Page 138 of Oh, Flutz!

I have to try and laugh. I have to. I’m still trying to catch up, I’m not awake enough for this. “Dad, what—”

“You have to stop. You have to make something else of yourself before you run out of time. Something thatcan’tbe taken away. You can’t keep living in this dream world anymore.”

No. Oh, no no no. “Dad?” I ask quietly, my voice coming out way off.

What is happening? Is this real? “Are you saying—are you saying I can’t skate anymore?” I ask, voice shaking, and he just shakes his head.

“I’m saying I’m not going to let you do this to yourself any longer. Neither will your mother. We never should have let it get this far, but here we are. We’re done.”

I have to fix this. I can fix this. “Dad, I can make this work,” I say, my heart starting to pound faster and faster. “I can, I swear. Lee says I have a shot at making the podium at Senior Worlds next year if I train really hard in the off-season and get more quads, and then there’s only four more years until the Helsinki Olympics. I can last until then, I know I can. And then after that—”

“No.”

“I can see what happens, I can see how my career goes, and if anything Miss Lou is always telling me I can coach—”

“No!”His voice rips through the little fantasy I’m frantically trying to keep from crumbling. “Enough is enough. You won tonight. You won’t tomorrow. It’s time to cut your losses, or else it’s time to go.”

“Go?” I repeat. “Go where?”

He doesn’t answer. But I know.

It’s like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I’m so dizzy, so nauseous, I have to hold on to the banister.

“Dad,” I croak out. “Dad, please.Please.”

He turns away.

My vision is swimming. The only reason I haven’t lost it yet is because I’m so in shock. There’s a faint buzzing in my ear. This can’t be happening.This can’t be real.

I take a step backwards, practically in slow motion. Then I run upstairs. All the way upstairs, down the hallway, into my room. I flip on the light, then start throwing things into a bag. I have no clue what I’m doing, but I grab clothes, my phone, random things, and my skate bag. I’m tossing things into my backpack, then shove it all down, zipping it shut, throwing it over my shoulder, feeling my heart stop and start in my chest, feeling my ribs tighten one by one, my breath coming in and out like a broken record.

“Bry?”

Oh, god. I look up, and there’s my little sister, standing in the doorway in her Star Wars pajamas, eyes bleary and swollen with sleep. “What are you doing?”

“I—” I can’t breathe. “I’m going to fix this, Alex,” I promise her, not even sure what I’m supposed to be fixing. “Go back to bed. I’m going to fix this.”

And then I push past her, run back downstairs, ignoring Ruby and her agitated barks as she tries to block my path.

I blast through the front door, backpack on one shoulder, skates on the other, then grab my bike, mounting it and pushing off into the street, adjusting my weight and going faster, faster—I have no clue where I’m going—I have to find Lian—

And that’s when I finally start sobbing, the tears flooding out, my lungs choking themselves, pedaling as fast as my legs can take me. My vision blurs, the streetlights picketing the night-morning sky, and when the tires skid on a patch of ice, there’s no stopping it as I’m thrown forward over the handlebars onto the side of the road.

The landing knocks the wind out of me, and I throw up, not entirely sure if from the impact or everything else, and I lean back, trying to catch the breath that seems to keep escaping into the night, fogging up the air instead of entering my lungs. I throw up again, pressing a hand to my chest, trying to scratch out the crushing weight—am I dying am I dying am I dying—and that’s when I see my skates tossed out where they’d been flung out of the bag; stark black against the snow, across from the bicycle itself lying haphazardly across the curb. I scramble forward, picking them up and clutching them to my chest, trying to remember how to breathe.

The street is empty. I’m alone.

No. No, not now,pleasenot now—

“What is it, what’s wrong?” Katya asks, panicked, and I shake my head violently, squeezing my eyes shut.

“Get her out of here,” I manage to say in Lian’s direction, even as I can feel my chest tightening like a balloon about to pop, like someone’s sitting on top of it. I dig my palms into my closed eyes until I’m essentially blinding myself, but I can’t bring myself to notice, let alone care.

Obviously, neither of them listens to me. It’d be almost comical if I weren’t so busy trying to escape the crushing grip my life has on my throat. I can feel Katya coming closer until she kneels down in front of me, putting her hands on my face, gently pushing my sweaty hair off my forehead. The feeling is so good in a sea of bad that I let out a choked whimpering sound.Pathetic. Dad was right, you’re just a pathetic piece of shit—

“How do I help?” she asks softly, and it takes all my remaining self-control to not burst into tears just at that.

“I don’t—I—you—” She can’t see me like this, shecan’t, but I can’t even get the words out to tell her to go. Somehow, though, it doesn’t matter. It doesn't make a difference.

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