Chapter 1

Tonya woke up that morning, just like she had any other. It was cool and rainy in Portland, and she just looked out her window and sighed...

'How could everything have turned out this bad?', she thought.

A few months ago, it looked like she was going to be on top of the world; a National Figure Skating Championship, a chance for Olympic gold, the possibility of making millions of dollars doing endorsements, and being loved by an entire nation! But then...

'Damn him anyway! Why did I ever get back together with him?', Tonya thought about her off-and-on husband, Jeff, 'HE was the one who got me into all this shit!'

She picked up his picture, and looked at it. The slicked-back hair, the beady little eyes, the con-man mustache... The more she looked at his picture, the angrier she got at him! She wanted to throw the picture against the wall; she wanted to destroy him for all the pain that he had caused her with his wild scheme against Nancy Kerrigan!

She started to cry, wishing she'd never heard of Nancy; the USFSA had turned Kerrigan into an Ice Goddess, and totally ignored Tonya... 'I never saw NANCY doing those triple axels... ', she thought to herself, as the tears flowed down her face.

Tonya laid back down on her bed, buried her face in her pillow, and started sobbing heavily. This wasn't the first time in her life that she'd done it, and she knew it wouldn't be the last, by any means...

Half an hour later, she got up off the bed, got dressed, and went outside; the rain had let up, and was just a fine mist now. She started walking, without paying any particular attention to where she was going, replaying the fiasco over and over in her mind.

A little while later, she came to a city park; nobody was there due to the rain. She shook some water off of a swing, and sat on it, slowly moving back and forth... Almost drifting off...

"Are you alright, miss?" Tonya jumped when she heard the man's voice; she hadn't noticed him walking up to her. His voice was fairly soft, and had a soothing quality to it. He was tall, with dark hair, a mustache and beard, looking like a college professor.

"I... I'm not sure...", Tonya replied, her heart still racing from being startled.

"I'm sorry to have startled you like that... May I join you?", he asked in the same soft voice.

"I guess so...", she answered, not quite knowing why she was willing to trust a total stranger.

"You look like you're having kind of a bad time of things...", he said, as he took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping away a tear that she hadn't realized was even there, "Would you like to talk about what's wrong?".

"The whole world hates me, that's what's wrong!" Tonya's anger started to flare up again, "People make jokes about me, they call me White Trash, they think I should have been thrown in jail, and for all I know, some pervert is even writing cheap porno stories about me!" Tonya's hands covered her face, and she started sobbing again.

"Hmmmmm...", the man said, "I think I might be able to help you, Tonya..." He smiled as he gently took her hand.

"How?"

"Oh! I forgot to introduce myself," he grinned sheepishly, "My name is David Liebenschmerz, and I'm a psychologist."