Chapter 56: Training Ramps Up

Georgia

For the first time in my life, my coach’s biggest note is "trust yourself," not "do it again."

I stand at the boards catching my breath after running my short program twice through, sweat cooling on the back of my neck. My legs burn in that satisfying way that means I actually worked for something. I wait for Coach Ferreira to tell me what I did wrong, because there’s always something. You land the jump, and somebody tells you the landing was a quarter inch off. You nail the spin, and somebody tells you your free leg wasn’t high enough. There is always, always something else to fix.

Coach Ferreira skates over slowly, clipboard tucked under one arm even though I’ve never once seen her actually write anything on it. She studies me for a second before she speaks.

"That was good," she says, her voice flat with certainty.

I wait for the rest of the sentence. It doesn’t come.

"That’s it?" I ask, baffled, because I genuinely don’t know what to do with a note that doesn’t have a correction attached to it. "No notes on the landing? My exit was a little wide on the loop."

"Your exit was fine," she says, dismissive, waving a hand like the loop isn’t even worth discussing. She tilts her head, studying me like I’m a puzzle she’s slowly working out. "You know what your problem is, Georgia? You don’t trust yourself. You skate like you’re waiting for someone to tell you it wasn’t good enough before you’ve even finished the element. Stop doing that. Trust yourself. That’s the note."

I don’t have anything to say to that. It sits strangely in my chest, unfamiliar, like a compliment in a language I never learned to speak. My throat tightens. I nod anyway, because nodding is easier than admitting I have absolutely no idea how to follow that instruction.

She skates a slow circle around me, watching the way I hold myself, the way my shoulders sit. "You’ve gotten stronger since you got here," she says, thoughtful, almost to herself. "Not just technically. There’s something different in how you carry yourself on the ice now."

I think about the empty rink at midnight, about skating out the anger after Mollie’s calls, about the strange, quiet freedom of an ice surface that doesn’t come with a scoreboard attached to it. I think about the fact that for the first time in years, I’m not doing this to prove anything to my mother. I’m doing it because some stubborn part of me still loves the exact second a jump goes right, the split moment where gravity forgets about you completely.

"I’ve been training a lot," I say, which is true but doesn’t cover even half of it.

"It shows." She stops in front of me, clipboard finally coming down to her side. "Which is why I want to talk to you about the Rosethorn Classic."

My stomach drops and twists at once. I’ve heard about the Classic since my first week here, an exhibition big enough to draw federation scouts, the kind of event that can put a stalled career back on track. I always assumed it was something other students competed in, not something anyone would seriously consider for me, not after months of watching Mollie’s face fall every time a scout’s name came up and didn’t call.

"You think I’m ready for that?" I ask, my voice smaller than I want it to be.

"I think you’re more than ready," she says, blunt, without a trace of dramatics. "I think you’ve been ready for weeks and didn’t know it because you’ve spent so long being told you weren’t." Something about the plainness of it lands harder than any pep talk could have. "I want to start building your program specifically for the Classic. Real choreography. Real intention. Not just clean technical content, something that shows them who you are."

I nod, and this time it isn’t the automatic nod I gave her a minute ago. This one comes from somewhere deeper, somewhere that’s been starving for exactly this kind of chance without knowing it.

*Trust yourself,* I think. *Fine. I’m trying.*

"Okay," I say. "Let’s do it."

We spend the next hour running through ideas, Coach Ferreira sketching rough shapes of a program on the ice with her own skates while I follow behind her, feeling the bones of something that could actually be mine start to take form. It’s exhausting in the good way, the way that leaves your legs shaking but your chest feeling lighter instead of heavier. By the time we call it for the day, I’m drenched in sweat and grinning without meaning to.

"Same time tomorrow," Coach Ferreira says, brisk, already turning to gather her things from the boards. "And the day after that. We’ve got a lot of work to do before the Classic, and I want you sharp."

"I’ll be here," I say, unlacing my skates on the bench, still catching my breath.

She pauses on her way toward the exit, glancing back like she just remembered something minor, something not worth much thought. "Oh. I meant to mention, we’ll need to work around the ice schedule a bit," she says, casual, barely looking up from her bag. "Puck Hale’s been requesting the slot right before yours every week. Has been since your first week here, actually. Before any of this Classic talk, before I even knew who you were to him. I don’t know why, he’s never said, but it’s been booked solid under his name every single session."

She says it so lightly, so completely without weight, that it takes me a second to actually process what she’s told me. My fingers go still on the laces.

"Every week?" I ask, sharp with disbelief.

"Every week." She shrugs, already moving again, already thinking about whatever comes next on her list. "Some kids just like their routines, I guess. See you tomorrow, Georgia."

She’s gone before I can ask anything else, disappearing through the rink doors and leaving me alone on the bench with one skate still half unlaced, turning the information over and over.

Puck. Every week. The ice slot right before mine, booked under his own name, no explanation given because apparently none was asked for. I think about the warmth I always feel when I step onto freshly cut ice, the way it never quite feels cold the way it should, the way I chalked that up to good rink maintenance and never thought to question it further. He’s been doing this since before the gala. Since before any of it went wrong. Which means whatever this is, it isn’t new. It’s just the first time I’ve noticed it.

He hasn’t looked at me in days. He walks the other direction when he sees me coming. My chest still aches with that hollow, phantom pressure like something got carved out of it and never grew back. And yet here’s a fact sitting quietly in the middle of my ribs that doesn’t match any of that, a fact that says maybe, underneath all that distance, some part of him is still here.

*He warms the ice before I even touch it,* I think. *What does that make him? What does that make us?*

I finish unlacing my skates slowly, the rink emptying out around me, the ice gleaming under the overhead lights.

I don’t understand it. I don’t try to.

But when I step back out onto the ice the next morning, into a slot that used to belong to someone else an hour earlier, something in me skates lighter than it has in weeks.