ACT I, CHAPTER I: Debut
word count. 8.8K. warnings. some illusions to like unhealthy thoughts/mindset but nothing really. links. main masterlist. on thin ice masterlist. ao3 link. a/n. this is so exciting. i am SO beyond excited to write this. it’s very figure skating heavy though so PLEASE if anyone has any questions, i am more than happy to answer. if you don’t know much about skating, things will probably get confusing.
THE EDGE is too shallow.
Paige feels it before she has the chance to take in the arena, the familiar music she hears everyday swelling around her, the bodies watching and the judges waiting and the cameras pointed. There's just the edge, the pressure of steel against ice, how it settled under her weight and threatens, just slightly, to slip if she doesn't correct it in time. She shifts, a barely noticeable adjustment through her ankle, and it bites properly this time, carving deeper, exactly where she needs it to be. Better.
Her arms are already set, shoulder checking. Her chin aligns naturally, without needing to be told. The entry stretches long across the ice, building speed that gathers under her blades, something coiled and ready to release. There's a voice somewhere, words painted across the inside of her skull, familiar and sharp, layering over everything else.
You're a dragon. Be a dragon.
It echoes across the edges of her cerebrum. She's watched Game of Thrones, did so in anticipation of this program that CD said fit her more than the others, a routine built off strength and determination. She's not usually one to focus on the artistry and emotion as a whole—this is a sport, after all, she wants to jump—but she enjoys the prospect of playing Daenerys, of being the dragon and the dominator of the competition, of everyone else kneeling at her feet. It's something she wants, something she longs for.
The takeoff snaps through her so cleanly it almost surprises her, though it shouldn't—she's done this enough times that surprise doesn't really factor in anymore. The pick digs, the vault comes fast, and then she's in the air, everything pulled tight, body taut, legs crossed, arms locked in against her chest as the rotations stack one over the other, quick and mechanical and exact.
One. Two. Three. Four.
She spots the ice and drops.
The landing holds. It's not perfect—it's never perfect, though she thinks last week in practice might have been the closest she's ever gotten—but it is solid, centered enough that the edge doesn't skid out from under her. Her knee absorbs the impact, a little deeper than she would've liked, her free leg swinking through a fraction wider before she checks it back in. It's controlled. It's what she would describe as fine, while everyone else would probably think something more along the lines of magnificent.
She's already leaving it behind, though. Much more to do, much more to get through.
The push out of the landing feeds straight into the next setup, no true pause or moment to sit in what just happened. The program doesn't give her that, and she wouldn't take it if it did. The next element is already there, already forming in her head before her blade even finishes the exit edge.
Quad toe-triple toe.
She adjusts earlier this time, making sure her weight stays over the skating foot, making sure the entry line doesn't drift. The pick goes in and she vaults once more, the air snapping around her as she pulls, faster this time, the rotation coming easily, almost automatically. The quad toe lands clean, and she steps back into the triple like it's nothing—because, really, at this point, a triple toe loop might as well be child's play to Paige.
Good.
That one is good.
The thought passes through, quick and quiet, might as well be a whisper, and then it's gone, filed away with the rest of it. There's no time or space to hold onto it, nor to feel anything about it. She's already moving, doing her crossovers, a couple simple transitions, building speed, setting up for the second quad toe.
The entry for it feels slightly off—her shoulders open just a little too early, her weight not as centered as it should be, as it is with her best ones—but she commits anyway. There's no backing out now, but she's the type that even if she could, she absolutely wouldn't. It's not in her nature. She pulls it in, forces the alignment back where it needs to be, and goes up.
The rotation is tight, fast, but she can feel the difference. It doesn't sit the same in the air. It's a fraction rushed, a fraction forced.
Still, she lands it. There's a small scrape, barely there, the blade catching just enough to not be deemed great, but she holds the edge, rides it out without stepping, without breaking any flow. It'll get a low GOE, she knows that, maybe a quarter underrotated call, but it still counts. It's still a quad in their book, which means it's better than anyone else in this competition can do.
Paige pushes out of it harder than necessary, almost as if she can skate away from the imperfection itself, as if the distance will somehow erase it. It won't; it never does. It's already been logged inside her brain, replaying in the background as she moves on.
Fix the shoulders. Earlier.
It's here that the program shifts, that she has to feed more into the choreography, focus as it threads through the music in a way she's been told is supposed to feel powerful, dramatic, something about embodying the character, about presence and projection and all the things she's heard a thousand times and still doesn't quite register with. Her arms hit their positions, her head turns where it's supposed to, and her edges cut clean patterns into the ice beneath her.
it looks right, which is all that matters.
The double axel is quick and easy, a relief after the quads, something simpler, something she doesn't have to think or prepare for nearly as hard.
The triple lutz-triple loop is the biggest flaw of the day. It isn't catastrophic, doesn't shatter the program in its entirety like mistakes often do. But she does feel it, instantly. The lutz is fine, normal. Her favorite jump, a fact that others call her crazy for. The rotation on the loop is also good. It's the landing that lacks, the edge immediately slipping when she comes down. She doesn't tumble or hit the ice, but she does step-out, clear and undeniable, certainly a negative GOE, her free foot touching down to catch herself so she can stabilize.
