I look like a child wearing a parent's laundry.
And I do not care.
Running is the one activity where I do not need to perform for anyone. No coaches evaluating my form from behind clipboards. No scouts pretending I am invisible. No mother cataloguing my aesthetic failures from across a dining table. On this trail, at this hour, I am just a body in motion, burning fuel and covering ground and existing in the merciful absence of judgment.
The birch trees thin as the trail curves northwest, opening onto a stretch that runs parallel to the property's eastern ridge. Morning light filters through the canopy in pale gold columns, illuminating the mist that clings to the forest floor like cotton pulled thin. The air tastes like damp earth and pine needles and the first sharp bite of autumn settling into the valley.
My mind, predictably, refuses to cooperate with the tranquility.
It has been thirty-seven hours since I pressed submit on the Valenridge application.
Thirty-seven hours of checking my email with a frequency that borders on clinical. Refreshing the inbox during meals. During showers. During the excruciating three-course dinner with the Beaumonts, where I had to sit through two hours of a man named Gerald explaining the nuances of his investment portfolio while his wife showed us photographs of their Pomeranian in seasonal costumes.
Gerald's dog wore a tiny tuxedo for New Year's Eve. I wanted to climb out the bathroom window and sprint into traffic.
The confirmation email said forty-eight hours. Which means I have eleven hours remaining before the window closes and the silence either breaks into acceptance or calcifies into another rejection I will have to absorb with my usual cocktail of rage and stubborn optimism.
I frown as the trail narrows, ducking beneath a low-hanging birch branch that catches the bun at the top of my head and yanks a few strands free.
Will it be an email? A phone call? Another registered letter delivered to the courier entrance while my mother is at her board meeting?
The uncertainty gnaws at me with small, persistent teeth.
I tried researching the university after submitting. Spent two hours scrolling through search results, university ranking databases, athletic program directories. Valenridge has a solid reputation. Clean website. Impressive facility photographs. Their Alpha hockey program has produced several professional-level players over the past decade, and their academic credentials are legitimate enough to pass scrutiny.
But information about the Omega integration initiative?
Sparse. Frustratingly, maddeningly sparse.
A single press release dated four months ago, announcing the program's creation in language so carefully vetted by legal counsel that it communicated almost nothing of substance. A brief mention in a sports industry newsletter, buried beneath coverage of a minor league trade deadline. No interviews with program administrators. No testimonials from prospective Omega students. No detailed breakdown of how, exactly, they intend to integrate Omegas into a competitive hockey program without the entire structure collapsing under the weight of the same institutional resistance that has kept me off every other roster I have ever tried to join.
Because there are no prospective Omega students yet, Sage. You would be among the first. That is the entire point.
And that is the entire problem.
Being first means there is no precedent to study. No one who walked this path before and left breadcrumbs. No former student to email at two in the morning askingdid it work? Did they treat you like an athlete or a lab experiment? Did the Alpha players accept your presence or spend the entire season making your life a variation of hell that university administrators conveniently failed to notice?
I exhale hard, forcing the anxiety out through my teeth in a sharp hiss that fogs in the cool air.
Stop. Stop catastrophizing before the catastrophe has even been offered to you. Run. Just run. Let your legs do the thinking for once because your brain is clearly not qualified for the job this morning.
The trail curves sharply to the left, banking around an ancient hemlock whose roots have buckled the packed earth into a series of ridges that serve as natural obstacles. I adjust my stride, shortening my gait to navigate the uneven terrain, myankles rolling with the practiced adaptability of someone who has been running these paths since her legs were too short to clear the roots without tripping.
The forest thickens here. The canopy closes overhead, filtering the morning light into a green-gold haze that makes the air feel dense and ancient. Ferns crowd the trail's edges, their fronds still beaded with dew. A woodpecker hammers somewhere above, the staccato percussion echoing through the timber like a tiny, angry drummer with a point to prove.
Relatable energy, honestly.
I round the corner.
And collide with a wall.
Not an actual wall. Walls do not grunt on impact or smell like cedarwood or have collarbones that connect with your forehead at precisely the right angle to send white sparks cascading across your vision like a private fireworks display.
The shriek that leaves my mouth is involuntary, high-pitched, and so aggressively feminine that I cringe at the sound of my own voice before the ground even finishes rushing up to meet me.
Did I just shriek? Like a girl in a horror film who trips over nothing while the monster walks at a leisurely pace? Did that sound actually come out of me, Sage Holloway, the Omega who once body-checked a two-hundred-pound defenseman into the boards hard enough to crack his visor?
Mortifying. Add it to the list.
