Page 27 of Blade

“It’s not normal, Jo,” I tell her, desperate for her to share our history. “It’s not really growing up—I know that now. I’ve studied it. I ...”

I look at the computer on the desk and the girl frozen on the screen. The blue dress with the low scoop neck. The tight bun. Bright lipstick and dark eyeliner. I think about that program and how it made me feel. Thelonging I carried in my body, not for my family, or even for my dream anymore. I can feel it now, seeing that girl. Living on scraps of what I was taught to crave. It makes me want to punch my fist through the screen.

Jolene skips forward to the very end, when I finish the program and skate back to the boards, where Dawn is waiting.

But with a sinking feeling, I realize it’s not just Dawn.

She freezes the frame at the point when my head stops turning. When my eyes can’t find Dawn because she’s turned away, angry about the underrotation of the triple flip, the cheat that will reduce my score, they land on the man standing beside her who was always there to pick up the pieces.

“Do you see that? The way you’re looking for him. And the way your face changes when you see him? This is what I was searching for.”

I pretend not to know.

“That’s Emile Dresiér,” she says quietly.

Jolene looks back at me now. “That’s the piece none of us knew about, isn’t it?” She pauses, waiting to see if I’ll volunteer an answer. When I don’t, she tries again. “Ana—tell me what happened after we left?”

I step toward the door, deflect us both away from the past.Mypast.

“What matters for Grace is what happened to her. She was seeing Dr. Westin. Did you know about that?”

Jolene nods. “I didn’t think it would do any harm—he’s a joke, right? Indy always said so. And Kayla—my God. She tore him to shreds, the way he tried to therapize her over her childhood. Her mean grandmother—remember?”

Of course I do. I can see Kayla’s face imitating his concerned stare. The way he draped one leg over the other and pinched his chin with his thumb and forefinger. She had his voice down too.

“Well,” I tell Jolene, “sometimes a hack therapist can do damage. Grace looked pretty angry in that video—it’s the worst piece of evidence, in my opinion.”

“You think Westin taught her that? In their sessions?”

“That’s what he used to do. Turn fear into rage that could be channeled into action—on the ice.”

I can hear the mantra in my head.

Fight the fear.

When he told me to get up from the chair. To close my eyes.

Christ. The things he would say—about Dawn leaving me. About my mother, my family sending me away.

“Are you sad, Ana? Does that make you angry? Where do you feel it in your body? Where does it live in your mind?”

And now, where did it go, I wonder?

“Westin is how I knew you were in Aspen the night Emile disappeared.”

She wipes the tears from her cheeks and steadies her gaze as I choke on the air I’ve just sucked into my lungs.

“He told me you’d been there for five days.”

“Yes,” I admit. “And he told me you’ve been here since Christmas.”

We lock eyes for a brief moment. Both thinking the same thing. Until, finally, Jolene says it.

“Jesus, Ana. Emile is dead. He’sdead, Ana—and the way he was killed ...”

“I know . . . with the blade . . .”

“We were both there when Indy told that story.”