Chapter 64: The Coach’s Warning

Georgia

My coach tells me to protect my equipment like it’s the most normal advice in the world.

We’re deep into Classic prep now, running the same sections of my program over and over until my legs ache in the specific, familiar way I’ve missed without realizing it - the good kind of tired that comes from actually working toward something instead of just surviving another day. The ice bites cold through my tights every time I fall, and I’ve fallen four times already this session trying to nail the exit edge on my triple loop. My thighs burn. My lungs burn. It feels incredible. There’s a strange comfort in the exhaustion, a reminder that my body still belongs to me, that it still answers when I ask something difficult of it.

Coach Ferreira calls a water break halfway through the session, her whistle cutting sharp through the empty rink. While I catch my breath at the boards, she skates over with her clipboard, the one she never actually writes on, tucked under her arm as usual. Her blades cut clean, precise arcs against the ice, barely making a sound. I’ve always admired that about her, the economy of her movement, like she’s never once in her life made a motion she didn’t mean.

"A few housekeeping things before we get closer to competition," she says, brisk and practical, the same tone she uses for everything from choreography notes to scheduling conflicts.

"Okay," I say, still catching my breath, reaching for my water bottle.

"Lock your skate bag whenever you’re not with it." Her voice stays even, methodical, like she’s reciting something rehearsed a hundred times before. "Don’t leave your equipment unattended in the locker room, even for a minute, even if you trust everyone around you."

I twist the cap off my water bottle, condensation slicking my palm. "This sport’s more cutthroat than people realize," she continues, tapping the boards once with her knuckles, a habit that seems to punctuate the end of any advice she gives, "especially this close to a competition scouts are actually going to attend. You’d be amazed what a loosened screw or a nicked blade edge can do to someone’s night. Better safe than sorry."

"Has that actually happened before?" I ask, more curious than alarmed, wiping sweat from my temple with the back of my wrist.

"More than you’d think, at bigger competitions," she says, matter-of-fact. "Rosethorne’s usually pretty insulated from that kind of thing. Small program, tight community. But I’d rather you get in the habit now than learn the hard way somewhere it actually matters."

"Got it," I say, nodding, already filing her words alongside a hundred other pieces of standard competition wisdom I’ve absorbed over the years without much thought. Warm up your blades before hard landings. Don’t eat heavy before a session. Lock your bag. It all blends into the same background hum that surrounds competitive skating the way weather surrounds a season, always present, rarely dramatic. I’ve heard some version of this speech from every coach I’ve ever had, and I’ve never once questioned it, never once imagined it might apply to me specifically.

Except this competition isn’t quite like the others. This is the one where Mollie doesn’t get to decide how the story gets told, where Coach Ferreira looked at me and said trust yourself instead of do it again, where my father told me I’m allowed to say no and I’m finally starting to believe him. This is supposed to be the first time skating has ever belonged entirely to me. I don’t think about that either, not really, not directly. I just feel it underneath everything else, quiet and constant, the reason my legs don’t feel tired in the way they used to.

I don’t think about it again for the rest of practice.

We run through my short program twice more, working out a rough patch in the footwork sequence leading into my combination spin. My blade catches wrong on the third attempt and I stumble, catching myself against empty air with my arms flailing, my heart lurching with that familiar jolt of adrenaline that comes right before a fall you manage, barely, to avoid. Coach Ferreira just watches from the boards without flinching, unmoved, as though she’s seen this exact stumble a thousand times before and knows precisely how it ends.

"Again," she calls out, flat, unbothered.

By the time she finally calls it for the day, my legs are properly exhausted in the way that makes me grateful for the shower waiting back at my dorm. I peel my skates off in the locker room, my toes throbbing with that particular soreness that means I worked hard enough to earn it, a soreness that feels almost sacred after months of half-hearted sessions back home under my mother’s watchful, dissatisfied eye.

That evening I come back to the rink for a quick extra session, just twenty minutes to run through the footwork one more time before it fully sets in my body, the kind of thing Coach Ferreira doesn’t need to know about but that helps me sleep better when I do it anyway. There’s something private and satisfying about these unscheduled sessions, like I’m stealing a little extra devotion for myself, proof that I want this for reasons that have nothing to do with anyone else’s expectations.

The rink is nearly empty this late. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting a flat white glow across the ice. A few younger skaters finish up their own sessions on the far end, their laughter bouncing thin and hollow off the rafters. I have the locker room mostly to myself while I change, my breath visible in small clouds even indoors, the cold clinging stubborn to the concrete walls. The quiet feels almost peaceful, the kind of silence I’ve learned to crave since coming to Rosethorne, so different from the noise that follows me everywhere else.

I set my skate bag down on the bench, unzip it to check my blades one more time before lacing up, and then remember, halfway through tying my laces, that I forgot to fill my water bottle before leaving my dorm. I sigh, half annoyed with myself, half amused at how easily my mind still slips into old habits of forgetfulness whenever I’m this focused on the ice. ℯℯ𝑙.

I glance at my skate bag sitting open on the bench, blades glinting dully under the fluorescent light. I think, briefly, distantly, of Coach Ferreira’s advice from earlier. *Lock it up. Don’t leave it unattended even for a minute.* The thought flickers through my mind and dissolves almost as quickly as it arrived, replaced by the louder, more immediate thought that the water fountain sits right outside the locker room door, thirty seconds away at most, and nobody’s even in here besides two younger skaters already halfway out the door themselves.

I’m already standing, already halfway to the door.

I fill my water bottle at the fountain in the hallway, taking longer than I mean to because the flow runs weak, sputtering and thin, and it takes almost a full minute to get it properly full. The hallway smells like rubber and chlorine and something colder underneath, something that makes the small hairs on my arms rise. I head back inside, my footsteps echoing slightly in the emptying rink, the sound bouncing strange off the walls like it’s traveling farther than it should, like the building itself is listening.

The locker room is quiet when I push back through the door. My bag sits exactly where I left it on the bench, unzipped, blades visible. Nothing knocked over. Nothing disturbed. I exhale, half laughing at myself for the flicker of unease that had crept in, chalking it up to nerves and too many late nights spent chasing shadows that probably aren’t there.

It looks untouched.

It isn’t.