Any normal teenage girl would have been eager to take advantage of the lack of chaperoning. But I wasn’t a normal teenage girl. I was going to be an Olympic champion, and I wasn’t about to do anything stupid to jeopardize that. Like stabbing my brother, no matter how much he might deserve it. Or getting myself knocked up and having to spend our dwindling training funds on an abortion.
Everyone thinks Heath Rocha was my first love. He wasn’t.
My first love was figure skating.
It started in February 1988—the Winter Olympics in Calgary. I was four years old, and up way past my bedtime, watching the last night of the ice dance competition.
Lin and Lockwood were the final couple to take the ice. As they posed in the center of the rink, awaiting the first note of their program music, the camera zoomed in—straight past Kirk, with his skintight costume and slicked-back hair, to focus on Sheila’s face alone.
The skaters who’d gone before had looked as if they were swallowing their nerves, hoping and praying to whatever god they believed in that all those years of grueling work would pay off with Olympic glory.
Not Sheila Lin. A smirk played across her lips, which were painted the same ruby hue as the jewels shining in her black hair. Even as a kid with no knowledge of the sport, I was sure she would win. Sheila looked like she’dalreadywon—like she had the gold medal around her neck and her blade firmly planted on the still-twitching corpse of her competition.
I didn’t become a skater because I harbored some childish fantasy of wearing sequins and spinning around like a pretty little top. I became a skater because I wanted to feel likethat.
Fierce. Confident. A warrior goddess covered in glitter. So sure of myself, I could make my dreams come true through sheer force of will.
Skating was my first love, but in the intervening years it had become so much more. It was the only thing I was good at—my best hope for survival, for escape from that dark and crumbling house, from my brother and his rages. And if I worked hard enough, if I got good enough…one day I might become as invulnerable as Sheila Lin.
Nationals was the first step, the beginning of everything. Soon, I told myself, staring into the shadows beyond my bedroom window, Heath and I would be free of this place.
And no matter what, we would be together.
Chapter 4
The sun was rising by the time I managed to sneak out of the house.
Lee lay facedown on the sofa in the parlor. The fireplace hearth was scattered with cigarette butts, and liquor bottles left rings all over the original hardwood floors. My brother’s idea of a quiet night in.
Outside, the morning was crisp and calm, silent aside from the gentle lap of the waves and the crunch of my shoes on the gravel driveway. I picked up my pace, jogging past Lee’s mud-spattered pickup truck to follow the path I knew Heath had taken in the dark.
My childhood home is in a far-flung Chicago suburb closer to the Wisconsin border than to the city, dubbed The Heights due to itsveryslight elevation over the pancake-flat landscape surrounding it. Most of the area was populated in the late 1800s, following the fires and labor riots that sent all the richest assholes fleeing downtown Chicago for the relative safety of Lake Michigan’s northern shore. The Shaws had already been there for decades.
My some-number-of-greats-grandfather bought a big patch of lakefront property back when the area was nothing but dirt and sand and black oaks bent double by the winds that whipped across the water. A generation after him, another Shaw built a house right on the lakefront, leaving plenty of forest to block the view of future prying neighbors.
The house itself is relatively simple: a modest flagstone farmhouse with a few Gothic revival flourishes. It’s the land that’s valuable. Every decade or so, developers come sniffing around, offering stacks of cash,and whichever Shaw is currently in residence tells them to fuck off, sometimes with Midwestern passive-aggression, other times with the barrel of a shotgun.
You can see how I came by my winning personality.
As a girl, I hated that house. It had already fallen into cobweb-choked disrepair when my parents inherited it, and my mother passed away before she had a chance to carry out her grand redecoration plans. If I wasn’t at school or at the rink, I was usually running wild outdoors—on my own at first, and then with Heath by my side. In warmer months, the lake itself was our favorite spot. We’d wade through the waves, climb on top of the rocks to watch the sailboats and freighters passing by, and build bonfires in the small strip of sand that passed for a private beach.
When the weather turned, we retreated to the stable. Everyone still referred to the building that way, though it hadn’t held any horses since decades before my father was born. Made of the same gray stone as the house, it sat near our northern boundary line, right next to the family burial plot. Lee steered clear of that corner of the property; he never came to visit our parents’ graves, not even on their birthdays or the anniversaries of their deaths.
So when Lee banned Heath from the house barely an hour after our father’s funeral, it seemed like the ideal hiding spot. For weeks, I smuggled things out to him: candles, firewood, an old mattress I dragged up from the cellar, even a battery-operated boom box.
As soon as I entered the stable that morning, I could tell Heath hadn’t gotten any more rest than I had. He’d pulled the mattress into the warmest stall, away from the shattered skylight that served as a makeshift chimney, and a Debussy nocturne played on the classical radio station he tuned in to when he had trouble sleeping. Last night’s fire had burned down to ash, and though sunshine had begun to melt the frost crystals on the jagged remains of the glass, it was still so cold I could see my breath.
I’d brought him his warmest coat, which I draped over his shoulders before lying down beside him. He opened his eyes, and even in the dim light, I could see how bruised the right one was, a purple bloom unfurling between his lashes and cheekbone.
My fingertips ghosted over the swollen skin. It must have been tender, but Heath exhaled a cloud of steam and leaned into my touch.
“I’m going to kill Lee,” I said.
“It’s not that bad.” Heath’s teeth chattered when he spoke. I slipped off my shoes and rubbed my wool socks against his cold-numbed toes. “You can cover it up for Nationals, right?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure the watery drugstore concealer in my makeup kit was up to the task.
“I think freezing my ass off out here might’ve kept the swelling down.” He brushed my hair back, fingers catching in a tangle. “I’m just glad he didn’t hurt you.”
