### CHAPTER 5 - TORONTO
I didn't go straight to the airport the night I left. I couldn't. I had eighteen hours until my flight and nowhere to go and too much fear in my chest to sit alone in a terminal, so I followed Dima to his house instead.
I slept on his couch with both my bags tucked under my legs so no one could take them, the old army duffel and the duct-taped skate bag, and his mother made me tea without asking any questions and his little sister stared at my skates like they were from another planet. Dima stayed up with me until three in the morning while I stared at his ceiling and tried not to throw up from fear, and he didn't tell me it would be okay because we both knew that would be a lie. At eight p.m. the next night the university car came and picked me up right from Dima's street, and Dima punched my shoulder at the curb and said "Don't die over there. Text me when you land or I'm calling the embassy."
The plane touches down at 2:17 p.m. the next day and my ears don't pop, they just stay full like I'm still underwater and haven't come up for air yet.
Customs takes two hours. The officer looks at my passport, then at the letter from the University of Toronto, then at my face, then back at the passport again. "Student athlete," he says. Not really a question.
"Yes," I say, and my English sounds worse out loud than it does in my head, thick and slow.
"Skating?"
"Yes."
He stamps the passport hard enough that I feel it through the counter. "Welcome to Canada."
Nobody has ever welcomed me anywhere before and I don't know what to do with the word, so I just take my bags and I nod and I walk away before he can change his mind.
Pearson Airport is too bright and too clean and too loud with too many people talking in too many languages I don't understand, and the signs are in English and French and I can read them but my brain is slow from jet lag and from fear, which right now feel like the same thing.
My phone has four percent battery because I spent the last of Mama's money on a SIM card at the kiosk and the guy had to set it up for me because I couldn't find the words. Now the top of the screen says Welcome to Rogers.
There's already a text from Alina Petrov, the coordinator. *Driver waiting at Arrivals Door D. Blue sign with your name. He will take you to campus.*
I walk toward Door D and my left ankle still hurts from two flights and one layover in Warsaw and eight hours in a chair that didn't recline, and the swelling is back and I'm limping and I'm trying not to.
The driver is there with a blue sign that says ORLOV, V. He's an old man in a thick coat with a nice smile. "Viktor?"
"Da. Yes. Sorry. Yes."
He takes both my bags before I can say no. "Long flight, eh?"
I nod because I don't have words for how long it was. Eighteen hours since I left Saint Petersburg. Eighteen hours since I hugged Anya at the door and Mama whispered be free and Papa didn't come out of the bedroom.
I texted Dima from Warsaw. *Alive. Tired. Canada is cold.*
He sent back three crying emojis and a photo of him flipping off the camera in front of Yubileyny. *For Kirill,* the caption said.
The car to campus is warm and the seats are leather and it smells like pine, and the driver talks the whole way and I catch maybe half of it, snow and weather and the Leafs lost last night, and he asks if I play hockey.
"No," I say. "Figure. Skating."
"Ah." He looks at me in the rearview mirror. "Tough sport. All that jumping. Knees, eh?"
I touch my left ankle without thinking. "Yes."
He laughs like I made a joke.
The University of Toronto sign is old stone covered in snow and the buildings are bigger than anything in Saint Petersburg, old brick and new glass all mixed together, and students are everywhere with backpacks and coffee cups and they're laughing and no one looks at me, no one looks at me twice, and that feels strange and safe at the same time.
The driver stops in front of a building that says ATHLETIC CENTRE. "Here you go, kid. Good luck. Stay warm."
He hands me both my bags and I hold them tight and I can see the duct tape peeling more on the skate bag and my hoodie showing through the gap.
"Thank you," I say, and it comes out right this time.
Inside it's even louder, high ceilings and more people and a wall of noise coming from somewhere to my left, shouting and banging and a horn, hockey rink, and my stomach drops the way it always does.
The front desk girl has blue hair and a name tag that says JESS and she smiles at me too big and too friendly and I don't trust it because I'm not used to strangers being nice for no reason.
"Hi! Can I help you?"
"Orlov. Viktor." I slide the letter across the counter and my hands are shaking. "Student. Skating."
Her eyes go from the letter to my two bags to my face and she types something fast. "Got you. International athlete housing. Goldring Centre. Room 417. Your key card is in this envelope." She slides it across. "Practice schedule is emailed, but yours starts tomorrow at 6 a.m. at the Oval. Coach Dubois will meet you. She's scary but nice."
I take the envelope. "Thank you."
"Dining hall is that way. Your meal plan starts now. And Viktor?"
I look up.
"Welcome to U of T."
Again. That word. Welcome.
I find my room by following the numbers up to the fourth floor, 417, and the door opens with a beep and a green light.
The room is small with a bed and a desk and a closet and a window looking out at snow and buildings, and it's empty, no roommate, private room per scholarship terms the email said and I didn't believe it until right now.
I set both my bags on the bed and the zipper on the duffel finally gives up completely and clothes spill out, and my skates and the Korovka candy and Lev's cookie, which is crushed to crumbs now but still here, and the little red toy car.
I pick up the car and put it on the desk, and next to it I put the candy, and next to that I put the cookie crumbs still in the napkin.
I sit on the bed and it's too soft and I'm not used to soft things.
My phone buzzes.
Dima: YOU LAND? YOU ALIVE? SEND PROOF OF LIFE
I take a photo of the window, the snow and the buildings and the CN Tower far away, and I send it.
