Chapter 4

Roselle's POV

The email came in at 8:52 that Thursday morning, and I read it standing in the dining hall line with a tray in one hand and my whole day already collapsing in the other.

The corrected documentation submitted Tuesday had apparently gone to the wrong department entirely, some digital filing error nobody could explain, and now I needed a physical copy signed in person by close of business, today, because tomorrow the financial aid office would be closed for a staff meeting and Monday my file would automatically roll into the review queue Pam had warned me about. Two to six weeks. My scholarship sitting in limbo for two to six weeks while my mother picked up a fourth week of double shifts to cover a gap that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

I called my father immediately, walking fast, tray abandoned somewhere behind me that I don’t even remember setting down.

“Dad, I need you to fax the original disability determination letter again, the whole thing, not just page two, they said the office scanned it wrong.”

“Okay, okay, let me find the folder.” I could hear him moving through the house, drawers opening, his voice steady even though I knew exactly how much effort steady cost him now. “Give me twenty minutes.”

Twenty minutes turned into thirty five, because the fax machine at the library jammed twice, and by the time it finally went through my phone had slid to six percent battery and I hadn’t eaten anything since a granola bar at seven that morning, and my hands had started that specific fine shake that wasn’t just hunger, it was never just hunger, it was the exact feeling of watching something I couldn’t afford to drop start sliding out of my hands anyway.

I ran.

The financial aid office had relocated for the day, some note taped to the door redirecting anyone with an appointment to a temporary desk set up in the athletics building, because apparently half the administrative staff really had been pulled for the showcase, and of course, of course, it was the one building on campus I had never once set foot in.

My phone died completely somewhere around the quad, mid call to my mother, her voice cutting off into silence right as she was telling me to breathe. I didn’t have time to breathe. I had a physical copy of a fax in my bag that needed a physical signature before five o’clock, and campus had turned into an obstacle course of parked cars and roped off walkways because of the showcase, every shortcut I tried blocked by security tape or a golf cart full of equipment.

I am not going to be the reason this falls apart. I am not going to be the thing my family has to explain away at Thanksgiving. Those two sentences ran through me on a loop, keeping pace with my footsteps, because it was easier to run on anger than on fear, and I needed something to run on, my legs already burning, my bag banging against my hip with every stride.

The athletics building finally came into view, glass and steel and a banner out front announcing the showcase in letters three feet tall, and I skidded around the side of it looking for any door that wasn’t blocked, any entrance that might actually lead to a temporary desk with my name on a file somewhere inside, my lungs on fire, my hands shaking around the strap of my bag hard enough now that I almost lost my grip on it entirely.

A door. Unmarked, propped slightly open, no rope, no tape, no one standing guard.

I didn’t stop to ask why.

I threw myself through it at a dead run, straight into a wall of blinding overhead light and the sudden, deafening echo of skates cutting into ice, and before I could even process what I was looking at, my own momentum carried me straight out onto the arena floor.