She gives me the most tender smile, and I feel so touched that she sees me as a person who will have her back again. It’s heartbreaking to watch her reckon with the broken pieces of her relationship, but I’m proud that she trusts me to help her heal and move on. Before Nationals, I never would have guessed in a million years that Jasmine and I would be friends again—could be best friends again, the kind of presence in your life where it doesn’t matter if you cry in your sweatpants or your voice cracks when you reveal the gnarled insecurities and fears that keep you up at night, because that person loves you for you and loves you for good, forever. I didn’t think a friendship of that magnitude could abruptly drop dead and be revived nearly a decade later. But this time, I’m glad to be proven wrong.
• CHAPTER 25 •
A few days later, as I’m jamming my feet into sneakers and getting ready to head out of my apartment for practice, Jasmine sends me a text.
Another one, she writes, copying a link to a news story.
The text shows a preview of the NBC story, with the headline “A Seventh Gymnast Accuses Dr. Ron Kaminsky of Sexual Abuse” and a photo of Skylar Hayashi taken at a competition. I feel disgusted as I click on the story and wait for it to load. I don’t know much about Skylar other than that she’s one of Dimitri’s gymnasts, she only competes on vault, and as far as I’ve seen, she can stick perfect landings in her sleep.
I sink down on the couch to read more. NBC reports that Skylar came forward on Twitter early this morning, writing, “I have some difficult news to share. Like many of my fellow athletes, I survived sexual abuse by Dr. Ron Kaminsky. For those of you who may be suffering in silence, I encourage you to seek the help you deserve. #MeToo.” NBC notes that Skylar accused Kaminsky of abuse following similar allegations from Delia Cruz, Maggie Farber, Kiki McCloud, Emily Jenkins, Bridget Sweeney, and Liora Cohen, and that Kaminsky’s criminal trial is set for this winter. The American Gymnastics Federation, the sport’s governing body, issued a statement this morning in support of its gymnasts’ bravery, but that doesn’t feel like enough to me. They must have known what was going on. Didn’t they?
Reluctantly, I head outside and drive to Summit. I know Hallie is going to be shaken up today, and I wish I had a way to shield her from all of this pain. What Skylar and Hallie and all the other girls are doing is already painful enough. They’ve already sacrificed enough of their childhood, their freedom, their health, and their families’ peace of mind in order to be where they are. It’s unbelievably unfair that grown men, monsters, can step in and make everything even worse.
When I spot Hallie glumly sprawled across a crash mat, I don’t have to ask if she’s seen the news. I can tell.
“Skylar,” she says heavily. “You saw?”
“I did,” I say.
“Out of everyone, I didn’t think it would be Skylar,” she says, shaking her head. “I mean, out of all of us, she’s, like, the normal one.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Hallie sighs. “She has school friends. She has a boyfriend. She’s really pretty and goes to Aruba with her family every winter, and she went to a Post Malone concert last month.”
“This can happen to anyone,” I say gently.
“Yeah, but you’d just think… ugh, god…” Hallie says, trailing off. “You’d hope that not everybody’s life would be ruined, you know?”
I nod, because what else is there to say?
Ryan approaches us gingerly, squatting down so he’s on Hallie’s eye level. He glances at me and gives a nervous half smile as a greeting.
“Hi. How are you doing?” he asks Hallie.
She shrugs at him and looks at me. “Bummed, I guess.”
“Because of Skylar’s news?” he asks.
She nods. “Yeah.”
“I don’t want to push you too hard today,” he says. “I’m sorry you’re having a tough morning.”
I’m surprised by how gentle he is with her. Trials are six weeks away—there isn’t time to take it easy, especially not when Hallie’s less of a shoo-in for the Olympic team than we all had hoped.
“Thanks,” she says. “I mean, I’m okay. It’s just… unfair.”
“It is. It really is,” he says. “Is there anything I can do to make things easier for you right now?”
She gives him a skeptical look.
“I’m here if you want to chat,” he says warmly, sounding like a coach and a protective big brother all rolled into one. “Or if you want to smash things, I can bring in my old printer and a hammer. Or we can skip practice today and pick up tomorrow.”
She laughs. “No, I’ll be good. I appreciate all that, really, but no smashing necessary.”
“Okay. Just let me know,” he says.
“Will do.”
He starts to rise, but appears to think better of it. “If it’s any comfort, I have a tiny piece of news that might cheer you up,” he says.
“Trials are canceled, and I can go straight to the Olympics?” Hallie guesses.
I think I know where Ryan is going with this, and I don’t like it.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I mutter.
“Well, I’ve been talking with Dimitri, and he seems really excited about training you for 2024, if you still want that,” he says, offering a small smile.
