Ellis Dean:Oh my god, the erotic fanfic. Imagine having strangers on the internet write multipart sagas about you banging.
Garrett Lin:No, of course I didn’t read it. I’m just telling you what I heard.
Ellis Dean:(He clears his throat, then reads from his cellphone screen.)“Heath thrust into her hot, wet center. ‘God, Katarina,’ he moaned as she rode his rock-hard member. ‘You even fuck like a champion.’ ” That’s one of the better ones, if you can believe it. We did a roundup on Kiss & Cry before the 2008 National Championships.
Garrett Lin:Bella and I were still in touch with Kat and Heath, yeah. We only saw one another at competitions, though.
Francesca Gaskell:I feel bad saying it, but it was kinda nice, not having them at the Academy anymore. Everyone could relax and just focus on skating.
Kirk Lockwood:Shaw and Rocha were certainly the most famous ice dance team. They were also one of the best. They were so in sync, sometimes they’d make mistakes in unison!
During the original dance at the 2007 U.S. Nationals in Spokane, Katarina and Heath stumble on their twizzles, at the same time and somehow still in rhythm to the song—which is now Kate Bush’s “Under Ice” rather than traditional tango music.
Garrett Lin:It seemed awful, if I’m being honest. All that attention. My sister and I grew up in the public eye, but what we went through paled in comparison.
Ellis Dean:Oh, theylovedthe attention. Well, Kat did anyway. And whatever Kat loved, Heath at least pretended to love too.
Jane Currer:Perhaps if they’d spent more time on their training and less time posing for photographs, they would have been happier with their results. We never knew whether they’d show up to any given competition with a new coach—or no coach at all.
Kirk Lockwood:The lack of coaching consistency was an issue. It’s remarkable they skated as well as they did, given all the upheaval and distraction.
Katarina’s brother, Lee, gives another tell-all interview: “Our father never told her no. Her eyes looked just like our mom’s. Katie would fix ’em on him like a gun sight until he surrendered.”
Inez Acton:Katarina and Heath both had this rebellious, sexy, no-fucks-given vibe. That’s what people loved about them—and what they hated. But we all know a “bad boy” and a “bad girl” are treatedverydifferently in our society.
Jane Currer:Champion skaters should be role models. Perhaps it’s old-fashioned of me to say so, but especially the ladies. So many young women look up to them.
Video footage immediately following the free dance at the 2008 World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden. Ellis Dean catches Katarina and Heath as they leave the kiss and cry. He has official press credentials now, and professional recording equipment.
“How are you feeling about the silver?” he asks. “Cause if you ask me, you guys got screwed.”
Heath has his hand on Katarina’s elbow, like he wants to hold her back. But she’s too fired up. “The results are bullshit, that’s what I think. Kipriyanov almost face-planted coming out of that combo spin. The judges just didn’t want to give us the gold.”
Jane Currer:I shudder to think of the influence Katarina Shaw has had on the younger generation of figure skaters. And continues to have, to this day.
Chapter 50
In 2009, the National Championships came back to Cleveland.
Heath and I walked through the arena doors hand in hand, same as we had nine years before. But everything else was different.
Instead of driving hours due east on I-90 in a rusty pickup truck with a busted heater, we’d flown first class, direct from a resort in Saint Lucia. We were staying at a five-star hotel rather than a roach-infested roadside motel, and a private car whisked us to the competition venue right on time for our warm-up. At our first Nationals, no one knew who we were. Now we were greeted by a horde of fans shouting our names.
When we looked up into the stands, we saw our names too: written a foot tall in glitter paint on banners and signs, collaged using Kit Kat and Heath bar candy wrappers, emblazoned on homemade shirts above screen prints of us kissing, even scrawled on faces in my signature lipstick—a vivid red shade with a subtle golden sheen called “Bold Medal Favorite,” one of the many lucrative brand campaigns our sports agency had negotiated on our behalf.
Everything we wore, from our skates to our warm-up gear to our underwear, was provided via some endorsement partnership or another. Turns out that once you become rich enough to afford whatever you want, people fall all over themselves to give you things for free. Our two-week stay in Saint Lucia had been comped too, because a few photos of Heath rubbing sunscreen onto my bare back outside one of the resort’s private cabanas would send bookings skyrocketing.
We had everything. Except the national title.
So far that season, we were undefeated. Gold at Skate America. Gold at the NHK Trophy. Gold at the Grand Prix Final in Goyang, where we got to stand on the top step of the podium above all of our major rivals: Volkova and Kipriyanov on the silver medal step, Bella and Garrett with the bronze.
A preview of the upcoming World Championships, I hoped. The event would be held in Los Angeles that year, and I was looking forward to trouncing the twins on their own turf.
First, though, we had to win Nationals. We’d been in first place after both the compulsory and the original dances, gaining a five-point lead over the Lins. We didn’t watch Bella and Garrett’s free dance, but I snuck a quick glance up at the Jumbotron as they awaited their scores. The twins looked exhausted, and Sheila’s lips were set in the stiff smile she used to signal profound disappointment. They hadn’t done enough.
Frannie Gaskell intercepted Bella outside the kiss and cry to give her a comforting hug—which Bella accepted with a stiff back, arms stuck by her sides. Frannie and her partner were in third, a few tenths of a point behind Bella and Garrett.
As Heath and I circled the rink, waiting for the announcement of our names, he seemed a bit distracted. More than once, he let go of my hand and bent over to adjust his skate laces. A cold stone of worry tumbled in my stomach. We were ahead, yes, but we had to skate clean, make sure the judges couldn’t deny us the gold.
