Tumbling (7 page)

“You really think no one knows? Or I mean, not knows. Suspects? Because that reporter said ‘linebacker,' and, you know, linebackers are, like, husky or whatever, and—”

“Will you calm down about it?” Grace said.

Grace was right: she was being crazy.

Leigh changed topics. “What do you know about this Monica Chase?” she asked.

An emotion flashed across Grace's face for a second,
her eyebrows raising and her thin lips curling in toward her cheeks. Pure condescension. “Monica from my gym? Why?”

Leigh shrugged. “She beat me on bars.”

Grace laughed lightly. “I don't think we need to worry about
Monica Chase
,” she said, as if the name itself smelled like a rotten banana. Grace was almost laughing in the middle of a meet. It was unheard of. “My dad's prepping her for the NCAA.”

Leigh tried to minimize the superiority threatening to puff up her chest. She chewed her cheek to stop her smile. She was not here thinking about the NCAA. She was better than that.

“I don't think it matters how great a day she has,” Grace said. “She could have her best day and you could have your worst and you'd still beat her twice over.”

Leigh nodded. She took a deep breath to try to steady her twitching heart.

“I mean, look at her,” Grace went on.

The two friends turned their heads to see the tiny gymnast crouching a few feet away with her back to the purple-mat-lined bleachers. Monica's arms were twisted behind her back.

Leigh couldn't help giggling. “What is she doing?” she whisper-squealed. “Is she . . .”

To Leigh's surprise and delight, Grace was giggling, too. And for a split second, they weren't talking in code about whose name was higher on the scoreboard.
The sight of Grace's tiny, pesky teammate pretzeling her body in an attempt to pick her leotard out of her butt without drawing the attention of the crowd was too much for even the most stoic gymnast. “Cheap butt glue!” Grace whisper-squealed, a hand on her stomach so her laughter wouldn't be visible through her red leo.

“Oh, God,” Leigh said. “Leo wedgie! And she's picking it! In front of everyone! Poor thing.”

Grace brought a hand to her mouth. “Poor thing?” she breathed. “She could put her pants on.”

“Or buy better butt glue! That's one way to not be the Wedgie Queen!” Leigh squealed.

Monica looked up.

Oh, God. Did she just hear?

No. No. She didn't. She couldn't.

Leigh would not let herself feel guilty. Today was not the day to be nice to every baby gymnast with delusional dreams.

With another quick squeeze from her best friend, Leigh took her place beside the beam.

I'm ready
, she told herself.
I'm the best.

When the green flag raised, she rushed at the springboard and flipped onto the beam. She moved on autopilot now, her muscles working through her dance positions while her brain spun in happy, thoughtless circles between her ears.

She heard Grace and Phil and Georgette cheer her name just before her first tumbling pass. She did a
roundoff (
bang
) followed by two back handsprings (
bang-boom-bang
) and landed solidly with her heels (
boom
) barely edging off the end of the beam.

The crowd applauded and her name was shouted but all Leigh heard was the metallic crashing of the equipment below her.

Stop listening to the beam
, she told herself.

The reporter meant it as a compliment
.

She split leaped, another
boom
. She did a full turn and wobbled out of it. A wolf jump (
bang
), she landed with her foot half off the beam. She squeezed her toes around the corner of it as her upper body swung dangerously backward. She squeezed all the muscles in her right leg, her right hip, her abdomen together and managed to send herself upright again. She missed another connection.

She did her backflip. (
Boom
.) Another wobble.

Is the beam always this loud?

She danced to the end of the five hundred centimeters for her dismount, and she stood still.

Back handspring, back handspring, double back tuck, stick the landing.

But her brain was echoing the metallic crashes. The noise that rang every time her feet hit the beam. Even with the whole stadium cheering her on, the crashing noise was the loudest in her ears. It was what that
Sports Illustrated
reporter had meant when he called her the Linebacker of Gymnastics.

