“So, if we’re all gonna cry, let’s do it now, before I make master-pieces of your faces.”
I wave my favorite eye kit, the one with the perfect teal eye-shadow, and a jet-black eyeliner at them.
“What are you talking about?” Chelsea says, sitting down on my bed, motioning to her own face. “This is already a masterpiece.”
We all laugh, and I sit beside Chelsea to start on her eyes. This is how it was supposed to be all along.
“The United States of America!” the announcer calls, and the sound reverberates through the entire arena with an answering roar from the crowd. Goose bumps explode over my skin as the six of us, together, raise our left arms into the air and wave to the crowd.
It’s super early in the morning, but the arena is full. We’re in the same subdivision as the Japanese team, and the crowd is divided pretty evenly between the two fan bases. I’m sure my parents are up there, somewhere, but finding them would be impossible, even if I wanted to. Seeing their faces in person, after everything that happened, after so long apart, might be too much. They texted me earlier, and that’ll have to be enough. My energy needs to be totally focused on one thing and one thing only: hitting my routines.
“Japan!” the announcer says next, and the fans explode again, supporting their home team.
This is going to be fun.
A cameraman follows us all the way to the bars podium, where we’re led up the stairs by a volunteer. As a group, we turn to face the panel of judges. The Olympic judges. I ball my hands into fists, my fingers digging into the grips already strapped onto my wrists for my first Olympic routine. Music is blaring through the speakers, and the crowd is clapping along with thundersticks, the thumps matching my ever-increasing heart rate.
I inhale and then exhale slowly.
A Klaxon clangs over the music—our signal to warm up. We salute the judges and then turn as one to the bars, where Janet and Brooke’s coach are rubbing chalk over the fiberglass cylinders we’ll be swinging on in just a minute or two.
We’ve practiced this over and over again, running through sections of our routine before jumping down and letting the next girl go in competition order, and then, as the warm-up time expires, Brooke is left up on the podium by herself, waiting to start her bars routine to get us going.
She’s a bars specialist, so it’s her only routine of the day.
“Come on, Brooke!” I shout, clapping my hands together, sending up a small cloud of chalk as she bounces up off the springboard and onto the high bar.
It happens right at the start of her routine, just a half turn for a grip change before her first release, but her hand slips instead of grasping the bar and then slides off entirely, and she’s down below the high bar on her knees, blinking over and over again—not even winded yet. She’d barely begun, and now it’s over. She fell. No final. No medal. Olympics finished.
She stands up and moves to the chalk bowl, adjusting her grips.
I look around at the other girls, but they’re all staring in silence, just like me. What is there even to say? Do we encourage her to keep going? To finish her routine strong? Do we say nothing?
What do you say to someone whose dream just died right in front of your eyes?
Brooke remounts the bars and starts her routine from the beginning. The simple grip change is executed as easy as breathing, before she flawlessly works through the remainder of her routine. She lands her double layout dismount with authority, in defiance of what her score will inevitably be, a point deducted for the fall and more tenths for the form break and lack of control just before her body hit the mat.
She leaps down from the podium and runs straight for her coach, who also happens to be her dad. He hugs her tightly and neither of them look up when the score flashes a few minutes later, a 14.0. Without the fall, it would have been over fifteen. She probably would have made the final, probably would have knocked out me or Emma, but that’s not going to happen now. For the rest of the Games, she’s nothing but a spectator.
“Now on uneven bars for the United States of America, Chelsea Cameron!” the announcer says, and this time I stay quiet as Chelsea takes a small leap and swings up onto the low bar.
Chelsea’s a pro, and she fights like hell to get through the routine. She’s winding up for the dismount, one giant, another, and then another when her feet thwack against the low bar. She releases and twists once in her double back and lands with her chest down at her knees, but her feet solidly on the mat. How the hell she managed to pull it around, I have no idea. It’s a major error, but it’s not like we were resting our gold medal hopes on Chelsea’s bars performance.
She helps Janet chalk the bars for Dani’s routine and then leaps down, bumping her fist against mine.
“You okay?” I ask while she shifts her weight back and forth, pointing and flexing her toes.
“Yeah,” she assures me, “just a dumb mental lapse.”
Her score lights up on the board, a 13, which definitely feels about right, considering.
Janet leaps down beside us, checking in with Chelsea too. She repeats that she’s fine as our eyes fix on Dani.
“On uneven bars for the United States of America, Daniela Olivero!”
The sound that explodes from the crowd is like nothing I’ve ever heard before, a wall of noise that just keeps building. Dani starts, her eyes briefly flickering up into the stands, before she focuses on the judges, waiting for their signal to begin.
The light switches from red to green and with a deep breath, she salutes and begins.