Shit.
She does her best to ignore it, to go on to the sit spin next, refusing to let it bleed into the rest of the program. It's one mistake, small and manageable.
Still.
It shouldn't have happened.
It never should.
It's irritating, more than anything. Even though it is the hardest triple-triple, it's not a quad. It's not deemed impossible by the media like the four-rotation jumps are. It's something she just wants to go back and fix immediately though she can't, though the program is still moving and she has no choice but to move with it.
Everything else is clean. The spins, the triple lutz-euler-triple sal, the triple flip, the step sequence. She finishes strong, which is important.
Her knees are pressed into the ice in her final position when the noise finally comes back, filtering in, reaching her. First, she feels the vibration under her palms where they hover just above the surface, then the low swell of sound that doesn't yet register as words or cheers, just pressure, large and surrounding. Paige's lungs pull in air slowly, controlled, the way she's trained them to after a program, even though there's a part of her that wants to gasp, to let it all rush in at once. She doesn't. There's a rhythm to this, too—there's always a rhythm.
She stays there for a second longer than necessary, head dipped, the wavy dirty blonde of her ponytail falling forward over her shoulder, letting the moment stretch just enough that it must look intentional from the outside. It probably does. It probably looks like she's feeling something—relief, maybe, or pride, or whatever it is people expect after a program like that.
Instead, she's still rewinding. The step-out cuts in sharpest, interrupting the rest of the replay, the exact moment her edge slipped and her foot touched down when it shouldn't have. She can feel it again, the slight loss of control, the irritation that flared with it. Everything else lines up behind it—quads mostly clean, the toe loop scrape, the other triples that are harder for the average skater but hardly anything to Paige, the way her arms might've been a little rushed through the middle section.
It all stacks, like normal. She makes mental notes, ready to nit-pick.
Exhaling slowly, she finally pushes herself up.
The arena comes fully into focus after that.
Almost everyone is on their feet, a standing ovation. She can see that now, rows and rows of bodies rising, hands clapping, some American flags waving, as well as other fan made ones with her face along with Geno's other skaters on them. The sounds begin to sharpen into something recognizable, into loud and constant cheering, echoing up into the rafters and back down again, rather than the muffled pressure she heard before. It's not subtle or restrained or polite in the way the Slovakian crowd reacts—it's much, much more than that.
They liked it.
More than liked it.
She knows why. This is bigger than just a (mostly) clean skate, this is something that's been anticipated for many years now. Paige did everything she could in juniors—three-time Junior World Champion, two-time winner of the Junior Grand Prix Final, the placements at U.S. Nationals. She did all of that, while landing jumps that even the top female senior skaters wouldn't be able to if they tried. She knows what this looks like to them; she knows what they're seeing.
Quads, on a senior stage. Not one, not two, but three. Already another record stamped next to the name Paige Bueckers in the history books, or Wikipedia, or wherever else you want to look.
She understands it, gets the excitement. She used to feel it, too, when she started, when she first landed her quad salchow at thirteen. Not so much anymore, though. By now, it's standard—to Paige, at least. To her mother, even more.
Paige's mouth curves into a smile anyway, one that's automatic and practiced, something she's learned to put on as easily as her skates. It's not exactly fake, just more so... placed. She lifts a hand, giving a small wave toward one side of the arena, then the other, acknowledging the noise because that's what she's supposed to do. Because it matters, in a way, that these people are awed by her.
Plushies then start hitting the ice, an average occurrence for the more famous side of figure skaters. The first one lands a few feet away, sliding toward Paige in a slow arc before losing momentum. Then another, then another, scattered across the surface in bright colors that stand out sharply against the white of the ice. She pushes off gently, gliding toward them, bending to pick up a couple.
There's a small bear, something with a scarf. She tucks them under her arm without really looking at, before her gaze moves on to the next one. It's a unicorn, obnoxiously bright pink, bubblegum-colored and kind of nauseating because it reminds Paige of Pepto Bismol. It's got a glittery horn and stitched-on eyes that are too big for its face. She picks it up off the ice, knowing it's the kind of thing she wouldn't choose for herself, making a mental note to just give it to Azzi when she gets back to Storrs. She can already picture it in Azzi's hands, probably laughing at how ridiculous it is, dimples out because she loves unicorns and she loves pink, how she'd certainly name it something stupid, just like she has with her collection of plushies at her house.
Paige gives another quick wave to the crowd, another small smile, and then she turns toward the boards. The glide feels longer now that her program is done, her legs heavier, something she only notices once she doesn't need them to be perfect anymore, a mix of exhaustion and the aftermath of holding everything together for four minutes straight and then letting go.
CD is waiting for her there, the coach who traveled with her here, looking pleased, steady, not overly emotional. Paige slows as she approaches, angling herself toward the boards, one hand already reaching out for the barrier as she comes to a stop.
"Hey," CD greets, as if they're just meeting up after a regular practice session instead of Paige's record-breaking performance on her first international senior stage.
The blonde nods once, still catching her breath, chest rising and falling beneath the itchy magenta dress. "Hey."
