FORMER GYMNAST AUNT HUMILIATED TRYING TO COMPETE WITH CHAMPION BRIDE.
My fingers tightened around the white fiberglass stick.
The satin ribbon rested against the floor beside my shoes.
For one second, the ballroom disappeared.
I smelled chalk.
Rosin.
Old wooden benches.
Cold winter air leaking through the windows of a training hall in Prague.
I heard a coach shouting counts in Czech.
I saw another blue ribbon spiraling above another floor.
And I saw myself.
Twenty-eight years old.
Strong.
Fearless.
Three weeks away from what should have been the biggest competition of my life.
Then my phone vibrated against the small evening bag hanging from my wrist.
I almost ignored it.
Instead, something made me look.
Unknown number.
The message contained seven words.
DON’T PERFORM UNTIL YOU CHECK THE WEDDING SCREEN.
My smile vanished.
A second message arrived.
MADISON’S ROUTINE IS YOURS.
I felt the room tilt.
Madison frowned.
“Everything okay?”
I opened the attached video.
Grainy footage filled my screen.
A training hall.
Prague.
I recognized it before I recognized myself.
Then a twenty-eight-year-old woman appeared carrying a blue ribbon.
Me.
My heart stopped.
Young Evelyn moved through the opening sequence.
Three traveling turns.
A low release.
Diagonal leap.
Blind catch behind the shoulder.
Then—
the reverse wrist spiral.
My reverse wrist spiral.
I had invented it after an injury made the traditional rotation uncomfortable.
No other gymnast in our training group used it.
I had never performed that complete routine in televised competition.
The choreography had never been publicly released.
Only three people had possessed recordings.
Me.
My coach, Anton Volkov.
And my younger sister.
Caroline.
Madison’s mother.
I slowly looked across the ballroom.
Caroline stood beside the enormous wedding cake.
She was holding a champagne glass.
Her face had gone completely white.
Another message appeared.
ASK WHERE HER NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP ROUTINE CAME FROM.
Something cold opened inside my chest.
Madison’s career had exploded two years earlier after she debuted what commentators called her revolutionary signature sequence.
I had watched the recording alone in my apartment in Boston.
The movements had bothered me.
The phrasing.
The unusual transition.
That reverse spiral.
But thirty years changes memories.
I had told myself talented people occasionally invented similar things.
I had wanted to believe that.
Perhaps because the alternative was too ugly.
Madison crossed her arms.
“Are you scared?”
Her bridesmaids laughed again.
I looked at her.
“No.”
Her smile sharpened.
“Then do it.”
“Evelyn.”
Caroline was suddenly walking toward us.
Too quickly.
“Maybe this isn’t appropriate.”
Madison rolled her eyes.
“Mom, relax.”
But Caroline wasn’t looking at Madison.
She was looking at my phone.
Her voice dropped.
“Who sent you that?”
The ballroom seemed to inhale.
I hadn’t told her I’d received anything.
I hadn’t even said I had a message.
