Jude kept up with every change of speed, lap after lap. The circles were infuriating. Turning a corner only to end up in the same place. It was like a big, annoying metaphor for us. Getting closer, then pulling away. Even the trampoline day, which had felt so momentous at the time, was the same thing. Up and down, up and down. Like we couldn’t move in one solid direction. Things would never work between us, and maybe we’d known that all along.

We turned another corner. And then everything happened at once.

At one end of the rink, Ethan and Harrison started singing “Beautiful Girl” at the top of their lungs, which made Jude and me look back at them. At the other end, Noah and Laurel started racing a couple of kids’ skating aids shaped like penguins. They’d sprint for a few feet and then shove the penguins so they skidded across the ice.

I was still looking back at Ethan and Harrison when I heard Jude yell, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

I only saw the penguin’s dopey painted smile for a split second before it knocked into my skate and I lurched forward.

Jude grabbed on to my arm to catch me, but he was off-balance too, and we were going too fast. We fell in a heap and my right ankle twisted under me as we slid to the edge of the rink.

A sharp crack echoed through the air.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

TANGLED THOUGHTS SPIRALED in my head.

Broken again. Can’t dance in the musical. Surgery. Can’t dance in the musical. Birdie’s gonna kill me. Won’t see Margot and Ethan and Jude every day. Won’t see them ever. Rods sticking out of my bones. More screws in my leg and I can’t dance in the musical.

“Death to penguins!” Jude yelled as he sat up, raising an arm in the air to cheers from around the rink.

“Sorry!” Noah yelled back. Everyone booed. I still couldn’t catch my breath.

Jude turned to me, smiling. Then he froze. “What is it? Are you hurt?” He pushed himself onto his knees and slid around in front of me. When he saw that my hands were clutching my right ankle, he inhaled sharply. “Is it—”

Is it?

I squeezed my fingers around my ankle and knew, with a strange kind of clarity, that it wasn’t. It wasn’t broken. It wasn’t sprained or twisted. It wasn’t anything. I slowly unclasped my hands and stared at them. They were shaking.

“Alina.” Jude was looking at me intently.

“No… I’m okay. I… I thought I’d… I thought it happened again.” Then the tears came. Ugly, embarrassing ones.