“Rey, that’s not …” Dani trails off, shaking her head.
“I know, but it’s what I felt. And now, knowing that it was happening to my best friend too”—I look to Emma, whose eyes are a little glassy, but she lets me continue—“I just think you guys deserve to know the real reason I did what I did. You deserve the truth.”
They don’t respond, but there’s no anger or judgment or even dismissal in the silence; they’re just listening because somehow, after everything we’ve been through these last weeks, I’m their leader, and my team is waiting for me to make a call.
So I do.
“I … I still think we’re the best team in the world, no matter what those standings said today.”
“You’re … not wrong,” Dani says slowly.
“Obviously,” Chelsea adds.
Emma nods.
“Okay,” I say, “then we have a week left to show everyone that we’re still the best team in the world. There are five more individual competitions before the Games are over, and we’re in all of them, two of us in most of them. We can still kick ass, all four of us. Together, just, you know, separately.”
Chelsea laughs a little and then smiles a wicked grin. “I like the sound of that.”
“So do I,” Dani says.
Emma’s eyes twinkle at me when she says, “Me too.”
“Okay.” I nod. “Then it starts tomorrow.” I hesitate, looking at Emma, even when I didn’t mean to.
“It starts tomorrow in the all-around final,” she finishes for me, even if she has to look away as she says it. It can’t be easy for her, after everything, that she won’t be competing tomorrow. “You and Dani are going to kick ass.”
There are six of us in the top flight for the all-around competition. Six gymnasts with a realistic shot at winning this thing. We were all within a point of one another in qualifications, and that means there’s a chance for each of us to finish the day at the top of the podium, and a chance is all we need.
The arena is the same. The same freezing temperatures, the same buzzing crowd, the same announcer saying everything in English and Japanese. I feel like something should have changed after we left yesterday. That the cosmos should have made something different about the place where we entered as the far-and-away favorites to win gold and exited without a medal.
Dani and I line up with the other girls, and since I’m taller than the three ahead of me in line, I can see beyond the tunnel entrance and out onto the floor, where one of my dreams died yesterday.
Today, though, today a dream I buried more than a year ago has a chance to live again. It was never supposed to be me, even when we were little. Now I have a chance to take home a medal, toofficiallybe one of the best gymnasts in the world. I don’t even know how I feel about that. There hasn’t been enough time to totally process it.
I bounce on my toes, trying to get warm, when Janet and Chelsea show up to take our bags into the arena. Technically, Janet’s there for me, and Chelsea’s stepped in as Dani’s “coach,” but since we’re in the same group it’ll be a team effort.
“Look who’s here,” Chelsea says, slinging Dani’s backpack over her shoulder and nodding up to the edge of the stands that overlook the tunnel. Leo leans on the railing, an American flag painted on one cheek and a teal awareness ribbon painted on the other.
“Nice face.”
“Yours too,” he says, his smile crinkling the paint job.
“I know,” I say, trying to be flippant and failing.
“Own it,” he says, crouching down to get near my eye level, reaching through the metal bars between us. I knock my fist against his, then, pushing up onto my toes, urge him closer with my eyes. He leans in and lets me kiss him quickly, but he’s Leo, so he doesn’t pull away and instead shifts forward and lets it go on for much longer than it should, probably long enough for the cameras to catch us. It’s ridiculous. We should not be doing this. We were pushing it the other night at the Olympic Village, but this is way more official, out in public with TV cameras everywhere. And yet I don’t care.
A laugh breaks in from behind me, back where the other girls are lined up. I pull away, letting Leo stumble back a bit. He leaves me with a quick eyebrow bounce and a cocky wink.
When I turn around, Irina Kareva and her teammate Erika Sheludenko are smiling in my direction.
“He is cute,” Irina says.
“They’re gross,” Dani says, nudging me with her elbow and then waving me forward. “You’ve got paint on your cheek.”
I scoff in mock offense, letting Dani wipe the paint away with her thumb, barely believingthisis the conversation we’re having right before the Olympic all-around. “Please, we’re adorable.”
Ana-Maria Popescu chimes in from behind me. “It is sweet. I never have a boyfriend.”
