Chapter 1 Sixty-Three Witnesses

Emma Park

Here is my life, in the order the internet learned it.

One: I was a single point from becoming the best badminton player on earth.

Two: I stood perfectly still for four seconds, in front of four thousand people and two hundred million screens.

Three: somebody added a violin.

The scoreboard said 21-9, 21-11, and I would like it noted that the second game was a moral victory.

Nobody noted it. There was nobody to note it.

I counted the crowd while I zipped my racket bag. Sixty-three people in an arena built for four thousand. Eleven of them were asleep. One was a toddler with a juice box, and honestly, the toddler looked the most engaged.

Five years ago, the Lisbon Pavilion had shaken when I walked onto court, a wall of sound so thick you could lean on it. Now I could hear my own sneakers squeak all the way to the net.

“Emmaline Park?”

Mei Tanabe stood there with her hand out. Nineteen years old, the girl who had just taken me apart like flat-pack furniture. Her eyes were huge and kind, which was the worst part.

“Good match,” she said.

“You were great. That backhand clear? Illegal.”

“Can I tell you something?” She bit her lip. “I grew up watching you. I had a poster.”

“Oh! That’s so nice.”

“It was above my bed. For four years.”

“Wow. Thank you.”

“I took it down last year, though.” She winced. “Sorry. That sounded worse out loud.”

“It’s fine,” I said, smiling so hard my molars ached. “I’d have taken it down too.”

She laughed, relieved, and bounced off toward her coach. I watched her go and thought: nineteen. I’d been nineteen when I won my first Super Series. Now I was twenty-four and being pitied by a teenager with a poster-shaped hole in her past.

The umpire climbed down from his chair. “Ms. Park. Your racket.”

I looked down. I was still holding it in a white-knuckled grip, six minutes after the match had ended.

“Right.” I loosened my fingers one at a time. “Just stretching my hand.”

“Of course.” He gave me the soft, careful smile people give someone standing on the edge of a roof. “Take care of yourself.”

The cleaner was already working the far end of the court, pushing a mop through the dark patch where I’d stood for forty minutes. She stopped when I passed.

“You’re her,” she said. “The match point lady.”

“Emma.”

“My daughter does the face.” She said it kindly, which was the worst way to say it. “When she loses her homework. It’s not mean. She says it means she’s ready.”

“That’s the idea.”

“You know what I tell her?” She leaned on the mop. “The floor doesn’t care how it got dirty. You just keep going.”

“That’s... honestly very good.”

“Thirty years of mopping.” She shrugged. “Go home, honey.”

The tunnel smelled like floor wax and defeat. I walked it fast, head down, my shoulder screaming every time the strap shifted.

“Don’t,” said a voice.

My sister leaned against the wall at the end of the tunnel, arms crossed, wearing the jacket I’d lent her three years ago and never got back.

“Don’t what?”

“The speech. ‘It was just a bad day, Hana.’ ‘I’ll bounce back, Hana.’”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“You were going to say it with a smile.”

“I have a lovely smile.”

“You have a hostage smile.” She took my bag off my shoulder before I could argue. She felt the weight, felt me flinch, and her face did a thing. “Emma.”

“It’s nothing.”

“That’s the nothing voice. It’s half an octave higher than your regular one.”

“There’s no nothing voice.”

“We’ll talk about the shoulder later.” She shifted the bag to her own. “Round one. Could’ve been worse.”

“How?”

“You could have lost in the qualifiers.”

“I lost in the qualifiers last month. In Osaka.”

“You could have lost and tripped.”

“I tripped in Osaka.”

“Right.” Hana winced. “I’d blocked that out.”

I laughed. I didn’t mean to. It came out cracked and ugly, but it was a laugh, and Hana’s whole face softened.

Then her phone buzzed. And buzzed again. And again.

“Don’t look at it,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Hana. Give me the phone.”

“Em, honestly, it’s just a...“

I took it out of her hand.

Thirty seconds of grainy video, posted forty minutes ago from somewhere in the stands. Me on court in the second game, serving into the net. Then again. Then a third time, my face going blank in a way I had never seen from the outside. Someone had laid slow violin music over the top. White text across the bottom: me trying to say “I’m ready” when anyone asks.

Below it, the hashtag I’d been dodging for fourteen months.

#MatchPointEmma.

“Four hundred thousand views,” I read. My voice sounded very far away. “It’s already at four hundred thousand.”

