He smiled but was looking at my foot as he taped my ankle. Once he was done, he ran his hand over the kinesis tape on my calf and Achilles. He nodded to himself, pleased. He was checking to make sure it was still on good.
"You are incredible to watch. The crowd loves you."
My cheeks blushed. I playfully rolled my eyes. "They love everyone, Kova."
"True, but they are much louder for you."
"You're just saying that."
"No. I am not. They see what I see."
My teeth dug into my bottom lip. Kova stood up, and I asked, "And what do you see?"
He studied me for a moment, then placed his hand out to help me up. His jaw flexed, my gaze fixed on his full, kissable lips.
"I will tell you tomorrow night." My brows furrowed, waiting for him to explain. "Tomorrow night, Adrianna. Now go warm up. Elena altered a tumbling pass."
Nodding, I squinted at him as I walked up the steps to the blue carpeted floor. I had questions, but I didn't want the thoughts to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day, so I shut them out and placed the questions in a drawer for tomorrow.
Each team was given a specific number of minutes to warm-up with tumbling passes. I stepped closer to the corner and looked ahead for Kova who was standing in the opposite corner ready to spot me.
He looked both ways then waved his fingers for me to come.
I turned over my first tumbling pass with Kova spotting right next to me. He halted my body with the palm of his hand so I didn't over rotate.
"Good. Delay the twist for another second and a half the next time," he said, and I nodded.
This was another last-minute change from Elena. I only knew this because I'd had the same passes for almost a year. They were just a little more difficult, especially on my endurance and lack of kidney function. I tried to remain calm as I drew air into my lungs, but they were so tight that it caused me to breathe harder. I stomped in chalk and powdered some on my palms. Kova reached the other corner and it was my turn again. I waited, watching his eyes, then he turned to me and waved.
I swallowed back my nerves and sprinted halfway across the floor. I hurdled into a front handspring, flipping over and punching my feet together into the floor to rebound into a hand-free roundoff, then finally double twisting backwards to land. My feet pounded into the spring floor and I felt the impact grind down my spine. Kova was right there to catch my chest from leaning forward too much. A gush of air rushed from me and I started coughing.
"Are you okay?" he asked, a slight shadow of concern in his eyes.
"I'm fine," I said out of breath. I winced and grabbed the inside of my elbow. I knew vault was going to make it hurt. "I'm just a little out of breath. I'll be good."
Kova's eyes were fixated on mine. I shook my arm out like it didn't faze me, but the truth was, there was a burning pain shooting up my arm. "Okay, because you will need to add a front tuck to the end of the pass for bonus. You will also switch your first tumbling pass."
This time I returned the concerned look. He was adding a bonus front flip and changing my tumbling pass. I waited for him to tell me which new tumbling pass I would do.
"Coach Elena believes that after she watched the other countries perform, if we increase our difficulty right now, it could push us to first."
Thirty-Three
The four of us stood in a circle with our hands in the middle again.
Each coach told us what to do and where we needed to make small tweaks to our routines. Some coaches even suggested pointers to the others. We knew the risks involved with a last-minute change even though we were still prepared if it came to this. Stepping out of bounds, twisting an ankle, over rotating. Anything was possible if your body is out of sync for even a millisecond. We came together and discussed what we had to do in order to take gold.
"Ready, girlies," the smallest one said with the brightest eyes. She sounded like she still hadn't reached puberty even though she was fifteen. "On the count of three."
"One… Two… Three."
"Phenomenal Four!"
We split up and I stood to the side, cheering on my teammate. I was third to go in this rotation.
The music started and I watched as she began, holding my breath when she executed her first tumbling pass like it was second nature to her. I could breathe.
There was something about seeing someone else do a trick first that brought a sense of relief to me. Now I knew I could do it too. Seeing her skip and leap across the floor to the other corner and then complete another extremely difficult tumbling pass, one that even I couldn't do, made me feel even better the second time. I was eager to get out there and perform.
"Is it true?" one of my teammates asked. "Do you really need a kidney?"
I blinked, confused for a moment until I remembered that the world knew about my secret now.
I nodded hesitantly. "It's true. After the Games are over, I'm on a flight back home to start dialysis immediately."
Her eyes softened, but not with pity like I expected. There was a sparkle of admiration that caught me by surprise. My head tilted to the side.
"Wow," she whispered. "You're, like, really tough."
My cheeks warmed and I laughed, feeling slightly embarrassed. "I wouldn't say I'm tough, just hardheaded."
"Do you hurt? Like are you in pain now? You don't look like you are."
"Not really right this minute, but once I sit down and unwind is when I’ll start to feel the side effects. Everything tenses up and the pain sets in. It makes me feel like I'm an eighty-seven-year-old and strips me of me. Doing gymnastics numbs that feeling. It makes me feel like nothing is wrong with me."
She stared at me for a long minute like she was trying to figure me out. "When I heard the news, I didn't believe it. I honestly thought it was a hoax to drive attention. There was no way, not after I saw how hard you trained at camp with everyone. And then seeing you here? I still didn't believe it even though I'd read about it numerous times. Sorry if I'm being rude, but I had to ask. You just seem so…normal."
I am normal, I wanted to say.
I wasn't sure whether to smile or not, and that was because I wasn't sure how to feel. She wasn't pitying me, she wasn't being cruel about my illness, she was genuinely curious and somewhat in awe. It was kind of a…normal conversation.
I glanced at my chalky toes and allowed the smile I wore to hide the imperfections and sins of my personal life tug into a real one. I looked back at her.
"You're not being rude. I was just caught by surprise is all. I've kept it a secret for what felt like forever and then suddenly everyone knows overnight."
Her eyes widened. "Yeah, I can see that now." She began to frown.
"Don't feel bad," I said, trying to reassure her. "Really, I don't mind."
"You seemed out of breath when we were practicing earlier."
My cheeks warmed again. "I was. The shortness of breath is daily for me and kind of annoying. I'm missing like seventy percent of my kidney function which means I'm depleting all my stored energy and oxygen at a much quicker rate. Sometimes it's hard for me to catch my breath when I'm in the zone, my chest gets all tight and sometimes I get nervous thinking I'm going to have a panic attack from it."