The Girl Without a Face

THE GIRL

WITHOUT A FACE

Randall Hicks

& Hailey Hicks

THE GIRL WITHOUT A FACE

Copyright 2020 by Randall Hicks

Trade paper ISBN: 978-0-9839425-7-3; Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9839425-8-0; hardcover ISBN: 978-0-9839425-9-7

This is a work of fiction. References to public figures, real places, companies, products and organizations are used fictitiously and are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity. The same is true for dialogue by public figures. All other characters, places, events and dialogue are the product of the authors' imagination and are not to be construed as real.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews or articles. Printed in the U.S.A.

Cover design: Michaela Apfler

WordSlinger Press / WordSlingerPress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (redacted for ebook version)

(LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018414 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018415

Praise for Prior Books by Randall Hicks

THE BABY GAME

Light, easy-to-read prose, self-deprecating humor and constant action place this first novel high on the must-have list.

—Library Journal

The ride is fast, the resolution is satisfying and it's got one of the best 'first kiss' scenes I've ever read.

—T. Jefferson Parker (Three-time Edgar Award winning author)

Winner Gumshoe Award (Best Debut Mystery, 2005)

Finalist for the Anthony, Barry and Macavity Awards

Book of the Month selection by Independent Mystery Booksellers Assn.

BABY CRIMES

Breezy and Beguiling.

—San Diego Union Tribune

Randall Hicks has the three vital ingredients for mega success: great narrative, humor and style. It’s smart, sassy and with a streak of compassion. Best of all, Hicks has that rarest of all qualities, he’s even better on your second reading.

—Ken Bruen (Shamus Award winning author)

ADOPTING IN AMERICA

Educational and empowering. No-nonsense, matter-of-fact advice while using a compassionate approach.

—Publishers Weekly

Showers the anxious parent with information.

—Booklist

Featured on The Today Show, CBS This Morning, PBS,

Sally Jessy Raphael, Mike & Maty, The Home and Family Show

and John & Leeza from Hollywood

STEPPARENTING: 50 One-Minute DOs & DON’Ts

A brilliantly lean book . . . enthusiastically recommended. [Starred Review]

—Library Journal

Acknowledgments

We can't begin to adequately thank the kind and generous people of the figure skating world who have contributed their time, expertise and enthusiasm to this book. They are all people we have admired for many years, and watched on television during countless U.S. national championships, Grand Prix and Olympics. To have them personally sharing their valuable time with us to help make this book as authentic as possible is greatly appreciated. If their name appears in this book, lending it realism, it is a sign of our great respect for their talents.

First and foremost, thanks to one of the world's top coaches, Tom Zakrajsek (Coach Z), coach of countless U.S. national champion and Olympic skaters. He dedicated so much time in answering our questions, and his knowledge and patience were limitless.

Thanks to: Tom Dickson (five-time USFS Choreographer of the Year), for his expertise in music and choreography; Todd Sand (two-time Olympian, world champion medalist and four-time U.S. national champion), for his insight on pairs skating; Jeremy Abbott (two-time Olympian, four-time U.S. national champion, and Grand Prix Final winner), for his singles expertise; Tatjana Flade, leading figure skating journalist, for her insight and expertise; Leslie Deason (Master-Rated coach in Carlsbad, California) for her personal demonstration of some of the technical aspects of figure skating; those who wrote pre-pub reviews: Joanne Vassallo Jamrosz (Skating), Susan D. Russell (IFS) & Paula Slater (Golden Skate); and to skating icons, Rafael Arutyunyan and the Shib Sibs, Alex & Maia Shibutani, for their kind letters of encouragement after receiving our first draft. We loved the early support! And thanks to Ryan Hicks for his suggestions.

Special thanks to Brian DeFiore of DeFiore and Company, as well as our many advance readers, especially Barry Meadow, Lisa Albright Ratnavira and Bonnie Hiler. Your contributions are greatly appreciated.

Any mistakes are those of the authors, not the experts who have advised us. There are a few areas where we have taken literary license and not strictly followed the USFS and ISU rulebooks.

