Page 60 of Blade

Ada Olson: Or maybe he was just biding his time until he could leave and be head coach at his own facility. Until he could finally discredit The Palace and the training practices you employed.

Dawn Sumner: And how could he possibly do that? My record speaks for itself.

Ada Olson: Come on, Ms. Sumner. You know the answer. By disclosing what happened to the four Orphans of Avery Hall.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ana

Before—One Year at The Palace

Ana and Indy stood beside her bed, assessing the situation. There were three neat stacks of clothing and costumes but just one suitcase. The limit imposed by the airline. But that wasn’t the biggest problem.

“I wish you were coming with me,” Indy said.

She was headed to Phoenix for Nationals—without Ana.

Ana had placed sixth in the junior division at Midwesterns, one spot short of making it to the last and most important of the domestic competitions. With few exceptions, Nationals would determine which skaters would compete on the international stage.

It wasn’t a bad outcome for her first year at The Palace. In fact, it set her up nicely for the next season if she could get the remaining triples in the coming months. That was the only thing holding her back. It was right there in the scoring. She just needed the triples to get into the higher range of awarded points.

“Indy—we have to figure this out,” Ana said.

Ana held the bottle of DMSO in her hand, examining it for labels, instructions, anything that would indicate what was inside.

“Look,” Indy said. “There’s nothing on it.”

“But that’s even worse,” Ana replied. “If they search your bag, they’ll wonder what it is, and then they might confiscate it. And then test it. And then ...”

Indy grabbed it back. “Well, it has to come with me to Nationals.”

The bruise on Indy’s hip had turned a yellow brown over the late fall and then the holidays—better, but still not gone by mid-January.

It was a battle now, between the falls and the liquid in that bottle. Each fall caused a new injury. Indy would rub the liquid into her skin at night, and the DMSO would speed up the healing, and the morphine would kill the pain. It never healed and never got worse. None of them wondered what this might be doing to the rest of her.

Hugo told them the morphine made it illegal, so now they were freaking out over the security at the airport.

Indy started to wrap the bottle in a warm-up jacket.

“This will hide it,” she said. But Ana shook her head.

“That’s not how the screening machines work. They’ll see it’s a bottle of liquid.”

“I’ll tell them it’s shampoo.”

“Wait!” Ana had an idea. She walked over to Jolene’s closet, where she kept a basket of toiletries, and grabbed a bottle.

“If we put it in here, they’ll think it really is shampoo!”

Indy smiled, her eyes lighting up. “You are a genius!”

They set the DMSO and shampoo aside and got to work on the clothing.This can go, this can stay,every decision another step closer to Indy leaving, her bed empty. Thisentire roomempty except for Jolene, but she’d spent every night sneaking off to be with Hugo until he’d gone back to Spain for the holidays. And now she moped around because he hadn’t returned.

“How many of these do you need?” Ana asked, holding up a practice dress from The Palace. The light blue with yellow butterflies.Dawn made them wear the dress on the practice sessions so everyone would see her prowess. A sea of blue dresses. An army of skaters at Nationals.

But out of nowhere, Indy snatched the dress from her hands. She held it up by the sleeves and looked it over. Top to bottom. Disgust creeping over her face.

“I hate these stupid dresses,” she said.