Chapter 65: Scouts Confirmed

Georgia

The email arrives at 9:47 p.m., and I read it standing in the hallway, my feet rooted to the tile as though something has nailed me there.

I’m on my way back from the showers, phone buzzing against my palm with the kind of insistent double vibration that usually means Mandi sending a meme. I almost don’t check it. I’m tired in the good way, legs sore from another long session, and all I want is my bed and ten minutes of not thinking about anything at all.

I check it anyway. Habit, mostly.

The subject line stops me cold in the middle of the hallway. *Rosethorn Classic - Official Scout Attendance Confirmation.* My thumb moves before my brain fully catches up, opening the email.

*We are pleased to confirm that representatives from the U.S. Figure Skating Federation will be in attendance at this year’s Rosethorn Classic, evaluating select competitors for consideration in the upcoming qualifying cycle.*

I stop breathing. Actually stop, standing there in the middle of an empty hallway, my pulse thudding once, hard, against my throat. I read it again to make absolutely sure I haven’t misunderstood something basic about how English sentences work.

Scouts. Real ones, from the actual federation, not some vague hopeful rumor that’s been floating around the rink for weeks. Confirmed. Coming here. To watch me skate.

The fluorescent light above me flickers once, and I barely register it. Somewhere down the hall a door closes, muffled and distant, but the sound might as well be coming from another building. My whole world has narrowed down to the glowing rectangle in my hand.

This is the moment. The one I plateaued so hard trying to reach back home that Mollie started calling every coach within driving distance, the one that felt so far out of reach after my scores stalled that I started to believe it simply wasn’t going to happen for me anymore, not this year, maybe not ever. And here it is, arriving in an email at 9:47 on an ordinary Tuesday night, real and official and impossible to argue with.

My hands are shaking by the time I finish reading the whole thing through. Goosebumps rise along my damp arms, and it isn’t from the cold. Some part of my brain is already racing ahead to warm-ups and choreography and every technical element I need to be flawless, while another part of me is still standing frozen in the hallway trying to process that any of this is actually happening.

I don’t think. I just call.

My thumb finds Arthur’s contact before I’ve even fully decided, and it’s only after the phone starts ringing that I realize what it means that his name was the first one I reached for. He picks up on the third ring, his voice warm and a little sleepy, like I’ve caught him settling in for the night.

"Hey, kiddo. Everything okay?" he asks, his tone gentling with concern.

"Scouts are coming." My voice comes out faster than I mean it to, higher, cracking slightly around the edges. "To the Classic. Federation scouts. It’s confirmed, Dad, it’s actually happening."

A beat of silence stretches on the line, long enough that I press the phone harder against my ear, straining to hear him breathing. Then I hear him exhale, long and slow, like he’s absorbing the full weight of what I just told him.

"Georgia." His voice is thick with something I don’t hear from him often, pride mixed with something closer to relief, the words coming out unsteady like he’s fighting to keep himself composed. "That’s incredible. That’s everything you’ve been working for."

"I know." I press my back against the hallway wall, sliding down slowly until I’m sitting on the floor, my towel bunching beneath me, phone pressed hard against my ear like distance might make it less real. "I don’t even know what to do with this. I don’t know if I’m ready."

"You’re ready," he says, no hesitation at all, the same certainty in his voice that he had when he told me to tell Mollie no, each word landing steady and sure. "You’ve been ready. This is just the moment catching up to you."

"Will you come?" I ask, my voice small and cracking on the last word, like some part of me is still eight years old at my very first competition, searching the stands for his face before I could even skate a full lap without falling.

"Try and stop me." I can hear the smile in his voice, warm and unguarded, stretching through every syllable. "I wouldn’t miss this for anything, Georgia. I’m so proud of you."

I press my free hand against my mouth, feeling my eyes sting without warning. My throat tightens, and I have to swallow twice before I trust myself to speak again. Relief, mostly - that after the plateau, after months of feeling like my career was quietly slipping away, someone finally believed I could still get it back. But underneath the relief there’s something sharper and colder, twisting through my chest at the exact same time.

Terror. Because now it’s real. Now there’s no more room to hide behind maybe, no more comfortable distance between hoping for something and actually having to earn it in front of people whose entire job is deciding whether I’m good enough to matter.

"Thank you," I say, voice thick, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand even though nobody’s around to see. "I love you, Dad."

"Love you too, kiddo," he says, his voice softening into something gentle and sure. "Go celebrate. You earned this."

We hang up, and I sit there on the hallway floor a little longer, phone resting in my lap, the screen dimming to black against my thigh. I let myself feel both things at once, the relief and the terror, tangled together in a way that leaves me strangely breathless, my chest rising and falling too fast for the empty hallway around me.

Eventually I push myself back up to standing, wiping my face properly this time, smoothing my damp hair back from my forehead. I look down the hallway like I’m expecting to find someone there, someone to tell, someone whose reaction I actually want to see in the moment this news is still fresh and enormous inside my chest.

Mandi would scream. Alexa would hug me, quiet and warm, the way she does everything. Both of those thoughts occur to me, and both of them feel like reasonable options, good options, the kind of reaction I actually deserve to get tonight.

But that isn’t who I want.

The realization lands somewhere low in my stomach, unwelcome and immediate, cutting straight through the leftover glow of Arthur’s pride. The person I actually want to tell, the first face that surfaces in my mind when I imagine turning around and saying *scouts are coming, it’s really happening,* is a boy who hasn’t spoken a single word to me in over a week. A boy who walks the other direction in hallways. A boy who leaves notes under water bottles but can’t seem to look me in the eye anywhere else.

I stand there in the empty hallway, phone still warm in my hand, my own reflection ghosting faintly in a darkened window at the far end of the corridor, and feel the terror sharpen into something that has nothing to do with scouts at all.

My thumb hovers over his name in my contacts before I’ve fully decided anything. I don’t know what I’d even say. *Scouts are coming* feels too small a thing to send to someone who won’t even look at me in a hallway. I type three words anyway. *I got scouts.* Delete them. Type them again. My thumb sits over the send button the same way it did the morning after the gala, and just like that morning, I don’t press it.