Coach Williams was writing something on her clipboard. Her face was very still. Beside her, the young assistant coach was staring at Alana with her mouth slightly open.
Madison Cross was smiling.
"Stunt," said Coach Williams. "Johnson, you're main base. Walsh, you're your secondary. Evans, back spot. Cross, you're flying."
Madison stood up from the table. She walked out onto the mat, slowly, and took her place in front of Alana, and turned her back to her. Britney Walsh came and stood beside Alana, close, shoulder to shoulder, and Alana felt her press in, slightly, deliberately, a quarter of an inch too close. A girl named Evans, tall and quiet, with a long black braid, came and stood behind.
"Simple extension," said Coach Williams. "On my count. Five, six, seven, eight."
Alana bent her knees. She put her hands where they belonged, under Madison's foot, and felt the weight come into them, and drove up.
And Madison wobbled.
Alana felt it start. She felt it the instant Madison's weight left the ground. A small dip of the left knee, a shift of the hips, a slight deliberate lean to the right, away from Alana's side, toward the side where Britney was standing. Exactly what she had done to the other girls. Exactly what Alana had watched her do ten times. And Britney, on the other side, did not compensate. Britney let the weight go. Alana felt the whole stunt start to tip, felt Madison's foot begin to slide off the edge of her palm.
She had seen it coming. She had watched it ten times. She was ready.
She did not fight it. Fighting a falling flyer is how bases get hurt. Instead she stepped. A single small step to her right, under the weight, following it, getting her body underneath the line of the fall the way her coach in Chula Vista had drilled into her a thousand times, and she shifted her grip, and locked her arms, and took the whole of Madison's weight on her own two hands, alone, and held it. Held it steady. Held it still. Madison Cross stood in the air above her, at full extension, rigid with surprise, with Britney Walsh standing uselessly beside them with her hands half raised, and Evans at the back with her mouth open, and Alana underneath, her arms locked straight, her legs braced, her face perfectly calm.
She held it for a four count. Then she brought Madison down, gently, cradled, the way you are supposed to, and set her on her feet on the mat.
Nobody in the gym said anything.
Coach Williams wrote something on her clipboard. She wrote it for a long time.
"Running tumbling," she said finally. Her voice was very flat. "Johnson. Last thing. Take your time."
Madison walked back to the judges' table. She did not look at Alana. Her face was pink. She sat down and picked up her clear plastic water bottle and unscrewed the cap and took a long drink from it, and then she stood up again, holding it, and said something to Coach Williams, something about getting the girls on the bleachers more water, it was so hot in here, and walked down the side of the mat toward the bleachers with the bottle in her hand.
Alana went to the far end of the forty-foot mat to set up her pass.
She stood there for a moment, breathing. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. She looked down the length of the blue mat, forty feet, spring-loaded, and mapped it in her head. Three running steps, hurdle, round-off on the first panel. Back handspring on the second. Full twisting layout on the third. Land on the fourth. She had done it a thousand times. She could do it in her sleep. She looked at the judges' table, where Coach Williams was looking down at her clipboard and saying something to the assistant coach, and the assistant coach was looking at her tablet.
She did not look at Madison. Madison was over by the bleachers, by the side of the mat, with her back to her, bending down to hand the clear plastic bottle to one of the JV girls.
Alana lifted her arms.
She ran. One, two, three. Hurdle. Her hands hit the first panel of the mat in a round-off, her feet snapped together, and she rebounded into the back handspring, hands, feet, everything perfect, everything fast, the whole of her body coiling for the layout, the big one, the full twist. She drove her feet down onto the third panel of the mat to launch.
And her right foot went out from under her.