“I mean, you know him,” she says, shrugging. “Sometimes, he has his… moods,” she admits. “You remember those.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“And he… he’s particular, you know? He likes things to be a certain way. Sometimes, he gets upset when things aren’t right.”

“He used to take it out on us,” I say bitterly.

Maybe that’s a step too far, but Jasmine doesn’t disagree with me.

“He meant well, but it wasn’t right,” she says.

“It took me a long time to clearly see how that affected me, because at the time, it all felt so normal,” I say. The words come more easily now, since I know Jasmine will agree with me on this point. “Or, at least, if not normal, like everything was in service of a greater goal.”

“Glory,” we intone at the same time, like we’ve heard thousands of times before.

In the back of my head, I hear the word in a guttural Russian accent, and I bet she does, too. For a moment, the past seven years collapse, and I feel like we’re just kids again—giggling friends who finish each other’s sentences. It makes me miss how we used to be. Nobody has ever replaced her.

“But I think that’s changing, no?” she says. “Dimitri’s old-school, but he’s pretty much the only one left.”

“I mean, Ryan and I do our best,” I concede. “Hallie’s mostly pretty easy, but even so, we don’t push her any harder than she’d push herself. I mean, god, the world is not a good place for gymnasts right now. You know what I mean.”

“I do,” she says heavily.

We don’t even need to say it out loud.

“But as horrible as that is, this isn’t the first time there’s been a scandal like that—awful things like that have happened before,” I point out.

“In dark, shady fucking corners, yeah,” she says grimly.

“The rest of the sport, though? I think it’s getting a little better,” I say.

“I think I see that, too,” she says. “At competitions, it’s like… whoa. The girls all have muscles and thighs and don’t hide the fact that they eat.”

We both look limply down at the remaining salad on our plates.

“I don’t know about the girls Dimitri works with, but Hallie has personality. Sass. Or, as he might call it, attitude,” I say.

“Nothing we were allowed to have,” Jasmine adds, shaking her head.

“Ha. No. But Hallie’s good. Happy.”

“She’s okay with food?” Jasmine asks.

“She eats, she does yoga, she’s confident…” I say.

Jasmine lets out a low whistle, understanding the implication: Hallie’s not like we were. “Good for her.”