Tumbling (11 page)

She knew how to congratulate her competitors when they bested her.

She wasn't used to the opposite. She wasn't used to beating people. It was so tiring.

Right now, Monica needed to use a few moments to have a little snack and turn off her brain. She relished the solitude.

But within minutes, there was a cameraman crouched a few feet in front of Monica's toes, his lens pointed directly at her.

The same thing had happened a minute before Leigh came up to her.

Monica tried to look away and choke down her mouthful of PowerBar. She hoped there wasn't purply-gray goop gumming up her teeth or anything. She pointed and flexed the toes on her left foot repeatedly, staring at her navy-blue toenails as they vanished and then reappeared in her vision.

What was with all these cameras? Why were they in her face all of a sudden?

Monica caught a frantic movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to look at the man in black. He was balancing the camera on one shoulder now, leaning to the side so it looked like he was about to fall on his hip, and shaking his other hand back and forth in the air in hectic repetitions.

Monica squinted.
What is he doing?

Grace appeared behind the squatting man. She smiled and waved. She was looking right at Monica
like Monica was a real girl and not a garbage can, and there was a camera there, so that didn't give Monica much choice. She smiled and waved back.

The cameraman gave her a thumbs-up and disappeared.

Grace didn't. She plopped down next to Monica.
What is she doing?

“They always want you to wave,” Grace said.

“Oh,” Monica said.

“The people at home like when you smile and wave, like you care about them, you know?”

Monica wished she could tell Grace that the “people at home” were leaving messages all over Grace's fan page and none on her own, so she didn't care one bit about them or Grace or anyone else. But that was too risky.

Monica knew all about Grace from sharing a gym with her every day.

If Grace spread some ugly rumors about her, there'd be no way to get revenge. Grace didn't care what people said or thought about her. The only thing Grace cared about was gymnastics.

I should be the same way.

Monica needed to do her own thing right now. She could feel her blood running slower and slower. If she didn't get a few more quiet minutes to recharge, she might not make it over the vault at all.

Just as she was gathering the guts to ask Grace to leave her alone for a minute or two, there was another camera. The girls waved and it went away again.

“Why does that keep happening?” Monica whispered.

Grace smiled at her. It looked stretched and awkward on her red-lipsticked lips. “They're talking about you.”

Monica tilted her head. They were? “What are they saying?” she asked. As soon as she asked it, she tried to swallow the words back from the air. There was no reason to trust Grace's answer.

“That you're having an amazing day. That you're beating people no one thought you ever could. That no one knew your name this morning, but now you might be placed on the Olympic team.”

Monica's head whipped around; she studied Grace's profile.
What is she trying to do to me?

“The Olympics?” Monica asked through her teeth. The word felt like an ice cube too big for her mouth. She didn't want to swallow it. She didn't want to hope.

Grace shrugged. “You've got a chance.”

Monica chomped on her PowerBar. Grace cracked her skinny knuckles and stared out into space.

“You should at least be an alternate,” Grace said, after too much time had gone by.

Monica turned. Grace's lips were twisted into that strange smile again.

“Wouldn't it be great? Being in Italy? At the Olympics? Together?” Grace said.

Monica forced her jaw not to drop, but her eyes kept growing.

Grace was up to no good.

But another camera focused on her face. It came
so close, she could tell it was looking at her alone, and not at the superstar next to her.

These cameras had to mean something.

Monica
was
having the best gymnastics day of her life.

It was possible that Ted never mentioned the idea of alternate because, to Ted, being an alternate wouldn't count for anything. Ted was an all-or-nothing kind of coach. He wouldn't care that much if Monica was the Olympic alternate. The country wouldn't care about the alternates. They wouldn't compete or be interviewed on TV or any of that. Monica's own family might not care if she was named alternate.

But Monica would.

She could see herself in an Olympic leo, boarding the plane to Italy. She could see herself smile and . . .

But the idea came from Grace. Who was still talking. Some part of Monica's brain detached and flew out to that fantasy world.

