Until a few years ago, Hannah Einbinder had never really screamed. “Anger very quickly converted to sadness for me,” she says on a June evening in a booth at House of Pies, a Los Feliz diner that is nearly empty before the dinner rush. “There was not a lot of room for me to be angry in my life.” Growing up in California, Einbinder was a competitive cheerleader from ages 11 to 14. She was a point flyer, the most desired spot on the roster. She was also taller than all the other girls, which meant she had a shakier center of gravity — and if she ever so much as wobbled, the entire squad would have to do conditioning drills. “I can’t fuck up. I have to be perfect and excel because this isn’t an individual sport,” she remembers thinking. “If I bobble in a competition, her score is going down too. I think I really internalized that.”
