Chapter 36: ARTHUR’S CALL

Georgia

I don’t move for a long while after Mandi leaves. I sit there on my bed with my notebook still clutched in my lap, staring at the door, replaying the sound of her voice cracking on *please don’t ask me that again*, until the light outside the window shifts from evening blue to something closer to full dark. My hands have stopped shaking by the time my phone finally rings, though the tightness in my chest hasn’t gone anywhere.

Arthur’s name lights up the screen. For a second I almost let it go to voicemail, unsure I have the energy to sound normal for anyone right now. Something makes me answer anyway, some old instinct that’s never once steered me wrong when it comes to my dad.

"Hey, kiddo," he says, warm and easy, the words landing like a hand on my shoulder.

"Hey, Dad." My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.

"You sound tired," he observes, gentle, not pressing.

"Long week." I press my palm against my forehead. Some of the tightness from the last hour eases, just slightly, at the sound of his voice.

We talk for a while about nothing important. His work. A documentary he’s been watching. A diner near campus he read about online and immediately decided I needed to review for him. It’s easy, familiar, the kind of conversation that asks nothing of me except to exist on the other end of the line. Something in my chest loosens the longer we talk, the tightly wound tension of the evening slowly unraveling thread by thread.

"How’s the ice?" he asks, curious, no evaluative edge to it the way Mollie always has, just real interest.

"Really good, actually. Better than home, honestly. The ice here is incredible."

"And the people. Mandi, right? Alexa?" he asks, flat and unguarded, like he actually wants the real answer instead of a performance of one.

"They’re good." I hesitate, thinking about Mandi fleeing our room an hour ago, her eyes full of grief she wasn’t allowed to explain. My stomach twists. "Complicated, sometimes. But good."

There’s a pause on his end, comfortable rather than awkward, the kind he’s always been good at holding without rushing to fill it. When he speaks again, his voice drops, quieter, more direct.

"Georgia. Are you happy there?" he asks, soft, deliberate, like he’s laying the question down carefully so it won’t shatter.

The question catches me off guard. My fingers tighten around the edge of my notebook. Nobody’s asked me that since I got here. Mollie asks about training logs and jump consistency. Mandi asks if I’m settling in. Alexa asks careful, probing questions dressed up as casual conversation. Nobody’s asked me plainly whether I’m actually happy.

"I don’t know," I say, honest in a way that surprises me. My throat tightens around the words. "It’s strange here, Dad. Really strange. Things happen that I can’t explain, and everyone acts like it’s normal. I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t understand what’s actually going on."

"Strange how?" he asks, quiet and unwasteful, direct and open, waiting for whatever I actually give him.

I almost tell him everything.

The words sit right there, ready, pressing against the back of my teeth. I almost tell him about the wax seal, the wolves that moved and then didn’t. About Puck, his burning skin, his impossible reflexes, the way his eyes flash gold in certain light. About Mandi tonight, flinching like she’d hit an invisible wall, grief in her eyes over words she wasn’t allowed to say. About the pattern I’ve mapped against the lunar calendar, precise and undeniable, and the word I still haven’t let myself write down anywhere except in my own head.

*Tell him. Just say it. Let someone outside these walls carry some of this weight.*

I want someone who loves me without any agenda attached to tell me I’m not losing my mind.

I don’t.

"Just a lot of new social stuff," I say instead, the lie coming out smoother than I expect. "Adjusting to a new school. You know how it is."

"I do know how it is," he says, easy, unbothered, letting the obvious evasion sit without calling me on it the way Mollie always would. "For what it’s worth, kiddo, you sound like you’re figuring something out. Whatever it is. You don’t have to have it all sorted before you talk about it, but I’m here whenever you do."

"Thanks, Dad."

"I mean it, Georgia. Not just surviving it. Are you actually happy?" he asks again, insistent now, gentle but unwilling to let the question dissolve into small talk.

I think about the ice here, smoother and more forgiving than anything I’ve trained on before. I think about Mandi’s warmth even now, even fractured and scared. I think about Puck, the storm walk, the almost touch in the library, the way something in me reaches toward him even when I don’t fully understand what I’m reaching for. My chest aches with the shape of all of it.

"I think so," I say slowly. "In pieces, maybe. Not all the time. But some of it. Yeah."

"That’s a good answer," he says, and I can hear the smile pulling through his voice. "Better than a perfect one."

We talk a little longer, easier, lighter, until he finally lets me go with a promise to call again soon and a reminder that he loves me, plain and uncomplicated, the way he’s always said it.

After we hang up, I sit there for a long moment in the quiet of my room, the conversation still settling over me like snowfall. Something in me feels lighter, even without having said any of the things I almost said.

I reach for my notebook instead, the same one still holding every scattered, unresolved piece of evidence I’ve collected since I got here, and flip to a fresh page.

I write his name at the top, full and deliberate, my pen pressing harder into the paper than it needs to.

*Puck Hale.*

I stare at it for a long moment. My pulse ticks unevenly in my throat. I don’t fully know why I wrote it, don’t know what I’m starting by writing it. I only know that some part of me has decided, without consulting the rest of me, that this is where the next Chapter of my notebook begins.