“We could get ready together. You know, go shopping for whatever we'll need. Get our nails done before our flight—”

“What are you talking about?” Monica said finally.

Grace snapped her jaw shut. “I was trying to be nice,” she said. “God.”

Then she was quiet. But she didn't move. She sat there, her shoulder almost touching Monica's, her breath ruining Monica's silent moment, her words destroying Monica's strategy.

Don't fall
, she told herself.
Don't fall. Have a good day.

But when she closed her eyes, the five Olympic rings were tattooed on the inside of her eyelids.

She had tried so hard not to want the impossible. Not to set herself up for disappointment. Her heart was breaking already and the meet wasn't half over.

Monica took a deep breath. She held the vault in her eyes and held her goal in her gut:
don't fall.

WILHELMINA

Camille's words were running through Wilhelmina's brain as she warmed up for beam.
Katja doesn't like surprises.

It was awful. Camille had seemed scatterbrained and distracted and lazy. Not like a cutthroat, manipulative, insecure gymnast who would start psychological wars. Turned out, somehow, she was both.

Wilhelmina hated those kinds of gymnasts. They made a mockery of her sport, her life.

Katja doesn't like surprises.

Katja loved winning more than she hated surprises. That's what Kerry said. That's what they were banking on.

Still, Wilhelmina hadn't thought about the full ramifications of trying to disprove Katja's system until Camille said it to her like that. And since a lot of the previous trials took place at private selection
camps, Wilhelmina could only be so sure that she was better than all the other girls who had tried to do it their own way before.

If Camille was right, here's what it meant: unless she managed to beat Grace or Leigh or Georgette, each time Wilhelmina performed well on any apparatus except for vault, she would be hurting her chances at making the Olympic team. Katja would view her dismount on bars and her tumbling series on beam as insubordination or trickery. It meant that Kerry was wrong, that Wilhelmina was dreaming this dream impossibly, and that—for the second time—she was destined to miss the Olympics by the skin of her teeth.

It meant that Wilhelmina was entirely dependent on Leigh messing up like she did on beam. Or else once again her talent and training would be dismissed for rules and politics.

Wilhelmina's entire life had been cursed.

She did her tumbling series, and her left heel landed off the tape on the floor that represented the beam.

The stupid, stupid comment. Four silly words had managed to rewrite Wilhelmina's entire day.
Katja doesn't like surprises. Katja. Doesn't. Like. Surprises.

Wilhelmina walked away from the tape without practicing her dismount and went to her gym bag for some water. She would be last up, anyway.

Next to her, Annie and Georgette leaned across an empty chair to peer at Georgette's phone. “Do you see this?” she heard Annie whisper. “He's only writing on
Grace's page because Leigh, like, begged him to.” Wilhelmina rolled her eyes.

Georgette shrugged. “I'm not really into Out of Touch,” she said. “But it's cool for Grace, I guess.”

Wilhelmina did not care. She and Georgette were probably the only girls at that meet today who couldn't name a single Out of Touch song. Black girls just don't do white boy bands. But it also wouldn't have mattered who messaged Wilhelmina or who called her in the middle of the freaking night (or who was waiting for her in the stands); all she would think about today was gymnastics. She was so sick of the fact that she was the one who knew where she was and how important it was for her to be right here, right now, and yet she was also the one who was almost certainly going to get screwed out of her rightful spot on the team.

Wilhelmina didn't like them poking fun at Grace. She didn't
like
Grace, but she respected her. At least Grace was in it for the gymnastics.

Wilhelmina shot Camille another dirty look where she sat next to Georgette.
Thanks, Comeback Cammie.
So nice of you to point out the futility of my own comeback, right in the middle of the Olympic trials.

Annie was still looking at her phone, holding it out to Maria, one seat over
.

