The Truth about Ice

I found out Knox knew at 7:47 in the morning.

Not because he texted. Not because Finn gave me a heads up with that quiet, steady warmth he deployed when something was about to happen. I found out because I walked into Evergreen High, turned the corner toward my locker, and Knox Callahan was already there — leaning against the one next to mine, arms folded, jaw set in a way I hadn't seen before. Not the flat, final expression from the cafeteria. Something rawer. Something that had been up since probably five in the morning running drills and getting angrier with every lap.

"Hey," I said carefully.

"Who sent it to you?" No preamble. No good morning.

I spun my combination. "Doesn't matter."

"Avery."

"Knox." I matched his tone. "It was a forwarded screenshot from an unknown number. Half the school has probably seen it by now. It's fine."

"It's not fine." His voice was low, controlled, the kind of controlled that meant the opposite. He pushed off the locker and turned to face me fully. "She called you a cleat chaser. She said you're using your dad's position to get close to me. That's not — that's not who you are, and she knows it, and she did it anyway."

I pulled out my AP Lit book and my notebook and focused on stacking them neatly. "She did it because she could. And because it's working — you're standing here at seven forty-seven looking like you want to check someone into the boards, which means everyone watching knows it got to you, which means it got to me by extension." I looked at him. "Reacting is what she wants."

He stared at me. "You're very calm about this."

"I'm extremely not calm about this. I'm just good at the face." I shut my locker. "Don't do anything. Please."

Something moved behind his eyes — frustration, reluctant respect, something else I didn't have a name for yet. He exhaled through his nose. "Finn told me last night. I wanted to come over but I figured your dad would—"

"Have benched you on the spot? Yes."

"I was going to say worry, but sure." His mouth twitched despite everything. Then it straightened again. "She crossed a line, Avery. This isn't just bonfire territorial stuff. She went after your character."

"I know." I shifted my books to my other arm. "Let me handle it."

He looked at me for a long moment. "You have a plan."

"I have the beginning of a plan."

"That's not the same thing."

"No," I agreed. "But it's what I've got. Can you trust me with it?"

Another long moment. Then he nodded — slow, still unhappy, but genuine. "Yeah. Okay." He fell into step beside me toward AP Lit. "But if it doesn't work—"

"Then you can be righteously angry on my behalf and I'll let you."

"That's all I ask," he said, and some of the tension finally broke loose from his shoulders.

We walked in silence for a moment, the hallway filling around us. Then he said, quieter: "For what it's worth — you are the least calculating person I've met in four years of people being nice to me because of what I can do on the ice. You couldn't fake that if you tried."

I kept my eyes forward. My throat did the tight thing. "Don't say nice things to me in hallways, Callahan. It ruins my composure."

"Your composure looks fine."

"It's the face. I told you."

He laughed, soft and low, and bumped his shoulder against mine once before peeling off toward his own locker.

I walked into AP Lit, sat down, and started forming an actual plan.

I found Sophia at lunch.

Not by accident — I'd clocked her schedule through the group chat Knox didn't know I'd been quietly reading since week one. She had fourth period free and spent it in the library annex, a glass-walled room off the main stacks where the light came in at a good angle and the couches were worn soft from years of students pretending to study. She was there with her laptop and a coffee, alone, which was either fortunate or the universe giving me a window I hadn't earned.

I sat down across from her without asking.

She looked up slowly, the way a person looks up when they've been expecting someone and don't want to give away that they have. "Avery."

"Sophia."

She closed her laptop halfway — not all the way, which meant she wanted an exit. I filed that away. "If you're here about the group chat thing—"

"I'm here because I think you're smart enough for an actual conversation," I said. "So I'm going to have one with you and skip the part where we both pretend we don't know what's happening."

Something shifted in her expression. Not the sharp, glittery performance from the bonfire. Something more tired underneath it. "Fine."

I set my books on the table, mostly to give my hands something to do. "You've known Knox since you were what, eleven? Twelve?"

