Blind Landing (Flipped #1) (17 page)

T
he deafening applause
has always fed me, pumped me up like a drug, like an elixir in my veins used to dial up my heartbeat and adrenaline.

The Olympic audience is like the best hit I’ve ever taken. Thousands upon thousands rain their cheers down on the competitors. Chants of “USA, USA
”
invade my pores, making my skin hum.

“This is insane …” Julia nudges me, her face giddy.

“I thought it was just going to be like any other meet.” I say this almost to myself, because it’s true.

I’ve been to dozens of international meets, all over the world. Have performed in sold out venues with hundreds of thousands of people sitting in the audience. I thought this would feel the same; that I would be excited because this was the Olympics, but that it would feel like any other meet.

How dead wrong I was.

“Hell no, girl, this is the meet of our lives. It was never going to be the same.”

I turn, surprised that Quinn is speaking up about it. Coming from the girl who never seemed affected by anything, that meant a lot.

“Well, no matter the venue, we’re still going to go out and kick ass.” Julia hooks an arm around Grace’s neck as we make it to our designated warm-up area.

Dropping our bags, we all remove our matching sweat suit jackets, in only our long sleeve leotards and red, white and blue track pants. I lead stretches, counting us through the splits, bridges and pikes. We all have this memorized, the warm-up having been drilled into our heads by Novak. So my eyes wander as I count, roaming the crowd for a specific buzzed head.

After a few minutes I find my mom in the crowd, her face ecstatic as she mingles with the other parents. Happiness suffuses me; it’s been so long since she’s come to watch me compete, my joy is almost childlike. I can’t wait to show my mom what I’ve accomplished, what I can do now.

My eyes avert to the large body next to her. As my gaze roams over him, cataloging the brawn and mass of him, my eyes flick up to his. To find that Spence is staring right back at me, a small smile ghosting his lips.

He was watching me check him out, I realize, and even I can feel the blush tinting my cheeks. Spence tilts his head and lifts a brow, as if to say, “I caught you.”

I tilt mine back, flirting with my body language. I can’t help it … he always did bring out the sassy side in me. Spence lifts his hands, two thumbs up shooting right at me. My heart jumps into my throat; he’s always been my biggest supporter, always wanted me to do my best.

I love him. It mixes through my body, wrapping around the adrenaline and high I’m getting from the audience. The love warms my chest, healing every last crack that splintered when Spence left.

“Let’s do this!” I nod to the other girls, smacking them on the backs, all of us stripping down to only our leotards. The red, white and blue sparkles emblazoned on our bodies shine, pinging rays of light around the arena.

We start on vault, our scores having qualified the U.S. as the number one seed. Thus, the Fearless Five were awarded the best rotation at the 2016 Olympic Games.

Sometimes people think the team event at a meet is secondary, but in the Olympics, it’s the thing that brings the most national pride. In what is typically an individual sport, the team competition is actually kind of fun … for once we’re competing with each other and not against. Well, at least not against the other Americans. While five gymnasts are selected for the team, only three compete on each event, and all three scores count towards the team total. Twelve scores, twelve chances. That’s all you get, and you have to nail each one for a shot at gold. It didn’t use to be like that, but the International Gymnastics Federation, or FIG, changed the requirements after the 2008 Olympics.

“Julia, Quinn, Grace … get ready to go.” Novak sweeps by, a cloud of negativity following him.

Of all the things that could bring us down today, he’s it. I gather the girls in close.

“Listen up. You can all do this, you’ve been training your entire lives for this day. Nothing that I say will help you any further. But do this … don’t let anything stand in your way. Not the other competitors, not mental games, not even Novak. Block it all out. Do this for you, do this for us. And ladies? Don’t forget to
have fun
. After all, that’s why we love gymnastics.”

“Hands in, USA on three!” Grace thrusts her hand into the circle and we all follow.

Julia counts us in. “One, two, three … USA!”

We carry the momentum through vault, scoring a whopping forty-eight points from the three who compete on the event. Julia and Quinn perform beautifully, soaring through the air with just a tiny step on their landings. But it’s Grace who rocks it out, exploding like a rocket only to come down and stick her landing, earning an astronomical sixteen-point-three.

