A group of friends tries to piece itself back together after losing its glue.
*****
It's a quiet October morning in Palo Alto, California, when the news break out--June Beaumont was...
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GRACE
It was pretty freaking cold in the ice-skating rink.
Like, I knew it was supposed to be cold in there, but, in case someone wanted to psychoanalyze me or something, they could also suggest the low temperature and the chills I felt running down my spine were courtesy of me, myself, and my bright personality.
Either way, whatever the reason was, I had grown quite tired of psychology ever since my mother had decided to spend a considerable amount of cash on a therapist, who occupied plenty of my free time—time I should be using to skate or study if I wanted to do something with my life.
I didn't feel like spending forty-five minutes three times per week just to hear someone with a PhD blabber about the personality disorder I had obviously inherited from my mother. There was no hidden meaning behind my reluctance to adhere to therapy; I simply didn't see how it would help me and I had better things to do.
My mother, the warmest person I knew—followed closely by the Night King—had ever so gracefully decided (and stolen my right to have an opinion in the process, but that was just how things worked in our household) that skating was now a privilege I had to earn. I'd earn it by cooperating in therapy, smoking less, and being nicer.
I'd be nicer when people stopped pissing me off.
I'd stop smoking when I found a better way of dealing with stress.
I'd start cooperating in therapy when it proved to be useful.
Maybe that was why I had been forced to go to therapy in the first place. Life worked in funny, mysterious ways, and all of them were doing a fantastic job of ruining my happiness and general will to live.
I knew it wasn't healthy to blame my mother for everything that went wrong in my life and, realistically, not everything was her fault. My insight skills were developed enough to allow me to come to such a conclusion, but I had to blame someone and blaming my dead friend sounded kind of rude.
So, now that my hours in the skating rink were at risk, I knew I had to push myself to the extreme to be able to keep the same level of perfect performance. My ankle had definitely seen better days, even though it was fully healed by now, but it was mid-November, and the temperatures were steadily dropping, which always brought a fair share of risks for my frail bones.
My therapist and my mother could suck it. I was not dropping out of the championship.
"You should take a break," Christina advised. She was wearing a heavy wool coat and a knit scarf, even if these temperatures were far from the worst we'd get in here, but she was still shivering on the stands. "You've been at this for over two hours."
