“Mm-hmm.”
He swallows roughly at that, stepping back a bit farther, plastering his arms against his sides, like he’s keeping them from reaching for me again.
“I should go.” I’m trying to avoid his eyes. This is way harder than I thought it would be.
“Go be great,” he rasps.
I walk away and don’t look back. Finding the others in the security line is easy enough.
“That is some serious tension,” Dani says, nudging me with her shoulder.
Chelsea looks like she’s about to burst, but I shake my head at her, then turn to Janet instead. “Thank you,” I whisper quietly.
She nods and then busies herself with her luggage. Emma’s ahead of us, scrolling through her phone like it’s the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen in her life.
Someone at the USOF—probably Mrs. Jackson—sensing another opportunity for positive publicity must have let it slip that we were on the flight, because when we arrive, the gate is completely decked out in USA gear, with our pictures plastered up near the door. A sign hangs below them withGOODLUCK,EMMA,DANI,CHELSEA,ANDAUDREYscrawled in gold paint across it.
The gate’s speakers are also blaring out patriotic music on a loop while we wait for our flight. It feels like every single song that mentions our country, from Miley’s “Party in the U.S.A.” to Simon and Garfunkel’s “America,” is cycled through at least twice before they call us for boarding.
We’re the last ones on, at Janet’s request. The less time we have sitting on the plane, the better, even if it’s an extra fifteen or twenty minutes, especially for me and my back. Getting through the flight is almost a part of our training—if we don’t do it quite right, it could have a major impact on our performance.
The key is to sleep for most of it. If we can do that, we’ll arrive around the middle of the afternoon feeling like we’re starting our day, albeit a little bit later than usual. We’ve got to trick our bodies into thinking that a twelve-hour flight with a seventeen-hour time difference is, you know, perfectly normal.
The USOF has spared no expense. We’re ushered into the front of the plane, to the sleeping pods that fully recline. I’ve flown first class before, but not like this.
Emma is in the pod across from mine, and I have to smile. We always sit next to each other on flights to big international competitions, and it’ll be nice to do it one last time.
Maybe it’s the sheer nostalgia of it all, but as we’re about to sit, I turn to her and say, “Thanks, Em.”
She turns to me, eyes wide, clearly startled. “For what?”
“You voted for me for captain. That was … really nice.”
“You deserve it,” she says, shrugging and running a hand through her red hair. And then she smiles, a familiar, mischievous one that I haven’t seen in way too long. “Besides, you’ll need something to console yourself with after you win silver on bars.”
I bark out a laugh and get an unimpressed glare from a woman a few rows ahead of us who looks way too dressed up just to sit on a plane for twelve hours.
“Ladies,” Janet calls from the other side of the aisle. “Settle in and try to get some sleep.”
I do manage to sleep, I always can on flights, but it’s one of those weird states in between rest and restlessness rather than a total conk-out, and it doesn’t last long.
The journey passes in a slow-motion blur of drink orders, food being left and then taken away, and a few trips to the bathroom. By the time I reach the conclusion that I probably should have taken a sleeping pill, like Emma, it’s way too late in the flight. I’m exhausted, my back is starting to stiffen up, and every one of her soft snores makes my eye twitch.
Twelve hours on the plane, an hour on line at customs, and then nearly an hour in traffic to the athletes’ village, and I’m feeling every single second of it. The soreness that can crop up a day or so after a cortisone shot—especially if you don’t move around enough—is rearing its ugly head at the injection spot. It feels like someone’s taken a hammer to the small of my back, and the rest of me doesn’t seem to understand that it’s the afternoon today and not the middle of the night yesterday. My eyes feel heavy enough to drag my whole body to the floor. And even though we’ve only been here for a few hours, the sheer amount of time that I’ve spent explaining that I’m not, in fact, Japanese, and that I only speak English has been a super-fun way to kick off the Games.
“Drop your luggage. You have some time to rest,” Janet says as we’re led by an Olympic official to a suite opposite the men’s gymnastics team, where the bass from their music is already pounding through the walls, “but remember, we have a training session in a couple of hours.”
I follow Emma into the room we’re sharing. It’s not quite as glamorous as the bedroom back at the rental house in Coronado, but since it’s the actual Olympic Village, I’m willing to let that slide. There are two twin beds with brightly colored duvets emblazoned with the Olympic logo and two soft-looking pillows. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a nap right now, but there isn’t enough time, and it would throw off my body clock even worse.
The only issue is that the AC is blaring against the heat outside, and it’s freezing in the suite. The building is a high-rise on the water, and our room happens to overlook several other buildings and the wide expanse of Tokyo Bay, blue in the distance. We’re over five thousand miles from the San Diego Bay we said goodbye to this morning, but it really reminds me more of New York, where the bridges connect Queens and Brooklyn to the city. The water is murky, but that makes me feel even more at home.
Thinking of home makes me think of my parents. I’d call them, but they’re actually on their own flight right now.
“It looks like home,” Emma says, coming up behind me.
“Right?” I agree, and this is good, talking to her again. “Listen, Em, I’m sorry for—”
She cuts me off. “No, I’m sorry. You were right. I should have defended you and Dani, and I shouldn’t have—”