The few plushies Paige bothered to pick up get passed over first, CD taking them and setting them aside without much comment. The unicorn lingers in her grip a second longer before she hands that over, too. CD raises a questioning eyebrow at the bright pink monstrosity. Paige just huffs out a quiet breath, the closest thing to a laugh she's letting herself have right now. "Yeah. Not for me."
"Figured."
Her guards come next, CD holding them out and Paige lifting one skate, steadying herself against the firmness of the boards as she snaps it into place, then the other.
"Good skate," CD tells her once she's finished, passing her the Team USA jacket now.
Paige slides it on without much thought, the fabric cool against her skin. "Mm."
She grabs her water bottle, too, twisting the cap and taking a small and careful sip. It's enough to wet her throat, but not enough to feel it sitting heavy in her gut. She's aware of that, too—always aware of it, how even something as simple as water has to be controlled, accounted for.
They move toward the Kiss and Cry, and the noise follows them, still loud and buzzing, though starting to fade at the edges as they sit, replaced by something a tad more contained. Cameras are closer here, right by her face, ready to catch her reaction, people watching more directly. Paige sits forward slightly, elbows resting on her thighs, hands loosely clasped around the bottle. Her mind is already back on the program.
"Toe was borderline," CD says quietly, just acknowledging the fact. She doesn't sound disappointed about it—Paige supposes it's hard to, when she's the only one of their skaters that can do it.
"I know," she answers. "Felt it."
"Probably a q. Not much, though."
Paige nods again. She's already factored that in, thought about the GOE on it, the base value, the step-out deduction.
"Loop was messy," CD adds.
"Yeah," the blonde responds again, lacking any defensiveness, just stacking it up herself.
"Everything else looked good. Lutz was strong."
Paige's fingers tighten slightly around the bottle. "Could've checked it faster."
CD glances at her, a small, almost amused shake of her head. "You always could."
Paige doesn't smile back at the words. She just exhales quietly, eyes flicking up toward the screen for half a second before dropping again. The scores always feel like forever, the judges constantly taking their sweet time. Paige doesn't let the moments of waiting—she's impatient by nature and it's just an odd, suspended space to be in, one where everything has already happened but hasn't technically been confirmed yet. It's not as if she feels necessarily nervous today at it. She's already done the math in her head, knows roughly where she'll land, knows she'll be in the lead by a long shot.
Still.
The announcer speaks in Slovak, something Paige can't understand, but then the scores alight the screen, and she knows once more why the crowd has reignited.
163.78.
238.69.
It takes half a second to process. Paige stares while the arena erupts, even louder now than before.
It's a world record. For both the free skate and the total score.
Her mouth opens slightly, stupidly, for just a moment, something close to surprise slipping through before she can smooth it over. She hadn't been counting on that, not with the step-out and the quarter underrotation on the toe.
"Huh," she breathes out, mostly to herself.
CD's bony hand comes down on her shoulder, squeezing once, firm. "I told you it was good."
Paige nods, then lets herself smile. It's small, but real. Her teeth show, just for a second as she exhales, the tension in her shoulders loosening. She feels a tiny flush coat her cheeks and she scratches at her jawline, trying to keep herself composed. The crowd, of course, is doing the exact opposite of that, nearly deafening. For a moment, Paige lets it all exist without immediately picking it apart, like she does for everything else.
It's good.
It's really good.
And then it slowly settles. The smile fades back into something neutral, as quickly as it came. The numbers shift around in her brain, recalculating, adjusting. It could've been higher—if the loop had been clean, if the toe had been tighter. There's always somewhere to go, something left.
By the time she stands, by the time they're moving away from the Kiss and Cry, before the medal ceremony, her mother is waiting for her.
Irina doesn't move toward her right away, doesn't gush and hug her daughter like most parents would when their child breaks multiple world records. Instead, she stands just off the side, arms crossed, expression unreadable in a way that Paige knows how to read anyway. There's no smile. There's no visible anger either, which almost makes things worse.
Paige slows as she approaches, the remnants of the earlier reaction already fading out of her system, replaced by something coiled tight. "Hi," she greets hesitantly.
Irina's gaze drags over her thoroughly, taking everything in—the dress Paige has already expressed she hates, the posture, the way she's holding herself—before settling somewhere near her shoulder. She steps forward then, close enough to reach out, fingers immediately going to the collar of Paige's jacket. She doesn't hug her, of course—Paige doesn't even remember the last time she did. She just merely adjusts the fabric, smoothing it down like something was out of place. If there was, Paige didn't notice.
"You rushed your exit on the loop," her mother starts, Russian accent thick, the words clipped just slightly. "You lost control there."
Paige's jaw tightens for half a second before she forces it to relax. "I know."
Irina's fingers move to the zipper, tugging it up a little higher. Paige wouldn't be surprised if it choked her. "And the toe—your shoulder opened too early. That is why you scraped."
"I felt it."
Her mother's eyes, blue and sharp like ice, exactly like Paige's own, snap up, bore into her. "You should not feel it. You should fix it before." The words land precise like always, cutting in their certainty. There's no acknowledgement of the score, of the record, of anything that just happened beyond the mistakes.
Paige nods. "Yeah."
