Page 91 of Blade

I hang up the phone, put it back in my pocket as I reach the entrance to the second rink and push through the double doors.

I smell the rink again. But it’s thicker here, trapped by the low ceiling and windowless walls, the plexiglass that sits on the boards.

The second rink was where I practiced spins and laid out choreography because it was too small to get speed for a jump, but enough to feel the ice, feel my body move. It was where we got dressed for the summer show—helped by the skating mothers, who spent more time at The Palace than their children. They had nowhere else to go, their lives entirely vicarious. I think now about Mrs. Finch—Shannon’s mother—and then Shannon.

How she told Tammy Theisen about Jolene and the clinic.

How could she do that—knowing it would get back to Grace? She has a child now. I saw the LEGO set. Heard the cartoons. I’m reminded of the lesson I had to keep learning when I was here as a girl. Over and over about themothers. How that word, alone, means nothing.

Memories creep out of hiding. I’ve woken the dead.

The musty costumes that were rented from theater companies, lingering body odor from the last people to wear them, fabric scratching my neck, hanging on my shoulders like a brocade drapery. Dawn dressing us up like puppets. Pulling us away from our routines and schedules, our alliances and bunkers. Stripped bare without them.

I call out her name.

“Grace?”

My breath encircles my head like a plume of smoke, cutting through the cold. The heat is off in this rink, and it’s dropped below freezing.

Panels of LED lights hang from metal beams that stretch across the ceiling. I can see wall to wall, across the ice through the plexiglass in front of me, and behind me to two rows of benches where we used to sit and lace our skates.

I call out again.

“Grace!”

Searching behind the boards, I walk the perimeter, reaching the place where we would hide, me and the other Orphans. We would hide and listen to the mothers’ gossip while they set up the racks with the costumes during the summer show, or Dawn with the other coaches. Dawn with Emile in between lessons.

Fourteen years ago, I left this place behind, sorted the memories like files. Put them in a box. I thought I’d done what I tell my clients to do—process, feel, then move on.

But it’s all here now, after building for days. Excitement, fear. Longing, fear. Loneliness, fear. Every emotion I cycled through at The Palace was accompanied by the one thing I was supposed to control.

Except for the one that came last. The rage. The same rage that was on Grace’s face in that video.

I make my way around the first corner, at the other end of the oval. I can feel the costumes, hear the Broadway music, all of it churning.

Anticipation, fear. The party at the field. The one that always came on the last night of the ice show—before the start of school. The night we parked next to the black van.

That was where it all began to unravel for us, the four Orphans. The second rink with the costumes. Then the show. Then back to Avery Hall to change for the party. What started then is still happening. Emile is dead. Jolene’s daughter is about to be charged with the crime, her life ruined.

Suddenly, I catch a flash of movement behind me, then a gust of bitter cold, the prickle of snow on my face. I turn to see a flurry of white as the storm rushes inside through the Zamboni bay.

“Ana!” Artis has pulled the car around. “What’s happening?” He can see me through the large metal door that’s open in the back. Grace must have gone out that way.

It’s dark now. The temperature is dropping fast.

Grace didn’t have a hat or gloves, and her coat wasn’t made for this kind of cold.

“Grace!” I call out one last time into the rink, though I know she’s not here. She’s out in the storm. And a wave of panic rises. She’ll freeze to death out there.

I can see the face of every child I’ve tried to save. Even the ones who were charged and tried, found guilty, and sentenced to some form of incarceration. We fought for them like they were our own children, and we never stopped. Appeals, motions for transfer, motions for release. Not one of my clients was discarded, left to slip away into psychosis, left to be abused in an adult facility. We fought for them—no matter what they’d done. Because they couldn’t fight for themselves.

That was how I dug my way out of this place.

I’ve asked myself when it might be enough. When I might see this work as a job and not a lifeline. I don’t have an answer. Sometimes I think all I see and hear in this world are the desperate pleas of damaged children. I know I can’t save them all.

I look at the white bursts of wind that pass through the beam of the headlights and think,Maybe not—but I can save Grace.

I can finish what Emile started. Burn this whole place to the ground.