King of the Court

Once, midway back to Coach Dalton’s property, I flip on my blinker, turn off on the side of the road, and prepare to U-turn back to Raelynn’s trailer before I curse myself and continue on my way.

I have no choice but to not visit her at the diner in the morning. I’d forgotten—what with everything else going on—but I have to fly out to New York for my meeting with Nike and my Olympic promo shoot.

There’s a helicopter waiting for me at the compound at 5:15 AM. It takes me to a small private airport in Austin, and from there, I take a plane to New York City alongside my manager, assistant, and PR rep.

“You look tired. Have you been training too much?” my manager asks once we’re in the clouds.

I shake my head, trying to fend off his concern. “I’m fine. Training’s fine.”

“Right, well we need your million-dollar smile today. You’ll need to turn it on for the cameras.”

I level him with a stare that’s dripping with so much disdain I’m surprised he doesn’t piss his pants. He’s talking to me as if I don’t already know that. As if I haven’t shot a thousand of these commercials before.

He gets the hint and backs off, returning to his laptop and leaving me in peace.

I stare out the window of the small jet, wondering how early Raelynn has to get to Dale’s to get ready for the breakfast rush. She’s always going a mile a minute by the time I arrive. She needs more help. Another coworker to help her out.

“You look like something’s troubling you.”

I turn to see my assistant wearing a tentative smile.

I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”

“I know it’s a pain, but would you mind—”

She holds out her laptop for me to take, and I don’t hesitate. I can’t keep biting heads off just because I’m in a foul mood. My assistant walks me through the deck of slides Nike sent over for us to review before the meeting later. I spend the rest of the flight familiarizing myself with the final designs of the sneakers as well as the campaign options they’ve suggested, and I’m glad for the distraction.

Once we touch down in New York, a driver whisks me straight to the studio for the Olympic promo shoot. The two other athletes, the gymnast and the soccer player, have already arrived and are sitting side by side getting their hair done when I walk in. I wave and make a point to stop and chat with them for a few minutes so we’re all comfortable enough with each other to ham it up in front of the cameras. I’m grateful that their personalities will carry the team considering this kind of stuff makes my skin crawl.

Brie’s a tiny gymnast, and the representatives for the Olympic committee obviously get a kick out of setting us side by side for candid shots. For an hour straight, we pose and joke around. I spin a basketball over her head and whisk it away before she can get it. I stand aside and watch—genuinely awestruck—when she pulls off some kind of standing flip while the cameras roll. The shoot team eats it all up.

The next hour, they do close-ups of the three of us grouped together while we wear our Olympic gear and hold up the gold medals we won back in the Rio games. They tell us they plan on putting the images on billboards across America, and Andie and Brie seem genuinely excited about it. I just want to get back to Pine Hill.

On the way home on the plane, I scroll through my private Instagram feed and pause when I find a photo Leanna posted a few days ago. She and Raelynn are sitting side by side on the couch in Leanna and Trey’s cabin, and Raelynn is holding up a bottle of nail polish and giving the camera a cheesy smile. Without thinking, I screenshot the photo and crop it down so only Raelynn is in it. I save it to my camera roll on my phone then check to make sure it’s there. Bright-eyed and carefree—she’s the embodiment of sunshine.

The photo isn’t enough.

I open my phone’s browser and type her name into Google. The first results don’t come back fruitful. It’s a unique name, but I still need to narrow it down. I type in “Raelynn Birdie Texas” and still, nothing comes up that seems related. Then I switch to “Raelynn Birdie California” and an article pops up at the very top of the search results.

Caltech Students Named Goldwater Scholars

I skim the body of the article that mentions the three Caltech undergraduates who were named Goldwater Scholars last year for excellence in STEM fields. On the right of the short article, there are photos of the three recipients, Raelynn beaming among them.