Page 31 of Oh, Flutz!

“Oh, yeah,” I say dryly, doing the same. “Guess you’re not stuck here because you were kicked out of your own country, then. I must be imagining things.”

She does flush then, taking another couple of steps, angry red splotches appearing on her pale skin, spitting out something in Russian.

“Yeah, use the curses I can’t even understand, real effective.”

“I think she said, ‘I hope your kids crap in your soup,’” Lian says nonchalantly, but neither of us are listening. Katya grabs her bag and starts walking off, not that it stops her from continuing the argument.

“How’s this?Fuck your dad!”

“Joke’s on you, I actually agree with that one!” I yell after her. She just fires off a middle finger without turning around, clomping off in the direction of the locker rooms.

Juliet smiles nervously. “Well…that was Day One.”

Lian shrugs, picking up her thermos. “I think it was a success.”

I snort. In what world?

Juliet looks like she has the same question, but my coach just smirks.

“They haven’t killed each other yet.”

Chapter Ten

BRYAN

“Hey, Bryan!” I hearfrom within the front office when I push through the entrance doors of the center, and I smile.

“Hey, Miss Lou,” I call to the eighty-something lady who’s manned that desk since way before I can remember. My dad said once that she was there when he came as a kid, so God only knows how long she’s been sitting there.

“How many times do I have to tell you, you’re a big boy now, you can drop the ‘miss’!” she yells after me, and I laugh.

“No chance in hell, Miss Lou.”

“Have a good practice, honey!”

I wave before turning the corner and heading to the locker room to put away my stuff, taking out my skates and my board bag and heading out to the ice.

There’s only a couple of people here for six-a.m. training, mostly the kids who come before school, and they’re all on the other side of the center. There’s less than an hour until our booked practice, and no walk-on freestyle sessions until after we leave, meaning I should have this side to myself. Which is a relief. Maybe with no one watching, I won’t pop all my jumps—wait.

I hear skating. Why do I hear skating?

I cautiously step into view of the ice. There’s someone out there, not playing anything over the loudspeakers, so the only sound is of blades ripping into ice.

Then the person turns, and I see a streak of bright red as a ponytail whips around—Katya. Of course.

She pulls herself back and forth through a complicated series of steps, twirling into a layback spin that rotates so quickly that her hair forms an orange cloud around her head. She straightens back up, curving her arms, looking so lost in her movements you wouldn’t think she didn’t have music playing.

She clearly doesn’t know I’m here, which in a way kind of feels violating, like I shouldn’t be watching. I don’t move, though.

I remember watching her from the audience at Worlds a few years back. When Katya stepped on the ice, the crowd went crazy, but the second the music started, you could hear a pin drop. She had everyone in the arena under her spell. And even without thousands of people hanging onto her every move, it’s the same. You can’t take your damn eyes off her.

Katya speeds up in preparation for a jump—she doesn’t even hesitate, just launches herself into a triple Axel that practically flies through the air, then backs away from the boards and does a quad toe, followed by a triple toe.Holy shit.Training with her every day, sometimes you forget she’s a world champion.

Suddenly, though, she stops.

Uh oh.I feel guilty, which is weird and also unnecessary, considering this is literallymyrink that I’ve been skating in all my life and we also have practice together starting in—I glance at the clock—fifteen minutes. Katya glides to the far end of the ice, stepping off. I panic for a second, trying to figure out whether I should make a run for it, but she just walks over to the jump harness and starts strapping herself in.Oh, hell no.

She doesn’t know how to use that thing. She can’t possibly know that it’s old as hell and no one’s gotten around to fixing it, which is why we use the pole harness instead. And she doesn’t have anyone holding it up for her. Which is, you know, a problem, considering the rope runs out eventually.

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