"It's five o'clock, Grace. Five. That number shouldn't exist on a Sunday."
"The arena opens in thirty minutes." She's already dressed. Full Team USA gear—jersey, beanie, face paint in red and blue stripes across her cheekbones like she's about to storm the ice herself.
I stare at her. "What happened to your face?"
"Patriotism happened." She tosses my jeans at me. They hit me in the chest. "Get dressed. We're going."
"Going where? It's five in the morning. In February. In Colorado."
"To the arena."
I blink. Process. Fail to process.
"The Olympic game starts at six-ten," she says, like this explains everything. "The arena opens at five-thirty. Thewhole town is going. We are not watching the gold medal game on a laptop in bed when there is a ten-thousand-seat arena three miles away that is open and free and has a Jumbotron."
"Grace—"
"JUMBOTRON, Jane."
I sit up. Rub my face. My brain is not awake enough for this level of enthusiasm.
"Can't we just—"
"No." She grabs my coat off the chair. Holds it out like a matador. "You have two minutes or I'm dragging you there in your pajamas."
I look at her face. The stripes. The absolute conviction in her eyes.
I get dressed.
We pull out of the Skyridge Hotel's underground garage into a Cedar Falls morning that has no business being this clear.
Dawn is coming—faint light edging the horizon in shades of rose and gold—but the sky above us is still dark. Still full of stars.
The mountains hold both at once, night and day existing in the same frame, and I don't know how that's possible but it's happening right in front of me.
Grace pulls up her phone. Taps something. Then holds it toward me.
“What, Grace?”
“Boston weather: gray, sleet advisory, wind chill in the teens.”
She swipes.
“New York: emergency declaration, travel disrupted, visibility near zero.”
She looks out the windshield at the dry Colorado pre-dawn.
"It's literally perfect here," she says. Not dramatically. Just factually. Like the universe forgot to check the February dress code.
I don't say anything.
But I feel it.
Grace is talking. Has been talking. I catch fragments.
"—and the nursing director said the simulation labs are brand new, like they just installed them last month, and the hospital has a trauma unit which is huge for a town this size, and the housing is literally across the street so I could walk to clinicals in like three minutes—"
I let her voice wash over me while I drive.
