### CHAPTER 4 - ACCEPT
I stare at the screen until the words stop swimming and finally hold still.
*Congratulations. We are pleased to offer you a full International Student-Athlete Award... University of Toronto... Olympic Oval... January 4...*
I click Accept before my hands can change their mind.
The screen changes instantly. *Confirmed. Your enrollment package and travel instructions will be sent within 24 hours. Welcome to U of T.*
Welcome. Like I belong somewhere. Like someone actually opened a door and meant for me to walk through it.
My thumb hovers over the power button and for a second I think about turning the phone off completely, because if I turn it off maybe it didn't happen, maybe I dreamed the whole thing, maybe it's not real and I won't have to decide what to do when Papa finds out, maybe I can just stay on this couch forever with my swollen ankle and the plate of cold potatoes.
The bedroom door is still closed and I can hear him in there with the TV on low, hockey of course, always hockey, and he watches men slam each other into the boards and calls it a real sport but he watches me land a triple toe and calls me a fairy for figure skating, and I've never understood that and I don't think I ever will.
Mama is in the kitchen and I can hear the water running too hard and plates clinking together, and she's washing dishes with her bare hands instead of waiting for the water to heat up because she does that when she's scared, when she needs to keep her hands busy so they don't start shaking.
I stand up and my ankle screams up my leg in this hot white line but I don't care, I walk to the kitchen with my phone in my hand and the screen still on and the brightness turned all the way up like it's proof I can show her.
She sees me in the doorway and she goes completely still, and the plate in her hands drips water onto the floor, plink plink plink, and she doesn't even notice.
"Mama," I say, and my voice comes out sounding like I haven't used it in years, all rusty and thin.
She puts the plate down slowly and wipes her hands on her apron and she doesn't ask what happened because she already knows, mothers always know before you tell them.
"Show me," she whispers.
I hand her the phone and she reads slowly with her lips moving over the English words, *full tuition, housing, training,* and her thumb shakes when she scrolls down, and when she gets to the word *Confirmed* she makes this sound that's not really a word at all, just air leaving her all at once like someone punched her gently in the stomach.
She looks up at me and her eyes are wet but her face is hard in a way I've never seen before, like she made this decision a long time ago, maybe years ago, and she's just been waiting for me to catch up to it.
"When?" she asks.
"January fourth."
Two weeks. Two weeks until I'm supposed to be in Moscow for a camp I can't afford, or in Toronto for a school I never thought would actually answer. Two weeks to become a completely different person.
She hands the phone back to me and then she goes to the drawer where she keeps all the important papers, my birth certificate and the passport she made me get last year "just in case" and never explained why, and she puts them on the table next to the envelope of money from earlier. It's not enough for Moscow but it might be enough for a taxi to the airport, it might be enough for freedom.
"Pack," she says. "Tonight. Small. Nothing he can use to find you."
My heart kicks against my ribs so hard I'm sure she can hear it.
"Papa—"
"Will kill me if I help you," she says, simple and calm like she's talking about the weather, like she's saying it will snow tomorrow. "He will kill you if you stay."
She says it without crying and that's how I know she means every word, that's how I know it's already true.
"Anya. Lev." I can't even say their names without my throat closing up because they're too small and too good for this house.
"I will tell them you went to win," she says. "I will tell them you're coming back with gold. That is all they need to know right now."
She goes back to the sink and turns the water on loud to cover our voices, to give us privacy in a two-room apartment where we've never had any.
"Go," she says to the window, not looking at me. "Before he wakes up."
I go.
My room is the size of a closet with one bed and one desk and one chair with a broken leg, and there are posters of Aleksei Sokolov curling at the edges from the damp. I take them down carefully and fold them along the creases that are already there, and they go in the first bag first because if I have nothing else I'll still have him.
Skates next. My Molniyas. I wrap them in my hoodie, the one with the hole in the sleeve, and the tape on the left boot peels up a little more and I press it down with my thumb and I whisper hold together, just a little longer, please.
I pack fast and quiet because my hands won't stop shaking. Two bags, not one. An old duffel that used to be Papa's from the army, and my duct-taped skate bag that smells like old ice. That's it. That's my whole life and it barely fills them both.
Two pairs of pants. Three shirts. Socks. Underwear. The Korovka candy from yesterday still unopened. Lev's cookie wrapped in a napkin, crumbling but I don't care. The crayon drawing that says VIKTOR IS NUMER 1 with the backwards R. My passport. The envelope of money. The phone.