Table of Contents

Praise for Prior Books by Randall Hicks

Acknowledgments

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About the Authors

About the Ice Castle

1

K, here’s the bio.

Katie Wilder. Fifteen. Blonde and blue. What my dad calls willowy, which is polite for no boobs.

Skater. As in ice.

And

I

don’t

have

a

face.

Legit. No exaggeration.

Not my favorite story, so details later, but third and fourth-degree burns to my face and neck when I was three—think marshmallows in a fire. And yeah, skin really does turn black when it burns. At least the dark skin contrasts nicely with my blonde hair. It gives me more color options when selecting from my many party dresses for the constant invitations I receive for tea parties and social galas.

Don’t believe me? Google Image it. You’ll even see my face there. Last I checked it was on page four, second row, third from the left, but it moves around the page. So go ahead, do it. You'll see. Not my whole face due to confidentiality, but enough for me to know it's me. In the name of science, shared with the world.

Actually, don’t. Because you’ll hate me if you do. And yourself.

Trust me, you will. Never having had a single friend in my life (a dad and a dog don’t count), I’d given it some thought. Like can’t-sleep-all-night thought, and here’s the circle of hate . . .

If you see my face, or a face like mine, you will feel

revulsion,

followed by

pity.

Then the revulsion again, wishing you’d never seen it. Like a bloody car wreck you don’t want in your memory bank. Now comes the guilt for what you feel, then hating yourself for your shallowness, for wishing people like me didn’t exist. So then you’d hate me, for making you hate yourself.

See?

Lose, lose, all the way around.

But in a weird way, figuring it out actually made me feel better, the hatred/fear/pity/revulsion thing in others, and the friendless/faceless thing that is me. Life’s like a roll of the dice in the cosmos, and mine came up with a number that is not supposed to exist. Whatever. Still, it gave me some peace in my aloneness. My meness. An acceptance for what is, and what will never be.

And I can live with that.

I have to.

So since no googling (we agreed right?), here’s the selfie. Believe me, your imagination will be kinder than reality.

Instructions:

1. Imagine a face made of wax.

2. Put face in oven.

3. Leave face in oven until severely melted.

4. Remove from oven.

5. Vomit.

I’ve been told I’m actually lucky. Ha! I guess God really hooked it up for me. At least my body is unaffected. In fact, it’s actually perfect. (Well, except for those mosquito bites I have for breasts.) But athletically a perfect body anyway.

Enough about my face though, or lack thereof. I don’t dwell on it. What I do instead is skate. Night and day. How good am I? The truth? I mean, I didn’t exactly sugarcoat the whole no face thing. So my skating?

Damn good. Olympic good. In the practice rink anyway. Of course, the real test is competition, but that’s not possible for me. I know only one rink. My rink. The Ice Castle in Lake Arrowhead, in the San Bernardino mountains of southern California. Yes, SoCal has mountains. Snow even.

Skating is the family business. I may have got a slap in the face from God—wait, that’s kind of funny—get it—slap in the face? LOL. Anyway, maybe I got shortchanged in that department, but I got a double dose of skating genes from my parents. Both were figure skaters and almost Olympians. Dad became a coach. Gloria (I refuse to call her Mom) became . . . absent.

I think somehow I’d have found my way on skates even if my dad hadn’t laced me up at 18 months. Walking and skating were one and the same, skating just easier. A fish in the ocean could not feel more at home than I do on the ice. I love that I can jump higher than any other woman on blades in the world—at least according to my dad. That I can do a triple Axel as easily as skipping over a crack in the sidewalk—that is if I’d ever walked on a sidewalk. But mostly, I love it for one big reason.

When I’m on the ice, it’s the only time I forget that

I

don’t

have

a

face.

That’s why I live on the ice.

2

I hate calendars. Calendars are for people with things to do. And people to do them with. Friends. In other words, a life. What could be a crueler invention for someone like me? I’ve never gone to a movie theater. Never eaten in a restaurant. Been in a store. Gone on a bicycle ride. No grade school sleepovers or Chuck E. Cheese birthday parties. No school. And I’ll certainly never get married. Or have a baby.

