28.1
3.Emma Sadowsky
27.8
What the hell is going on?
chapter seventeen
It’s nice to be in the top spot all-around, but that’s not really the important thing, especially since we’re headed to floor and vault, where Dani and Emma are going to pull ahead of me and the universe will right itself.
My gaze moves from those standings to the individual event qualifications, and there I am, sitting in the top spot for bars and beam. That’s what matters. I’ve given myself a chance to win the medals I set my sights on a year ago, when the doctors told me that I couldtryfor the Games, but that there was no guarantee, and that I really probably shouldn’t. When Pauline made me downgrade my vault and I wasn’t able to tumble with the ease I’d felt before.
“Hey, did you see?” Chelsea says, pulling me out of my thoughts. Thank God. The last thing I need to do is get caught up in everything that went down. She lines up ahead of me as the Klaxon rings, signaling our move to the floor exercise. Her chin juts out toward the all-around standings.
“Yeah, it’s a shame I can’t just double up on bars and beam,” I quip, as a cameraman comes charging toward us to get the shot of our march to the next event.
Chelsea snorts as Sarah and Brooke line up in front of her, and then Emma and Dani join us, one ahead of me, one behind, and a weighted silence falls over the group. They’re within a few tenths of each other, jockeying for position to qualify for the all-around final. It doesn’t really matter which one of them comes out on top today, but the way both of them are staring straight ahead, their typically excellent posture even more straight and unbending than usual, makes it feel like they’re battling it out for that gold medal right here and now.
“Two more,” Dani says from ahead of me, and something in my head finally clicks.
Two more events: floor and vault.
My last time competing both of them.
Seriously, are you just realizing that now, Audrey?
I was too caught up in everything, training like this was normal, like everything about this competition was the same as every other competition I’ve ever been to. Maybe, in some ways, I lost sight of what this actually is.
It’s an ending.
“Last floor routine ever,” I say, mostly to myself as we drop our things on the chairs near floor and move to line up in front of the judges.
Chelsea turns to me in surprise, her eyebrows lifting. She opens her mouth to say something, but then closes it with a rueful shake of her head. “Just go do your thing, Rey,” she says finally.
“You too.”
There isn’t really time think about it because, as the weakest floor worker on the team, I’m up first, for the very last time.
I close my eyes and breathe, once, twice. A chime sounds in the arena, and then my music begins. “Moon River,” clear as a bell, rings through the air, and I’m dancing, and it’s like magic as I let the feel of performing in the Olympic arena wash over me. There’s no pressure here, nothing riding on this routine except that it’s my last and I want to make it a good one. I have to go out and do my routine, like I have a million times before, except Ifeelit, maybe for the first time since the world seemed to tear itself apart around me—around all of us—and we had to stitch it back together again.