I zip the duffel and the zipper catches and I yank it hard and it closes with a sound like teeth snapping shut. I do the same with the skate bag.
I sit on the bed and I listen to the sounds of the apartment, the TV in the bedroom and the plates in the kitchen and Anya and Lev whispering behind their door, and they're just normal sounds but they're also last-time sounds and I try to memorize every single one of them.
My phone buzzes.
Dima: *u alive? coach said u went home sick. u ok?*
I type back with fingers that keep slipping: *Come over. Now. Bring your brother's car. Don't tell anyone.*
Three dots. Then: *on my way. 15 min.*
Fifteen minutes to decide if I'm really doing this. Fifteen minutes to become a runaway.
I open the Toronto email again and read it again and there's a link at the bottom that says *Click here to book your flight. University-sponsored travel for international award recipients.*
I click it and my hands are shaking so bad I hit the wrong button twice and my ankle throbs in time with my pulse.
There's a form, name and passport number and preferred departure date, and there's a note underneath that says *If you require immediate travel due to personal circumstances, select "Urgent" and a coordinator will contact you within 2 hours.*
Urgent. Yes. God, yes.
I fill it out and hit submit and the screen says *Coordinator Alina Petrov will contact you shortly.*
I close my eyes and count to thirty twice and breathe in for four and hold for four and out for four the way Coach taught me before a jump.
When I open them there's already an email from Alina Petrov. *Viktor, we can get you on a flight tomorrow night. 11:45 PM, LOT Polish Airlines, Saint Petersburg to Toronto via Warsaw. Can you make that? Reply YES to confirm.*
Tomorrow night. Less than twenty-four hours. Less than one day left in this city.
I type YES and I hit send before I can throw up, before I can change my mind.
The front door bangs open downstairs and I hear heavy feet on the stairs and it's Papa, and he wasn't supposed to be home until late, he must have left work early or left the bar early or he just knew somehow.
Mama's voice comes sharp from the kitchen. "Sasha! You're home early."
"Where is he?" Papa says, and he's not yelling which is worse, he's quiet, that quiet that comes right before the storm.
I shove the phone in my pocket and zip both bags the rest of the way and stand up, and my ankle screams but I swallow the sound and I don't care.
My door opens without a knock and Papa fills the doorway, and he looks at the two bags on my bed and at me standing there with my coat on and at the pale squares on the wall where my posters used to be.
"Going somewhere?" he says.
My mouth is dry and my whole body wants to do what it's always done, shoulders back, chin down, mouth shut, that's the rule, that's always been the rule, that's how you survive.
Not this time.
"Canada," I say, and my voice doesn't shake and I don't know how because maybe I'm already gone in my head. "University of Toronto. They gave me a scholarship."
He laughs once, this ugly short sound. "You're not going anywhere."
"Yes, I am."
He steps into the room and the floor creaks under his weight. "You think you're leaving this house? You think you're going to run off to the West and embarrass me in front of the whole city? Skating like a girl in front of cameras? On my name?"
"It's my name too," I say, and it's stupid and it's dangerous but I say it anyway because it's true and I'm tired of pretending it isn't.
He moves fast and his hand comes up and I flinch before I can stop myself and I hate that I flinch, I hate that my body remembers every time before this more than my brain does.
He doesn't hit me. He grabs the duffel and yanks it off the bed and the zipper bursts open and everything spills out across the floor, then he grabs the skate bag too and throws it, and clothes and skates and the Korovka candy and the cookie and the drawing all spread out like guts.
"Pick it up," he says. "Unpack it. Now. Before I burn it."
I don't move. I can't move. If I move I'll run and if I run he'll catch me and if he catches me—
"Anya!" Mama's voice comes from the doorway, sharp and loud, and she never raises her voice, never. "Lev! Come here! Now!"
They run in and Anya sees the clothes all over the floor and Lev sees my face and he starts to cry without making a sound, tears just running down his cheeks.
"Look," Mama says to Papa, and her voice is shaking but her eyes aren't. "Look at your children. Look at what you're doing."
Papa looks at her and at Anya holding Lev's hand so tight her knuckles are white and at me standing by the bed with my hands in fists.
"You're all against me," he says, like we planned this, like this is betrayal and not survival.
"You're against yourself, Sasha," Mama says. "And you're losing."
