Chapter 5 Everyone Looks Normal

Chapter 5: Everyone Looks Human

Lena's POV

The building has changed again. I stare at the map for a full four minutes.

Okay I'm not sure the problem is the building.

I tilt my head and finally notice the map is upside down. Again.

I turn it the right way. The hallways suddenly make sense, though I keep walking in the exact same wayward direction anyway, wandering past a row of lockers that smell of old rubber and a classroom door propped open with a rusted fire extinguisher. Gradually, the surrounding students thin out until the corridor falls into a strange hush.

The sound of a blade cutting into ice echoes from somewhere beyond the wall to my left.

I stop walking. The noise comes again, crisp and rhythmic, a scrape followed by a long, smooth glide. It's not the sort of sound I expected to hear behind a stretch of gray lockers. I fold the map carelessly, shoving it into my bag to follow the noise instead of the printed lines.

The hallway bends toward a set of double doors standing half open. Frigid air spills through the gap, raising goosebumps along my arms as I reach them.

I push one of the doors wider.

An ice rink stretches across the room beneath rows of empty bleachers, its surface glowing silver beneath the overhead lights. The arena sits eerily still. There are no shouting teammates, no coach barking instructions from the bench. Just the even rhythm of skates carving through fresh ice.

There's only one person on the rink.

He moves fast. Human fast, not that jarring kind of speed I've been noticing since Friday night, the kind that makes my stomach knot because someone casually ignored the laws of physics. Every stride costs him actual physical effort. Every stop throws a spray of ice against the boards, and his breath fogs thick in front of him every few seconds.

He cuts left ahead of an opening existing on the ice. A defender should be there, but the rink is empty. By the time the space finally opens up, he's skating through it, as though he'd known where the gap would be.

I lower myself onto the frigid metal of the bleachers, forgetting that I was supposed to be looking for my next class. My right hand rests in my lap, and I turn it palm up without thinking. The skin is smooth, without a single scar, as if nothing traumatic has ever happened to it, which flatly contradicts what broken glass on a Friday night actually left behind. I've been checking this palm since Saturday, over and over every few hours, finding nothing. I close my fingers into a fist, forcing myself to look back at the ice.

He circles the far end of the rink, picking up a puck from nowhere I can track. One clean swing sends it crashing into the top corner of the goal, the net snapping backward from the force. He resets. Another shot follows from a different, harder angle, and the puck finds the mesh anyway.

I pull my knees up beneath my chin and keep watching him win a game only he's playing.

He notices me around the fourth goal. His head turns mid-glide. Momentum carries him another few feet ahead of digging his blades into the ice. He squints up into the dim bleachers as if checking to ensure his mind isn't playing tricks on him. "You've been up there a while."

"You didn't seem like you wanted an audience."

"I didn't." He skates closer, stopping at the low wall separating the ice from the steps. Up close, his face is open, a stark contrast to the guarded, measuring looks I've encountered since arriving at Vaelthorn. "Doesn't mean I mind one."

Nothing comes to mind, so I let the silence answer for me.

He drops onto the top step of the rink stairs, leaving his skates laced tight as he rests his forearms on his knees, his breath fogging faintly. "You lost?"

"I'm exploring."

"That's what lost people say."

"Then I'm lost."

I hear myself admit it, the words out ahead of I can dress them up into something less embarrassing. I've spent the last two days measuring every conversation ahead of stepping into it, but somewhere between the sound of the hockey puck and the weight of my upside-down map, I forgot to guard myself.

"This is the east wing," he says, gesturing around the arena. "You're about as far from the main campus as you can possibly get. Whoever handed you that map hates you personally."

"Nobody gave it to me. It came with orientation."

"Normally orientation hates everyone."

I pull the wrinkled paper from my bag and hold it out toward him. If he laughs, he laughs. I'm done pretending I know where I'm going. His eyes skim the lines. Without a word, he flips the page right side up and hands it back to me.

I stare at the now-correct orientation of the hallways. The rink, the central courtyard, and the dorm building I've been trying to find since this morning are all sitting exactly where they belong instead of somewhere they were never going to be.

"How long have you had it upside down?"

"Since enrollment."

A genuine laugh breaks from him, the sound carrying easily across the empty expanse of the ice. By the time it fades, I realize I was listening too closely. He pushes up from the steps, his skates clicking against the concrete floor as he walks over to the boards nearest my seat.

"I'm Jasper, by the way. Saves you from having to call me the hockey guy."

"Lena."

"Lena." He repeats it once, testing the syllables. He doesn't ask where I'm from or what my major is, or any of the standard icebreaker questions people have been collecting since Friday like they're filling out mandatory paperwork.

I wait for it anyway. It doesn't come.

"Team's short a manager," he says instead, nodding back toward the empty rink. "League board likes every roster to have at least one human member attached to it. Makes the paperwork easier. Nobody on the team wants to deal with it."

I blink. "Human member?"

"Yeah." He shrugs, his tone easy, as if he'd described an ordinary rule. "Administration likes the various campus clubs to stay balanced."

"Hmm balanced."

"Looks better on the end-of-year reports." One corner of his mouth lifts slightly. "And it means somebody has to answer the department emails. Tragic, really."

"That sounds suspiciously like you're trying to trick me into unpaid labor."

"I'm trying to trick you into very boring unpaid labor."

A finger goes to my chin as I consider. "I'll think about it."

"That's a dangerous amount of hope to give a guy." He grins, stepping back toward the ice. "Bleachers are open whenever you get lost again. Judging by your relationship with that map, I'll probably see you tomorrow."

I climb down from the metal seats, heading toward the exit without looking back. Behind me, the crisp scrape of his blades tells me he's already moving again, skating into the open ice, chasing paths only he seems equipped to see.

He hadn't probed into my background, my scholarship, or why I'd drifted into the east wing with an upside-down campus guide. He had asked for my name.

As the double doors swing shut behind me, his casual phrase drifts back through my thoughts.

‘Human member.’

The phrase follows me into the hallway.

Maybe university paperwork really was that strange. Or maybe everyone else knew something I didn't.