Payson Keeler yawned and stretched under her blue duvet covers when she heard her iPhone ring. She sat up, reaching for her phone on the night table. She rubbed her eyes and checked the caller ID seeing the name "Kaylie Cruz" flash across the screen. She slid her thumb across the screen to unlock the phone and held it against her ear. "Right on schedule," she said with a smile. "Man, I don't even need an alarm clock with you."
Kaylie laughed on the other end. "Well then get out of bed, sleepyhead. I'm just ordered breakfast from Spruce Juice. I'll be at your house soon."
"Okay, see you soon," said Payson, hanging up the phone. She got out of bed and started calculating in her head how long it would take Kaylie to get to her house. Since Kaylie didn't like to tire herself out before they would actually start jogging, she would probably walk and she also still had to wait for their order at Spruce Juice to be ready, so Payson had at least 20 minutes before Kaylie would get to her place.
Her gym bag was already packed and ready to go with her metal water bottle, sleeveless leotard (it was not fun to run in a leotard – no mater what people tried to say, it did not feel like wearing a swimsuit), a change of clothes to wear after practice and her various gym gear, like extra scrunchies, bar grips and bandages. Payson got changed out of her comfy flannel pajamas into black yoga pants, a black sports bra, a plain white t-shirt and her purple and red Rock jacket along with white socks and her white and purple running shoes.
She headed down the stairs to the kitchen, saying good morning to her mother who was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and the Rock's accounting information in front of her. Kaylie had said she was bringing breakfast, so Payson just grabbed the lunch she had made the night before: a Tupperware container of a salad with field greens, sliced cucumber, chopped carrots, strips of red pepper and Asian Sesame dressing, a Ziploc bag of grapes and strawberries and a Healthy Bar. She packed everything into her lunch bag cooler, pausing to admire the Healthy Bar. She couldn't believe how far she had come. A mere four months before Worlds, she had been lying in a hospital bed with a back brace and yet here she was, on the wrapper of a protein bar that thousands of people bought and ate every day.
"Admiring your photo?" her mother asked.
Payson laughed and packed the Healthy Bar into her lunch bag and zipped it back up. "Yes, doesn't the camera just love me?" she joked, packing her lunch bag into her gym bag.
Kim laughed. "Who would have thought that from one little endorsement, you would get so much media attention?"
It was true. The fact that she had just gotten back from a two-week long press tour made it even more obvious. Kaylie had also gotten the opportunity for a press tour but as Alex and Ronnie Cruz (Kaylie's parents who were back to being her manager and press agent) had told the press that Kaylie was recovering from her eating disorder at home so she mostly did her interviews and meetings with potential sponsors over the phone. Payson, however, had spent two weeks away, one in LA, one in NYC and it had been jam packed with the same interviews and meetings with potential sponsors as Kaylie's but in person rather than over the phone. To add to things, Payson also had a ton of photo shoots, talk show appearances and even a few times when she was on the red carpet. As difficult and grueling as training was, she would take Sasha's intense training regime over the two weeks of dealing with the press and media, any day.
After her second vault on her injured ankle at team finals (gymnasts in vault event finals like she and Kaylie had to do two vaults during team finals, whereas if you weren't in vault event finals, you only had to do one during team finals) that got everyone calling her "the next Keri Strug", the media attention had been intense and after she had competed in the all-around, it had intensified even more, if that was at all possible. Worlds had gone extremely well, not just for the USA and the Rock girls but also for herself as an individual athlete.
She and Kelly Parker had been amazing throughout the all-around competition, winning bronze and gold respectively. Ever since her back injury, Payson hadn't thought herself to be able to compete for an all-around during any competition, let alone for Worlds. Despite all of her insecurities, thanks to a shot of Cortisone to her injured ankle in the trainers room (she would never admit it to anyone but she'd had some flashbacks about 2011 Nationals and her back injury), she'd edged a hairs width in front of Genji Cho, scoring just 0.10 points more than Genji, who had an unfortunate step out of bounds on an otherwise perfect floor routine. Payson got the Bronze all-around medal and Gneji Cho got nothing.
Kelly Parker beat Ivanka Kirilenko by a huge margin after Ivanka's attempt to land a Produnova (a handspring double front salto vault) didn't go the way the Russian gymnast had been able to land it in prelims or in team finals. For the all-around, you only did one vault (even though you had to compete two if you were in vault event finals) and instead of going for the double twisting Yurchenko that she could land very consistently, Ivanka decided to go for the much harder, yet not very consistently landed second vault. Although the vault in question had a 7.1 D Score and was the hardest vault a female gymnast could do, if you didn't land on your feet, you got a big fat zero. Unfortunately for her, Ivanka landed on her ass, Kelly landed the Gold and Ivanka had to make do with Silver, something that she made very clear she was not happy with, calling her "silver" medal a "platinum" medal.
A gold for Kaylie in the vault event finals (Kaylie could probably stick an Amanar in her sleep by now and her laid out front handspring Rudi was almost as good as Alicia Sacramone's) and a bronze for Lauren in the beam event finals (she was much better than Payson cared to admit) and the USA had taken Worlds by storm, surprising everyone after that disastrous first day at the team competition.