“Em—“

“It’s a violin, Hana. Who adds a violin?”

“Someone with a lot of time and a very sad cello.”

My phone began to ring in my pocket, a number I knew. I let it ring. It rang again.

“Emma, hi! Colby Reese, Halcyon Sports, Brand Partnerships. Are you somewhere you can talk?”

I was sitting on the end of a hotel bed with my shoes still on. Hana stood by the window pretending not to listen, which she did by listening very hard.

“I’m somewhere,” I said.

“Amazing. So! The clip. We are not panicking.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“We think it’s an opportunity. We’ve drafted something.” My inbox pinged. “Thirty seconds, selfie style. You say ‘I’m ready,’ you laugh, and you say, quote, ‘Guess I wasn’t!’”

I read the script. It had an emoji in it.

“You want me to laugh,” I said slowly, “at the worst moment of my life.”

“We want you to reclaim it.”

“With an emoji.”

“It tested very well. Six p.m., Lisbon time. If it’s not up by then, Halcyon will need to reassess the partnership.” Colby’s voice dropped into something almost kind. “I’m on your side here. Truly.”

He hung up. The silence in the room was enormous.

“Don’t,” Hana said.

“It’s four thousand dollars a month.”

“Em.”

“It’s the only four thousand dollars a month.” I stood. “Hold the phone. Please.”

She held it. The lens stared at me like a black eye.

Take one. “Hi, everyone! It’s me, Emma! I just wanted to say“ I held up a finger. “I’m ready!” I laughed. It sounded like a fork in a garbage disposal. “Guess I wasn’t!”

“Again,” Hana whispered.

Take two. I got as far as Guess and my throat closed.

Take three. I looked into the lens, and nothing came out of my mouth that had been written by anyone else.

“Four seconds,” I heard myself say. “I stood there for four seconds, in front of the whole world, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why. And every day since, people have laughed, and I’ve laughed with them, because the alternative is...“

My voice cracked down the middle.

Hana lowered the phone.

Neither of us moved.

“Delete it,” I said.

“Emma, that was...“

“Delete it.”

She deleted all three. Then she sat beside me on the bed, put an arm around my good shoulder, and said nothing, and that was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in a year.

At 5:58 p.m. I called Colby back.

“No,” I said.

“Emma“

“No. I’m not going to laugh at it for a brand. If that’s the end of the partnership, then that’s the end.”

There was a long, careful pause. “I’ll let legal know.”

At 6:01, an email arrived from Halcyon. Effective immediately, we are pausing our partnership. It was very polite. It thanked me for my years of collaboration.

At 6:04, a second email arrived.

Subject: Funding Review: Outcome.

Hana read it over my shoulder. I watched her lips move, and I watched her get to the part that mattered, and I watched her stop.

“Effective this Friday,” she said slowly, “all Federation support ceases. Travel. Physio. Stipend.” She swallowed. “Unless you attend a meeting with President Gordon Hale. Monday. Nine a.m.”

“That’s three days.”

“Em...“

“It’s fine. It’s a meeting. I’m excellent at meetings.”

I said it to Hana. I said it to the ceiling. I said it to the small folded square of paper zipped inside my bag, which had not forgiven me for anything in fourteen months.

It didn’t answer. It never does.

But it felt heavier than it had that morning. And for the first time, I wondered whether I was the one carrying it, or whether it had been carrying me.

“You have no sponsor, and in three days you may have no Federation.”

“Then I’d better be excellent.”

“There’s more.” Hana scrolled, and her eyebrows went up. “’Your assigned coach will be introduced at the meeting. He has agreed to this arrangement under specific conditions. Do not make this difficult for him.’”

“Him,” I said. “Do not make this difficult for him.”

“Who would agree to coach you under conditions?”

“Thanks, Hana.”

“That’s not what I meant! I meant, who’s desperate enough to—“

“Hana.”

“Sorry.”

The attachment was a one-page PDF, a standard Federation form. I opened it with a trembling thumb. In the box marked Assigned Personnel, a name was typed in plain black letters.

Theo Bradford.

I stared at it. The name tugged at something at the back of my memory, the way a half-forgotten song does. Something small, and folded, and zipped into the front pocket of my bag.

“Do you know him?” Hana asked.

“No,” I said. Then, slowly: “But everyone in badminton does.”

Mostly in whispers.