"Ten," she said. Quiet. "His family moved in three houses down."

"Ten." I nodded. "So you've watched him become — all of this. The captain, the scouts, the chants in the grocery store. You've been there for the dad stuff, the losses, the wins. You know what he looks like at five in the morning before practice and what he sounds like when something's actually wrong." I paused. "I don't have any of that. I've been here three weeks."

Sophia's jaw tightened. "Then why is he—"

"I don't know," I said honestly. "I genuinely don't know why any of this is happening as fast as it is. And I'm not going to pretend I don't feel it because that would be a lie. But I didn't come here to take anything from you, Sophia. I didn't even know you existed until the bonfire."

She looked at the table. Her coffee cup. The middle distance. "The rumour was stupid," she said finally. The words came out like they cost something. "I was angry. Maya was there and it just — came out. I didn't think it would travel that fast."

"It always travels that fast."

"I know." She pressed her lips together. "I'm not — I'm not a mean person. I know it looks like that."

"I think you're a person who's scared of losing something that matters to her," I said. "That's different from mean. But the thing is—" I leaned forward slightly. "Knox isn't a thing that can be lost or kept. He's a person making choices. And the more you try to manage those choices, the more he pulls away. You know that. You've watched it happen."

The library was quiet around us. Somewhere in the stacks, a cart squeaked across the floor.

Sophia looked up, and for the first time since I'd met her she looked exactly her age — seventeen, a little tired, holding something too heavy for the grip she had on it. "He told you about us."

"Enough."

"Did he tell you his dad asked his mom to look out for Knox? Before she passed?" Her voice was careful now, not cruel. Just careful. "That's why my family does the casseroles, the hospital visits. It's not manipulation. It's — we made a promise. My mom made a promise. And I grew up and I fell in love with him and now it's all tangled up in something I can't separate anymore." She exhaled. "I don't know how to just be his friend. I've never been just his friend."

I sat with that for a moment. Because it was real and it was sad and it deserved more than a quick answer.

"I don't know what happens next," I said finally. "With Knox, with any of it. I'm still figuring out if I even live here or if I'm just — visiting." I looked at her. "But I'm asking you to stop. Not for me. Because you're better than anonymous screenshots, and you know it."

Sophia was quiet for a long time.

Then she picked up her coffee, took a slow sip, and said: "You're annoyingly reasonable for someone who showed up in a yellow dress on Decades Day."

Something loosened in my chest. "The dress was devastating and you know it."

The corner of her mouth moved. Not a full smile. But something.

It wasn't fixed. It wasn't a friendship and it wasn't a truce with any teeth yet. But it was two people sitting across from each other in a library annex telling the truth, which was more than I'd had an hour ago.

I gathered my books and stood.

"Avery." Sophia's voice, behind me.

I turned.

She looked down at her laptop, opening it again. "The dress actually was good."

I walked out of the library and into the hallway and let myself smile all the way back to class.

Knox was waiting by my locker after sixth period, and the second he saw my face he read it the way he read the ice — fast, accurate, already adjusting.

"Well?" he said.

"Handled."

He studied me. "You're not going to tell me what you said."

"Nope."

"Avery—"

"Knox." I looked up at him. "She's not a villain. She's just someone who loves you and doesn't know what to do with it. So let's not make her one." I pulled my jacket from the locker. "Give her some grace. She grew up with you. That's not nothing."

He was quiet for a moment. Something moved across his face — complicated, layered, the kind of expression that took years of knowing someone to fully read. "How are you this—"

"If you say mature I'm throwing this jacket at you."

"I was going to say *kind.*" He said it simply. Straight. No deflection.

I zipped my jacket so I had something to do with my hands. "Don't make it a thing."

"Too late." He fell into step beside me toward the exit, and his hand found mine in the space between us — easy, natural, like it had been doing it for years instead of days.

I let it.

Outside, Minnesota was cold and bright and enormous.

And for the first time since the bonfire, the ice under my feet felt solid.

Not thin.

Not cracking.

Just — steady.