"There it is," Rivera said quietly, and wrote something longer on the clipboard.
Day two was stunts, and this was the part Amaya had feared. Tumbling was solitary; stunts were trust. She was grouped with two returning girls — Priya, a base with arms like steel cables, and Lena, who'd fly with her. The sequence was a simple extension: they'd lift Amaya overhead, she'd hit a liberty, hold it, cradle down.
"Don't think," Priya told her as they set. "Just go up like you mean it."
Amaya went up like she meant it. The world tilted, steadied — Priya's hands solid at her feet — and she hit the liberty clean, one leg bent, arms in a high V. For three seconds she was eight feet in the air, perfectly still, and she understood what her father had meant about trust at speed.
"Beautiful," Rivera called. "Cradle!"
They caught her. Lena whooped. Priya grinned up at her. "Garage beam," she said. "Respect."
Day three, they put it together: a ninety-second routine, tumbling into jumps into stunts into dance. Amaya's group went seventh. She hit every mark. At the final pose — arms up, chin high — Rivera nodded once.
Afterward, the girls sprawled on the mats, exhausted and buzzing. The blonde ponytailed girl — her name was Kayla — flopped down next to Amaya.
"You're annoyingly good," Kayla said. "I hate that I like you."
"Likewise," Amaya said, laughing.
The roster went up Friday morning outside the gym: a single sheet of paper that drew a crowd like a lottery drawing. Amaya hung back, her heart hammering. Maya found her in the hall.
"Did you look?"
"I'm looking," Amaya said, and walked up.
Twelve names. She scanned — and there, eleventh: WALKER, AMAYA.
She stared at it until the letters blurred. Then Maya was hugging her, Jordan was shouting, and Tariq was filming her reaction for what he called "archival purposes."
Coach Rivera appeared in the gym doorway. "Walker. A word."
Amaya's stomach dropped — until she saw the coach was smiling.
"First practice Monday," Rivera said. "You're raw on dance and your motions need cleaning up, but you have the two things I can't teach: air awareness and nerve. Don't make me regret this."
"I won't," Amaya said.
"Good. Because Brett Carson's crowd is going to give you static — they give everyone static. You let your work answer." Rivera's eyes were steady. "Welcome to the squad, Walker."
Amaya walked to the bus loop in a daze, the roster sheet photographed on her phone. She texted her father: *I made it.*
He replied instantly: *Knew you would. Tell me everything at 1800.*
Amaya touched the end of her braid — still there, still hers — and smiled. New ground. One stuck landing at a time.
Chapter 4
Crosshairs
The first week on the squad was everything Amaya had hoped. Practices ran long and left her pleasantly sore. Priya taught her the squad's secret handshake. Kayla — the blonde who'd been "annoyingly" impressed at tryouts — turned out to be funny in a dry, exhausted-captain way, and she drilled Amaya on motions until Amaya's arms remembered them in her sleep.
"You know what your problem is?" Kayla said on Thursday, watching Amaya run the dance sequence. "You're thinking like a gymnast. Stop sticking the landing and start selling it."
"I'm selling," Amaya protested.
"You're shipping," Kayla said. "There's a difference."
Amaya laughed — and then, across the gym, she caught Brett Carson leaning in the doorway with Derek, watching. Not heckling this time. Just watching, arms crossed, expression unreadable. When he saw her looking, he smiled — thin, deliberate — and pushed off the doorframe.
"Ignore them," Kayla muttered. "They do that to every new girl. It's like a tax."
But it didn't feel like a tax. It felt like crosshairs.
The locker-room taunts started the following Monday. Amaya came out of the shower to find her practice clothes knotted into a tight, damp ball inside her gym bag. The girls around her went quiet in that specific way that meant everyone knew something.
Amaya untied the knots methodically, the way her father had taught her to untie rope. She said nothing. But that night, she opened the notes app on her phone and started a log: date, time, what happened, who was present. Just facts.
On Wednesday, the doctored photo appeared.
Tariq found it first. He slid into the lunch table with his laptop, face grim, and turned the screen toward her. Someone had taken a photo of Amaya at practice — mid-toe-touch, mouth open in exertion — and edited it into something crude and mocking. The caption read: *Westbridge's newest "cheerleader."* It was already circulating in a group chat with forty-odd members.
Amaya stared at it. Her ears rang.
"Who sent it?" she asked quietly.
"Can't tell. Burner account." Tariq's jaw was tight. "I can report it. The platform will take it down, but — "
"But it'll be back," Amaya finished. "Screenshot it. Everything."