Page 14 of Oh, Flutz!

“And you still act like it.”

“Oh, shush. And don’t change the subject. I’m serious, okay? This is going to be good.”

I roll my eyes. “Okay.” I pause. “Hey, Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Love you, dumbass. Oh, and tell Katya I’m obsessed with her Les Mis.”

She clicks off before I can reply, leaving me with my finger hovering over Lian’s name.

Sometimes you get a weird feeling that something important is about to happen—and right now, my heart is beating way too fast for someone who’s only about to start a phone call.Fuck it. I heave a sigh and press the button.

“Hello?”

“Hey, sorry it’s late. I just wanted to say…” I take a deep breath. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

Chapter Five

KATYA

I’m furious.

Actually, I’m—what’s the word—livid. I can feel the anger threatening to burst from where it’s boiling under my skin.

I stomp around, pace back and forth up and down the same hallway I’ve been circling. This woman, this committee, they practically begged me to come skate here. And now, not only are they forcing me intopairs skating, but they’re trying to give me a partner who, judging by the fact that I have never even heard of a skater named Bryan Young, is completely and utterly useless?

This is ridiculous,I think, for the millionth time. No matter how much time passes, I still can’t get over the fact that thisishappening, and it isn’t some strange nightmare where everything is just unbelievable enough that the fear doesn’t fully set in. Yes, I am actually here, considering skating for the United States. If someone had told me three weeks ago I’d be in this situation, I would have laughed in their face.

I resist the urge to tear my hair out and force myself to keep walking around this complex, exploring, trying to distract myself from the urge to scream, just like I’ve been doing since I left the meeting. Maybe I shouldn’t have stormed out like I did, but can you blame me? I went into one competition the second-best skater in the world and left the building with my life turned upside down. Now these people are holding my career for ransom.

I let out a wide yawn despite myself, and I blink a few times to try and keep myself awake. I’m eight hours behind my usual time—it’s practically midnight in Moscow—and I already know it’s going to hit me like a truck when I try to get back to training tomorrow. I barely slept at all on the plane, even after taking two pills. At least now I can blame the time difference. No one will question it if they think I’m adjusting.

Training. It won’t be what I’m used to. And that’s if I even agree, which, despite what I said back there in that office, I’m still not sold on.

God, I don’t want to be here. I just want to get on a plane and return to my country, to my coaches—my team. Only they aren’t my team anymore, are they? They don’t want me. They were so anxious to be rid of me that they actually agreed to pass me over to the U.S. Ridiculously quickly, too—it usually takes at least a year to approve athlete transfers. Longer if they feel like having a bit of fun. Instead, they punt me halfway across the world like a football.

Is this worth it?A familiar voice in my head whispers.Is it worth moving to another continent, away from your family, your friends, everything you’ve ever known?

I’ve dedicated my life to this sport since the moment I first stepped onto the little frozen pond at the edge of Dedushka’s backyard back home. For the first time since then, I have doubts.

My head starts to hurt again at the thought of my grandfather, and all the times Mama would leave me with him while she worked those long hours to pay for our livelihoods (and all that ice time later on). I miss them. If I can’t go back to my team, I wish I could go back to his house and sit there at the breakfast table, both of us sipping steaming black tea straight from the ancient samovar that survived two world wars and countless bitter days without so much as a scratch, save the dent right under the spout—which Dedushka had always insisted had been caused by his mother whacking a Nazi soldier in the head with it.

“Just imagine!” my grandfather would always cackle. “A big German boy with a gun the size of this old Jew lady, and he runs the second she starts waving her teapot at him!”

He’d be crying laughing about cowardlyfashistyfor hours after that. And I can see him turning to me. “Katyusha, your great-grandmother scared the enemy off from her kids with nothing but a lump of metal, and you’re thinking about quitting because things haven’t gone your way for once?”

He’d kill me if he knew I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself like this. Dmitriy Andreyev has zero patience for whining and even less for ungrateful fools.Then again, he’ll probably have a coronary when he finds out I’m being forced to compete under the American flag. I snort just thinking about it—poor Mama. She’s going to have her work cut out for her, trying to keep the old man from boarding a plane to Moscow to bully whoever he needs to bully in order to get my spot back.

I’m about to laugh and pull out my phone to call. But then thatsmellwashes over me—the one so familiar to me that I can recognize it across oceans, across borders. I might be five thousand miles away from everything I know, but if there’s one thing that I can recognize like my own reflection, it’s that smell; or more importantly, its source. It stays the same, no matter the circumstances. That’s one of the things I’ve always appreciated about it.

Chemicals. Cold. It draws me in, which is how I find myself walking around with no idea of where I’m going. A girl clomps past in skate guards, and I pounce before she can get away. “Excuse me, where is the ice?”

She takes out an earphone, gesturing behind her. “USA rink’s that way. ‘32’s got a bunch of hockey players on it right now if you’re looking for them, though.”

“Thank you.” I edge past her, heading in the direction she’d come from, and perking up at the unmistakable sounds of blade edges ripping. It’s stupid, but it makes me feel at home, even in this shitty little village in the middle of nowhere. Especially since it almost got taken away from me for good.

---