I stop in front of that portrait.
Study the girl in it.
She is so small. So absurdly, impossibly small beneath all that equipment, like a turtle whose shell is three sizes too large. Her green eyes are enormous, burning with a ferocity that does not belong on a seven-year-old's face. Her knuckles are already scraped, even then. Even at seven, she was fighting for ice time with boys who outweighed her by thirty pounds and had parents who complained to the league about an Omega contaminating their sons' sacred sport.
That girl did not know what the world would try to take from her.
She just knew she loved the ice.
And she never stopped loving it. No matter how many times they told her she was wrong to.
I pull the folded letter from the pocket of my joggers, where I tucked it before leaving Dad's office. The paper is warm from my body heat, slightly crumpled at the edges from being handled with too much intensity.
Valenridge University.
Inaugural Omega Integration Program.
Five coaches who rejected me to my face and then wrote letters saying I deserved more than they could offer.
A team. A real team. With a pathway to the leagues and a chance to compete at a level that has never been open to someone like me.
I press the letter against my chest, feeling the heavy stock paper flatten against my sternum. My heartbeat pulses through it, steady and strong, the rhythm of a body that has survived two hours of drills and a decade of rejection and still has enough left in the tank to keep going.
This could be real.
Or it could be another gilded cage dressed up as an opportunity. Another institution that parades its progressiveness in press releases while quietly maintaining the same barriers that have kept me out of every locker room and roster and league pipeline since I was old enough to want in.
But.
There is that word again. That conjunction. That pivot point between reality and possibility.
But what if it is not?
What if this letter is exactly what it claims to be? A door that no one has opened before, held ajar by five coaches who could not let it close without trying one more time?
What if Valenridge is the rink where the scouts actually write my name on their clipboards?
I start walking.
Past the portraits. Past my mother's closed office door and the muffled sound of her voice delegating someone's existence into a spreadsheet. Past the grand staircase with its wrought iron railings and the crystal chandelier that throws fractured rainbows across the marble floor every afternoon at four seventeen when the sun hits it at precisely the right angle.
Up to my room.
Which is not really a room so much as a compromise between my aesthetic preferences and my mother's interior designer, resulting in a space that looks like a luxury hotel suite fought a sporting goods store and both sides sustained heavy casualties. The bed is pristine white because my mother insisted. The walls are covered in hockey posters and team pennants because I insisted harder. A custom-built gear rack occupies the entire west wall, holding sticks and skates and padding and rolls of tape in a system of organization that makes perfect sense to me and drives every other person who enters this room to the brink of madness.
My laptop is on the desk, buried under a stack of hockey analytics printouts and three empty energy drink cans that I should probably recycle before Jeffrey sees them and gives me the disappointed look that is worse than any lecture.
I sit down.
Pull up a browser.
TypeValenridge Universityinto the search bar.
The website loads quickly. Clean design. Navy and gold color scheme matching the letterhead. A hero image of a sprawling campus with modern facilities set against a backdrop of mountains and evergreen forest.
The application portal is right on the front page. A button labeledAPPLY NOWin gold letters, pulsing gently, like the website itself is holding its breath.
I hover my cursor over it.
