Summary:

Ilya lies on the ground and looks up at the stars and waits to die.
The pavement is cold.
Ilya wonders if his mother was cold when she died. He thinks maybe not, since she didn’t die in a deserted alleyway in Vancouver. But she did die at home, and maybe that was even colder.

In a world where the Cold War ended but the Iron Curtain never fell, Ilya Rozanov is the most promising figure skater in Russia. At only 19, he’s an easy candidate for gold at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, one of the only times Russia allows its citizens to leave the USSR.
And then one mistake means Russia will never let him come back. Hollander won’t stop trying to talk to him, but the last thing Ilya wants to do is talk to the man who ruined his life. He might be stuck in Canada, a refugee, for the rest of his life, but that doesn’t mean he has to talk to Hollander ever again.
He wanders Vancouver aimlessly and doesn’t think about Russia, or Hollander, or the ice that can never be home again.