Emily’s POV
The academic hall outside the rink looks different during competition week. Posters line the walls, glossy photos of athletes beside event schedules and sponsor banners, and students I've never seen in this corridor before slow down to read them.
Chris nudges one of the posters as we walk past. "Look at that," he says. "Your face is officially decoration."
"I always suspected I'd end up as wall art eventually," I reply, adjusting the strap of my bag. "This feels like the natural progression of things."
Ava laughs softly beside me. "You're weirdly calm about it," she says. "The posters, the cameras, all of it."
"Calm is the goal," I say, which is mostly true and the rest I keep to myself.
When we reach the rink entrance, the noise hits immediately. Cameras, reporters, and spectators fill the stands in numbers that open practice doesn't usually warrant.
Ava glances around the seating area. "This is significantly more people than usual," she says, taking it in carefully.
"It's open practice during competition week," I remind her, scanning the stands without making it obvious. "Everyone wants a preview."
Chris leans toward me, lowering his voice. "Olympic scouts, journalists, sponsors. Basically everyone who might want to rewrite the next five years of your life."
We step onto the ice one by one, blades finding the surface. The crowd noise dips slightly as practice begins, the way it always does when people sense there's something worth watching.
I push into warm-up laps and let the rhythm take over. The rink simplifies things — edges, speed, balance, all of it responding honestly to effort. No politics on the ice. No scoring panels. Just physics and consequence.
Chris glides past me during a footwork pass and drops his voice. "You planning anything dramatic today?"
I keep my eyes on the ice ahead of me. "Just trust the process," I say, which from the sound he makes means he's immediately suspicious.
The first run goes cleanly. The second is sharper. By the third pass the entry speed is high enough that the sequence tightens on its own, the combination doing what months of work have trained it to do.
I circle the rink once, twice, letting the momentum build. The entry angle is precise, the edge sharp. The rink goes momentarily quiet — one of those small silences that happen when a crowd senses something is about to happen.
Then I launch.
The quad snaps into rotation, tight and controlled, and I feel the landing before I hit it, the blade catching clean. The transition into the triple flows without hesitation between them.
When the second landing locks, applause breaks across the stands in a wave, echoing off the glass panels and the steel beams overhead. A few reporters raise their cameras.
Chris skates past me wide-eyed. "You did not just do that in an open practice," he says, staring at me like I've committed something.
"It felt ready," I say, still gliding on the residual momentum. "So I did it."
Ava shakes her head from the boards. "Emily, that combination is genuinely insane," she says. "I say that as a compliment and also a genuine concern for the program."
I glide toward Coach at the boards. She does not look impressed in the way she reserves for things that actually impress her.
"That combination," she says evenly, "leaves almost no margin for error in competition conditions."
"It landed in competition conditions," I reply. "Open practice, full crowd, under pressure. That's as close to a test as I can give it before finals."
Coach crosses her arms, unmoved. "Pushing limits is not the same thing as gambling with the program," she says. "There's a line, and I need you to stay aware of where it is."
"I feel stronger than I have all season," I tell her honestly. "If I don't try it now, when do I? The sport doesn't move forward by playing it safe every time."
She holds my gaze for a moment. "Get back out there," she says, which is not an agreement but is not a no either, and I'll take it.
The rest of practice runs in controlled intensity. By the time the rink empties, I've run the combination four more times and landed it every one.
In the library that afternoon, Maddie finds me at a corner table where I've been working through competition data on my laptop. She approaches carefully and sets a folder on the table between us.
"Ava and I finished compiling the evidence," she says, sitting down across from me. "Organized and cross-referenced."
She opens the folder and slides printed pages toward me — charts, competition records, scoring breakdowns laid out side by side.
"The comparison patterns hold across multiple events and judge panels," she explains. "Consistent enough that the federation would have to acknowledge it."
"I already found the pattern," I say, scanning the first page.
Maddie leans forward slightly. "Then you understand what it means if Victoria judges finals," she says. "Those numbers don't stay in a spreadsheet. They land on our score."
I close the folder and slide it back. "My plan is to skate well enough that the margin she can take is as small as possible," I say.
Maddie's expression tightens slightly. "Emily. This isn't a pride problem."
"No," I say, meeting her eyes. "But performance determines the ceiling of what she can do. She can bring scores down — she can't manufacture mistakes I don't make."
Neither of us speaks for a moment. The library hums quietly around us.
"Be careful," Maddie says finally, and quietly enough that it sounds less like advice and more like something she means.
"I always am," I say, and look back at my screen.
That evening Coach organizes a team dinner at a small restaurant near campus — morale, she calls it.
The table is long enough to seat the full team and filled with exactly the kind of noise that makes me realize I'd forgotten what it sounded like.
Chris raises his glass halfway through the meal. "To surviving another week of athletic trauma," he says, with the gravity of a man announcing a military victory.
Someone across the table asks me about the pressure. I shrug and say something about diamonds that makes Chris groan loudly and makes the rest of the table laugh.
The conversation drifts toward travel logistics and music playlists and which hotel has the better breakfast. I participate just enough to keep the mood light and let my mind rest for an hour.
After dinner we walk back toward campus together. The group slowly splits as people peel off toward their dorms. Coach stays beside me until we reach the athletic building entrance, where she stops.
"There's something you should know before finals," she says, turning to face me. "Olympic development scouts will be attending. In person."
The words settle in the quiet between us. I know exactly what it means — for the stakes, for Victoria's motives, for everything we're about to walk into.
"Understood," I say, and I mean it completely.