And

I’ll

never

be

kissed.

But I was alright with all that. Really. My world was peaceful. Safe. Predictable. Just the way I wanted it, and just the way things should be for someone like me. Besides, movies taught me all I needed to know about the outside world—and thanks—but I’ll take a pass. Mean Girls, High School Musical and The Fault in Our Stars showed me the teenage life cycle: dis, dance and die. Hollywood wouldn’t lie. So I was content in my perfect solitary world.

And then it all changed.

Forever.

I got up before dawn to get in two hours of ice time before breakfast. I was just getting off the ice when I heard the phone, so it was me getting Uncle Robbie, my dad’s brother. Just after 8:00 a.m., early for him to call.

Katie, Katie! So excited he said my name twice. "Get your dad! Please. Right away!" It was positive excitement, so I wasn’t alarmed. Just curious.

Uncle Robbie, what—

"Just get him, honey! Please. Right now. No! No! Never mind! I’m coming over. Tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes."

With that he was gone. Unlike him to interrupt me, not to mention hang up on me. And excitement wasn’t a word you’d associate with Uncle Robbie. His idea of excitement was a new sweater vest. On sale.

His cabin was just a mile and a half away, but on the curvy mountain roads of Arrowhead that meant at least ten minutes. That gave me time for my usual after-workout shower, a five-minute blast of steaming water followed by 60 seconds at max cold. I was drying my hair when I heard Uncle Robbie let himself into the kitchen via the back door. I could hear the sound of my dad putting his pot of morning tea on the stove.

The rink has the public entrance in front, with our apartment attached in the back. There is also a string of six cabins behind the rink for resident skaters in training. But that was back in the glory days of the Ice Castle. The glory days of my father actually. Before his cover-of-People-esque fall from grace. Now the cabins are vacation rentals to bring in some extra money.

I moved closer to the oversized heating vent in my room. It was directly across from the one in the kitchen, so any conversation was as clear as if I was in the room with them. I’d grown up falling asleep listening to the sound of conversations in the kitchen, although usually the conversations were just my dad watching TV. He barely had more visitors than I did. Sad considering I had none.

ROBBIE: Davey! Davey!

Still with the double naming, although no one called Dad Davey but Uncle Robbie. Dad’s status as a coach, even now, got him full use of his fancy triple play: David Cole Wilder. Just one of those semi-show biz things of the skating world that he had once been such a part of.

DAD: Robbie, what’s up with you? You look like you’re ten years old and it’s Christmas morning.

I could hear the amusement in his voice at Uncle Robbie’s uncharacteristic excitement.

ROBBIE: "It’s Juliette! She’s recanting! She’s recanting!"

I didn’t realize my legs had given away until I found myself sitting on the floor.

Juliette?

Recanting?

Juliette Francine’s name was not a welcome one in our home. Dad had been her coach sixteen years ago, back when my mom was pregnant with me. Juliette was seventeen, a French phenom who’d just won the European Championships and was a favorite to medal in the Olympics. She’d lived here at the Ice Castle, back when it was called the campus. The pictures of those glory days were still on the walls.

Thirteen Olympic medals represented by those photographs: five gold, three silver and five bronze. Three of those golds my father’s. As a coach anyway. The rink must have been so cool back then, like a tiny college for elite skaters from all over the world. My parents owned the rink, and Dad was the most famous of the resident coaches. The rink was not even open to the public. It was dedicated solely to training high-level skaters.

But it had all ended sixteen years ago, the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. Dad and Juliette, both front and center media stars in different ways. Dad, only thirty-eight years old, crazy young for a top coach, and with rock star good looks and an ego to match. And Juliette, his newest star, a Guess model on skates.

It took only thirty seconds for both their worlds to end.

3

Anticipation had been high. Ladies figure skating is the signature event of every Winter Olympics, and Juliette had been its poster child. She had it all.

Youth,

sex,

innocence,

beauty.

