Fake it with me
She deleted it and started again.
The fourth version was harder to write because it required admitting things she did not usually admit, even to herself, things about why she wanted this so badly and what she was actually afraid of losing if she didn't get it. She wrote about the first time she had ever led a squad through a routine, freshman year, twelve years old and terrified and discovering, for the first time, that she was good at something in a way that felt entirely her own. She wrote about Jade, about the practice room and the mirror and the moment a scared first-year had stopped counting and let her body remember what it already knew.