The doorbell rings loud and insistent and then there's banging. "Vitya! Open up! It's me!"
Dima.
Papa's head snaps toward the door. "You called him? You called that boy here?"
"He's my friend," I say, the same thing I said yesterday, but today it means more, today it means everything.
"I said no friends in this house!"
"He's not in the house," Dima yells through the door, "but I can be! I have rights! My brother's a lawyer!"
His brother is not a lawyer, his brother drives a Lada and owes people money, but Papa doesn't know that.
More banging. "Vitya, you good? I'm coming in!"
"Go," Mama says to me, so quiet only I can hear her. "Now. While he's distracted."
I drop to my knees and shove everything back into both bags, skates and clothes and candy and cookie and drawing, and I don't care about folding or being neat, the zippers won't close all the way so I tie them both shut with laces from my old sneakers and my hands are shaking so hard I can barely make the knots.
Papa turns back to me. "If you walk out that door, you don't come back. You hear me? You're dead to me. Dead to this family."
I stand up with both bags over my shoulders and my ankle wants to give out but I lock my knee and I don't let it.
"Okay," I say.
It's the same thing I said last night at dinner but it means something completely different now. It means I choose me.
Anya makes this broken little noise and lets go of Lev and runs at me and hits me around the waist and buries her face in my hoodie.
"Don't go," she cries into my chest. "Don't leave us with him."
I hug her back hard and I smell her shampoo and the flour from earlier and home and childhood. "I have to," I whisper into her hair. "I have to or I'll die here, Anya. You know that. You see it."
She sobs once and then she stops herself and pulls back and wipes her face with her sleeve and looks at me with eyes that are way too old for twelve.
"Then win," she says. "Win everything. And come back and get us."
I can't promise that so I don't, I just kiss the top of her head and breathe her in.
Lev is next and he doesn't say anything, he just puts his little red toy car in my coat pocket and pats it twice like he's telling it to take care of me, like he's giving me a bodyguard.
"Love you, malysh," I say, and my voice breaks and I don't care who hears it. Let Papa hear.
"Love you, Vitya," he whispers.
Mama is last and she doesn't hug me because if she hugs me she won't let go, she just puts both her hands on my face with her thumbs under my eyes and looks at me like she's trying to memorize me, like she's taking a picture with her hands.
"Be free," she says. "Be everything you can't be here. And eat. You're too thin."
I laugh and it comes out wet. "Okay, Mama."
"Go," she says. "Now."
Dima is still banging on the door and Papa is staring at me like he doesn't even know who I am anymore, like I'm a stranger in his house.
I walk past him and I don't look back because if I look back I won't make it, if I look back I'll stay.
Dima is on the landing with his brother behind him and car keys in his hand, and he sees my face and sees the two bags tied with shoelaces and sees Anya crying in the doorway behind me.
"Fuck," he says softly, then louder, "Let's go."
His brother takes both my bags without asking and Dima gets under my shoulder and takes my weight the way we've done a hundred times after practice.
We go down the stairs, one two three four flights, and my ankle is on fire and every step is a white flash of pain but I don't stop, I count the steps instead of the pain.
At the bottom I look up and the fourth floor window is open and Mama is there holding Lev and Anya is next to them, and they don't wave because if they wave Papa will see.
I nod once.
Mama nods back once.
The Lada is running at the curb with exhaust making clouds in the cold air, and we get in and Dima's brother doesn't ask where to go, he just drives, and the tires slip on the ice and then catch.
I don't look back at the building, I look forward at the road and at the snow and at the sky that's too dark to be morning and too light to be night, at a future I can't see yet.
My phone buzzes.
Alina Petrov: *Flight confirmed. LOT Polish Airlines. Saint Petersburg to Toronto via Warsaw. Departs 23:45 tomorrow. E-ticket attached. A car will pick you up at 20:00. Pack light. You're safe now.*
Safe. I don't know what that word means yet because I've never felt it, but I want to learn.
Dima puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes once and doesn't say anything because he doesn't have to, he knows.
I close my eyes and I can still hear Papa's voice saying you're dead to me, and I can still hear Mama's voice saying be free, and I can still hear Anya's voice saying win everything.
I hold the red toy car in my pocket and I hold the Korovka candy and I hold the cookie that says FIRST PLACE, and I hold all of it tight.
Tomorrow night, 11:45 PM.
Tomorrow night, I leave.