Chapter Ten #2
“No.” She turned the screen toward him.
Wren.
WREN: Forum rot escalated. Do not engage. Emergency meeting after classes. Bring facts and no felonies.
Frankie locked the phone.
Coop pulled his own out.
Same text.
Then another from Hayes.
HAYES: You see Wren’s message?
Coop typed:
COOP: Yeah.
Frankie was already walking toward the media room.
“Classes,” Coop said.
She did not slow. “Later.”
He followed.
Probably also a mistake.
Definitely not one he regretted.
The media room was technically a converted storage office beside the student-athlete lounge. Wren had claimed it last semester after discovering no one used it except to store broken tripods and a box of old Brookfield Hockey lanyards from 2014.
Now it had a whiteboard, two folding tables, three mismatched chairs, and the atmosphere of a bunker run by someone with excellent eyeliner and no patience for institutional nonsense.
By the time Coop and Frankie arrived, Wren was already there with Dani.
Reese came in two minutes later with Hayes behind her.
Birdie arrived holding a banana like a weapon.
Nolan appeared last and said, “I was told no felonies, so I brought potassium.”
No one responded.
Wren projected the forum thread onto the wall.
Coop’s stomach dropped.
It was worse.
Not viral, exactly.
But meaner.
More specific.
Brookfield’s goalie has one nice clip and suddenly they’re building a whole donor event around her?
Westbridge forwards are going to expose that rebound control.
The Spitfires are a PR project with skates.
Then one with a screenshot of the showcase poster.
Frankie’s glove-save photo circled.
Imagine making the goalie the face of the event when she gave up a soft one the same night. Couldn’t be me.
The room went silent.
Coop felt anger move through him so fast it scared him.
Not hot.
Cold.
His hands curled once at his sides.
He opened them.
Frankie stood perfectly still.
Too still.
Birdie whispered, “I’m going to jail.”
Reese said, “No.”
“Prison, then.”
“No.”
“House arrest?”
“Birdie.”
Wren clicked to the next slide. “It was posted from a new account, but the language overlaps with prior comments. Could be the same person or someone copying the style.”
Dani had a spreadsheet open. Of course she did.
“I pulled timing. Posts increase after Spitfires content goes up, especially anything showing program investment or Frankie.”
Frankie’s face did not change.
Coop hated that most.
Not the post.
Not the cowardice.
That Frankie was so practiced at looking like nothing landed.
Hayes stepped forward. “Can we get it taken down?”
Wren nodded. “I reported it. But taking it down isn’t enough. Screenshots exist. People talk. The board preview is tomorrow.”
Claire entered then, tablet in hand, expression tightly controlled.
Doyle followed.
Of course he did.
The room shifted.
Doyle took one look at the projected post and sighed.
Coop disliked the sigh immediately.
Not because Doyle had caused the post.
Because his sigh sounded like inconvenience.
“There is always a risk,” Doyle said carefully, “when building messaging around a student-athlete.”
Frankie flinched.
Barely.
But Coop saw it.
So did Reese.
So did Sutter, who appeared in the doorway behind Doyle like justice with a whistle.
Doyle did not notice.
He continued, “Perhaps we should adjust the display and the goalie station emphasis. Lower the temperature before the preview.”
Coop felt the room tilt.
There it was.
Make it smaller.
Make her smaller.
Make the target less visible by making the work less visible.
Frankie said nothing.
Her jaw was locked.
Reese stepped forward. “No.”
Doyle looked at her. “Reese—”
“No,” Reese said again. “We are not letting anonymous gossip shape the board preview.”
Sutter said, “Good.”
Doyle’s mouth tightened. “This is not about gossip. It’s about risk management.”
Wren turned from the laptop. “Anonymous gossip is not a governance metric.”
“Wren,” Brenda said softly from behind Claire.
Wren did not blink. “It is not.”
Doyle rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I understand the sentiment. But optics matter.”
Frankie’s voice cut through the room.
“Yes.”
Everyone looked at her.
Coop did too.
Her face was pale.
Still.
Hard.
But her eyes were bright in a way that made his chest hurt.
“Optics matter,” she said. “That’s why they do this.”
Doyle blinked.
Frankie stepped closer to the projected post.
Not away from it.
Toward it.
“Make one athlete look too visible,” she said. “Call that arrogance. Make one mistake look representative. Call that analysis. Make the program look emotional. Call that concern. Then everyone gets nervous and makes the safest decision, which is usually the old one.”
The room was dead quiet now.
Coop could barely breathe.
Frankie pointed at the circled glove-save photo.
“They don’t want the station smaller because it’s risky,” she said. “They want it smaller because it explains the work.”
Dani whispered, “Yes.”
