Page 137 of Oh, Flutz!

“Oh my god, Bry!” Nina shrieks, her and Oliver coming over and crash-tackling me with a hug.

“Neens, you’re killing me,” I choke out, only for Alexandra to come running.

“You did good, or whatever,” my ten-year-old sister mutters, swinging a strawberry blonde pigtail braid over her shoulder. I tug on it playfully, making her shriek.

“Mo-om!”

Our mother pointedly ignores her, instead sighing and giving me a kiss on the forehead, taking my jacket from Lian. “You did wonderfully, Bryan. We’re very happy for you.”

“Onto Worlds!” Oliver crows, and we laugh.

“One step at a time, kids,” my dad jokes, ironically as he’s wheeling up to us. I freeze for a second, not sure what to do. He comes up to me and motions for me to bend over, so I do, and he claps me on the shoulder. It’s an incredibly awkward angle, but my grin grows impossibly bigger, especially when he adds a “good job, Bry,” looking up at me with something close to a smile.

“We need to feed the kids, Robert,” Mom frets, and Ollie and I make eye contact, smirking in unison.

“There’s an IHOP down the street?” I ask, waggling my eyebrows.

Mom looks dubious. “That’s hardly dinner.”

“Pretty please?”

“Fine. I suppose today merits a celebration,” she concedes, and me and Ollie high-five enthusiastically.

“Come on, let’s go!”

The pancakes are the best I’ve ever eaten in my life, and I’m pretty sure they’ll never taste this good again until I’ve got an Olympic title to my name. We’re sitting there in the mostly empty IHOP, me and Ollie accidentally shooting whipped cream onto the slanted blue ceiling, drizzling mounds of maple syrup onto our stacks, me swiping cream on Alexandra’s nose, who gets me back by robbing me of a pancake and shoving it into her mouth in one bite before I can snatch it back. Nina shows her how to make hearts with the toppings. Mom and Dad are laughing for the first time in recent memory. Lian is fast asleep in the hotel, but we’re all already preparing stories for her.

It's a five-hour drive back home, and I stay up the whole way; too buzzed to sleep. This is the best night of my life.

Three-time junior national champion. It sounds pretty sweet. So does everything else that people have been saying. I’ll be coming into my debut senior season with every opportunity open for the taking—freaking Connor Murphy is scared of me. I start grinning again.

We drop off the Kwans. By the time we’re at the house, it’s three thirty-five a.m. Mom carries a sleeping Alexandra upstairs to bed, and I’m about to go to the kitchen when my dad stops me.

“Hold on, I need to talk to you.”

I stifle a yawn. “Sure, what’s up?”

“How do you feel right now?”

“Uh, like, right now?” I grin at him. “Pretty great, Dad. I just won Nationals.”

“That’s not what I mean. Or, well, I guess it is. You won Nationals. Now what? What comes now?”

I blink. “Uh…well, Worlds are in a month, and next year I move into the senior level. Remember?”

“And what then?”

I pause. “Um…”

He looks long and hard at me. “That’s what I thought.” He wheels a little closer. “We need to discuss your future, Bryan.”

“Uh, like, right now?” I ask, grimacing. “It’s four in the morning. It’s been a long day, what with me breaking a ton of records and everything. I kinda wanna go to—”

My dad laughs, almost angrily. “Man up, Bryan. Get yourself together! None of thismeansanything!”

“Wh-what?” Okay, I think I might be a little sleep deprived. This isn’t happening. I laugh nervously. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

“This can be taken away from you at any moment. You could fall, or get in a car crash, or just be walking down the street and get hit by something. The second you’re not expecting it,bam!”He slams his hand so loudly against the armrest of his chair that I flinch. “Everything you’ve worked your whole life for, gone. Or even if something doesn’t happen, what’s the shelf life of a figure skater? This isn’tpermanent, Bryan. It isn’t real. You better learn that as soon as you can.”

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