Tumbling (35 page)

“Sorry about that,” Camille said. She sat back in the stool next to the hospital bed but Leigh quickly folded her hands across her chest, so Camille kept hers in her lap. “So, what were we talking about?”

And then, to Camille's surprise, Leigh laughed.

“What?” Camille said, but Leigh was still laughing. “What?”

“I can't believe it,” Leigh said, “but we were actually talking about the
next
Olympics.”

Camille joined in the giggling. “We're the most predictable people ever. Gymnasts,” she said.

“Yup,” Leigh said. “So. You really didn't want to go? You really didn't want to be an Olympian?”

Camille sighed. “You know . . . I did. Four years ago, I did. But now I don't. I really don't.”

“What do you want to do?” Leigh said.

Camille squirmed. For some reason this was making her uncomfortable. “It's okay,” she said. “I came here to comfort you. We don't have to talk about my drama.”

Leigh shrugged. “Well, I'm stuck in this bed. I can't decide what I'm going to do four years from now today, can I?” She snorted. “I mean, you know, I'm thinking about it but . . . I'm stuck here all night. So we may as well talk about you. I mean, it's okay to talk about you sometimes, you know, Camille?”

Leigh's face turned bright red like it did sometimes and she tried to shrug off what she'd just said, but the words slapped Camille in the face.

It's okay to talk about you sometimes.

It's okay to talk about you sometimes.

And it was.

“So, like, are you done?” Leigh asked. “Retiring?”

Camille shook her head slowly. “I know it's weird but . . . and Andrew will be all upset with me today, obviously, but he's nice and I think he'll get over it and help me . . . and, well, I don't want to go to the Olympics. I want to go to college.”

Leigh laughed. “Yeah, that's good.”

“No, I mean, like the NCAA.” Camille's heart was beating wildly. “I didn't admit this, even to myself, until today. My mom always wanted me to go to the Olympics and my boyfriend, well, ex now, he always wanted me to quit all gymnastics and I . . . I lost my voice in the shuffle. But . . . I figured it out when you vaulted yesterday. I was happy when I thought your vault maybe meant I wouldn't make the team. Because if I just
didn't make it
, I knew there were a ton of NCAA teams that would take me, and that's what I want.

“I'm not sure if it'll be the same now that I disqualified myself but, I mean, you're my teammate. Someone will understand, I hope. I just want—”

“You want to be a Bulldog. Or a Gator. Or something!” Leigh finished her sentence gleefully. “I think that's cool. That's so cool.”

“Really?” Camille said.

“Yeah,” Leigh said. “I mean, people do that. People decide to be a serious gymnast but only, like, as a part of their lives. Like, my parents made me do that. But you're doing it on purpose. That's cool. And unique. And like, independent.” Leigh's face was bright red again and she she cleared her throat before saying, “So who was on the phone?”

Camille's brain was still making plans, still thinking about marching out of this hospital and calling Andrew and telling him everything. She only half heard herself say, “Wilhelmina.”

But Leigh's eyes went wide. “Oh! So do you know now?”

“No, but—” Just then her phone buzzed and the results were in her hand. “Well, I do now,” Camille said. “That was Wilhelmina. She made it. With Georgette, Maria, and Samantha. And then they were going to promote one of the alternates, since I'm not there.”

Leigh's jaw hung open. “So no Grace?” she said, stunned. She looked sadder than she had since Camille first walked in the room.

“Oh,” Camille said, realizing how surprising this was for the first time. “I guess not. Not unless she's who they decided to promote.”

“She's not.” The voice came from the open door behind them. “I'm not,” Grace said. “And, you know, hi.”

GRACE

“Grace!” Leigh cried out from the bed.

Grace's head began pounding immediately at the sight of Leigh all wrapped in sterile sheets.
I'm not a god
, Grace reminded herself, over and over.
I didn't make her fall.

“How'd you get here?” Leigh asked.

Grace shrugged. “My dad drove me,” she said. “He's in the lobby with your parents.”