Vault is the only event I won’t be competing on in the team finals, my history and scores just not good enough for what we need to succeed. So by the time it becomes my turn to compete last on bars in the second rotation, I’m so keyed up it’s a miracle I’m not twitching from head to toe.

Quinn and Anna slaughtered their routines ahead of me, earning huge numbers and setting me up for an even bigger score as the last competitor. As soon as the judge salutes I’m off, rotating and soaring, coming as close to flying as one human can. By the time my feet make contact with the mat, chalk flying up around me, the smile on my face sends cramps through my cheeks.

“Yes, Nat! Yes!” The girls are jumping up and down, pulling me into one giant hug as I step from the podium.

“Natalia Grekov, bar routine … fifteen-point-eight five.” The announcer booms.

The crowd goes wild, and I turn to locate my mom. She has tears streaming down her face, blowing kisses at me and jumping up and down as she hugs Spence. He hangs on, a goofy grin melting me straight down to the core as he supports my emotional mother.

We’re at the top of the leader board going into the third rotation.

But with beam, as always, comes trouble. Judges always score beam more harshly, critiquing every bent leg and wobble. Julia even falls.

“I’m so sorry, guys …” She’s pulling at her scalp, guilt clouding her features.

“Hey, stop that. We don’t want any of that here. This lands on all of our shoulders … Anna and I could have put up better scores as well.”

Quinn rubs Julia’s back and straps on her own Tiger Paws for floor. “Yeah, stop beating yourself up. You still scored a fourteen-point-three, that’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination.”

Julia nods into her lap, an errant tear dropping onto her thigh.

“No! No crying in gymnastics. We’re only five tenths behind Russia. Floor is our best event; Anna, Quinn and Natalia are going to pummel this event.” Grace, the youngest of the bunch, hypes us up.

Julia sniffles and chins up, shaking off her bad performance. “I’ll be screaming at the top of my lungs for you.”

She directs her comment at me, a silent acknowledgement running between us that this is on my shoulders now. And she knows how the cheering psyches me up.

I don’t check the scores going into our last rotation, I never do. I don’t want to know what I need to score to win us this meet. The team finals at the Olympics, one of the two biggest meets of my entire life.

So when it comes time for me to ascend those platform steps, to present to the judges and take my opening pose on floor, I tune it all out. I let my mind wander as I dance along to the music that the Phantom and Christine fell in love to. I smile and swagger through the difficult jumps, pound my limbs into the carpet as I spiral through my tumbling passes. All I do is feel … feel everything that I’ve always loved about gymnastics.

The minute the music stops, the ending chords of “The Point of No Return,” the roar from the arena sends my soul bounding. The girls don’t even wait until I walk off the floor, they come sprinting at me, tackling me in a giant team hug.

“You did it! You have to have done it!” Julia screeches in my ear.

We’re whisked off the floor by officials, all of us holding hands as we huddle together, our eyes pinned to the overhead jumbotron.

“Natalia Grekov, floor routine … sixteen.”

I don’t even have time to pump my fists in the air before the girls are engulfing each other again, our bodies one buzzing, joyous unit.

“And your 2016 Women’s Gymnastics Olympic Champions, with a combined score of one hundred eighty-two point-forty-five points, are the athletes from the United States of America!” Tim Daggett yells for the camera just feet away.

My body is so overwhelmed that I almost don’t feel the fat teardrops rolling down my cheeks as they hang the gold medal around my neck.

T
he women’s
team is swept into interviews and festivities for an entire twenty-four hours after their triumphant win, and we all know that this hype won’t end for months. I don’t have the chance to congratulate Nat or even pull her aside for a quick hug because she’s surrounded by everyone trying to get a piece of her.

She should have some downtime this morning, which is why I’m on my way to her dorm with a colorful bouquet of Brazilian flowers in my hands. I know they’re not as good as a gold medal, but girls love flowers and hearts and shit.

What I don’t expect to see as I stroll up to the U.S. gymnasts building though are medical staff rolling a stretcher into one of the rooms. My gut rolls, panic swamping me. My eyes are frantic, searching the small crowd that’s gathered outside the building. When they catch on a familiar blond ponytail, I’m running before I even realize it.

“Natalia!” My voice pierces the air, and then blue eyes are turning towards mine.

