Coach Foss arrived 20 minutes in and watched without saying much. Occasionally, a quiet correction. Mostly, she just let Mia work.
At 9:30, Foss said, "That's enough. Eat something. Stay off your feet."
Mia ate in the small athletes' lounge off the main hall. A sandwich she had made the night before, the way Connie had taught her. Real food, not vending machine food. She sat alone and ate and looked at the wall.
She was aware of a low-level vibration in her chest that she recognized. The particular aliveness of a body that knows something is coming and is preparing, at every level, for it. She had felt it before, in the years of training, in the few competitions she had entered before her mother died.
It was not pleasant, and it was not unpleasant. It was information.
She breathed with it. Didn't push it away.
At 11:00, she heard Reese's voice in the corridor outside the lounge.
She didn't move. Just listened.
He was talking to Burke. His voice had its usual quality, that unexamined confidence. But underneath it today, she could hear something else. A tightness. The specific irritation of someone whose arrangements have not gone according to plan.
She heard her name. Then the words "shouldn't even be here." Then something she couldn't make out. Then footsteps moving away.
She finished her sandwich, folded the wrapper neatly, put it in the bag.
At noon, Connie arrived.
Mia saw her from across the athletic hall. Her grandmother came through the main entrance with the particular walk she had. Unhurried and completely certain. The walk of someone who knew exactly where she was going and didn't need anyone's permission to go there. Dark blue sweater, white hair, a neat canvas bag over one shoulder.
She saw Mia and walked over.
She didn't hug her. That wasn't Connie. She put her hand on Mia's shoulder for a moment and looked at her carefully, taking in the full picture.
"You look good," Connie said.
"I feel ready," Mia said.
"Same thing, at a certain point."
Connie looked around the hall. Her eyes moved to the Hartwell banner, then away.
"Coach Foss here?"
"She's in the back. She'll find you."
Connie nodded. She looked at Mia's braid. At the ribbon. Something moved in her expression, quick and deep, and then it settled back into the steady calm that Mia had relied on her whole life.
"She'd be here," Connie said quietly. Just a fact.
"I know," Mia said.
"Front row." Connie's voice was steady, but something in it was not. "She'd have made a sign. Something embarrassing, with glitter on it."