Page 41 of Blade

This stops me in my tracks.

“You’ve been in touch with Kayla?”

Jolene nods. “Yes. Soon after I left here, I found her. We’ve kept up over the years.”

I don’t know why this shakes me, but it does. In my version of the story, each of us left and never wanted to think about this place again. And now Jolene and Kayla are still friends.

Jolene gives me the keys, and I walk away.

Twenty minutes later, I’m halfway to Pueblo. Headed south on the highway into the storm. A gust of wind smacks the car like it did earlier at the field, pushing it to the right, and I wonder what the hell I’m doing. I clench my hands around the wheel and keep it from moving onto the shoulder. The road’s been plowed once but is again covered with snow.

I think through the arguments for tomorrow—the ones I would make if I had no connection to the case.

They start with Dawn and Dr. Westin. The two people who had the most to lose from Emile leaving. I would also raise the possibility of other skaters and parents psychotically invested in their children’s skating careers.

But, then, I would point to the past.

To us—the Orphans.

I clutch the wheel, my eyes glued to the tracks on the road made by the last vehicle to pass along the highway, and I think about the way he was killed. The four strikes to his head with the heel of a blade.

Then I see Indy bouncing around the room, telling a story about a blade, about me, and Dawn.

I picture Kayla marching into the stands with her fist inside a skate, threatening Mrs. Finch.

The method of his killing—the image lived inside us. And we all had motive—each and every one of us.

I think about the way we were trained here. The push and pull, the desperate attachments Dawn created. And then Westin and the sessions in the office next to Dawn’s. He frames it now like it was nothing more than cognitive behavioral therapy, learning to overcome our fears. Our instincts. Eliminate our innate response to situations that screamed out for retreat, caution.

We were trained to override it—the fear of falling—with a greater fear: of Dawn and what she might do if we didn’t succeed.

“Does that make you sad?”

“Does your sadness make you angry?”

“Feel the rage.”

“Fight the fear.”

And what did that do to us? What did it do to Grace?

I see her face in that video. The still shot at the end, right after she attacked that girl over whatever it was she first said, the words not captured by the other girl’s phone. And then the words Shannon heard when it was over—about Emile knowing the truth. Tammy would be following Emile to California. They were undermining Dawn and The Palace. That much we know. But that look on her face—it doesn’t fit with the narrative we’ve been building around this altercation.

It’s a face I recognize from Indy Cunningham but also from my clients accused of violence.Guiltyof violence. And I think about what I’ve learned since leaving this place, both in my life’s work and in my own recovery. What I know about fear and what happens when it’s caged inside us. How it can turn to rage, all on its own. That’s what I saw on the face of the girl in that video. Grace. Jolene’s daughter.

This is the argument—the training, the mindfuck. I know it well, and I can sell it if I have to. If the evidence keeps pointing to Grace and only Grace.

I follow the GPS to the exit off the highway. I’m still north of Pueblo, and it feels like I’m driving toward nothing. Into empty space. Finally, I get to a mailbox and a narrow road that leads to a small rustic house at the end of a clearing. On either side are structures that look like chicken coops or barns for small animals.

Through the gusts of snow, I see a pickup truck in the driveway, and I park beside it, turn off the engine. Kayla is there, already at the door.

The woman I see is both different and familiar, and it elicits confusion as I walk toward her. Long brown hair that was once short and jet black. Soft, bare skin and gentle eyes. She smiles as she stepsaside, letting me in from the storm. The wind blows snow into the small foyer and she quickly closes the door behind us to keep it out.

“My God,” she says. “I can’t believe it’s you.” And then she pulls me into her arms with strength that belies her tiny frame.

When she backs away, there are tears in her eyes. But all I can do is study her, head to toe, as I shake off the disorientation.

“How long has it been?” she asks. And I have to think for a moment before arriving at the number. It’s been sixteen years since I last saw Kayla. She left a year into my stay at The Palace and Avery Hall. Her journey cut short by that night in the field and the betrayals that followed.