She stayed in the doorway. She was still worried that Leigh was mad, maybe not about the falling, but about all the other awful, twisted things Grace had done. It was easier to see them now, looking back over the past
few days, now that she'd fallen off her own pedestal.

“Get over here. I can't move. Get over here,” Leigh ordered, and Grace flew across the room and squeezed her best friend.

And it was like they were in their hotel room again, like they were alone. “I'm so sorry,” Grace said and Leigh said and Grace said, back and forth.

Finally they broke their embrace.

“You're . . . You, Grace Cooper . . . You're not going?” Leigh asked.

Grace shrugged. “I'm the alternate,” she said. “So . . . I'm going. Just. Not how we planned.”

“Grace,” Leigh said. “I'm so sorry. That's so unfair. Who—”

“Monica. She got the last spot.”

Leigh's face flashed into something close to horror, but Grace shook her head. “Don't. Don't,” she said.

Leigh nodded.

“I'm . . . I'm okay. I think? Maybe I . . . Maybe I didn't deserve to go?”

“You?” Leigh shouted, aghast.

Just then an orderly came into the room rolling a cart of food. The smell of cafeteria roast beef and green beans from a can almost knocked Grace over. It was gross food, and it still sung to her empty stomach.

“What do you mean?” Leigh asked when the orderly was gone. “You're the World Champion. The
World
Champion!”

“I guess . . . I don't know, I guess . . .” Grace watched
Leigh reposition herself in front of her tray and try to cut into her meat with a useless plastic knife. She was close to telling Leigh everything. That she hadn't eaten more than six bites of anything all day that day. That she'd thought starving herself would make her better somehow but it had clearly backfired and that that was her own fault and not Katja Minkovski's. But then Camille coughed behind them and Grace jumped, startled.

It was one thing to tell Leigh. She didn't need to tell the whole world.

“Next time?” Grace asked her best friend. “Are we going to try again?”

Leigh's fork froze on the way to her mouth. “Will you, you think? Will you try again? It seems so . . . hard.”

Grace shrugged. She sat on the edge of Leigh's bed. “I don't know,” she said. “Will you?”

Then Leigh looked at Camille, so Grace did, too.

“You'd tell us not to, right?” Leigh asked.

Camille shook her head. “No,” she said. “I'd say only do it if you want to.”

The two of them nodded seriously but Camille burst out in laughter.

“What?” Grace asked.

“I just—it's so obvious. That's like the most obvious advice ever. Why couldn't I give it to myself?”

They laughed with her. When they were calm again, Camille kept talking. “The real advice is this: If you're going to do it again, you have to be careful, okay? You have to treat your body differently when it's older. You
have to let yourself get bigger. And you might have to drop an event or two. You have to let your gymnastics change.” Camille paused. “Well, I guess I'm done with her for real now, so I'm just going to say it. Wilhelmina was right: if you want to do it again in four years, you can't play by Katja's rules.”

Leigh and Grace giggled shyly. They were both nodding.

Then Camille looked right at Grace. “You've got to gain weight. Muscle. If you're going to try again in four years—”

Grace cut her off. “I have to eat.”

“Well, yeah,” Leigh said with her usual cheer. Leigh didn't get what Grace was saying.

“No, I mean . . .” She took a deep breath. It didn't matter if Camille heard her, because she was about to tell her dad. If she wanted to keep being a gymnast, she needed help. Just like Wilhelmina said. “I mean I have to eat more. I mean I haven't been eating. I mean, the reason I almost fell off bars today, and the reason I fell at Nationals and Classics—” Their eyes were so wide. They were horrified. Leigh was going to hate her forever for this secret. “I haven't been eating,” Grace said.

It was the bravest thing she'd done all day. Ever.

“Oh, Grace,” Leigh said. “Oh, Grace.” She almost seemed sad. “You can get help for that, you know. You need to get help. Olympics or not.”

Grace nodded. “My dad already said I need a new coach.”

“That's a good idea,” Camille said. “Tell him you need a new nutritionist, too. . . . There are a lot of girls who struggle with food. Not just gymnasts either. So there's a lot of help you can get.”