Juliette was one of the favorites to win the gold, with anticipated tens of millions in endorsement dollars awaiting her on the other side. Smile and sell the world soap, face lotion and tampons.

The beginning of the end was just ten seconds into her long program. She was already in first place by the narrowest of margins after the short. Skate a clean program and the gold was hers.

She fell on her first jump, a simple triple toe loop. A jump she—any elite skater—could do in their sleep. Then she caught an edge and fell again on a flying sit spin. When she got up the panic was in her eyes. A deer in headlights. Any chance at the gold was gone. Epic fail. She and everyone knew it. But still an outside chance at a medal.

Silver or bronze.

And then she fell a third time, going down hard and hitting the back of her head, the ice like cement. A sick sound like a stick breaking, echoing through the arena. And she didn’t get up. She laid there, lifeless.

At least that’s the way it looked. I’ve seen the video hundreds of times. I torture myself with it. Hating her for not dying. There’d been screams from the crowd followed by absolute silence. They carried her off the ice on a stretcher, my dad at her side, distraught, touchingly pressing his forehead to hers as if transferring life. His lips an inch from hers, speaking silent words. That was the photo that found its way onto every front page and news story around the world.

Juliette, even more famous.

My dad, as it turned out, infamous.

Her press conference was given from her hospital bed two days later—yeah, that’s on YouTube too. Concussion, neck brace, the whole dog-and-pony show. But it wasn’t the sympathetic puff piece from an adoring press she’d been anticipating. The sympathy was still there, but some questions were being asked by the media. Forcefully. Rumors were swirling of her sneaking out for some late-night partying the night before the long program. Not dedicating herself to her sport and her country. She’d been France’s best chance at a gold and they wanted answers.

But the hard questions ended when she burst into tears and haltingly, gasping for air, begged for them to leave her alone. She said she could not hide the truth any longer.

Her truth anyway.

She claimed she’d been in a sexual relationship with my father for months leading up to the Olympics, and she’d felt powerless to say no. Worse, she feared she might be pregnant. It was a wonder she could skate at all, but she had to try for her country. So she said anyway. Poor, poor Juliette.

It turned out there was no pregnancy, but proving there had been no affair was impossible.

He said.

She said.

Skating may look beautiful on the ice, but behind the scenes it can be a brutal, take-no-prisoners world. My dad had told me he’d met the best people of his life in skating, but there was another side too—filled with jealous coaches, maniac parents and prima donna skaters. Dad’s fast success—the first ever to coach both the ladies’ singles and pairs to gold in the same Olympics—made him a target. Others could only rise with his fall, so the skating world’s silence in his support was deafening.

So maybe no surprise that no one heard any words but those from Juliette. She was an adorable and can’t-hide-it-even-if-she-tried sexy girl with tears in her eyes, and Dad was a man whose bedroom had been one wall from hers for years of training. No cabin for Juliette. She shared the rink apartment with Dad and Gloria. She had what’s now my room in fact.

Maybe making it worse was the world’s knowledge that Gloria was pregnant (me), and she was virtually a slightly older clone of Juliette. Both skaters, beautiful and young. So it was easy for the world to imagine Dad’s taste ran to the type, and what a sexy story for the normally staid Olympics. Sex triangle on ice!

So Dad was finished. The cover story photograph, initially seen as incredibly touching and sweet, was then seen as evidence of his lechery. No real evidence, so no trial, but abandoned by the skating world. His once famous Ice Castle became a public rink, and his coaching became just local kids with big aspirations and little talent. The locals of Lake Arrowhead knew Dad, so knew the story had to be bogus, so at least we still had a community to support the rink, but little else. The only winner was me, coming along just months later:

The world’s best skating coach since I was a toddler.

Focused

only

on

me.

My mind snapped back to the conversation in the next room as I heard the sound of a coffee cup hit the counter. Hard. Like the arm holding it could no longer support it. My dad’s I’m sure.

DAD: What are you saying, Robbie?

His voice had become quiet and I had to put my ear right to the vent. There was hope in his words.

