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as her bedroom door closes.
    "Ten minutes, max," she yells back.
    She's such a liar. It'll be at least twenty minutes, but more likely a half hour. She always takes forever to get ready.
    Amber and I have been friends since we were kids. After high school, she went to college and I stayed in Michigan to train full-time.
    I'm a gymnast. Or I used to be. No. Scratch that. I'm still a gymnast. It's who I am, no matter what my parents or Amber or anyone else says.
    Gymnastics has been my life for as long as I can remember. Amber is also a gymnast. That's how we got to be friends. We used to be really competitive, but in a good way. We always pushed each other to do better and spent hours together at the gym. Then our junior year of high school, she joined the cheerleading squad, started dating the quarterback, and was named prom queen. She had no time for gymnastics so she quit, but she still supported me in my dream to make it to nationals. And I achieved that dream.
    After high school, I trained all day, every day, and all my hard work paid off. Competing at nationals was the greatest day of my life and gave me a new goal to shoot for, which was to make the Olympic team. As soon as I got home from nationals, I started training even harder. I pushed my body to the limit, hoping to reach the elite status that only a few gymnasts achieve. I knew it was a long shot. I had a good coach but not the best, and I didn't do that great at nationals, but at least I'd made it that far, and I knew if I trained hard enough, I could make it there again.
    But then the accident happened. It was at a regional meet. I was doing an aerial back flip on the balance beam and as I was coming down for a landing, my foot slipped. It happened fast but in the moment, it felt like slow motion. My foot went to touch the beam, but I only felt the very edge of it, and that's when I knew my body would soon crash to the ground. And it did. I landed with a thud, my leg hitting at an odd angle and with such force that I shattered bones. I heard them crack. And then the pain hit like a lightning bolt, exploding up and down my leg. It was so bad I passed out and didn't wake up until I got to the hospital. By then, they were pumping pain meds in me and rushing me into surgery.
    That one tiny misplacement of my foot changed everything. I was supposed to ace nationals and earn a place at the Olympic trials. Yeah, I know the Olympics were a stretch, but that doesn't mean I couldn't try. It was my dream and I wanted it so bad. Not just for me, but for my family; my parents and three younger brothers.
    My parents sacrificed everything for me. Their time. Their money. With four kids, I know my parents always wanted a larger house but they couldn't afford one. Because of me. And my poor brothers, stuck spending their childhood being dragged to my gymnastic meets, and yet they rarely complained. Because they believed in me. They believed in the dream just as much as I did.
    But now they don't. Nobody does. My parents keep telling me it's over. That I'll never do gymnastics again. And what's even worse is that Amber agrees with them.
    Amber. My best friend. A fellow gymnast who knows how hard it is to get to that level. How could she take my parents' side? I thought of all people, she'd support me. Encourage me. Tell me I could compete again. She was a freaking cheerleader, for crying out loud. She should be cheering me on, telling me to never give up, to keep trying. But instead, she pities me, just like everyone else. Even now, a year after the accident, she still gives me that look that says she feels sorry for me. And not because of what happened, but because I refuse to accept that it's over. As if I'm crazy for even thinking I could ever go back to gymnastics again.
    It can't be over. This is what I've trained for my whole life. I don't know who I am without it. And more importantly, I owe it to my family to keep trying. They nearly went broke paying for my training, my