But I can’t forget what I know is playing out on-screen: the younger version of me launching into my first tumbling pass. It’s the most impressive one of my routine: round-off, back handspring, whip, back handspring, double-twisting, double back somersault. I had performed it a thousand times before. But this time, I underrotated and came crashing down onto the blue spring floor while I was still spinning. There was a horrific shredding sensation in my knee before my hands even hit the ground.

“Gnarly,” Lucas says emphatically, shaking his head at the screen. “I used to watch this all the time. Sick.”

My floor music continues as the audience gasps. I scream. Lucas taps the screen to watch the crash over again, cutting short the moment when Dimitri rushed onto the floor to carry me away in his arms. My stomach lurches as I watch Lucas lean even closer to the video.

I clear my throat. “Please turn that off,” I say.

“I can’t believe this is you,” he says, glancing from me to the screen. “You were so tiny back then.”

He makes no move to stop the video.

“Can you—?” In a jolt of frustration, I grab the phone out of his hands and shut the video off, leaving the phone facedown on the bar.

I do my best attempt at a smile, but I can sense it comes out all thin and strained.

“Whoa,” Lucas says, holding up his hands as if to prove he’s harmless.

“I don’t like to watch that,” I try to explain as calmly as possible. I swallow. “That right there? That was the end of my gymnastics career. And a lot of stuff changed for me after that. It was hard, okay? So, please, let’s stop watching it.”

“No need to be so intense,” Lucas says defensively. He slurps down his beer. “I got it.”

Somehow, I have a hard time believing he’s “got it.” I had trained for that moment since the time I was four years old, when my ballet instructor complained I had too much energy for dance and suggested I switch to gymnastics instead. By age eight, I was practicing four times a week. At twelve, I sat in a straddle on my living room floor, transfixed as Lindsay Tillerson won the all-around gold—I knew I could follow in her footsteps. Two years later, I convinced my parents to let me drop out of school and study with a tutor so I could train full-time under the legendary coach Dimitri Federov. In this sport, it’s outrageous for anyone to claim an easy path to Olympic glory. But everyone from Dimitri to Jasmine to the girls who sent me fan emails all said the same thing: I had a better chance than any other athlete out there.