Page 21 of Blade

The whisper. “Shhh.”

Chapter Seven

Excerpt from Testimony of Dr. Gerard Westin

Ada Olson: Would you say the skaters were afraid of Dawn Sumner?

Dr. Gerard Westin: In a sense. It was part of the training. They feared Dawn more than what they had to face on the ice.

Ada Olson: And you helped them turn that fear to rage? Is that accurate?

Dr. Gerard Westin: It’s not quite like that.

Ada Olson: Okay—what is it like, then?

Dr. Gerard Westin: Fear causes three responses. Fight, flight, or freeze. I help the skaters channel the fear into a fight response, which helps them take the necessary action on the ice.

Ada Olson: You don’t work with them to calm the fear? Isn’t that the most common practice in sports psychology?

Dr. Gerard Westin: For competition, yes. But for training—to override the innate fear of falling, of speed and height—no amount of mindfulness can stop the brain from a real and immediate threat, like hurling your body into the air over a sheet of ice. That requires a kind of fire in the belly. In the mind.

Ada Olson: The fight response?

Dr. Gerard Westin: Yes.

Ada Olson: And fight is born of rage?

Dr. Westin: Yes. Rage at the obstacle. The threat.

Ada Olson: Of losing Dawn’s approval? Her affection?

Dr. Gerard Westin: Yes.

Ada Olson: Like the kinds of things a girl might face in the field?

Dr. Gerard Westin: I wouldn’t know about that. The training is about what skaters face on the ice.

Ada Olson: But did you ever consider what might happen off the ice—if you started that kind of fire in the mind of a child?

Chapter Eight

Ana

Before—Eight Months at The Palace

Avery Hall smelled of bacon and syrup. Edie always made pancakes on Saturday mornings, and the heat of late August had taken hold of the odors and followed Ana and Mio right up the stairs after breakfast.

Mio was standing on a small stool so she could see herself in the dresser mirror, checking that her underwear wasn’t showing when her skirt moved.

When she was satisfied, she climbed down and gathered her things into a small backpack. Ana sat on the edge of her bed, still listening to the lecture that had begun the second they’d returned to their room.

“I know they’re your friends, Ana. But don’t go to the field with them.”

Mio had become like a substitute teacher—she had a lot to say but wasn’t here very much to say it.

“The things they think they know are wrong. Nothing good ever happens at the field.”

The field had been the topic of conversation at the breakfast table. And not just among the Orphans buteveryone, especially the trio of men from abroad who’d been here all summer. Ivan from Germany,Hugo from Spain, and Travis from South Africa, though he was an American with dual citizenship, skating for another country so he could make it to the international stage in the next Olympic cycle with Mio and, fingers and toes crossed a million times, Indy.