Then, since she couldn't take the unfairness anymore, Wilhelmina plopped her butt down right on the folding chair that had been serving as a stage for Annie's phone. She sat so quickly, Annie almost didn't
have time to pull her arm away before it got snapped beneath Wilhelmina's muscly behind. The two girls shut up, and that was good.

There was an inch for her somewhere. Leigh had messed up on the beam. Grace had a few falls in Nationals and Classics earlier this summer. Georgette was not as good as either of them. But Wilhelmina had spent many hours with a calculator, adding up DODs and potential execution scores. A few mess-ups would not guarantee she could beat these girls. Every gymnast had a few mess-ups every meet, Wilhelmina included. There might be an inch for her to sneak into one of the top three spots. But it was narrow.

And of course this didn't account for anyone else. Every girl here was trying to wiggle her way into that inch.

She watched in silence as Georgette, then Grace, then Annie performed nearly flawless beam routines. Samantha mounted.

A tear started in the middle of Wilhelmina's heart, pulling the two sides of it farther and farther apart with each high score.

It was uncanny for three gymnasts to hit beam routines in a row, and Samantha was about to be the fourth. It was almost statistically impossible for five to do it. By the odds alone, she was probably going to screw up this rotation. And, if she did, that would help her, maybe. In a weird way.

Maybe she shouldn't be trying to beat the
all-arounders. Maybe Wilhelmina should be thinking about beating Camille. If she was the best on vault, she'd be named to the team, for sure. And Katja wouldn't hate her for it.

But she couldn't beat Camille. Not unless Camille fell.

Wilhelmina could have been the best on vault if she was totally focused on it like Camille was. But Camille had outsmarted her.

And then gotten into her head.

Wilhelmina stood and did a quick back walkover, keeping her muscles warm as she waited for her name to be called, for her doom to be sealed.

Kerry came up beside Wilhelmina and put her warm hands on her almost-shaking shoulders. “Just yourself, right?” Kerry said.

Wilhelmina nodded.

They both watched Samantha nail a double-tuck dismount.

“It doesn't matter what these other girls do, huh? You only control Mina, huh?” Kerry said.

Wilhelmina nodded, even though now she knew she was better off doing just okay for the rest of the day. She was better off performing mediocre on beam and floor today, and on bars, beam, and floor tomorrow. And rocking the vault.

Would that be a dirty strategy, too? Would that make her just like Camille?

Camille was getting exactly what she wanted:
Wilhelmina was thinking about her stupid hushed voice instead of visualizing her beam routine.

Wilhelmina's name rang out through the gym and she swung her arms in circles, loosening her shoulders before mounting the podium.

“Just your best, huh?” Kerry said, her voice so low it was almost a whisper. Like the advice was a secret. Like a coach who said to do your best was unheard of in that room.

Wilhelmina nodded again. But she wasn't sure anymore. What if her best hurt her?

A minute later, after the green flag and the signal to the judges, Wilhelmina ran toward the beam, her left foot pushed against the springboard, and she leaped with full extension of her legs. Her right foot landed on the beam with a solid
bang.
Her heart pounded in her chest, hard but not fast. It seemed to be saying,
You can do this.

Wilhelmina launched immediately into her full turn and stopped without the smallest wobble.

She took a deep breath, preparing for her longest tumbling run, and she realized it. She didn't have the choice Kerry seemed to imply with that “huh?” It didn't matter if Katja would hate her.

When Wilhelmina was up on the beam like she was now, she didn't have a choice but to do her best. In the end, gymnastics was about this moment. Even more than the results. Even more than the scores. Gymnastics
was about right now. The stadium captivated by the way she could control each muscle in her body. The beam staying exactly where she put it, beneath the soles of her feet or the palms of her hands. Ninety seconds of publicly flying, of joy pulsating through every muscle, of power marrying grace right in her soul. That was Wilhelmina's gymnastics.

Then she was back on the ground, the crowd cheering, the judges nodding, her coach jumping up and down.

Wilhelmina couldn't help but search out Katja Minkovski and stare at the ugly frown on her grandmotherly face.