Tumbling (26 page)

But, Camille had asked Leigh if she was normal, if she was one of them. Camille hadn't been able to tell that the high-school life was her other life, her second life, that Leigh was just like the rest of the gymnasts. Except she wasn't.

No one understood her. To one group she was the professional teen, and to the other she was the one who went to high school full-time.

Even Grace had never really understood Leigh. Leigh saw that now. They were being friendly like usual but something had shifted last night. Leigh wasn't sure she and Grace would ever be whole again. She wasn't sure she'd ever trust Grace like she once had.

Leigh felt like Camille felt. Totally misunderstood. She wondered if that's what she had recognized in Camille in the first place.

Leigh was staring at the empty air above the vault. She wasn't seeing anything.

Phil grabbed her arm as he walked by. “Focus!”
He almost spat the word in her face. “There's no point in Nice Leigh if you can't focus!”

She nodded and shook him off her.
Focus
, she told herself.
Focus on your Amanar. On sticking the landing.

They were using her normal Amanar today because it was much more consistent than her TTY. And she didn't need the extra points from a TTY anymore. If Leigh hit on her Amanar, she'd get enough points to pass Grace, who only did a DTY. She'd be on top at the end of this rotation. The challenge would be staying there.

Leigh climbed the podium, chalked up, and stood ready for her green flag.
Stick the landing
, she told herself. But she wasn't even hearing her own internal warnings. Inside she was still cringing and wondering what Camille thought about that stupid hug.

Leigh glanced around. Phil was staring at her. Grace was not. She was digging through her bag. Monica was pulling on her warm-ups. Camille was pacing next to the bars. Were her friends from home watching? Or had That Girl been alone the whole time?

The green flag went up and Leigh was running over the mat before she even knew it.

The lightning nerves jolted her again.
What do I do? Oh, God, what do I do? Why didn't I visualize it?

Leigh's hands were on the mat.
You can do it
, she told herself, but she could feel she was off. Her right hand landed inches ahead of her left on the table, so she was a little twisted; her body got into the air but not as
high as yesterday; she stumbled sideways on the landing but still stood it up.

Not great. Not a disaster.

“You have to focus,” Phil whispered as he pulled her off the podium. “You gotta get your head out of your being a nice kid. Friends are for later. Focus!”

Leigh nodded.

Then she heard her score. She turned to the scoreboard and watched as the scores updated. And her jaw dropped.

She was now tied for first place. In the Olympic trials. With Grace.

Leigh felt her heart speed up but she took a deep breath to calm it.

She couldn't make this about beating Grace. That wasn't nice. That was something Grace would do.

STANDINGS
AFTER THE FIFTH ROTATION

Sixth Rotation

MONICA

As she walked behind Georgette from the vault to the bars, Monica glimpsed the scoreboard. Okay, she looked at it. She made that ultimate mistake and turned her head and looked for her name.

Worse, she forgot herself for a minute. She forgot all her rules and rituals. She looked from the top down.

Seventh.

At the end of the third rotation yesterday, she'd been in fourth. Two rotations later, she had plummeted, and Natalie and Annie were right on her tail.

All of that happened despite the fact that, a minute ago, she'd beaten yesterday's score on vault.

The precise makeup and the sparkly leo and the braided hair didn't mean anything. She wasn't good enough.

Her mom and dad and grandmother and stepdad and brothers and sisters and stepbrothers and stepsisters were all here to watch her fail. And if anyone had finally recognized her face on the TV, that person was watching her fail now, too.

Monica's cheeks burned as she put her bag on her new chair and waited her turn to warm up on bars. Grace was right. She was only placed in this squad because they needed a sixth gymnast and they didn't want to make Ted run back and forth constantly like he had yesterday. How could she have let herself believe that this was where she belonged? That she mattered?

Monica mounted the bars for her warm-up. Maybe it was time to go back to her old goal, the one Wilhelmina had convinced her wasn't big enough.
Don't fall.
If that was her focus, it wouldn't be so disappointing when Natalie or Annie climbed past her on the scoreboard.

Except Monica had seen that four next to her name yesterday.

No matter what, she'd go home disappointed. Monica hated how hope compounded on hope until she built herself up to be higher than she could be, and all of those piles of hope meant that she was never happy. It was why she usually tried not to hope at all.

No falls
, Monica told herself as she swung through a series of giants.
No falls and no looking at the scoreboard.

Monica landed a watered-down dismount and hopped off the podium.