DAD: "Did . . . did she call you? Juliette?"

Uncle Robbie was a lawyer and handled business for Dad, not that there was much of it anymore.

ROBBIE: That little coward? No. Someone from a book publisher called me. From New York City. An editor named . . . oh, never mind . . . someone called me. She’s written a book—

DAD: Juliette?

ROBBIE: "Yes, yes! Juliette! Just listen! There’s a book coming out. About her life. Skating and . . . up to now . . . her life. She’s admitting she made the whole thing up! The truth is finally coming out, Davey. That you did nothing wrong!"

There was silence as my dad absorbed what he was hearing. I could hear the bewilderment in his voice when he finally spoke.

DAD: Why? Why did she do it?

A snort from Uncle Robbie.

ROBBIE: Who cares? Maybe she found Jesus. Or maybe she just wants to sell books. You’ve got to have something juicy if you want to get on some talk shows, get a bestseller, be famous again.

DAD: "No, I meant, why did she do it back then? Why did she lie?"

ROBBIE: Who knows? The lady who called me promised to FedEx an advance copy for you today. And it’s going out to the media too. I guess to get a little buzz going. Then the book is released next week. The short version I got on the phone was Juliette’s life was a mess, and she just fell apart. You were her scapegoat.

After her failure at the Olympics, Juliette never skated again, not with any success anyway. Her story was a sad one. She remained a celebrity of sorts, like all the other damaged ones who never seemed to go away. There had been drugs. Alcohol. Arrests for abusing both. But she was still beautiful and sexy and a figure of sympathy. Particularly in Europe, she was a guaranteed headline, usually spotted with a race car driver or somebody super rich. She’d become a dating accessory, a taste of the month, then discarded.

And then Uncle Robbie said out loud what had just occurred to me.

No.

No!

Don’t say the words. Saying them out loud would make them reality. But he said them anyway.

ROBBIE: "You know what this means don’t you, Davey? You’re back! You are going to be back in business!"

Yeah.

They’d be calling.

All of them.

The skaters. The parents. The coaches. The sponsors. The media.

All those people in Dad’s old life would be back. Or at least the new crop of them sixteen years later. Their excuse to hate him was gone. The prince was back. And I knew my private world was over.

4

I wore my mask to practice that afternoon. I’d found it when I was six and exploring one of the rink’s many storage rooms. Discarded skating costumes, old equipment, and the mask. It was nothing but a smooth hard shell with holes for eyes, nostrils and mouth. White with black accents, it looked nothing like a real face. More like Japanese art, a kabuki mask.

Before the mask, I’d just stay in my room when the rink had its public hours, but I wanted every minute on the ice. So one day without even telling my dad, I was out there, the mask a little too big for my face but the pretty pink ribbons from each side tied securely behind my head, weaving between the Saturday night skaters whose only goal was to keep their ankles straight and not fall down, a couple of brave souls skating backwards.

I don’t know what they made of me, the little girl skating like a demon, kamikaze maneuvers around the skaters, tossing in singles and doubles when I’d find a clear patch of ice. I had been so focused that I hadn’t even noticed when the ice had emptied, all the skaters having moved to the sides to watch me. But when I finished center ice with a scratch spin, I heard them. Their applause. Loud and long. I even bowed. One of the coolest moments of my life. Actually, the best moment of my life.

Until the mask fell off.

Maybe I didn’t want the applause to end, or I just wanted to show off, but on my way off the ice I tossed in a double Lutz. But not enough speed, caught an edge and went down hard. The mask skidded away, leaving me

naked.

Every eye fixed on me. Mouths opened in horror, Edvard Munch’s The Scream times fifty. At least, that’s how I remember the faces in the crowd.

And silence.

The mask ten miles away and hours to get to it.

My hair tied back, not hiding my face, even though my little hands tried.

One child crying in fright and confusion at the sight of me. Then two. A collective intake of breath that practically took the air out of the rink. No ears. No nose. Just holes in distorted flesh. An arena so filled with pity that even at age six I knew revulsion was preferable. So what did I learn that day?