Frankie turned to Doyle.
“Keep the station.”
Her voice did not shake.
“Keep the photo small. Keep the copy. Keep the display. Keep the ask. Do not make it cute. Do not make it inspirational. Make it accurate.”
Doyle’s eyes moved from Frankie to Reese to Claire.
Claire’s expression had changed.
Not just approval.
Decision.
“She’s right,” Claire said.
Doyle exhaled. “Claire—”
“No,” Claire said. “This is exactly the argument. Investment is not about avoiding criticism. It’s about building enough structure that bad-faith criticism does not get to determine the future.”
Wren typed that immediately.
Claire pointed at the projection. “We counter with receipts. Not defensiveness. Attendance. Funding. Student turnout. Equitable ice agreement. Game results. Player development. And the station stays.”
Doyle looked uncomfortable.
Good.
Maybe discomfort was educational.
Sutter stepped into the room. “The board asked for viability.”
Her voice was calm.
Deadly.
“This is viability. Pressure arrived. The program produced facts.”
Doyle looked at Frankie.
Not like the goalie.
Not like a risk.
Like maybe he was finally seeing the person holding the line everyone else had been discussing.
He nodded once.
“Fine,” he said. “The station stays.”
Birdie muttered, “A generous king.”
Reese elbowed her.
Doyle either did not hear or chose survival.
Claire turned to Wren. “Build the board packet around this. Not the anonymous comments themselves, but the principle. Visibility attracts scrutiny. Scrutiny requires structure. Structure requires investment.”
Wren’s fingers flew.
Dani said, “I can add comparative funding levels without naming Westbridge directly.”
Asher’s voice suddenly came from Birdie’s phone.
“You should name Westbridge.”
Everyone froze.
Birdie looked at her phone in horror.
“You were on mute,” she hissed.
Asher said, “You thought I was. Rookie mistake, decorative skating.”
Birdie’s face went crimson. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to hear Brookfield grow a spine.”
Wren leaned toward the phone. “Explain naming Westbridge.”
Asher’s voice sharpened into something useful.
“If you don’t name the benchmark, the board gets to pretend the benchmark is theoretical.
Say the conference landscape changed. Say Westbridge’s entry raises the competitive standard.
Say Brookfield needs a planned investment line to compete in the conference it already belongs to. ”
Frankie stared at the phone.
So did everyone else.
Birdie whispered, “I hate this.”
Asher said, “No, you don’t.”
“I hate you.”
“Sure.”
Reese looked at Claire. “She’s right.”
Claire nodded slowly. “She is.”
Doyle looked like he regretted every administrative choice that had led him into a room where a rival player on speakerphone was improving his board strategy.
Coop near smiled.
Almost.
Then he looked at Frankie.
She stood near the projection, arms folded, still too pale, but not gone.
Not behind the wall.
In front of it.
That might have been braver.
Wren clicked to a blank slide and typed a new heading.
THE CASE FOR PLANNED INVESTMENT
Under it, she added:
The question is not whether Brookfield women’s hockey can generate visibility. It already has. The question is whether Brookfield will build the structure to match it.
Frankie read it.
Then nodded.
“Good,” she said.
Sutter, from the doorway, said, “Good.”
The double good nearly ended Nolan.
He gripped Hayes’s arm. “Historic.”
Hayes removed his hand. “Personal space.”
“History needs witnesses.”
Birdie lifted her banana. “I witness under protest.”
The room moved.
Fast.
Clean.
Focused.
Doyle stayed, which was something.
Brenda stopped suggesting softer language, which was better.
Claire turned the board preview into a sharper pitch.
Dani built three new charts.
Wren created copy that looked polished enough to be expensive.
Reese and Hayes tightened the captain remarks.
Birdie and Asher accidentally created rivalry language so good that Wren muted them twice to type it down without letting them know.
Coop took the student-section plan from Nolan, removed the word “egg” seven times, and rebuilt it around chants, poster signs, and coordinated attendance pushes.
All the while, Frankie stayed in the room.
Not loud.
Not central in a performative way.
But there.
Adding one sentence here.
Killing a weak phrase there.
Correcting the goalie station diagram when someone tried to call a rebound a bounce.
“A rebound is earned by bad positioning,” she said.
Nolan whispered, “Put that on my gravestone.”
At one point, Doyle said, “Perhaps we soften ‘properly backed’ to ‘meaningfully supported.’”
Frankie looked at him.
Doyle cleared his throat.
“Or not.”
Growth.
By the time the emergency meeting ended, the board preview packet had a spine.
Not a soft one.
A real one.
Claire looked around the room. “This is stronger than what we had this morning.”
Wren closed her laptop. “Spite is a renewable resource.”