“Damn it, Rey,” Dani says, laughing through a new set of tears. “You’re good people.”
I smile, feeling my own tears building but forcing them down. We need to get back out there. “You’re good people too.”
“Come on—your boyfriend is probably dying to see your floor routine up close and personal again.” She’s deflecting, but I’m cool with it, especially because of the dark half-moons under her eyes.
I haven’t gotten much sleep in the last few days, but she’s probably barely slept since trials, and she’s dealing with all of it and still doing awesome gymnastics.
If she can do it, then so can I.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I shoot back as I follow her out of the bathroom. “We can’t, you know, be together now.”
“Well, that sucks,” she says, eyeing me with sympathy as we walk back toward the floor. The other girls are warming up their tumbling, and we join Chelsea in one of the corners as she waits for Sierra to finish her run. I deliberately keep my back to where Leo is working out across the gym.
“Yeah, it does.”
I push up onto my toes and run into the pass, a roundoff, a back handspring into a two and a half twist immediately into a front full. It’s my hardest tumbling run, and I stick it perfectly enough to lift my leg in arabesque at the end as a flourish. I finish with a salute and smile in satisfaction. That was a—
“Nice one,” Emma says when I pass her. Maybe there’s a hint of contrition in the softness of her voice, but to be honest I’m really not in the mood at all, not after seeing Dani as upset as she was.
“Thanks,” I mumble and stand behind her, bouncing up and down on my toes as she takes off toward the other corner, executing a perfect triple twist.
“Okay, ladies,” Janet calls, clapping her hands together. “We’ll be rotating through in the order that we’ll likely compete in Tokyo, but alternates first. Jaime?”
With the press of a button, Jaime’s music blasts through the gym’s speakers. It’s “Zorba’s Dance,” retooled to begin at lightning speed for her to get her most difficult tumbling in with the music at crescendo, before slowing down in the middle of the routine for her dance sequences and some choreography that sort of resembles the actual Zorba’s Dance.
I’ve always thought it was a weird choice for Jaime, who is decidedly not Greek, but she does manage to make the routine work well despite some pretty big lunges and hops on her tumbling landings. Then she falls out of her double turn too, which will drop her difficulty, not to mention her execution score.
She finishes off her routine with a double back and then salutes. It’s actually pretty obnoxious how loudly Sierra and Emma applaud for what’s a painfully average routine. Not that I can judge—mine is pretty much on par with it in difficulty, but Chelsea and I look to each other meaningfully before applauding as politely as we can.
Janet waves Jaime over to her. “Good job. Excellent height on your tumbling. Okay, Sierra, up next.”
I blink at the lack of correction. There were a bunch of things wrong with Jaime’s routine—her landings, not finishing her turns completely. Oh, that must be another one of Janet’s sport psych things: positive reinforcement. I guess Jaime knows what she did wrong. We always know what we did wrong.
Sierra’s music blares to life: a theme fromThe Magnificent Seven. Her family owns a ranch, and her music has been some kind of tribute to the Wild West since we were little. It definitely has an epic quality to it, but I’m not in the mood to be generous. I smirk when her heel drops during her double L-turn and when she doesn’t hit a full split on not one but two of her leaps. Dance elements aren’t her strength. Tumbling, however, definitely is, and she lands a routine packed full with a double layout, a triple twist, a one and a half through to double Arabian, and a full-in to end.
“Yeah, Sierra! Kill it!” Jaime cheers when Sierra lands the full-in with a hop back.
“Good job, Sierra,” Janet says, applauding as well. “We’ll work on the turns tomorrow, but way to sell that routine. Your emotional connection really came through.”
Sierra nods but jogs back to Emma and Jaime with a huge smile on her face.
I move out onto the floor and nod to let Janet know I’m ready to go.
“Audrey,” Janet says, before she presses play. “I only want a dance-through. No tumbling.”
“But, Coach …” I stop at the word. Coach. She’s my coach now, and I’ve never called anyone that, except Pauline. As the silence stretches, Janet walks over to my corner of the floor.
“Just a dance-through, Audrey, please,” she repeats softly, and I nod, swallowing back another protest.
She cues up “Moon River” and I do my best to focus on my choreography, a waltz over the floor with an imaginary partner leading into balletic turns and spins that don’t just add in difficulty but link the choreography to the gymnastics skills. Where most gymnasts do the most difficult move they can execute without falling, Pauline and I worked really hard at finding creative and rare elements that would highlight my dancing while still helping out my difficulty. Something Janet seems to appreciate, by the way she’s nodding along with my routine.
I push away thoughts of both coaches, old and new, and line up for a fake tumbling run, jogging across the mat and jumping up slightly to imitate a landing before moving back into my choreography. This time a leap series across the floor, linking them together with the dance and then finally into my last turn, before finishing with my arms raised and my head tilted back.
Applause breaks out, and it rattles up into the high ceilings of the gym. It was a good run-through, but without the actual tumbling, it’s meaningless. I smile at Chelsea and Dani, who are waiting for me in our corner. Dani offers me a bottle of water for when I catch my breath. Chelsea’s up next, and she runs through her routine to Otis Redding’s “Down in the Valley,” with Otis’s voice edited out thanks to the stupid rules against songs with vocals. According to her, it was her grandad’s favorite song, but it melds perfectly with her playful style on the floor. My gaze flies across the room to Leo, and the urge to take him by the hand, pull him off the stationary bike he’s riding, and dance to this is nearly overwhelming, so I look away and concentrate on Chelsea’s powerful—if a little out of control—tumbling.
“Easy, Chelsea,” Janet corrects as she overdoes a double layout and nearly bounces out of bounds from the ricochet. She reins herself in and keeps the routine going.
Chelsea finishes with a flourish of her arms in the air and a sassy twist of her body on the piano’s chords. Anyone who watches that routine without smiling isn’t human. It’s the total opposite of traditional gymnastics wisdom, but Chelsea owns it, and who exactly is going to argue with the defending Olympic champion over her floor music choice?