She doesn't bother saying anything else. There's nothing else to say that won't turn into something bigger, something she doesn't have time for right now. The urge to push back flickers—cutting and quick, to say something about how her mom never did any of this when she skated, never landed anything close to what Paige just did, never even had the same technical content to criticize—
It dies just as quickly as it comes. Because, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter and her mother is right. There was a mistake. There are always mistakes. That's the only part that counts moving forward.
Irina steps back slightly, giving her a once-over like she's checking that everything is in place once more. "This is only the beginning," she says. "Do not get comfortable."
Paige nods again.
It's true; this wasn't anything real. Not yet, not like what's coming. The Ondrej Nepala Memorial is a small competition, it doesn't even compare to the Grand Prix circuit. No one of true, threatening talent was here. This is not like the competitions that actually matter, the ones where everyone is there, where there's no room for step-outs or borderline rotations or anything less than exactly what she's capable of.
This is just the start.
THE HOTEL ROOM is quiet. It doesn't feel calm after a long day of travel like Paige would hope, but something more hollow, the space around her empty, waiting to be filled. She can't blame it; she feels like that herself sometimes. The curtains are half-drawn, letting in a thin strip of grey light from outside, the sky dimming, and the air carries that stale, recycled chill from the plane that has yet to leave Paige. She lies flat on her back on one of the beds, on top of the covers, not bothering to get under them yet, still in the clothes she wore on the flight, hoodie slightly twisted under her shoulders, one arm tucked behind her head while the other rests across her stomach, fingers loosely curled, holding onto something she can't see.
Her body is tired. It's not in the way it is after training, not the deep, familiar ache of muscles that have been pushed and stretched and used, but a dull, heavy exhaustion that rots her bones from hours of sitting still, of airports and security lines and cramped seats and the constant movement around her without any sort of calm. JFK to Seattle, Seattle to Kelowna. Her legs want to move. Her legs always want to move. And now that they can't—now that she's just lying here, doing nothing—they feel wrong, not belonging to her in the same way they do on the ice.
She exhales slowly, staring up at the ceiling without really seeing it, mind flooded with other things.
Seventeen.
It's her seventeenth birthday. She hasn't had much time to think about it, to dwell on it. Her mom mentioned it in passing, between flights, not even looking up from her phone, something about how they'd do something later, maybe, depending on the schedule. Jamelle had said happy birthday, too, quick and easy, another thing to check off before boarding. Paige had nodded, mumbled a thanks, and that had been it.
Birthdays are a time people are meant to celebrate—if she's honest, she's glad they're not. Turning seventeen isn't something she's particularly happy about, and neither is the day on which she was born.
Last year, she had felt rotted out and useless on this day. She was sixteen, but not in time. Sixteen, but not the right kind of sixteen. The ISU had bumped up the age requirement for seniors from fifteen to sixteen, with a cutoff date of September first, clean and definitive, a line she fell just on the wrong side of by only one month. One month. If she had been born earlier—if it had been September instead of October, if she had just torn her way out of that fucking placenta a few weeks sooner—she would have been a senior last season. She would have been in those competitions, in those fields, stacking results that feel only delayed now that she's finally here. Titles that could have been hers already, experience she could have built, a year she could have used before things start to change.
Because they will change. She's sure of it.
Geno and her have discussed it, and he made it clear that it wasn't something to panic about but also not something to ignore. There's not enough data, not enough history with girls doing what she does to make it a certainty, but there are patterns, there are trends, there are bodies that don't hold up the same way once they grow into themselves fully. The jumps get harder, the timing shifts, injuries become less hypothetical and more expected.
It's not as though she's felt anything like that yet. Her body listens to her the way it always has, sometimes stubborn but never denying. The rotations are still there, the snap, the air position, the way everything comes together when she needs it to. Nothing has slipped or dulled. She is not yet of decay, though, in a way, she supposes she could argue otherwise.
But she's sure it will come. At some point.
And every day she's not already ahead feels like something lost, something she's going to have to make up for later in ways that don't get easier the longer she waits.
Seventeen is more like time running out than time moving forward.
Her phone buzzes lightly against her stomach, pulling her out of the loop just enough that she blinks, shifting her head to the side, and picking it up easily. Notifications stack across her home screen—a couple birthday texts she hasn't opened yet, an email from Team USA, a couple tags on Instagram—but her thumb moves past all of it automatically, uninterested. Instead, she opens Twitter, hoping to doom scroll a bit.
She should have known better than that.
It's unavoidable, really, with the way her algorithms on all of her accounts are set up. The clips from Skate America from last weekend, the first Grand Prix of the season, are everywhere, and, truthfully, have been ever since the competition ended. Highlights, reposts, think pieces, edits with dramatic music layered over them, slow-motion breakdown of jumps that people don't fully understand but talk about anyway like they do. Paige scrolls through them impassively at first, until—predictably—she stops when she comes across Azzi's free skate.
Paige recognizes it immediately because of the way she moves across the ice. Sure, she knows what Azzi's dress looks like, knows she's skating to The Nutcracker, knows all of the obvious stuff. But it's the distinct way she glides along her blades, soft even when she's building speed, even when she's pushing hard into the ice.
Paige's thumb stills, and she can't help but watch. The video starts a few seconds into her program, one that Paige has watched several times in practice, saw her learn it piece by piece. Azzi's transitions flow into each other without visible effort, arms moving in ways that look less like placement and more like... something else. Paige doesn't have a word for it that she actually believes in, but she knows what people would call it—artistry, musicality. All the things that get brought up when her own skating is compared to someone like Azzi, someone who can tune in and feel and become one with the music, with the story.
