Her teammate is next, and where Irina opened a door, Erika is trying to pull it shut. She’s a great bars worker, and it shows with every perfect handstand and her floaty, almost ethereal, releases. She lands her double layout lightly, like she hopped off a step and the crowd roars with approval. Another stuck landing, and her score is going to be higher than her teammate’s. And it is: a 15.0. That’s going to keep her in the race for a medal.
Sun Luli is next, and she blinks first. A great routine full of epic pirouetting and a fantastic release combination that made the entire crowd gasp ends with a short double layout, her knee and shin scraping across the landing mat as her hands go down to catch her. She’s in tears before she leaps off the podium and into her coach’s arms. It’s not my job to console her, but I want to. The judges hammer her. She’d scored a 15.3 during the team final on her routine, and when a 14.2 appears next to her name, it’s over for her.
Making up a whole point in two rotations will be next to impossible. That’s probably something I should have realized yesterday after Emma fell on bars. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone up on beam. Maybe that’s where it all went wrong.
But I can’t think about that anymore because I’m next. Janet hops up onto the podium to chalk the bars for me while I make sure my grips are tight enough and that I have the exact amount of chalk I’ll need to keep my swing light.
“You got this, Rey!” Chelsea screams from just a few feet away, and I let that register with a smile and then block everything else out.
The lead judge nods to me and switches on the green light. I step between the bars, salute, and begin. The scrape of the bars against my grips is perfect as I swing and shift my hands around, launching myself up and over to the high bar, twisting into my pirouettes, one hand and then another before releasing and catching in perfect rhythm. Another handstand out of my last pirouette and I swing down and release into one, two, three twists and stick.
“Yes!” I shout and pump my fist. I’m going to inch up on the leaders and leap over the girls who vaulted ahead of me in that first rotation. I clap my hands together, sending out a cloud of chalk dust before I salute the judges and leave the podium.
Sun Luli immediately approaches, her eyes red-rimmed, but a fist held out to congratulate me.
Instead, I open my arms for a hug, which she steps into gratefully. She’s not even sixteen yet; her birthday isn’t until December. That’s pretty young for your dreams to get crushed.
I’d know. Except that’s not quite true anymore, is it? Because here I am, after the injury and Gibby and losing my coach, here I am anyway with girls who’ve had my back and a boy who makes everything feel perfect and a coach who would never lie to me. I want to tell her all of that, but it’s impossible. Even if we spoke the same language, there’s not enough time to really make her understand. I hope she does one day.
She releases me as my score pops up—a 15.1—and I nod at it with a smile. That’s exactly what I needed to stay in this thing.
A shriek pierces from the stands where Emma and Mrs. Jackson sit, and I smile up in their direction and wave, not really seeing them.
Ana-Maria Popescu is next, and it’s tough to watch. Romania isn’t exactly known for its bars work, and it’s easily her weakest routine. She powers through though, muscling up her skills and desperately trying to keep her swing going through her short and relatively easy routine. She just has to land her dismount, a full-twisting double layout, and her score will be decent enough for her to make a run at a medal. She does, and it’s stuck too, which makes the crowd go wild again despite the routine itself.
There’s just Dani to go now, and I let out a deep breath before finally taking off my grips. “Come on, Dani! You got this.”
Dani wasn’t a great bars worker when we were younger, but she’s better than decent on them now. Her swing is maybe stronger than what people would call natural for the event, but she always hits her handstands, her releases are high and caught easily, and she sticks her landings.
The crowd chants her name again, “Da-ni! Da-ni!” as she comes off the podium. I’m right there to give her a hug, and the rest of the girls in the rotation offer her their fists as we wait for her score.
Wow. A 14.7 for Dani, and that propels her into a tie for first.
1.Daniela Olivero (USA)
30.1
1.Irina Kareva (RUS)
