Hallie is up against several gymnasts I know—Emma Perry, Delia Cruz, Maggie Farber, Kiki McCloud, Skylar Hayashi, and Brit Almeda—and also several that I don’t: Olivia Walsh, Madison Salazar, Riley Robinson, Jocelyn Snyder, Ayanna Clayton, Taylor O’Connor, Charlotte Chan, Lucy Shapiro. It’s dizzying and heartbreaking to consider that the majority of these girls will have their careers end today. The next few hours will change all of their lives.
Once again, Hallie has been assigned to start on bars, which means she’ll cycle through vault, beam, and then floor. Apparently having finished her cardio warm-up, she trots back to where Ryan and I are sitting to stretch. She rolls her wrists, bends over her feet, and occasionally waves at cameras passing by.
Before the first rotation starts, Ryan squats down next to her and waves me over to join.
“Look, I’m not going to make a big speech to psych you up, because I know you’ve got this,” he says simply. “All I want you to do is go out there and perform just as beautifully as you’ve been doing every day. Don’t worry about anything beyond the actual work. Because that’s all you can control.”
She nods heavily, then hugs each of us.
“Got it. Thank you for everything. Let’s do this,” she declares.
I’m secretly glad that she’s up first on bars, because that will get her started on the right foot. She puts on her grips and warms up for the allotted few minutes, and then waits for her turn. When the announcer booms her name over the loudspeaker, she waves to a girl in the stands holding a poster with her name on it as she strides toward the bars. This is her moment to shine, and she knows it.
“Let’s go, Hallie, let’s go!” I cheer.
She centers herself in front of the low bar, lifts her chin, and with just a hint of a smug smirk, jumps forward into her mount. Across the arena, another gymnast’s floor music begins to play, but it’s clear that Hallie has tuned out everything except the bar under her hands. Her body rockets cleanly to the high bar, where she swings up into a handstand, pirouettes, and flings herself into the series she’s been drilling all year with Ryan: a Tkatchev into a Pak Salto. It’s gorgeous. She finishes strong with two giants and her breathtaking dismount, a double-twisting double back tuck. Hallie sticks the landing solidly with her fingers splayed out in an elegant flourish. The audience cheers as she straightens up into a proud salute for the judges, then waves to the crowd. That was a goddamn perfect routine.
Ryan, who was spotting her release moves, high-fives her with both hands. They look triumphant as they make their way back to where I’m sitting.
“That was epic!” I say.
“Let’s see what the judges have to say,” she says modestly.
The judges barely need to deliberate. They award her routine with a well-deserved 15.150.
Hallie squeals, smooshing a hand over her mouth to muffle her excitement.
“See? Nothing to worry about. You’re doing an amazing job,” Ryan tells her.
By the end of the first rotation, she reigns in second place. The only person who scored even a sliver higher than her for the first round was Dimitri’s gymnast Emma, with a 15.250 on beam. That doesn’t faze me. Emma is freakishly, supernaturally, horrifyingly talented. Hallie’s second-place showing is still fantastic. With a strong start like that, she could be a real contender for one of the four Olympic-bound spots.
Thanks to her excellent bars routine, Hallie’s sure-footed confidence carries over to vault. The event goes by in such a flash, I don’t even have time to get nervous. She sticks clean landings on both her first run, an Amanar, and her second, a Mustafina. After her final salute, she glides back to the bench serenely. The judges reveal her score as she settles down: 14.975.
Vault is the shortest event, which means there’s a bit of wait before the second rotation ends and we can see where Hallie will fall in the rankings. As she sucks down the contents of her water bottle, I watch the competition. Delia polishes off a glorious floor routine. Ayanna completes an impressive series of release moves on bars. On beam, Charlotte sways off balance when trying to land a front aerial and loses her footing. The crowd lets out a somber “Ooooh” when she falls to the ground. I cringe; I feel so terrible for her. She climbs back up on beam and finishes her routine with a disappointed grimace.
When the second rotation ends, Hallie has dropped into fourth place. That’s still a very good spot to be in—if the competition were over right this second, she’d make the Olympic team—but it also means there’s no more room for error or bad luck. If she doesn’t perform the hell out of her next two routines, or if anyone else happens to have a startlingly successful showing, it’s game over.
I’ve always known, of course, that making the Olympic team is a long shot. I knew there were no guarantees of Hallie’s success when I signed on to coach her. But somehow, I’ve never thought through exactly what to say or do to console her if it turns out that she doesn’t make the team, despite our best efforts. There’s no good way to comfort a person whose sole dream has just slipped away. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
Hallie heads off to warm up for beam.
“You okay, Avery?” Ryan asks, once she’s gone.
“Ha. Hanging in there,” I say.
“You look stressed,” he says.
He knows me well enough to see through the calm act I’m putting on for Hallie.
“I didn’t realize this would bother me until I got here, but being at Trials again? It’s just kind of a lot,” I confess.
“Because of what happened to you?” he asks.
“I know I’m fine, and it’s not that I expect Hallie to have a freak accident the way I did, but today’s major, even if we’re pretending it’s not. No matter what happens today, a few people’s lives change for the better, and everyone else’s lives will really suck,” I explain. “I know that sounds really stupid and obvious, but I just… I feel for these girls.”
“It’s high stakes,” he says, nodding.
He reaches for my hand and runs his thumb soothingly across my palm. The gesture is comforting.
“I hope Hallie makes it,” I say glumly.
He heaves a giant sigh. “Me, too.”
I barely breathe when it’s Hallie’s turn on beam. The problem with this apparatus is that you can’t get cocky: it doesn’t matter how talented you are or how hard you’ve worked to prepare—you can still fall, and then you’re screwed. “Come on, come on, come on,” I whisper, watching her execute the back handspring, whip back, back layout step-out combo we’ve drilled so many times. It’s solid, but I still can’t relax. Every muscle in my body tightens as she winds up to perform the wolf turn. I’m relieved when she stays on the beam without a wobble. There’s a brief glint of surprise on her face, too. Her dismount goes smoothly, too, and it’s only when she salutes the judges that I can finally exhale. The routine was good, but not great: I can imagine one tiny deduction for not seamlessly connecting two jumps, and another one for a leg that could’ve been a little bit straighter. But overall, it was a fine showing.
She barrels back to the bench, where I wrap her in a hug and stroke her hair.