watch as it plays. The altercation between Grace and another skater, Tammy Theisen, recorded on a cell phone moments after it began.
A group of skaters was in the TV room at the dorm, and even though the decor has changed, the layout appears to be exactly as it was when I lived there. The TV on the wall to the right, the couch under the window that faces the front yard. A few chairs along the path to the dining room, the kitchen, and the boys’ wing on the left.
In the video, Grace screams at Tammy—“You’re a liar!”—her face bright red. Tammy whispers something inaudible, then tries to leave,but Grace lunges forward and grabs a fistful of her hair. The other skaters gasp. A few are caught on the screen, hands covering their mouths.
Grace, who stands a foot below Tammy, dominates her with this one fistful of hair, pulling her to the ground, climbing over her in a straddle. She’s wearing the dress from The Palace, blue with yellow butterflies. Light-beige tights. Puffy boots.
I can’t see her face in the video, just the back of her head and her prisoner, trapped between her powerful thighs, beginning to cry as she yields control of her body.
“I’m sorry! Let me go!”
Grace climbs off her, slow and steady like she’s made of steel. Like nothing can break her.
Finally, she turns, sees the phone filming her, grabs it, and throws it to the ground. That’s where the video ends, on a frame of her face that holds an expression I’ve only seen once before. The complex intersection of defiance and despair that belonged to my best friend. Indy Cunningham.
“Jesus,” Artis says. “That’s gonna kill us. She left with Emile right after that. Demanded to see him.”
Westin spins his thumbs, his hands folded in his lap.
“I know how it looks,” I tell them. “But she’s a child.”
I stop myself from leaning on my script. I’m an advocate for minors—I know the arguments and the science behind them, about brain development and decision-making and emotional maturation.
But those are just conjecture until we know what actually happened. Tothisgirl. Inthisplace.
“Why were you seeing her?” I ask now. I picture Grace, sitting across from Westin in the office next to Dawn’s. Two chairs in the center of the room. His deep, soft voice. Tugging on her brain like a puppeteer.
Fear into rage. Rage into action.
He looks at me with curiosity. “Oh, nothing out of the ordinary—sports conditioning. I use many of the new techniques for mindfulness,” he says with a casual shrug.
“The thing is—these athletes are on a different trajectory. The discipline, the drive, the exposure to complex feelings and relationships. I don’t think we can compare them to other adolescents. They aren’t like most children their age. But that doesn’t mean what they’re going through is somehow damaging them or turning them violent.”
He takes a sip of the coffee. “Do you have any theories—from your experience here, and your work with young criminals, that might help us understand the face we both saw in that video? Because”—he pauses for a moment—“that looks like a girl who could kill someone.”
He stares at me like I should know—and not from my work. But from the time I spent here. With him.
Artis answers before me. “Shannon told Jolene that Grace was an angel. Up at five a.m., going to the morning sessions. She took her bike unless it was pouring rain or sheet ice. Got straight A’s in school.”
I remember my own schedule now. I also rode my bike to The Palace in the dark of morning and then home in the dark of night. I sat on the same bench, pulling on nylon laces with raw fingers, drawing blood from the cracks in brittle skin that refused to heal, licking them dry. The blood in my mouth, the ache in my muscles and joints and bones. The sting of Dawn’s words after that first fall. And the second. And the third. Thousands of falls.
Every skater has done the same.
Westin shifts gears. “You know that Grace’s stepfather left them.”
“Yes—Jolene told me.”
Artis stands up. He needs more coffee. The second he’s gone, Westin lowers his voice, leans closer to me.
“You know,” he says. “It reminds me a bit of your situation.”
I look at him with surprise.
“You didn’t feel like you had a home to go back to either. Remember?”
I’m about to answer but then stop.This is a trap.
“When you first arrived and learned your mother was sick, right?” Westin reminds me. “You would cry in a closet—in the basement, if Irecall correctly. Your father kept you away from her, away from home, so you wouldn’t have to see it.”