Grace nodded. It was going to be awful. It was going to be almost impossible to let her body change from feather to rock. But she had to do it now. Leigh would make her do it. That's why saying it out loud was the hardest part.

“Come here,” Leigh said again, and Grace leaned in to hug her.

Just then her phone buzzed in her pocket. “Check it!” Leigh squealed.

“It won't be Dylan,” Grace said. “He stopped messaging me as soon as I messed up on bars.”

But Leigh laughed. “Dylan does not care enough about gymnastics to know you messed up on bars,” she said.

And it was Dylan.

Congrats, Grace Cooper, Olympic team alternate! I had a lot of fun watching you the past two days. Being the alternate is probably similar to being the backup dancer in a boy band. We have something in common, I guess. :-)

Grace stared at the message, dumbfounded. Could it be that someone, somewhere in the world would
understand what it was like to try and try and try and never quite get what you were aiming for? Could it be that someone, somewhere in the world would understand Grace?

LEIGH

Camille stood and joined the hug, her arms wrapped around both Leigh's and Grace's backs so that all of Leigh's broken body was on fire.

I'm the same girl I was yesterday
, she reminded herself. So many parts of her would stay the same even if gymnastics went away.

“Um,” Camille said when the hug was over. “I don't want to sound, like, I don't know. Don't judge me too harshly for this or anything. But, should we maybe go get your dad now, Grace? I mean, I'll go away or whatever. But maybe you should, like, tell him when you have Leigh here to support you and before—”

Leigh couldn't believe it, but Grace was nodding. “Before I lose my nerve.”

Camille turned toward the door. “Should I go—”

“Wait!” Leigh cut her off. She'd shouted again, but this time she wasn't embarrassed. This time everything on her mind was too important for a crush to get in the way of it. “Wait, Grace, does that mean you're trying again? Does that mean you're keeping this going four more years?”

“I don't know. Are you?” Grace said. “Are we still in this together?”

But Leigh wasn't sure yet. The thought of losing that part of her life—the workouts and the competition and the camps and the friends—was so painful, it stung.

But the rest of it. The secrets. The parceling up her life. The twisted line Grace and Leigh had to walk between besties and competition. Four more years of that. It seemed so exhausting.

Too exhausting.

It wasn't worth it.

But maybe she could fix that. She could fix their friendship. She could glue all the pieces of her life back together.

They were her secrets anyway.

They weren't even bad secrets.

And if Grace was brave enough to tell a secret like
that
—

“I want to go to the Olympics,” Leigh said. “But I want to do it as your friend. If we try again . . . can we be better?”

Grace shrugged. “Be better?”

“No, I don't mean like better tricks or DODs or whatever. I just mean . . . can we be better to each other?”

“I hope so,” Grace said. Her eyes were on her sneakers. “I'm really sorry, Leigh. I get all confused because gymnastics . . . I mean, it's everything to me. It didn't make sense to me that you're thinking about other things but . . . I can be your friend even if gymnastics is only
part of what's important to you. I can make friendship a bit part of my life, too, you know? I don't want to quit after this Olympics, but I also want to be happier. I want to like myself more. So, don't worry. I won't tell anyone you're gay. I really won't.”

Leigh's eyes went wide and straight to Camille. Grace's followed hers. She clutched her hands at her chest. Leigh's face was so hot, she couldn't think. Grace looked pale enough to pass out.

“I—oh my God, I didn't—I suck. Oh God, Leigh, I suck. I didn't even mean to—I was trying—Camille, you can't tell anyone, okay? Leigh doesn't want anyone to know and I just—oh my God, Leigh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—oh my God.”

And then Grace'e eyes spilled over. The blood left Leigh's face. Her breath returned to her lungs. Grace was crying about something that had nothing to do with gymnastics. Grace was crying for
her
.

“I can be better, too, Grace. I can be better to you. I can forgive you. It's different this time. Because you didn't mean to.”

And part of Leigh was relieved anyway. Part of her was grateful.

“Well, I wasn't supposed to hear that,” Camille said, clearly trying to lighten the mood. “But I just retired from elite gymnastics, so I'm pretty sure I don't even count anymore.”