Paige hardly cares about that. It's the jumps she's looking for. So, when the triple axel comes up, quick, her focus sharpens. The entry is clean, controlled, the edge held longer than Paige would hold it, the takeoff smooth without any visible hesitation. Azzi goes up, and the rotation is easy. It doesn't look an ounce forced, as if she doesn't have to fight for it. It's just clean and centered, her axis perfect, and when she lands, it flows, lacking any sort of scrape or adjustment or visible correction.
Paige's jaw tightens slightly. Her thumb moves before she consciously even decides to do it, tapping the screen, dragging the bar back to the start of the jump.
Again.
She watches the entry more closely this time, eyes tracking the edge again, the timing, how Azzi sets it up without rush. The takeoff is identical, the air position unwavering, the landing just as clean.
Again.
Paige replays it a third time.
And a fourth.
Each time, she’s looking for something different, something she can pinpoint as the reason it looks the way it does. The edge, or the timing, or the way her shoulders stay aligned through the takeoff, or the snap in the air that doesn’t look strained, doesn’t look like it’s being pulled together at the last second.
Her own attempts flash through her head without her asking for them, unwarranted and unwelcome. She's always been hesitant about that jump; it's why she's yet to attempt it in competition. Her weight is either off-center when she goes up, her axis tilted all wrong, or it's the landing that feels too tight, that needs to be saved.
She knows well her quads are harder, she does. The base value alone says it, the risk, the lack of women that even attempt them. There’s no question there. But still.
Paige’s thumb pauses over the screen, the video frozen mid-landing, Azzi’s blade just touching down, perfectly aligned.
It looks better. She looks better.
Before she can truly dwell on that can of worms, her phone lights up again, Azzi's name cutting through her own skate on the screen. Paige stares at it for a second, letting it ring, feeling caught even though Azzi doesn't know she's been replaying her program over and over. She doesn't know if she wants to talk, entertains the idea of letting it go to voicemail. It's a short and stupid thought to have, because it's Azzi, who she's known since they were ten, who she's always struggled with ignoring (yes, she's tried a few times). Her thumb presses accept and she lifts the phone to her ear, turning onto her side, staring at the beige and boring wall.
"Hey," she says, the word coming out huskier than she expects. She hasn't talked much today; her vocal cords are in a slight state of disuse.
"Hi," Azzi answers. Her voice is warm and she sounds like she's smiling on the other end. Paige imagines it, thinks of her bunny teeth and dimples. She hasn't seen that in a few weeks, hasn't heard her in a few weeks. It's abnormal for them; usually, she sees her every damn day, same time, same place, same practice. "Happy birthday."
The blonde huffs out a breath that almost turns into a laugh, but not quite. "Thanks."
"You're seventeen now," Azzi adds, something lightly amused in it, as if she's turning the number over in her mouth just to see how it sounds. Paige already did that; she didn't like the taste, or what came with it.
"Yeah," she mutters, shifting so she's half on her stomach now, pressing her cheek into the pillow, now staring at nothing. "Old as hell."
Azzi snorts softly. "Relax. You've got, like, one good year left before everything goes downhill."
"That's what I'm sayin'," Paige replies, her voice flattening into something dry, something easier to sit in, bask in. "Might as well retire now."
"You should. Save yourself."
Paige huffs again, a small, stupid smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. She bites at the inside of her cheek to get it to go away, skin between her teeth. "I'll think about it."
There's a brief stretch of silence that lacks a need to fill it, just the faint sound of movement on Azzi's end—voices in the background, her brothers if Paige had to guess, distant and alive in a way Paige's room isn't. She picks at the skin by her nail, ignoring the low flicker in her stomach. She must be hungry; she usually is.
"You get in okay?" Azzi asks after a second, voice having gone softer than normal, which is saying something. She's the most soft-spoken person Paige has ever met.
"Yeah," the blonde responds. "Flights sucked. I hate connecting."
"Where'd you go through?"
"Seattle."
"Could be worse."
"Still bad," she argues. The skin on her nail is picked off now, leaving red irritation. She lets her hand drop before she can continue, not keen on bleeding on the white hotel comfortable. "Just... sitting around all day. I hate not moving."
"Yeah," is Azzi's response, as though she understands exactly what that means without Paige having to explain it further. Paige appreciates that; she doesn't enjoy having to explain herself.
She presses her lips together for a second, debating. Exhaling, her gaze drifts back toward her phone, toward the paused frame still sitting there just beneath the call screen, Azzi frozen mid-landing. "You skated good," she decides on, trying for nonchalant, as if it's an afterthought, as if she didn't just spend however long watching said skate on repeat. "Last weekend."
There's a faint shift on the other end, a small muffling before becoming clear. "Thanks."
"I watched it," Paige adds. She's not sure why, though she feels like she needed to let it be known, as if leaving it out would be lying. "It was... good," she repeats, cringing a little at the lack of creativity in her words.
Azzi laughs, soft and low. "Just good?"
Paige rolls her eyes even though she can't see her. "You know what I mean."
