I twist in the air in a two and a half to full. I don’t stick it, but that’s okay because I can even make that step beautiful, pushing up into arabesque and dancing out of it the way I’ve been taught, and the routine is as much of a blur as the rest of the competition has been so far, but it’s also perfect. The crowd is silent for a moment after I finish, and then it erupts for me and I’m breathing hard, but my eyes are closed. I don’t want to open them yet. If that was the last time I’m going to dance for them, I want to feel it wash over me.
Finally, I open my eyes and take in the arena, the bright lights, the crowd cheering, and tears start to gather. If this is an ending, it’s the best I could have asked for.
“Great job, Rey,” Emma says when I race down the stairs, my breath coming in heaving gasps. She’s up next. I hug her quickly, unable to get any words out over my desperate need for air, and then move off to the side.
Digging through my bag for some tape, I miss my score coming up, but hear thedingof the bell just before Emma’s music begins.
“You got this, Em!” I shout when I’m in control of my lungs again.
Chelsea and Dani are pacing in front of me, jogging and swinging their arms back and forth to try to stay warm. The crowd claps along with the music, their thundersticks pounding out the rhythm. Emma dances and tumbles and sticks the hell out of her landings before finishing with a flourish as the music crashes to an end.
The roll of tape is dangling from my wrist when I hug her and she sits beside me, fighting to catch her breath.
Her score pops up, a huge 14.7, and she nods to herself while I reach out and pull her into a side-hug. That will definitely be good enough for the floor final.
“Just gotta finish strong,” Emma says, picking at the tape around her ankles that helped stabilize them on floor but will just get in the way during vault.
Chelsea’s swanky routine to “Down in the Valley” has the crowd riled up again, and when she finishes they applaud wildly.
Her eyes are bright and wide as she leaves the floor, waving out into the stands, especially toward the other side of the arena, where a group is decked out in red, white, and blue, someone standing on their seat holding up an American flag.
“This is why I came back,” she says, falling into the chair beside me and nudging her shoulder against mine. “There is nothing like this.”
Nodding, I look up, into the crowd, around the arena, trying to soak it all in. I’m an Olympian, and that’s forever, but I want to remember as much as possible.
Dani’s up on the floor, and the crowd roars at her, the same way they have since we stepped into the arena. They clap their thundersticks along to the remixedThe Greatest Showmansoundtrack, even managing to catch and recatch the beat as the tempo changes. Her tumbling is as high and impressive as it usually is, though she takes a big hop back out of her last pass, at least one foot landing entirely outside the boundaries. The line judge’s flag pops up to indicate the deduction. It’s still a brilliant routine, though, and when she leaps up and lands in a split with her hands raised over her head to finish, we rise along with the fans to applaud.
But it’s not over. Not yet.
One more rotation.
“Okay, ladies. Nice job. Let’s go,” Janet says once Dani has given us fist bumps celebrating our first entirely hit rotation of the day. This fact clearly hasn’t escaped Janet’s notice if the firm set of her mouth is any indication. Better today than tomorrow, at least.
The Klaxon rings one last time, ending the third rotation and beginning the fourth. We line up together and follow our volunteer around nearly the entire arena, with the thundersticks pounding to the music pumping through the speakers.
“Last vault ever,” I say as we stand before the judges to salute them before warm-ups. I mean, I still hate vault. I think I’ll hate it forever, but it’s the last time I’ll do one, and that feels kind of momentous, just like back on floor.
“Make it a great one,” Dani says as we jog down the podium to the end of the vault run to begin our warm-ups.
I nod, digging into the chalk bowl and swiping handfuls onto the bottoms of my feet, the insides of my thighs, and the palms of my hands—just enough to avoid slipping off the vault. I race down the runway first, just doing a simple flip off the table, and land on my feet, popping up into the air to eat away the leftover momentum that will eventually propel me into a full one and a half twist.
Walking back to the other end of the run, my eye catches a group in the crowd, the same red-white-and-blue-bedecked section that Chelsea saluted before. It’s our parents, all of them, sitting together, clapping their thundersticks as hard as everyone else. My parents are with Emma’s, and Emma’s agent is with them too. My agent now, I guess, if that deal with Adidas is legit. Chelsea’s boyfriend, Ben, is in the row in front of them, a giant Uncle Sam hat on his head. He’s holding one end of the American flag, and holding the other end is … Leo, with a matching hat.
Sheer force of habit gets me to the end of the vault run and up onto the podium, waiting for the other girls, including Sarah, to finish their run-throughs. I have to physically shake my head to get my focus back, but it doesn’t stop my stomach flipping over once and then again when I glance that way out of the corner of my eye.
“I guess you saw him?” Chelsea says from in front of me, where she’s waiting for Emma to land and get out of the way.
“Did you know?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at her.
“Ben and I might have asked Janet if it was cool for Leo to stay with him,” she says.
“But how did he pay …” I trail off as she smirks at me. “You’re the actual best, you know that, right?”
“I know,” she says, pushing up on her toes and then sprinting full speed at the vault, leaving me behind.
One more round through, and we’ve all done a warm-up vault, and then I’m left by myself on the podium, first up as the weakest vaulter on the team.
“Now on vault for the United States of America, Audrey Lee!” the announcer calls out.
