Chapter 5 Thirty Days and Counting

~Author's POV~

"Twenty-seven days to change their minds," Elena said without looking up from her clipboard. "I intend to use every single one of them."

Nova stopped dead in the doorway of the locker room, her bag sliding off her shoulder. Above the mirror, someone had taped a strip of dry-erase board to the wall. In thick red marker, it read: 27 DAYS UNTIL PROVISIONAL CLOSURE. Beside the number, a small, crooked skate blade had been sketched in, like a tombstone doodle.

"Please tell me you didn't actually count down the days," Nova said, dropping her bag on the bench.

"I did more than count," Elena said, finally lifting her eyes from the clipboard. "I've been busy."

"Busy how?"

Elena set the clipboard down and crossed her arms. "Alumni letters. A petition that's already past two hundred signatures. And I've got a local sports reporter interested in the angle, how the university's dumping millions into a hockey annex while quietly killing off the only women's program that's actually winning."

Nova blinked. "That's... a lot."

"It's not enough," Elena said flatly. "Not without a face on it."

Something in Nova's stomach dropped before Elena even finished the sentence. "A face."

"Yours," Elena said. "Interviews. A short testimonial video, you, your scholarship, what this program actually means to a kid who clawed her way here with nothing. That kind of story moves people, Nova. Numbers on a page don't."

Nova shook her head before she'd even fully processed the request. "No."

"Nova…"

"No," she repeated, sharper this time. "I'm not doing interviews. I'm not doing a video. I skate, Elena. That's the whole deal. I'm not the story."

"You are the story," Elena said, her voice rising slightly. "Whether you like it or not, you're the reason this program has a fighting chance at all. If we let the board write the narrative, they'll paint us as a charity case that isn't worth the ice time. You could change that in five minutes on camera."

"Then find someone else." Nova's hands curled at her sides. "Get one of the younger girls. Get anyone. I'm not putting my face, my life, out there for strangers to pick apart."

Elena studied her for a long moment, and something in her expression softened, though her tone didn't. "You've spent your whole life making yourself small so nobody could hurt you. I get it. I do. But sometimes the only way to keep what you love is to stop hiding."

Nova opened her mouth to argue and found nothing came out. The words landed somewhere she hadn't expected, somewhere old and tender, and she didn't understand why they stung as much as they did.

"I have practice," she said instead, grabbing her bag off the bench.

Elena didn't stop her. She just watched her go, the way she always did when she knew pushing further wouldn't help.

—----

By the time Nova got back to the dorm, the sky outside was already bruising into evening. She let herself in quietly, hoping to slip past the living room and straight into a hot shower, but Elodie was sprawled across the couch with a stack of lab reports and a red pen clenched between her teeth, and there was no sneaking past Elodie Harper.

"There she is," Elodie said, not even glancing up. "The ghost of Ponderosa Commons."

Nova froze mid-step. "What?"

"Ghost," Elodie repeated, finally looking up over the rim of her glasses. "You disappear every night, you come back looking like you got run over by a Zamboni, and when I ask where you've been, I get exactly one sentence. It's a pattern, Nova. I notice patterns. It's kind of my whole thing."

"I've been at the rink," Nova said, setting her bag down carefully, deliberately, buying herself half a second. "Extra ice time. Trying to build the case for the petition, keep the program alive."

Elodie tilted her head, unconvinced. "That's a very specific amount of not-an-answer, icebug."

Nova forced a small laugh, hoping it sounded lighter than it felt. "It's the truth."

"Mm." Elodie let it go, but not without one more look, longer than the first. "You know you can tell me anything, right? Whatever it is."

"I know." The guilt in Nova's chest curled tighter than she expected, heavy and sour, and she busied herself digging through her bag for nothing in particular so she wouldn't have to meet Elodie's eyes. It wasn't even really a lie. It just wasn't the whole truth, and somehow that felt worse.

"Okay," Elodie said finally, turning back to her lab report. "Just don't vanish on me completely. I like having a roommate who's actually in the apartment sometimes."

"I won't," Nova said, and meant it, even as she already knew tonight would be another late one.

—----

The next morning, Nova arrived at the rink before the sun had fully cleared the mountains, her breath fogging in the cold as she made her way to her cubby to grab her spare laces. She almost didn't notice the envelope tucked in the corner of the shelf, half-hidden behind her gloves.

She pulled it out, frowning. Her name wasn't written on it, but she recognized the weight of it instantly, the same kind of envelope the athletics office used for stipend payments. She tore it open and found exactly what Henderson had promised: her first coaching payment, counted out to the dollar, right on schedule.

Relief hit her first, quiet, physical relief, the kind that came from knowing she wouldn't have to skip another grocery run this week. Then she noticed the sticky note stuck to the front of the cash, the handwriting blocky and careless, like it had been scrawled in a hurry between drills.

"Don't spend it all on hairspray, Barbie. —C"

Nova stared at it a beat too long. A small, unwilling huff of laughter escaped her before she could stop it, and she immediately hated herself for it.

"Stupid," she muttered under her breath, glancing around the empty locker room as if someone might have witnessed the moment of weakness. No one had. She shoved the note deep into the bottom of her bag, burying it under her spare socks like evidence of a crime, and told herself it meant absolutely nothing.

She almost believed it, too, right up until she caught herself smiling again on the walk to morning practice, and had to physically force her face back into something neutral before anyone saw.

Because if a stupid three-word joke from Colt Callahan could do that to her, after everything his family was doing to her rink, to her future, to everything she'd fought for, then she was in far more trouble than twenty-seven days could ever explain.