“Nice dismount,” she heard Grace's garbage voice say.

Monica turned her head, startled. She hadn't realized anyone had been watching. She hadn't seen Grace approach.

And before she knew it, she'd rolled her eyes.

Grace's own eyes grew in surprise. “What?” she asked.

Oh, come on.

“I just said it was a good dismount. You know, you stuck it.”

Monica shook her head.

“What?” Grace said again.

You're not my coach. I don't have to care what you think.

She looked around. Ted was sitting slumped over at the end of the row of folding chairs. He had his phone in his hand. He hadn't even seen her warm up.

Even her own coach didn't think she was worth the effort. What was she doing here?

“I'm being nice,” Grace whined.

Monica was sick of it. She was sick of Grace and Ted and Leigh and everyone.

She was sick of hoping. But Monica didn't think she could stop the hope from pulsing through her veins anymore, so she dove into it. She wasn't going to make the team, she knew that. But she was going to get as close as she could.

She was going to believe in herself. Alternate. Olympic team alternate. She had three more rotations to get there.

“That wasn't my real dismount. And you know it,” Monica said to Grace. Then she marched over to their coach.

“Do you have anything to say about my
warm-up?” she asked. She tried to make her voice strong, but of course it sounded squeaky.

Ted looked up. He lowered his bushy eyebrows in surprise. “You did great,” he said. He looked back at his phone.

Monica didn't move. She didn't care that she was only in her leo and totally exposed to everyone in the stands. She didn't care that she was tiny and she probably had chalk in her braids and streaked across her thighs. She was at the Olympic trials. She was alive. And though she wouldn't make the team, she owed it to every gymnast who hadn't made it this far for one reason or another to try her best, push her hardest.

Finally Ted looked up again. “Yes?” he said.

“Did you see it?” She hated how her voice sounded weak and raspy when inside she was finally feeling strong.

“Huh?” he said.

Behind Monica, Georgette mounted the bars and began her official routine. Monica would be up next, in only a few minutes.

“Did you even see my warm-up? Did I miss a handstand? Did I bend a knee? Did I look strong on the first release?”

To Monica's surprise, Ted smiled.

“You want my real critique?” he asked.

Monica felt herself shrink. She'd started this conversation so confident. But he was smiling at her like she
was a three-year-old with a messy lollipop. Monica didn't want to be cute. She wanted to be good.

Still, she nodded. “For real,” she managed.

“You hit your handstands,” he said. “But you almost always have an inch or two between your ankles. Your release move is precise, but I always think you're about to hit your foot on the bar on the way down. You barely get any height.”

Monica nodded.

Ted kept talking. “When you kip to the low bar, your right hand always looks too loose on the bar. And if you think you're making that connection between your release moves, you're fooling yourself. You hesitate half the time, almost. The judges will always see that, always, no matter how well you cover it up.”

Monica stared at him wide-eyed.
Now? He chooses to tell me this stuff now? For the first time?

“Oh, don't give me that look,” he said, wrinkling his face in a way that made him look like his daughter. “Don't give me those big hurt eyes. You asked for it. You marched up here and demanded a real critique, so there you have it.”

Monica's eyes fell to her toes and she shook her head. But she wasn't hurt. “What?” Ted said.

She was pissed.

If you've known that all along, you should have told me before. If you were taking me seriously, maybe I'd have taken myself seriously. Maybe I'd have a
chance.

“Nothing,” Monica said.

Ted turned around and went back to his chair.

But, a few minutes later, when Monica's name was called, he stood and walked to the side of the podium. “Ankles together,” he yelled. “Remember, keep those ankles together.” She nodded. She mounted the bars and, ninety seconds later, when there were red half-moons on each of her inner ankles from being pressed together through her whole routine, Monica knew her score would be even higher than yesterday's.

But she didn't look.

GRACE

Grace spat into her grips and rubbed the wet chalk across the leather. There was a camera circling her like a kid at a roller rink.

She thought about what they'd be saying on television right now:

“And here we have one of our leaders. She made a good case for the guaranteed position yesterday, didn't she, Jim?”

“Why, yes, she did, Cheryl. The top spot is certainly on her mind right now. But we've seen some mistakes from her in the past.”

“Mistakes or no mistakes, are we going to see this one competing for our country in Rome?”

“Cheryl, I'd be shocked if Grace Cooper wasn't on that Europe-bound plane tomorrow.”

