Fake Skating
Lynn Painter
PROLOGUE Alec
There was no way it was actually happening.
Dani Collins was moving to Southview.
“Impossible,” I muttered to myself as I stomped on the gas pedal.
An hour ago life had been normal. I’d walked through the front door after practice, inhaled a few bowls of goulash while my dad talked about his buddy’s new duck boat, and I’d been just about to leave the table when my mom gave me the news.
She’d excitedly filled me in on the details of how Dani’s parents were getting divorced and now Dani and her mom were going to move in with her grandpa. She squealed about how incredible it was going to be to finally have them close by.
Just imagine how often we can see them now!
I smiled and nodded like a good boy while trying not to lose my ever-loving shit at the thought of having to see her every day.
Dani Collins.
Was moving.
To fucking. Southview.
I made up an excuse to get out of the house as soon as possible, because I needed air—and music—while I tried to wrap my head around this unexpected turn of events. I had a cousin who neurotically made playlists for every waking moment of her life, and that slightly obsessive habit had rubbed off on me to the point that I couldn’t deal with the harshness of reality anymore unless I rolled it around in music first.
So I got in Burrito (my piece-of-shit ’03 Olds Alero) and just drove, cranking “Escorpi?o,” the Brazilian song that I didn’t understand but fucking loved. I knew the translation was something along the lines of “?‘I love you’ is bullshit,” so that seemed good enough for me.
But almost as if Burrito had a mind of his own, I found myself turning down the barely there dirt road that wound through the woods next to the pond. I drove over the snow-packed path until I saw the old, abandoned shed that had once been “our spot.”
What the fuck am I doing?
The night was quiet, the deep snow insulating the world so all I could hear was the crunch of snow under my shoes as I got out of the car and walked toward the structure. It’d always looked like it was five minutes from collapsing, and that hadn’t changed since the last time I’d been there.
The summer after seventh grade.
I pushed in the door of the abandoned shed and stepped inside, half expecting a pack of raccoons to fly at my face. It was darker than dark, but when I turned on my phone’s flashlight, it felt like I’d taken a puck to the chest because how could it still look the same?
The actual chairs we’d stolen from my dad’s shop to furnish our ridiculous little shed were still there, and so was the massive hole in the roof that we called our skylight.
Holy shit.
I swallowed and looked up at the moon. Everything about “our spot” remained the same. And, who was I kidding, so was the memory of her. Of Dani.
And the last time I saw her.
Five-ish Years Ago
“I don’t want to go home.”
I looked at Dani’s profile as she stared up at the moon and couldn’t believe she was already leaving. We were sitting side by side on a blanket in the pond shed and I uttered the understatement of the century when I said, “This sucks.”
Dani and her mom came for one month every summer, one month where our mothers (best friends) hung out twenty-four seven and we got to do whatever we wanted, every single day. We rode bikes, went fishing, walked endless miles while debating everything, hung out at the pool… it was summer perfection.
It’d been an annual event for longer than I could remember.
Literally.
The reason for their annual visit was to see Dani’s grandparents, but since she spent most of her time with me at our house (or in our shed hangout), it always felt like our vacation.
And it was hands down the best part of summer break.
Because for one month of the year, she was my best friend.
We screwed around and laughed our asses off for thirty days, and then she went back to whatever Air Force base her dad was stationed at until the next season of the fireflies.
But now they were leaving after only two days. This time their visit had been for her grandma’s funeral, and this time her prickish dad—the colonel—had come with them.
Which was a big mistake, because his presence made everything blow way the hell up.
It was epic in the worst way.
Mick—Dani’s grandpa—lost his shit on her dad after the funeral, saying it was Mr. Collins’s fault that her grandma died of a broken heart because he took Dani’s mom away and moved her all over the country.
Then Mick told them—in front of everyone—to go back to “wherever the hell you’re stationed now” and get out of his sight.
Yep—nightmare.
And now they were leaving in the morning.
Which meant we wouldn’t be walking to Kriz’s Bakery, where we were supposed to sit at a sticky table outside and try to guess which donuts the customers were going to order by what they were wearing.
One of our (many) annual traditions.
“I know it makes me a garbage person,” she said, looking at me with brown eyes that were too sad, “but I think I’m more bummed about not getting my month here than I am about the whole family-fight thing.”