How to tie a freaking knot, that’s what!

So Dad understood the mask. But I’d never worn it when it was just us. Not ever. There was no public to hide from. But on that day it wouldn’t be my face I was hiding. It was the emotions it would show.

I’d never lied to my father.

But today was going to be the day.

I loved him too much not to lie.

It had been only a minute after Uncle Robbie left that Dad was knocking on my door. Even his knocks radiated his joy. I knew he’d be bursting to share the news with me.

Daughter.

Best friend.

Maybe nerdy shrinks would label it as unhealthy codependence, easy to happen when you are both outcasts, and skating is a shared addiction. But I couldn’t be his daughter or his friend at that moment, and I let his knocks go unanswered. I made it to my bed just in time to look like I’d gone back to bed as he opened the door. Then felt shame as he whispered my name, so clearly hoping I was awake. But I kept up the sleep act.

With a whispered, Love you, sleep well, he closed the door, leaving me with my shame.

And my thoughts.

Because it hadn’t taken me long to realize that I’d been wrong earlier that morning. Yeah, my dad’s life was going to change. There were less than a dozen elite skating coaches in the world and my dad would take his place there again. Even after an absence of sixteen years and three Olympics, that kind of talent was never forgotten, especially after what they’d now see as his unfair ouster. And I knew one thing no one else did—that he’d never stopped coaching. He’d just been coaching only me.

So the skating world would be waiting with its arms open, and an apology for his wrongful banishment.

But only if he let them.

And he wouldn’t.

I knew his mind, and his heart, better than he did. He’d celebrate the news for a while, then tell Uncle Robbie to turn the inquiries away. He’d imagine leaving for weeks at a time for major competitions with me left alone, or only Uncle Robbie to watch me. He’d imagine skaters living at the campus again, and worry about me learning to interact with them 24/7. No privacy to take off my mask. He’d imagine me locking myself in my room each day, becoming the lost girl he’d worked so hard to never let me become.

So Juliette may have freed him, but he still had a jailer.

Me.

5

My face might be hideously scarred, but that didn’t mean it didn’t show emotion, and no one could read me like my dad. So when I went out for my eleven o’clock session, I had the mask on before I even left my room. Dad already had his skates on and had been warming up on the ice. As he skated up to me I could literally see the question forming on his lips: Why are you wearing the mask?

But then Parenting101 kicked in and the wisdom of silence took over. Clearly he thought it better to say nothing than the wrong thing. The poor guy. Tucked away somewhere in his room was probably a Guide to Single-Parenting a Teenage Daughter. What he needed was Parenting a Teenage Daughter Without a Face, but I don’t think Amazon or Barnes & Noble stocked that.

So instead he started with, Uncle Robbie came by this morning. And then he excitedly told me what I already knew.

There was no need to fake a look of surprise with the mask, so I put it into my voice. Dad! I ran the few steps between us and gave him a hug. I’m so happy for you.

His infectious grin flashed. It’s amazing, isn’t it? I . . . I don’t even know what to think yet.

Dad, what’s to think about? They’re going to be begging you to coach again. It’s going to be fantastic! Lie #1 (about the fantastic part anyway).

I sat down to lace up my skates and gave him my profile so he couldn’t see the lie in my eyes. I said, It’s going to be so exciting to have some of the best skaters in the world here again, like in the old days. Lie #2. Then sealing it excitedly with, Dad, don’t you know how many times I’ve looked at the pictures on the walls and wished I’d been alive back when all the top skaters were here? To be a part of that? Lie #3 (actually some truth in that one).

He stepped off the ice, pausing just to put the guards on his skates, and sat down next to me to get at eye level. His face was doubting, wordlessly asking, really?

The fact was that I’d quashed his every effort for me to interact with people since I could remember, so this sudden turnaround wasn’t ringing true to him. But he didn’t go there. Instead he said, "Well, honey, I don’t even know if I want to coach again, or if they’ll want me. That’s way down the road. I’m just so glad to have . . . you know, all the other stuff gone."