Fluffy Monica and balletic Grace would never
make the balance beam echo the way she did.

She couldn't chase the thoughts out of her head before she was flipping down the beam, listening to the crashes below her limbs.

As soon as her feet launched her off the end of the beam, her head tucked into her chest so she could attempt her double-tuck dismount, she realized she didn't have enough height. She flexed all her muscles, trying to get around a second time, and landed crouched too close to the mat. Her knees were bent too deeply, her butt was hovering over the floor, her feet backpedaled, moving her away from the beam in a series of steps until she finally regained her balance. She didn't fall. But she might as well have.

Leigh saluted the judges and slunk off the podium.

She felt like crying.

Her coach intercepted her as soon as she hit the floor. He hugged her, patting her back. She tried to walk away, to get a moment to herself at her bag to wonder what happened between bars and beam. Ten minutes ago she thought she could rule the world. Now she was in damage-control mode.

But Phil put his hands on Leigh's massive shoulders. He forced her to stop moving, to look at him. “You nail floor and vault, and this won't matter, okay? You do your routines like you have a million times and it'll be fine.”

This morning they hadn't needed a strategy. They were so sure she'd be placed on the team. Now, things were different.

“Do you think I should try it?” Leigh asked. “Should I try our new vault today?”

Phil thought for a second. “I hope you don't have to. Let's see where we are after floor. For now, don't think about anything else. Focus on floor.”

Leigh stared at him. She didn't want to nod because that felt like it would be a lie. People were always telling her to focus on this or think about that, but it wasn't that easy. Leigh couldn't always control what she was thinking. Sometimes words and pictures and sounds snuck into her brain before she could stop them.

Words like
linebacker
.

“What happened out there?” Phil asked finally.

Leigh shrugged.

She and Phil hadn't talked about that article after Nationals a month ago, but she'd noticed that he didn't hang it on the wall in his office with the rest of the articles about his gymnasts. The reporter might have tried to claim “compliment” when Leigh's publicist called to complain, but the article was ugly. The sounds he said Leigh made on the beam. The way the bars flexed under her weight. The way the floor dipped under her “power.”

Phil was still staring at her, so Leigh said the one word: “Linebacker.”

To Leigh's surprise, Phil knew exactly what she was talking about. He swallowed hard and mumbled, “That asshole.”

That's all he said. He didn't tell her to forget about it
like her dad; he didn't explain how it was intended as a compliment like her mom. He said, “That asshole,” and walked away. Leigh almost smiled.

She kept her eyes away from the competition, her ears closed to her score, and fumbled in the bag for her ChapStick. Her pulse felt shaky in her chest, her gut wobbly, as if, in some alternate universe, she was still at risk of falling off the beam.

As soon as Leigh could handle it, Grace was by her side.

“That wedgie-picking queen is not going to beat you,” Grace said.

Leigh nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I'll crush her. And her cheap butt glue.”

Her eye twitched. It was funny, what she was saying, but it stressed her out, too. She didn't want to be focused on crushing Monica. She wanted to crush Grace.

No. God, these meets could get her so confused. Leigh didn't want to crush Grace or Monica or anybody. She only wanted to do well enough today to compete in the all-around at the Olympics.

“Monica's plain delusional if she thinks she'll make the team,” Grace hissed. “She's like my-DTY-will-beat-Camille's-Amanar delusional.” They were both laughing. “She's like Dylan-Patrick-is-in-love-with-me delusional.”

It was a low blow. Monica was delusional about gymnastics, maybe, but not about everything.

But Leigh laughed anyway. They laughed and laughed.

WILHELMINA

The chalk-coated fiberglass of the uneven bars spun in Wilhelmina's palms. That's what it felt like when she was having an “on” day. Like her body stayed in one place while she manipulated the bars around her straight knees and her pointed toes. Instead of a straddle release, where she flew over the bars with her legs kicked out to each side, today she shoved the high bar beneath her and sat in the air while she waited for it to rejoin her hands. Instead of a transition kipping beneath the low bar to a handstand on top of the high bar, she threw the entire apparatus over her head, then spun it around in her fingers until it rested beneath her body, perpendicular.

