Page 5 of Oh, Flutz!

You’re not giving in to the music, Ekaterina!Tatyana’s voice reminds me, as inescapable as it’s been all my life.Give in! Let go!I’ve always managed to figure out a way to give just enough of myself over to the artistry of a program to make my performance believable, to win an audience over, while still maintaining one hundred percent of control.

Which is why I was so thrown when I screwed up at the Final. It wasn’t supposed to happen; I hadn’t even planned for the possibility of it. But I should have. I got careless, arrogant. I gotlazy.

I’m never making that mistake again. Which is why I’m here right now.

I’ve skated this program so many times since then, trying to figure out what went wrong, that I could recite it from memory. The layout is practically inscribed in my brain, and I don’t need Khachaturian’s soaring violins to guide me as I progress through the edgework, the step sequences, the spins and the jumps.

Coming out of the spin combination, the momentum and the blood roaring in my ears make me think I might finally be able to land the combination that fucked me over—but the second I’m in the air, I can feel that it’s all wrong. I end up sprawled back on the ice, biting back a scream that’s less from the crunching sound I think my ribs may have just made and more from utter, blinding rage.

This is just stupid. I’m beingstupid.

Why am I not landing it? I’ve had this combination for months, I can land both the Salchow and the toe loop individually, but it’s like the second I try to put them together my body just seizes up.

I smack the ice. “Fuck!”The resulting stinging of my wrist just infuriates me more. And as if it can’t get worse, when I go to get up and balance on my skate blades again, pain bursts in my lower back from my old injury. I clench my teeth, swallowing a pathetic whimper, then try again, but it hurts more insistently and I have to bite down hard on my tongue to keep from crying out.

When did I turn into such acrybaby?My whole life, I’ve refused to be like that, to cry or complain. It’s a waste of time. We were trained never to complain if we wanted this—and I still want it.

I need it.

“Katyusha!”

My head jerks up midway through struggling to get to my feet again, and despite myself I’m smiling at the sight of a familiar dark-haired figure in even darker clothing waving from the side of the ice. “Privyet, Misha.”

Mikhail joined our team as a senior assistant coach when I was twelve, right around the time I passed into the junior levels. It would’ve been odd to see a man not much older than the skaters that high up in the hierarchy of Tatyana’s camp if you hadn’t known he’d won two Olympic gold medals before the age of twenty, his first at the ripe old age of fifteen—yeah, fifteen. He’d achieved more than I have in my entire career by the time he was five years younger than me.

I’ve seen him almost every single day since then—his dramatic all-black outfits and ridiculous hairstyling regimen have been a staple of training these last eight years. He’s the older brother I never had, not to mention my favorite assistant coach.

Make that ex-assistant coach. Just like that, my mood sours again. “What are you doing here?”

He clutches a hand to his chest, faking offense. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, and that’s how you greet me?”

I get up, even as my eyes water, and skate over. “You could’ve come,” I mutter, and he bites his lip.

“We both know I couldn’t.”

He’s right, and I hate it. “M-hm.” I reach over the side for my bag, unscrewing my water bottle and taking a swig.

“So…”

I sniffle, and wipe my upper lip with a folded tissue—one of the downsides of this sport no one talks about is a perpetually running nose. “Spit it out, Misha.”

“I saw you skating.”

“You mean falling.ThatI’ve been doing plenty of.”

He laughs. “That too. No, really. How has it been?”

I scoff. “How do you think?Zhizn’ ebet meya.” Translation: life is fucking me. Never has an expression felt so relevant than that particular one has these last few weeks.

“It can’t be that bad.”

“It can.”Really. It can.I toss the tissue into my bag, yanking my gloves off finger by finger. “I’m so sick of this. Why can’t things just go back to normal? Hasn’t Tatyana’s tantrum ended yet?”

“Come on, Katenka. You know as well as I do that ‘normal’ is impossible right now. And, as for Tatyana Nikolaevna, she’s in a constant state of tantrum.”

Any other time, I would laugh at his jokes. “It was one fall,” I mutter, for what’s probably the millionth time since the disaster that left me stranded here instead of Moscow. It wasone fall. The first I’ve had in competition since I was fourteen—yes, I fact checked, because I genuinely could not remember the last time I’d screwed up like that. Shouldn’t my track record be enough to save me here?

Because I’m good. Better than good. I’ve held my position as second-best in the world for two years, and I was bestperiodfor three years before that. I came in gold at Worlds my first senior season, my very first time on that ice. This shouldn’t be happening to me—and yet I’m still standing here, with my friend probably risking his job to come see me. With my name scratched off the team roster.

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