Grace remembered watching meets as a child. The announcers had made it all seem simple. She thought it was simple. Gymnasts were talented girls who wanted to win the meet. Who enjoyed hugging each competitor after each routine. Who were friends with their athletic enemies. A gymnast was able to be happy for people who got what she herself wanted, what she had worked hard for. A gymnast cared more about her country winning gold than herself going to the Olympics.

A gymnast would be thrilled to take a step to the left on the podium and share that gold medal with her best friend. She wouldn't hate her for tying her score.

Even Dylan seemed to think this way. After Grace's vault he posted:
I'm still watching you, Grace Cooper, even though it seems pretty obvious you and Leigh are both going to the Olympics. Woo hoo! Can't wait to watch you there.

For the announcers and spectators it was as simple as “she wants it, and she wants it, and she wants it, and she wants it, but only one of them will get it, and, hey look, they're all friends.” They
were
friends, some of them. But.

The announcers and spectators didn't know what it was like to have fire running in your veins because you just heard your name for the sixth time at the Olympic trials and you know you're less than two hours,
only three quick rotations, away from the final step to achieving your wildest, grandest dream and that the only thing possibly standing in your way of going to the Olympics as the world's best gymnast is your best friend, who is now tying you, and how that's the most exciting and scary and overwhelming place you've ever been.

Grace had to stare at the bars, to narrow her eyes, and to tell her veins to cool down, her heart to stay steady, her stomach to feel full, because there were way too many tiny things that could pull the dream right from her fingertips.

Bars was Grace's best event and Leigh's worst. This tie would be over soon.

Grace got the green flag, signaled the judges, and mounted. It was time for her to turn back into the willow tree.

She spun around the high bar in a giant, added another half giant, and landed in handstand. She was slightly short on it but she wasn't even sure if the judges would catch that.

So far so good.

She transitioned to the low bar, flew around it in a straddle, and swung herself back up the high bar for a double pirouette.

Her toes were pointed, her knees were straight, her arms were strong. Her body was full of long, lean lines, like her father and everyone else would say.

Still good.

Something was different from yesterday. The crowd was fidgety or something. She didn't feel every eye on her, every pair of lungs holding in their breath, every face calm.

She didn't feel calm. She felt nervous.

But she'd competed like this before and gotten great scores. Everything she was doing was technically perfect.

Grace did her Cooper with her legs splayed and her free arm circling the bar like a ribbon. Then she re-grasped the bar with her left hand for a pirouette. She hit it perfectly, up and down.

Still good. Almost done.

But that's when it happened. Her arms were suddenly spaghetti. Her stomach was slush. Her eyes saw black. Her body almost crumpled off the bar and whacked it before falling 8.2 feet to the floor. The entire crowd gasped with shock and surprise and horror, terrified she would fall.

She caught herself just in time, tightening every muscle from her fingers to her biceps to her abs to her lower back and quads and calfs and toes. She swung herself into another giant and another handstand. Two tricks she wasn't planning on, tricks that she'd already done, so they wouldn't add anything to her score. She hadn't fallen. But the entire crowd had inhaled with surprise. It was noticeable. And now she had no idea what she was
doing.

She had to figure it out in a millisecond.

She was exhausted. Her palms were ripping apart, her muscles were burning, her lungs were fighting for air.

If she missed her Mustafina dismount and fell, her save would have been pointless.

But she had to do something. She kipped as usual. She could feel that her knees were slightly bent and her toes were not quite as curled as they should be. God, her joints were so tired.

There's no way she could make her muscles do all the twists and flips in a Mustafina.

She released the bar and did a simple, and sloppy, single backflip dismount. She stumbled on the landing.

Grace turned to the judges and barely put her arms in the air before jumping off the podium.

That was it. Leigh would take over. Leigh didn't even look at her as she climbed onto the podium herself and dipped her hands in the chalk.

Grace hung her head and approached the folding chairs, instructing her neck not to turn, not to watch as Leigh stole the top position out from under her.

Oh, God
, Grace thought.
What is Dad going to say?

But she wouldn't wish her mother was there. Her dad was wishing it. He never said anything, but Grace knew he was always wishing their lives had gone differently. He was always wishing that his wife was still here.

He didn't have that kind of wife. Grace didn't have that kind of mother. She had the kind who disappeared, and she couldn't wish for anything different. She couldn't do that to herself.

By the time the announcer said Leigh's name, her dad still wasn't by her side. He wasn't there. Grace looked up and glanced around for him. Was he talking to Monica? Was he in the bathroom or something?