Page 141 of Oh, Flutz!

KATYA

THE NEXT DAY

Ipull frantically atthe skirt of my Top Gun short program costume, which got massively wrinkled on the flight.

“Shit,” I hiss, hearing the announcer declare the scores of the pair that just went on. I turn to Bryan, who’s been standing silently next to me brooding all morning, but right now I don’t care. “Is it noticeable?”

He doesn’t look at me. “It’s fine.”

“You didn’t even look.”

“Katya, I don’t give a shit, alright?”

“You’ll give a shit when they duck our artistic scores for a messy costume. It’s sloppy. It looks like we don’t care.”

“Do we?” he asks ironically, and I glare daggers at him.

“You’re impossible.”

“This coming from you?”

I shake my head. “I don’t even know why I try.”

He’s silent for a second, frustration radiating off of him. He’s so determined to not talk to me that I’m about to give up—we’re about to go on, it might be better to save any distractions for later, anyway—but then he finally glances back, eyes burning. “You know, if you really gave a shit, you never would have let this happen in the first place.”

He cannot be serious.“You want to do thisnow?” I hiss, and he scoffs.

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

“Because we can’t keep ignoring it, not because I figured we should have this conversation right before we go out there.”

“That’s right, I forgot. Everything is on your terms, all the time. Katya Andreyeva only does things when she feels like it. Katya Andreyeva doesn’t give a shit about how her actions affect other people. Katya Andreyeva doesn’t give a shit about other people, period.”

The hurt sinks in my chest like a rock. “That’s not true,” is all I can get out, voice pathetically small. He can’t possibly think that. Everyone else can think it, but not him.Please not him.

The look in those eyes just adds insult to injury. I don’t think he knows just how much power he has over me.

“You up and left in all of five minutes.” His voice is cold. Hard. The normal sunshine’s gone stormcloud grey, and his sea-blue eyes are frozen over. Any other time, he’d be trying to get as far away from me as possible. Right now, we don’t have that option. He tightens his grip.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I say, loudly, because I need him to understand this. Why doesn’t he understand it? Why can’t he see why I did it? Why can’t he see that I did it for him?

“Sure you did. You chose to leave. Abandon me, just like everybody else.”

“Stop,” I demand, because I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how else to get him to stop saying this. “You know that’s not true. You know I—”

“From the United States of America, Ekaterina Andreyeva and Bryan Young!”

We switch on our smiles. Switch off everything else.

Once the music starts, it’s like nothing ever happened—we’re doing some of our best work yet, moving in perfect unison, executing a flawless quad twist and throw triple Lutz; Bryan holding me straight over his head in the lasso lift and flipping me downwards to get more points for difficulty of exit.

Then the music shifts, meaning it’s almost time for the quad toe-triple toe combination. We step together, crossing backwards, then letting go and spacing apart. I slam my left pick into the ice behind me; one, two, three, four—and before I know what’s happening, I’m coming down too far back on my blade and pain is shooting up from the base of my spine, so burning hot that I can’t even try to save the landing, leaving me sprawling out on the ice.

Fuck, fuck,fuck—I push myself up, ignoring the sting on my hands, then do a shitty double toe to compensate so at least I can catch up. But by the time I do, and we’re skating hand in hand again, I realize something else.

“I can’t feel my leg.”

“What?”

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