I felt a rush of shame. The biggest news for him had nothing to do with coaching again, which was all I was thinking about. I could only imagine what it had been like to live with the accusation hanging over his head that he’d slept with Juliette, and worse, someone he’d been trusted to care for as her coach. If he’d had one wish to grant him anything in the world, he’d use it on me having a normal life. But right behind that—he’d gotten his wish: his name was cleared. I should be celebrating this with him, not hiding behind a mask.

I finally turned to face him. "Dad, what do you mean if they want you? Your skaters have won three gold medals! Stop being so modest. I leaned my shoulder into his and gave him a bump. Don’t you want other skaters here too, Dad? Don’t you want to coach someone besides me? Someone the world can see? Someone who can compete? And win?" In other words, someone besides me who we both knew would never leave the rink.

He just stared at me with that sweet face I knew so well, and then as if in slow motion I saw his eyes moisten, then overflow, as ignored tears ran down his face. He gently cupped his hands around my face. "Oh, honey, is that what you think? That I’ve been missing something? Do you have any idea how much I’ve loved teaching you to skate? You’re not just my daughter, you’re the best and the hardest working skater I’ve ever coached. You’re my life, Katie. I don’t need anything else. Anyone else."

Okay, now time for my tears to come. I locked my arms around him. My God, we were living in a Hallmark Channel movie. We just needed an off-screen orchestra for some sappy music. We were linked not just by skating and family blood, but by the accident that destroyed me—or created me. A life changed at age three.

Dad couldn’t have avoided the pick-up that hit us. The drums of gasoline it was carrying sent a spray of fuel across my face—like nectar for the fire that followed. He was knocked unconscious, leaving me a prisoner in my car seat in the back when the car erupted in flames. We’d been sledding just a couple miles from home and were headed back, soaked and shivering but laughing. They say our wet winter clothes saved us—but that was no help for a face wet with gasoline. The burns to my body were minor by comparison, as were Dad’s. The only reason I still have eyes is that evidently I covered them up with my wet gloves.

I hugged him so tight I think I might have actually hurt him. Here he was, giving me an out, despite the Oscar-caliber lies I’d just delivered. All I had to do was say, Okay, and keep things just like they were. Just one word from me, and our lives would continue as they were. Just him and me. And skating. Just one little word. But that’s not the word I said.

I stood up and pulled the guards off my skates. No.

He stood up alongside me and I could see the surprise on his face. I didn’t even know if I was lying anymore. Dad, you’ve got to coach again. And I didn’t plan to say it, but the words tumbling after were, And I need to grow up.

God, where did that come from?

But before I could change my mind, or let him change it for me, I said, Protopopovs, 1965 Worlds.

Dad had converted old TV and film footage to digital so we could study all the great skaters, and we had memorized more than twenty programs, some of them going back even before my dad was born. Oleg Protopopov and his wife, Ludmila Belousova, were one of Russia’s greatest pairs skaters, winning gold in two Olympics and four straight World Championships. Unique for their grace and interpretation to their music, they were one of my favorites.

Every day my dad and I would take a break from training and choose a famous pairs program to skate—old school stuff, before fancy overhead lifts and twists. It was my favorite part of every day. Dad was still an excellent skater and incredibly strong, still able to throw me high enough to turn a triple. And as much as I loved skating alone, there was something special about pairs, especially with my dad. Most girls just get their wedding dance with their father. I’d never have that, but what I had was better.

And so after I did my warm-up, we skated. But for the first time ever, my thoughts were elsewhere. What had allowed me to lie so convincingly, first to him then to myself, was that I knew nothing would change immediately. The National Championships were just four months away, with the Olympics another month after that, quickly followed by the Worlds. Top skaters rarely change coaches, and if they do it’s usually right after the season ends, so that meant nothing would change for at least four or five months. That’s when Olympic expectations for so many would be unfulfilled, coaches blamed, and changes made.

So for now, I could convince myself

the

future

would

never

come.

But I was wrong.

I didn’t know it then, but Dad’s new