“I do,” Azzi says, still smiling through it, Paige can hear it clear as anything.
She doesn’t respond to that right away. Her thumb brushes the side of her phone, her mind pulling, uninvited, back to the clip, to the way the jump looked, to the way it felt to watch it. “That axel,” she says finally, quieter now, placing something down carefully between them. “It looked easy.”
There’s a short pause, until Azzi hums. "Yeah?"
“Yeah,” Paige confirms, her voice neutral in the way she’s practiced it to be. “Like you didn’t even have to try.”
Azzi lets out a small breath, something almost like a laugh. “I mean, I did.”
“You know what I mean,” Paige says again, a little sharper this time, like she needs it to be understood.
“I do,” Azzi repeats, and she doesn’t push it further than that. “It felt good.”
Paige nods faintly against the pillow, even though it doesn’t translate through the phone. “Yeah.”
“I’ve been working on it a lot,” Azzi adds after a second, almost casually. “Just trying to get it more consistent.”
Paige knows that; she's seen her work on it in practice. She saw it when she first landed the jump and every time after. "It looks consistent," she tells her, honest. She hopes the uncomfortable and unwanted envy in her gut doesn't translate.
“Only lately," Azzi replies, which is also true.
Paige hums softly, noncommittal, but her mind is already moving, already slotting that information into place, already comparing it against her own attempts, her own inconsistencies, the way the jump still doesn’t sit right in her body the way the others do.
“You gonna do it this week?” Azzi asks.
Paige exhales slowly, her eyes drifting shut for a second. “Maybe," she responds, though it would be more likely to put the flip in the free than the axel in the short. Quads are easier than the 3A—she can't explain it.
“Yeah?”
“Been working on it,” she says, which isn’t an answer, but it’s all she’s willing to give.
“You’d be insane,” Azzi says lightly. "I mean, you already kinda are, but..."
Paige can't help but smile a little at that, glad to know Azzi doesn't think of her skating as average. No one in their right mind would, but hearing it is nice. (What isn't nice is the sudden redness flooding the skin of her neck and cheeks. She rubs at her skin to try and get it to go away).
“You ready?” Azzi asks after a moment.
Paige opens her eyes again, staring at the faint line of light slipping through the curtains. “Yeah.”
“You don’t sound like it.”
“I’m tired,” Paige says simply. “I just wanna skate.”
Azzi doesn't say anything in response to that. Instead, she tells Paige again, as if to really bolt it down, "Happy birthday."
Paige swallows, throat swollen. “Thanks.”
“Seventeen’s not that bad.”
“We’ll see.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Yeah.”
Silence stretches once more, lingering longer than it needs to, as if neither of them wants to be the one to end it first, like there's something unfinished even though everything that needed to be said already has been.
“Alright,” Azzi says eventually.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll let you sleep.”
“Okay.”
Another second, neither of them hanging up. Paige’s grip on the phone tightens just slightly, something in her chest pulling in a way she doesn’t quite understand, the moment is balancing on something thin and invisible and she’s not sure what happens if it tips.
“Okay,” Azzi repeats, quieter.
“Okay,” Paige echoes.
The line clicks off.
The room folds back in on itself.
Paige lies there, the phone still pressed up against her ear, like if she moves too quickly, it'll break whatever just passed between them—whatever that was, whatever it wasn't—and when she finally lowers it, the silence feels heavier than before, lonely almost.
It doesn't stay quiet long, though, because then the door opens. Her mom steps in, the hallway light cutting briefly across the carpet before it disappears once more. Paige turns her head just enough to see her without fully sitting up. She's still in the same clothes she left in, phone tucked between her shoulder and ear for a moment as she finishes whatever conversation she's been having, her voice low and clipped, efficient in Russian before she pulls it away and ends the call.
In her other hand is a rice cake. There's a candle stuck into the center of it, already lit, the flame small and unsteady, flickering, as she crosses the room.
Paige pushes herself up slowly, her back pressing against the headboard, her hands resting loosely in her lap as she watches her mom stop in front of her, watches the way the flight flickers across her face, across the hard lines that never quite soften the way other people's do.
"Happy birthday to you," she begins, her accent thick, the melody slightly off but recognizable. Paige's eyes drop to the flame immediately, to the way it wavers with every small movement of air, the wax beginning to melt down the side in thin, uneven trails.
"Happy birthday to you..."
The room feels too small for this, too quiet, the sound of the song having nowhere to go but right in Paige's chest, where she doesn't want it.
"Happy birthday, Paigeya..."
Her mother is trying to say Paigey, the old nickname she hasn't been called since she was a child, but with her accent it never quite sounds like it does when anyone else says it. It's just wrong, twisting and altered.
"Happy birthday to you."
The last note lingers, then fades, and then the silence settles again.
Paige inhales slowly, her lips parting, preparing to lean forward, to blow out the candle, to just finish this shit—
Something flutters at the edge of her vision, small and erratic. Her eyes flit immediately, to see a moth. It circles once, twice, drawn immediately to the flame, its wings beating in uneven, fragile patterns that don't quite hold a straight line. Her focus locks onto it, the rest of the room fading slightly as she tracks its movement, the unpredictable dips and turns, the way it keeps pulling closer despite the heat.