“Spencer!” My name cracks in her throat as she throws herself into my arms, a sob escaping her.

“What the hell is going on?” My arms circle her, pressing her lithe body to my chest.

“It’s Grace … they found her unconscious. Anna couldn’t shake her awake this morning. They’re taking her to the hospital building.” Her cries are muffled into my shirt.

I look up to see the medical staff rolling an unmoving Grace out of the dorm, her skin white as a sheet. I keep Nat’s face tucked into my shoulder, not wanting her to see her youngest teammate in such a bad state.

As they roll her into an enclosed golf cart, a tiny woman in an impeccable black suit steps forward. “I’d like to meet with all of the gymnasts from the U.S. team. Immediately.”

I rub Nat’s arms, gently pushing her off of me a little. “They need you, baby.”

She doesn’t look like herself, her expression gaunt and far away. “I don’t want to. Can I … can I stay with you?”

I lower my head so that our eyes are at the exact same level. “I’ll be right here, I’ll be waiting for you until you get back. Okay?”

Nat nods, tentatively stepping away from me and towards the woman in the suit. Julia hooks an arm through Nat’s elbow, and I silently beg her to take care of my girl. I see the imperceptible tilt of Julia’s head in acknowledgement.

And then I sit on the bench outside of their dorm, wringing my hands and waiting for Natalia to return.

* * *

T
he girls walk
hand in hand up the pavement towards their dorm and the bench I’m seated on. Checking the time on my phone, it’s been nearly five hours since they left with the woman from the International Olympic Committee. Each of them has a variation of sadness, grief and emptiness etched into their faces.

Standing, I wait until they get closer to hold my arms open for Natalia, and she moves to me freely. She nuzzles into my chest, the feeling of her there making the world spin on the right axis again.

“So what happened?” I ask the group.

Julia wipes her hand down her face. “Grace is in a coma. Was so malnourished and vitamin deficient that her body just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Anna begins to silently cry. “I didn’t know, I thought she was fine …”

Quinn rubs her shoulder. “We know, there was no way of knowing.” She directs her next sentence at me. “They think the adrenaline and the excitement of being here jacked her up enough to keep her body running. But after winning last night and coming home to relax, her body just couldn’t handle the crash.”

“This was
him
, Spence.” Nat peers up at me, her blue eyes rimmed with red. “He did this to her. Starving her, getting inside her head to make sure she thought food was the enemy.”

“Those fucking pieces of shit!” I want to throttle Novak. Grace could have died. She still wasn’t out of the woods. A coma?! She was sixteen. “What the fuck is being done about them? They need to answer for this!”

Julia nods in agreement. “Something is being done. The IOC has suspended Novak after our testimony on what we’d seen and heard. He won’t be able to coach anyone for the remainder of this Olympics. Maybe ever.”

“Thank God my coach from Alabama is here for the individual finals.” Quinn makes an idle comment.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I have no coach.” Nat runs her hands through her hair.

“My coach from home will represent you, too. Don’t worry, the committee will understand.” Julia soothes her. “Come on girls, let’s go get some rest.”

The rest of the girls move around us, Nat still clinging to me as we stood on the pavement.

“I saw it, Spence. I knew she was having some issues, and probably an eating disorder, I should have done something …” Nat fists her hands in her hair.

“Hey,” I tip her chin up with my finger, “Even if you had done something, it’s not something that changes overnight. Someone suffering from an eating disorder like that has to want to get help.”

She buries her face back into the crook of my chest and arm. I rub her back, the feel of her in my arms better than anything on this earth.

“I want you to coach me for individuals tomorrow night.”

Her request takes me back, my feet even stumbling a bit as I’m hit with the force of her wish. “Me? You … you trust me enough to coach you tomorrow? Are you sure?”

Nat reaches a calloused palm to my cheek, cupping my jaw. “There is no one else I’d want looking out for me on the floor tomorrow. Yes, I want you to coach me.”

Her words send my heart flipping, but it’s the look in her eyes that gets me. One of complete trust, complete faith. And that is more of an apology than I’ll ever need. There is no way two other people in the world share what we share with each other. So of course I will do this for her.

I’ll do whatever she needs me to. Forever.