Chapter 8

Roselle's POV

Dean Whitmore’s office smelled like old coffee and expensive furniture polish, and she did not ask me to sit down until she had finished reading something on her computer screen for a full, deliberate thirty seconds, which felt less like an accident and more like a technique she’d perfected over many years of making nervous freshmen wait exactly long enough to properly sweat.

“Ms. Adair.” She finally looked up, glasses pushed down her nose, expression unreadable in the specific way that administrators seem to train for. “Please, sit.”

I sat.

“I’ve watched the footage,” she said, no preamble, sliding a folder across her desk that I did not touch. “Multiple angles, in fact, since apparently half the athletics complex had their phones out yesterday afternoon. I understand you were attempting to reach a relocated financial aid office.”

“Yes, ma’am. There was a note on the door redirecting appointments to the athletics building because of the showcase, and I couldn’t find the temporary desk, and I panicked, and I saw a door that wasn’t blocked off and I—”

“I understand the sequence of events.” She said it not unkindly, but firmly, the tone of someone who had already heard this story enough times in the last eighteen hours to have it fully memorized. “What I need you to understand is the scope of the fallout, because I don’t think you fully grasp it yet.”

My stomach, which had spent the entire night in some version of free fall, dropped one more floor.

“The recruiter who was present yesterday left the facility early and has since communicated, through her staff, that she no longer intends to visit our program in person this season. That is a significant loss for this university, Ms. Adair, one with real financial and reputational consequences that extend well beyond one hockey player’s draft prospects.” She let that sit for a second before continuing. “Additionally, and this is the part that concerns you directly, your financial aid file has been formally flagged for expedited review due to, and I’m reading this directly, quote, an active incident involving university property and personnel during a scheduled event, unquote.”

“Flagged how? I already resubmitted the corrected paperwork, that’s the whole reason I was even trying to get to that office in the first place.”

“Flagged in a way that pulls it out of the standard review queue entirely and places it in front of a committee instead, which, and I want to be honest with you here, typically takes considerably longer than the two to six weeks you may have already been told to expect.” She folded her hands on the desk, watching me carefully now, the way you watch someone right before you’re about to tell them something they don’t want to hear. “It also opens the door to additional scrutiny on the incident itself, which, depending on how the athletics department chooses to characterize what happened, could complicate your standing here considerably.”

I felt my pulse pick up somewhere in my throat. “Are you saying I could lose my scholarship over an accident?”

“I’m saying the situation has become more complicated than an accident, purely because of who was involved and how visible it became." She said it plainly, without cruelty, but the plainness somehow made it worse. “However. There is a path that resolves this quickly, and cleanly, for everyone involved.”

I didn’t say anything. I just waited, hands clenched in my lap where she couldn’t see them.

“The athletics department has proposed reassigning your current work study position. You’re currently placed in the general library system, correct?”

“Yes.”

“They’re proposing you be moved instead into a support role within the athletics department itself, effective immediately, for the remainder of the semester at minimum. Tutoring support, academic monitoring, scheduling assistance, that sort of thing, for student athletes who need it.” She said it like she was reading off a form, which she may well have been. “The framing, from the university’s perspective, is that this demonstrates good faith, a willingness to directly address the disruption rather than simply letting it fade from public conversation, and it allows your financial aid file to be expedited back into standard review rather than sitting with the committee indefinitely.”

“So I lose my old job and get put somewhere I never asked to be, in exchange for my scholarship not disappearing into a black hole.”

“That is, essentially, correct, yes.” At least she didn’t pretend otherwise. “I understand this isn’t the outcome you were hoping to walk in here and hear. But I would encourage you to consider it as the significantly better of your two available options, because the alternative is an open ended committee review with an outcome I genuinely cannot predict for you.”

I sat there for a long moment, staring at the folder she still hadn’t asked me to open, feeling the exact shape of the trap even as I understood I didn’t have any real choice but to walk into it. My mother had picked up a fourth week of double shifts to cover an envelope I hadn’t wanted to take in the first place. My father sat in our kitchen every morning with an arm he was still learning to live with. None of that math left room for me to sit here and be proud about it.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Dean Whitmore made a note on her screen, something quick and administrative, the whole enormous weight of my next several months apparently reduced to a few keystrokes on her end. “You’ll report to the athletics complex tomorrow morning to meet your new supervisor, who will handle your onboarding and scheduling going forward.”

“Who is it?” I asked, mostly out of habit, already halfway to standing, my mind already three steps ahead trying to figure out how I was going to explain this to my mother without her hearing the words scholarship and flagged in the same sentence.

“I believe the athletics director specifically requested that the team captain oversee the placement, given the, ah, direct nature of his involvement in the incident.” She glanced back down at her screen, reading off a name like it meant nothing at all to her. “A Mr. Jace Whitfield.”

I sat back down without meaning to.