It gets too near, the flame flickering harder. Paige's hand moves before she fully decides to move it, a quick and sharp motion. There's barely a sound when she kills it, just a soft, almost imperceptible interruption as the movement stops, the delicate body crushed against her palm, wings collapsing into nothing under the pressure.
She stills for a moment before she registers the feeling of something dark and wet across her hand. Its guts smear against her skin, the fragile structure of it broken into something unrecognizable, and a sharp, immediate disgust curls through her, her mouth twisting as she jerks her hand back.
"Fuck," she mutters, already pushing off the bed, heading straight for the bathroom without a single look back at her mother or her birthday candle.
The water runs cold over her hand, washing it away in streaks, the evidence disappearing down the drain until there’s nothing left but the faintest memory of it, the feeling lingering longer than it should, sunk into her skin somehow. She scrubs harder than necessary, rough over her palm, not minding if it stings.
When she steps back out, drying her hands against the towel, the candle has gone out. The wick is curled inward, a thin thread of smoke still rising from it, the rice cake sitting untouched on the dresser like something that was never meant to be eaten in the first place.
Her mom is already back on her phone, her voice low, distracted, the moment over before it ever even really anything.
Paige’s eyes snag on the rice cake for a second, feeling her stomach twist not for the first time tonight. She looks away quickly, unlingering, before climbing back into bed, pulling the covers up this time, turning onto her side with her back to the room, to her mother.
She tries for sleep.
KELOWNA IS HARD to settle into. Its cold air cuts cleaner than the East Coast, the faint smell of the rink clings to everything no matter how far away from it she is, the hum of voices layered over the scrape of blades and the hollow echo of jumps landing in practice sessions that bleed into each other until they stop feeling like separate hours and start feeling like one continuous stretch of time she’s moving through without pause. The few days fold inward, structured and narrow, every piece of them dictated by ice time and recovery and repetition, and Paige slips into it the way she always does, easily, completely, letting everything else fall away because it has to, because there isn’t room for anything else if she wants to keep everything as piercing, razor-edged and stark as it needs to be.
Jamelle stands at the boards with her tablet, always watching, recording, seeing something Paige can’t feel in the moment but learns to recognize later when it’s played back frame by frame, slowed down until each movement loses its illusion of effortlessness and reveals itself as a series of precise, breakable mechanics. She leaves no room for guessing, no space for instinct unbacked by proof; everything is angles and timing and the exact placement of weight over a blade that is barely there, and Paige thrives in it, in the clarity of it, in the way it turns something as intangible as movement into something she can control. That's why Jamelle is Paige's favorite coach—she gets her, she knows how Paige's mind works, and she lets her jump, jump, jump. CD is always making Paige try to feel, try to understand why this, why that, why the choreography is the way it is instead of just letting it be. And Geno, as much as Paige respects the man, has a hard time bonding with anyone at all.
Again.
That’s what Jamelle says, more often than anything else.
Again, and Paige resets without hesitation, pushing back to her starting position, lungs already burning slightly from the last run-through, legs heavy in a way that feels earned rather than limiting. The quad lutz first because it sets the tone, because it demands everything be right from the beginning. She enters it faster this time, holds the edge longer, feels the tension coil tighter before she lets it release, snapping into the air with a force that leaves no space for doubt, for hesitation, for anything other than the clean, familiar sensation of rotation stacking exactly the way it should.
The landing bites into the ice with a sharp certainty.
Good. She loves the lutz. If she could do it ten times over in the program, she probably would.
The rest follows in sequence, each element feeding into the next, each correction from the last run-through applied without conscious thought now that it’s been broken down and rebuilt in her head. She falls on quad salchow, which has become inconsistent, annoyingly so. It's why she didn't jump it in Slovakia a few weeks ago. It doesn't make much sense to Paige—why should the quad that she's had the longest, the one she landed first, be her worst now? The quad toe-triple toe combination is tight, cleaner on the exit. The quad toe-euler-triple sal is even better, centered and airy. Even the transitions between jumps feel polished, less like filler and more like something that carries her forward with intention rather than simply connecting one element to the next. She does her best to think about it that way, because if she doesn't, her brain tends to render them completely useless.
“You’re dropping your shoulder on the takeoff,” Jamelle calls out after Paige finishes, exactly as expected, her voice cutting cleanly across the rink. “It’s subtle, but it’s there. That’s what’s pulling you off-axis on the sal.”
Paige nods once, turning it over in her head, replaying the jump with that correction layered over it, adjusting the mental image until it fits. “Again?” she asks, not even needing the answer.
Jamelle lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Again.”
So she does.
Over and over, until the adjustment stops feeling like something she has to think about and starts settling into her body the way everything else has, until the repetition smooths out the edges of it, until the jump feels inevitable instead of constructed.
There’s comfort in that.
Not exactly in the work itself—she doesn’t love the work, not really—but in the certainty of it, in the knowledge that if she does this enough times, if she refines it down to the smallest detail, it will hold when it matters. That’s the part she trusts, everything else is useless noise.
