Page 80 of Thin Ice

"Riverside has the stroke seat, the cox, and half the engine." He nodded at me, then at himself. "Kingswell has the bow and the three. If Eldridge pulls out, he doesn't got much. No offense Alex."

"You're not wrong." Alex said.

"The quad's the whole point. Alex, Braden, Liam, Tyler. Me in the cox seat. That's the fastest lineup either program can put on the water. You break that up, neither side has a boat worth entering at Henley."

"There's also Braden," Noah said. "Tyler again. Tyler said Braden's been rowing every morning over break."

"Hold on," Ethan said. "How does Tyler know what Braden's doing at five in the morning?"

"Because Tyler's been doing it with him," Noah said.

That stopped the conversation. Everyone looked at Noah.

"Tyler — Riverside Tyler — is meeting up with Braden Lockwood to row in the winter?" I said.

"That's what he told me."

"Over break. Voluntarily. Nobody assigned it."

"Nobody assigned it."

Remy leaned forward in his chair. "That's not normal."

"That's insane," Ethan said. "Those two barely spoke before the joint program. Tyler called him 'the Lockwood kid' all last semester."

"Well, apparently the Lockwood kid rows at five and Tyler decided to show up." Noah ate a clementine segment. "I don't have more context than that. Tyler just said it like it was obvious."

I sat with it. Braden and Tyler, opposite schools, grinding together in the dark before anyone was awake to see it. No coaches. No program structure.

"He's not the problem I thought he was," Alex said quietly.

"No," Ethan agreed. "He's not."

The talk drifted — Jace gone, who takes over scheduling permanently, whether Hale would make a move before Eldridge did or let him self-destruct. Remy laid out the Henley qualification math without notes — times, margins, the April window — and Priya listened from the ice with the expression she probably wore in debate rounds, and at one point she asked a question about seeding criteria that was so precisely framed Remy actually paused before answering.

Then Alex said it.

"I don't even know if I'm going to be rowing in January."

Nobody spoke. The ice groaned underneath us. Priya stopped skating.

Alex wasn't looking at anyone. He was looking at the lake, at the flat white nothing of it, and his voice was steady but his jaw was working the way it did when he was holding something down.

"My registration's on hold. Tuition's gone. I don't know if I'm even enrolled."

The quiet was the hard kind. The kind where everyone's doing math on what to say and nobody wants to say the wrong thing.

Remy spoke first.

"We'll figure something out."

Not soft or inspirational. Just flat and certain, the way he said everything that mattered.

"He's right," I said. "We will."

Ethan stood up. Skated over to Alex and pulled him into a hug, full, both arms.

"We got you, buddy," Ethan said. "Whatever it looks like. We got you."