Page 118 of Oh, Flutz!

“I heard that!” Nina yells from halfway across the ballroom, and I laugh.

“Then you know it’s true!”

Juliet boos me. “Don’t listen to him! We’re more fun, anyway!”

I pout, and Katya giggles, starting to walk away. “I’ll be right back.”

“No, don’t abandon me,” I groan, still holding onto her hand.

“I’m not going anywhere, Yasha.”

“Promise?”

“I’ll be right back!”

I let go, and she bounds across the room to Nina and Juliet, who shriek and hug her before dragging her out of the room with them.

“Bry?” Ollie says, voice uncertain, and I turn around to see an oddly pale version of my best friend.

I crease my eyebrows. “You good? You need to sit or something?”

“No, it’s fine. Listen, I need to talk to you.”

“What, now?”

“Yeah, like, right now. It’s urgent.”

“Urgent like the time you needed me to choose between two identical shirts for your date with Ski Guy? Or the time you needed me to come pick you up from CVS? Or the time you interrupted my Do Not Disturb While Driving to send me a TikTok you’d literally shown me four times already?”

My best friend shakes his head. “Bryan, I’m being serious.”

I pause. He does look weirdly tense. “What’s up?”

“It’s a long story, but I had to sneak into the coatroom to get the La Mer from Nins’ bag—”

“Do I really want to hear the rest of this story?”

“Just listen to me, alright? Turns out I was looking in the wrong bag, since I guess Katya's is identical, and—”

Okay, I definitely do not want to hear the rest of this story. I plug my ears.“Lalalalala—“

“She’s leaving, Bryan!”

What?

I take my hands off my ears. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s going back to Russia. She’s going back to her old team.”

What? I scoff. “Of course she isn’t. We just got back."

“I guess something must have changed.”

Katya leaving?The idea is so bizarre I can’t even picture it. Maybe before, but not now. No way. “Ollie, come on. They don’t want her anyway, remember?”

“I’m not joking around. I swear. Look.” He pulls out his phone, then pulls up a picture from his camera roll, handing it to me.

It’s a plane ticket, from JFK to Moscow.

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