She notices Gabby halfway through one of her resets, standing at the far end of the rink, lacing up her skates with the same reserved focus she’s always had, the same contained presence that never quite demanded attention but always held it anyway. It takes Paige a second to place her here, in this setting, outside of the version of her that exists in Storrs, in the senior skater she looked up to, in the space they used to share without thinking too much about what it meant.
Paige understands why she left. She competes for France, and Storrs, Connecticut is nowhere near there, nor near her partner, Marine Johannes, another French skater. Respectfully, Paige can't wrap her head around how they do that—how they could date their competition, invest themselves into each other when the other could tear them down and just beat them at any point in time. Or maybe they're just not competitive enough to care—if that were the case, Paige doesn't respect it.
Paige watches her for a moment longer than necessary, thinking about the time when she was still a novice skater and Gabby had just won Junior Worlds, how Paige idolized her for it. It feels so far away; Paige can hardly even remember it. (Though, to be fair, she doesn't remember most of her childhood). Gabby looks up at some point, catches her eye, and lifts her chin slightly in acknowledgment. Paige does the same. It's enough; they don't need to do more than that.
By the time competition starts, everything feels skinned down to a single point.
The short program comes first, and Paige steps onto the ice already knowing what it is and what it isn’t. There's less space here, less opportunity to separate herself through difficulty alone, the structure tighter, the expectations different. The ISU doesn't allow women to do quads in the short—why, Paige doesn't understand—which means there's no room to overwhelm through sheer technical force, that it all has to come through with just execution, precision, and the parts of skating that have never come as naturally to her as the jumps have.
She resents it, a little bit.
She understands that this is where others have the advantage, where the things she doesn’t prioritize in the same way become more visible, more important. Where her weaknesses shine. It's okay—her strengths will have the opportunities to show themselves on Saturday.
She skates it clean. Every element hits, every landing controlled, every movement placed exactly where it needs to be. Still, there’s a ceiling she can feel even before the scores come up, a limit to how far this program can take her compared to what she knows she’s capable of in the free.
She scores third, with 74.40. She ends up behind Gabby, as well as Japan’s top skater, Mai Yamamoto, the one everyone keeps talking about, the one with the triple axel that carries through her programs with an ease that echoes too closely to something Paige has already spent too much time thinking about. (People compare her skating to Azzi's. Paige can see why).
The day between programs stretches thin, filled with the same routines, the same repetitions, the same careful conservation of energy that keeps her from burning out before she needs to. Jamelle keeps it simple—run-throughs, small corrections, nothing that disrupts what’s already in place. Paige moves through it all with contained kind of focus that borders on detachment, her mind already on the next skate, stepping through the layout element by element.
When the free skate begins, the next day, everything narrows.
The opening notes of the program settle over the rink, but they don’t register the way they’re supposed to; they function as markers for Paige, as timing cues, as the structure she moves within rather than something she feels. The quad salchow comes first in this version of the layout, a calculated risk she’s chosen to take early, to set the tone the same way the lutz had before.
She enters it clean but comes down short, the blade catching wrong, the impact jarring up through her body as she hits the ice right on her butt, cold and wet against her tights and the new blue dress, the echo of it jolting the space around her, instilling the reaction of a few gasps in the crowd.
Be a dragon.
She clenches her jaw, pursing her lips, and then immediately pops up. She doesn't bother sitting in it, tries not to replay it, because it was the first fucking element and she's got the rest of the program to get through. She’s already on, moving into the transitions for her quad lutz. She glances over her shoulder slightly as she sets it up, before snapping into place with a force that's aggressive now, trying to make up for the salchow. It lands, clean, and she glides right out of it.
The first toeloop combination follows, the rhythm of the program reestablishing itself piece by piece as she works through it, each successful element stacking over the last until the fall becomes something distant, something that happened but doesn’t define what comes after it.
By the time she reaches the final elements, her legs are burning, her lungs pulling air in sharp, measured inhales, but the structure holds, the program carrying her through the last jump, the last spin, the final movement that brings everything to a close.
She finishes strong, knees on ice.
When the scores come up, the reaction is immediate, louder than she expects considering the fall, considering the imperfection still sitting there in the middle of it. Another new record—or, two, actually. The free and the total score, once again, with 166.62 and 241.01. The numbers climb higher than they have before, the technical score in the free pushing past a hundred points, a threshold no one in the women's crossed yet. Over a hundred, even with the fall.
Paige stares at it for a second longer than she means to, something stark and bright cutting through her chest—something more electric than relief or satisfaction, something that feels dangerously close to belief.
Because it’s enough, more than enough. Mai finishes second, Gabby third. And the gap isn't small or fragile—it's incredibly definitive, a statement to be made in Paige's senior Grand Prix debut, against true, fierce competition.
For the first time since she stepped into this season, since everything became bigger than it’s ever been before, Paige lets the thought settle without immediately picking it apart like a scab, without searching for the flaw in it, without dismantling it before it has time to even exist on its own.
She can fall. She can make mistakes. And she can still beat all the senior vets, the outcome unchanging. The realization is steady and solid, one that comes as she sits in the Kiss and Cry, Jamelle's arm around her shoulders, the noise of the arena swelling around her.
And on the podium, as she stands there with gold heavy against her chest, heavy in her hands, Paige knows there are good things to come.
Good, bigger things.
She'll be ready when they do.
(?)
