I left the room lighter than I’d entered.
Chapter 5
Observation Deck
Austen
“Focus.”Maya tapped her pen against my notebook, right next to a line of derivatives.“You dropped a negative sign here.You’re hemorrhaging value.”
“I wrote what the caffeine told me to write.”I flipped the page, unwilling to erase the mess.My brain felt like it was floating in formaldehyde; the chalkboard smell of Ridgeway wasn’t helping.
Outside the seminar room, Friday afternoon energy vibrated through the hall—zippers zipping, voices pitched high.Game day static.Every scrap of conversation drifting through the door ended with “Caribou” or “Frost Demons.”
Maya’s phone buzzed on the table, vibrating against a stack of anatomy flashcards.A push alert lit up the screen:CARTER TO START IN NET TONIGHT.
She angled it toward me, eyebrows raised.“Well.It’s official.Your roommate just went viral.”
“It’s a starting lineup, Maya.Not a pandemic.”
“Tell that to the campus,” she said, gesturing toward the noisy hallway with her highlighter.“Symptoms include face paint and screaming.You ready for the exposure?”
“I’m ready to finish this problem set,” I lied, recapping my pen with a precise click.“The rest is just noise.”
“You’re going.”Not a question.A decree.
“I don’t care about hockey.Not my scene.”
“You also never share a dorm with the starting goalie.”
“Correlation is not causation.”
She grinned.“Cop-out.Game starts at seven-thirty.That gives you”—she checked her watch—”three hours to finish math and decide which side of the rink you like.”
“North side,” I said automatically, then cursed internal muscle memory.My foster placement in eighth grade took me to three local games; the foster dad always sat north end because tickets were cheaper.Data point lodged deep.
Maya heard the slip and let it hang without comment.Instead, she packed her laptop.“Dinner?”
I nodded, stacking the corrected quizzes.“Food that isn’t vending-machine biscotti would be an upgrade.”
We pushed through Ridgeway’s double doors.Cold Harbor’s sky had the flat, dishwater gray that turned every outdoor sound brittle.Students hurried past dressed in school merchandise.North Point sat across the quad, windows lit like a convection oven.
Halfway there, a trio of freshmen jogged by chanting, “Let’s go Demons!”One wore face paint.
Maya smiled.“Entire campus is vibrating.”
“Just campus?”I flexed my left hand; the fingers tingled, leftover adrenaline from grading under a time crunch.“My window at seven will be rattling in sympathy.”
“You’ll be inside the arena, so it won’t matter.”
“I—” I started, then shut up because my rebuttal sounded flimsy even to me.
North Point’s heat flushed my glasses.We joined the queue, trays clattering ahead.The display boards had swapped the usual slideshow for hype videos: saves from last season, slow-mo glove snags, students losing their minds in the stands.
I stepped forward, tray vibrating in my hands.
Maya selected chickpea curry.“You okay?”
“Noticed they updated the garnish on the salad bar.”
