"I can," she said. "If they're willing to do the work. Trust goes both ways — I have to earn theirs too."
Rivera studied her for a long moment. Then she smiled — a real smile, rare as a blue moon. "You know what? I believe you."
The rebuild was brutal. Rivera ran them like it was preseason: endless conditioning, basic stunt progressions, trust exercises that felt childish until you realized how hard they were. Amaya threw herself into it, and something shifted. She stopped trying to prove she belonged and started trying to make everyone else better.
It started with Jess. The sophomore flyer had been tentative since the drop, balking at the top of stunts, and Amaya volunteered to base her in every drill.
"I've got you," she said, every single time. "Go."
On the third day, Jess stuck a full extension without flinching, and when she came down, she was laughing and crying at the same time. "I did it," she whispered.
"We did it," Amaya corrected.
Then it was Dana — one of Kayla's camp — who kept rushing her back handspring. Amaya stayed after practice to drill it with her until Dana landed one cleanly and stared at her like she'd performed magic.
"Why are you helping me?" Dana asked, breathing hard. "I said — I thought what you did to Brett was too much."
"You're my teammate," Amaya said simply. "That's the whole reason."
Word traveled. By the second week, even Kayla was different: quieter, watching Amaya during drills with an expression that wasn't quite apology.
The new stunt came together almost by accident. Rivera had been sketching formations late one night, and Amaya suggested a variation: a two-level pyramid with a rotating dismount, adapted for their squad's strengths.
"It's risky," Rivera had said.
"Everything worth doing is a little risky," Amaya had answered, and Rivera had laughed and drawn it in.
They built it rep by rep. Amaya anchored the center base position — the load-bearing heart of the formation — and the first time the whole thing hit, all sixteen girls moving as one organism, Jess spiraling down from the top into waiting arms, the gym erupted. Not polite applause. A roar.
Kayla was the first one to reach Amaya, pulling her into a hug so fierce it knocked the wind out of her. "I'm sorry," Kayla whispered. "For what I said. For the drop. You didn't ruin anyone's life. You saved this team."
Amaya hugged her back. "We're not done," she said. "We've got regionals."
That evening, the squad went for pizza — all of them, no camps, no seating chart. Jess sat on one side of Amaya and Dana on the other, and they argued about music and whether Rivera's conditioning drills were technically torture. Someone spilled soda. It was loud and messy and perfect.
Driving home, Amaya called her father. "We're whole," she said. "The team. We're whole."
"How'd you do it?" Elijah asked.
"I stopped trying to be the best one on the mat," she said. "And started trying to make the mat the best place for everyone."
There was a pause. Then, softly: "Baby girl, that's the strongest thing you've ever said."
Above the highway, the sky was doing its violet thing. Amaya drove toward it, toward home, toward regionals — a girl with short hair and a steady heart, part of something bigger than herself, finally, fully, exactly where she belonged.
Chapter 16
Regionals
The arena smelled like fresh paint and popcorn, and for a minute Amaya just stood in the tunnel with her bag over her shoulder, listening to the crowd hum like a struck wire. Nine months ago she had walked into Westbridge Prep not knowing where the cafeteria was. Now she was about to walk onto the biggest mat of her life in a Westbridge uniform, her name stitched on the back like it had always belonged there.
"Breathing helps," Maya said beside her, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "They taught us that in warm-ups. Allegedly."
Amaya laughed, but it came out thin. Coach Rivera gathered them in a circle, and her eyes moved over every face — the girls who had fractured last fall, who had whispered and taken sides and almost let the whole season drown. They'd rebuilt. It wasn't perfect. It was real.
"Eyes up," Coach said. "The routine is the routine. Not the judges, not the crowd, not the scores. Each other. You know your jobs. Amaya — anchor, you good?"
Amaya nodded. She was the base in the hardest stunt of the sequence, a rewind-into-liberty pyramid section Coach had designed around her strength. She had lifted more than weight this season. She'd lifted people. The weight she knew how to hold.
In the stands, she could see her father three rows back, sitting very still the way he did when he was paying the most attention. He'd driven her to practice at six in the morning for months. He never said she owed him anything. That was the thing about Elijah Walker: he gave the way a tree gives shade.
The announcer's voice boomed. "Westbridge Prep!"
They ran out in formation and the lights swallowed them. The music started — the count, the snap, the stomp — and Amaya's body took over. Tumbling pass: roundoff, two back handsprings, a tuck that stuck. Maya hit her jumps in sync. The crowd was noise behind the counts in her head. First stunt sequence: clean. The rewind came up — she felt the flyer twist above her, caught her weight, and held her steady as a post. Liberty. The arena tilted on its axis and roared.
Then the wobble.
It happened on the transition into the final pyramid — a timing slip, Jordan's hand landing half a beat off, the flyer overcorrecting, and for one sickening half-second the whole left side swayed. Amaya's core locked. She didn't think. She adjusted her grip, shifted her hips, and took an extra inch of the weight onto her shoulder while the flyer found her balance. The structure held. Barely. But it held.
The music ended. They hit their final pose, chests heaving, and the crowd was on its feet — but Amaya could feel the crack in the room. A wobble like that, at regionals, was a number. She looked at Jordan, whose face had gone white. "Hey," Amaya panted. "You good?"
"My fault. I—"
"Team," Amaya said, and grabbed her hand. "One team."
The scores came up on the board: 94.6. Solid. Not spectacular. The rival squad, Cedar Hollow, scored 96.2 on a routine that was cleaner but — Amaya would die on this hill — less ambitious. They'd thrown a bigger skill; the scoring sheet showed an "execution deduction" the coaches would argue about for weeks.
Coach Rivera gathered them. "We qualified," she said. "We're going to the championship."