Chapter Seventeen #2
And then, just as quickly, a tornado of anxiety swept in and suffocated any joy I had.
It wasn’t like they were here to witness me winning a debate or presenting a thesis. I was dancing on a field at a football game — and suddenly, that pride and excitement I’d felt just moments before was eviscerated.
And I was ashamed.
Every conversation, every look, every moment where I had felt like I was just slightly off from the version of success they’d imagined for me came rushing back all at once.
It tangled with the present so fast I couldn’t separate it, couldn’t tell what was real and what was memory and what was just the story I told myself about them.
My breath caught, lodged so fiercely in my chest I couldn’t make it budge.
Darcy was right next to me in formation, and though she was smiling and standing tall with her hands on her hips waiting for the first beat drop of our routine, her gaze slid to me with her brows pinched slightly.
She was asking silently if I was okay.
If I looked anything on the outside how I felt on the inside, I knew she had her answer before I could even attempt to mask it.
I realized I was still breathing — it was just shallow and strained.
I tried to pull in another inhale, deeper this time, but it didn’t quite land right, like my lungs couldn’t expand all the way.
I forced a smile anyway, lifting one pompom in a small wave I wasn’t sure they even saw, because they were already cheering louder, jumping higher, so excited it made my chest ache.
I should have felt nothing but joy.
Instead, my pulse was like the stampede of a hundred antelope running for their lives.
The music started, loud and immediate, snapping me back into place whether I was ready or not.
My body moved on instinct, hitting the first counts clean and sharp, exactly how we’d practiced.
I leaned into the choreography, into the familiarity of it, letting it carry me while my mind struggled to catch up.
Each step, each turn, each extension of my arms was something I knew better than my own name.
But everything felt just a fraction off.
It wasn’t enough that anyone else would notice, not enough to throw the routine.
But it was enough that I could feel it.
The timing was there, but my breath wasn’t. My chest still felt tight, my inhales too quick, my exhales too shallow. I forced myself to focus, to lock in, to let the rhythm anchor me instead of the riot of unsteady emotions building under my skin.
The crowd roared at a formation change, and I turned, hitting my mark, smiling like nothing in the world was wrong.
Somewhere on the sideline, Braden was watching.
Right there in the front row, my parents were, too.
I pushed harder, danced bigger, gave them something worth watching, something worth being proud of, even if my heart was beating too fast and my thoughts wouldn’t quite settle.
We moved into the final section of the routine, the energy building, the music climbing toward its peak, and I knew what was coming next.
My tumbling pass.
I stepped back into position as the others cleared, my grip tightening slightly on my pompoms before I tossed them aside in one clean motion. My hands flexed at my sides, and I rolled my shoulders once, trying to shake out the lingering tension.
It didn’t fully leave.
I could feel it in the way my weight shifted, in the way my balance didn’t feel as centered as it should have. My body knew the sequence, knew exactly what to do, but something underneath it all felt just a little misaligned.
Don’t fuck up, Emily.
They’re watching.
They came to see you.
Make them proud.
Make them see.
I glanced forward, not at anyone in particular, just grounding myself in the field, the lines beneath my feet, the space ahead of me.
It was all muscle memory from here. It was training and practice and repetition.
I had done this a thousand times, and I’d do it again right now.
I took a breath, as full as I could manage, and went.
The first skill snapped into place, powerful and controlled, my body moving through it with precision. My hands hit the ground, my legs whipped over, momentum building exactly how it was supposed to.
But when my hands planted again, something shifted.
The angle was wrong.
My wrist bent in a way it shouldn’t have.
And then, through all the noise of the stadium and the pounding of my heart, I heard a loud and distinctive crack.
Pain shot up my arm so fast it stole the air from my lungs, white-hot and blinding, but I was already in motion, already committed. There was no stopping it now, no pulling out without making it worse.
So I finished.
I pushed through the final movement, forcing my body upright, forcing my arms up into the ending pose, my smile locking into place like it had been programmed there.
The crowd erupted.
The music hit its final note.
And I held it.
I held the pose. I held the smile. I held everything together by sheer force of will, even as my arm throbbed violently where I had it overhead, even as I could feel something deep and wrong pulsing through it.
We closed out the routine, transitioning into the final formation, and I stayed with it, step for step, count for count, because I didn’t know how not to.
But the second the last beat faded and the routine was finished, the weight became too much to bear.
I dropped.
My knees hit the turf, my good hand immediately clutching the opposite wrist, cradling it close as the pain surged, overwhelming now that I wasn’t fighting through choreography.
My vision blurred at the edges, my breath coming in short, uneven pulls as I tried to process it, to make sense of what I already knew.
This wasn’t minor.
This wasn’t something I could shake off.
This was serious.
Season-ending serious.
Voices started to rise around me, movement rushing in from the sidelines, but all I could think, all I could feel, was the weight of it settling in my chest.
And the fact that my parents had just watched the entire thing unfold.