Dima: HOLY SHIT. YOU'RE REALLY THERE. YOU'RE IN CANADA. YOU ESCAPED.
Dima: I'M TELLING ANYA. SHE'S GONNA LOSE HER MIND.
Dima: DON'T TELL YOUR DAD. HE'LL FIND A WAY TO RUIN IT.
I type back: *I won't.*
Then: *Thank you. For everything.*
Dima: *shut up. go eat. you look like a ghost in that photo.*
I go cause I’m feeling hungry.
The dining hall is huge with too much food and too many choices and I get a tray and I stare at the pizza and the pasta and the salad bar and I end up taking a banana and a bread roll and water because old habits are hard to break.
I sit alone at a table by the window and I eat slow and I make it last.
At 5:30 p.m. I can't sit in the room anymore because the quiet is too loud, so I need to see it, I need to see the ice, the reason I'm here.
The Olympic Oval is connected to the Athletic Centre by a long hallway with glass walls, and I can hear the hockey rink before I see it, yelling and whistles and bodies hitting boards.
I walk past it and I tell myself don't look, don't look, and then I look anyway.
It's a game or a practice, I don't know hockey, boys in blue and white jerseys, big and fast and violent, and one of them checks another into the glass so hard I flinch and the crowd in the bleachers cheers.
I keep walking.
The Oval is at the end of the hall and I push the door open and the cold hits me first and then the smell, clean ice, not rubber and not coffee and not Yubileyny, just cold and white and empty.
The rink is huge, Olympic size, bigger than anything I've ever skated on, and the ice is fresh with Zamboni marks still on it and no one is here because six a.m. is my time and right now it's mine just to look at.
I walk to the boards and put my hands on them and the wood is real, not plastic and not chipped, real.
I close my eyes and I breathe and for the first time in eighteen hours my chest doesn't hurt.
I'm here. I made it. Papa isn't here. Kirill isn't here. The words aren't here.
Just ice.
I open my eyes.
"Hey. You lost?"
The voice comes from behind me, loud, Canadian accent, boy.
I turn around and he's huge, that's the first thing I notice, six three at least with shoulders like a door, hair wet and curling at the ends, U of T hockey jersey blue and white number eighteen, pads still on, skates in his hand, sweating and breathing hard like he just came off the ice.
He's looking at me like I'm a problem he didn't expect to have.
"Sorry," I say, and my English goes bad when I'm nervous. "I am, I look. Only look."
He frowns. "You with the school?"
"Yes. Skating. Figure."
His whole face changes and shuts down. "Oh."
Oh. Like that explains everything. Like that's the answer to a question he didn't like.
"Rink's closed," he says, not mean and not nice, just flat. "Maintenance. You can't be in here."
The sign on the door said nothing about closed and the lights are on and the ice is fresh.
"Okay," I say, and I step back from the boards the way I've been trained to do my whole life, shoulders back, chin down, mouth shut, make yourself small.
He watches me and his eyes go to my two bags on the bench, to the duct tape and the hole and the skates sticking out, my Molniyas.
"Those yours?" he asks, nodding at them.
"Yes."
He snorts. "They look like shit."
My face goes hot and it's not from embarrassment, it's from anger, fast and hot before I can shove it down the way I always do.
"They work," I say, the same thing I told Kirill back home.
"Do they?" He starts walking toward the door, toward me. "Look, kid. No offense. But we don't need twirly boys getting hurt on our ice before our game. You fall, you sue, we lose the rink. So—"
"I don't fall," I say, too fast and too loud and too much.
He stops and blinks like he didn't expect me to talk back.
"Right," he says after a second. "Sure. Whatever. Just don't be here after six. That's when we practice. And we don't like an audience."
He pushes past me and shoulder checks me on the way out, not hard but not an accident either.
"Watch it," he says, but he's the one who wasn't watching.
The door bangs shut behind him and I stand there for a long time and the cold isn't calming anymore, it's just cold.
I look down at my bags and at the tape and at my Molniyas.
They look like shit.
Twirly boys.
Fairy.
Faggot.
I pick up both my bags and the zipper on the duffel tears the rest of the way and I don't care.
I walk out of the Oval and past the hockey rink and past the shouting and past the sign that says Varsity Blues Hockey Home of the Champions, and I don't look back.
In my room I throw both bags on the floor and I sit on the bed and I pull out my phone and I google him, U of T hockey number eighteen blue and white.
Roman Callahan. Left wing. Third year. Team captain next year if he doesn't get drafted. NHL prospect. Six three, 195 pounds. From Ottawa. Hometown hero.
There are pictures of him scoring and fighting and smiling with a cup and with his arms around other boys in jerseys, all of them yelling.
I look at his face, jaw sharp and eyes mean and mouth like he's used to getting what he wants.
I hate him already.
My phone buzzes.
Coach Dubois: *Viktor. Welcome. 6 a.m. Oval. Don't be late. And stay away from the hockey players. They think they own the place.*
I type back: *Yes, Coach. I understand.*
I set the alarm for 4:30 a.m. and I put Lev's red car on the nightstand and I put the Korovka candy under my pillow.
I lie down and the bed is too soft and the room is too quiet and there's no Papa in the next room and no Anya breathing and no Lev snoring.
Just me.
I close my eyes.
Tomorrow, 6 a.m., I skate.
And Roman Callahan can go to hell.