Bars were widely known as Wilhelmina's worst event, but it was sometimes her favorite. She would receive deductions for imperfect lines and separation between her feet because of the way she was built. It was impossible to have the “long, lean lines” the judges love when you have muscular, curvy legs that never look perfectly straight. It was nearly impossible to keep your knees glued together when your quad muscles touched with your knees still inches apart.

The best bar workers were always built like Grace Cooper or Annie Sims. They were all limb and no torso. They were more bone than fat, more bone than muscle, even. Gymnasts like Wilhelmina were expected to
dazzle with the space they managed to put between their bodies and anything that anchored them to the floor.

Still, Wilhelmina loved the bars. Yes, all of those deductions were frustrating, but when it came down to it, working the bars was like swinging on a playground.

She bent her elbows and launched her body away from the bar, curled into a double-double—two tucked backflips, each with a full twist—and made sure her feet stuck to the floor when she landed.

She turned to the judges with her hands over her head and a smile already on her face. There was so much cheering and applause behind her, she felt like taking a bow.

Surprise!
she told the crowd, the judges, the other athletes.

Wilhelmina and Kerry had been working for this moment for the past three years and here it was. She wasn't a vault specialist. She wasn't only competition for Camille. She'd just nailed her worst event.

All-around, here I come!

She hopped off the podium and, after the obligatory hugs, stuck her earbuds in, hoping Beyoncé would block out her score when the announcer screamed it. She didn't want to hear her scores until the meet was over. She didn't want to think about her place when she should be focusing on her gymnastics.

If she had six more performances like this, maybe she wasn't here for nothing. Maybe she would make the Olympic team. Maybe the past four years hadn't been a
waste and maybe her birthday hadn't cursed her completely.

She didn't have to beat Grace or Leigh or Georgette.

She only had to beat everyone else.

The dream had been so close and then so far, it seemed impossible that it was back within her grasp.

When she glanced at Katja, the woman was frowning right at her. But that was okay. As long as Mina made the team, Katja's feelings didn't matter. She'd come here to prove you could make the Olympics a different way, a non-Katja way. She was here to prove you didn't have to beat up your body with constant gym camps, you didn't have to push yourself to train forty hours a week, you didn't have to suffer through eating disorders and broken backs. You could do this gymnast thing and keep your body intact. Wilhelmina had come here to prove Katja wrong, because her body and her birthday had required that was how she do it.

“Where did
that
come from?”

The words cut through the music pumping into Wilhelmina's brain. She turned to find Camille behind her. She pulled a wire until her right ear was free and forced herself to smile.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“That was amazing,” Camille said. But she didn't sound enthusiastic. She sounded confused. “Where have you been?”

Wilhelmina stared.

Just because you became a dirty gymnast
who rests on one perfect Amanar doesn't mean I'm going to, Cammie.

“Why weren't you at camp last month?” Camille pressed. “Why have you only been there for the required team practices? Why didn't you do bars at Nationals?”

Wilhelmina shrugged. She felt her personality shrinking inside her at this barrage of questions. She didn't want to let Camille in on her strategy. Camille had her own strategy and it was clearly working for her a second time around. Why couldn't she let Wilhelmina do her thing in peace?

Strategy and safety: they were what brought Wilhelmina to this place. Unknown. But uninjured.

Of course it would upset some people. Of course some of her competitors would think it unfair that they didn't know exactly who they were up against before this meet. Some of them might think this was dishonest, like Wilhelmina thought it was dishonest of Camille to suddenly adopt the vault, which had been her worst event four years ago. But Wilhelmina knew her plan was different. She wasn't being lazy. And she wasn't being dishonest with
herself
.

“What's it matter to you?” she hissed. “It's not like you're even doing the uneven bars.”