There’s no way Dimitri would have ever used the word “excited.” Ryan’s exaggerating.
Hallie beams. “Well, that’s nice!”
“Just passing along a compliment,” Ryan says.
“I mean, I guess a lot depends on what happens this summer, but… without making promises, I think I do still want to keep 2024 open as an option.”
“Cool,” Ryan says, high-fiving her.
“Dimitri’s intense, isn’t he?” Hallie says, turning to me. “I mean, he’s the best, but he’s intense. Right, Avery?”
“Yeah, he’s intense,” I say darkly.
“Avery,” Ryan says quietly, as if he’s warning me.
He shoots me a meaningful glare, and I hesitate.
“I’m sure whatever happens, you’ll be amazing,” I tell her diplomatically.
It’s the truth. Not the whole truth, but there’s only so much I can say without crossing an inappropriate professional line.
She squeals and drums her hands against the mat. “Eep, thanks.”
Ryan smirks. “Glad I could cheer you up. Let’s get to work.”
• CHAPTER 26 •
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jasmine got her shit together to leave Dimitri pretty quickly. Within two weeks of her telling me she wanted to divorce him, she had already contacted a good divorce lawyer, funneled away enough money into a separate bank account in order to put down a deposit and the first month of rent on an apartment in Cambridge, and officially broke the news to Dimitri. She told me she was going to do it on a Friday night; I spent all evening holding my breath, waiting for the frantic phone call that she needed help. I stayed in and watched a movie on Netflix with my phone resting in my hand, just in case. But the call never came—just a text at nearly midnight, asking me to come by the next morning to help her pack up her things. I was relieved.
So, on Saturday morning, for the final time, I drive to see Jasmine at her house. It’s a gorgeous seventy-five degrees outside, but I get a chill waiting on the front step for her to open the door. It’s hard to imagine that after nearly a lifetime with Dimitri, she’ll be leaving him behind for good. She opens the door in white jeans and a pink tank top and throws her arms around me into a hug.
“Thank you for coming!” she says.
She seems relieved to see me, which is, I guess, better than the alternative—miserable.
“I’m happy to,” I say. “Is Dimitri home?”
She wrinkles her nose. “No. He was at least nice enough to leave me alone while I packed today.”
“So, then, last night went okay?” I ask.
She heaves a sigh and starts to trudge up the stairs to her bedroom. “Yes
and no. At first, he was furious. He screamed at me. He wanted to know if I was cheating, and he accused me of sabotaging Tokyo by throwing this distraction his way at a ‘crucial time,’ ” she says, rolling her eyes and making air quotes with her fingers. “He was mad at me, but ultimately, he didn’t argue with me. I mean, he can’t pretend like our marriage is happy. I think we’d both be happier with a divorce.”
“Wow.”
It’s a tiny, meager thing to say, but words just aren’t forming for me. I can’t imagine standing up to Dimitri like that. I’m impressed by her bravery.
We enter her bedroom, and I try not to think about the would-be baby’s room down the hall. The crisp white bed is covered with folded piles of clothes, and there’s a stack of cardboard boxes piled in one corner of the room. On the nightstand, there’s a roll of packing tape and a black Sharpie alongside Jasmine’s engagement ring and wedding ring, and a silver photo frame turned facedown.
“He told me that he would ruin me, that I’d never work in the sport again, that I was an ‘ungrateful bitch’ who was giving up the best life with the ‘greatest man’ I’d ever know,” she recalls, spitting out each brutal word. “But, I mean, fine. Nothing worse than anything he’s said before. And, most important, he let me go.”
“He let you go,” I repeat dumbly, trying to absorb how casually Jasmine tosses off his cruel remarks.
I remember how horrible he was to us years ago, but it’s different to hear of him hurling insults like that at his wife. It’s depressing.
“He said he was angry with me, but he wouldn’t stop me,” she says. “His exact words, I think, were that I’m now ‘an adult woman who can make her own choices.’ ”
“As if you weren’t when you got married,” I say, filling in the implication.
“Barely,” she admits. “I was twenty-one. I had been on a few dates with guys my own age, but he was the first person I dated. He was the only man I’d ever really known.”
Someday, when a little more time has passed, Jasmine will eventually dip one toe in the dating pool, and she’s going to discover an entire world out there: electrifying first dates; butterfly-inducing texts; real, equal love. Maybe heartbreak, too. But at least this time around, she’ll be standing on her own two feet, away from Dimitri’s shadow.
“So. Help me put everything into boxes?” she asks.
“Of course.”
We work side by side, stacking her jewel-toned shift dresses, workout clothes, and thick winter sweaters into cardboard boxes, securing them shut with strips of tape, and labeling each box with thick, definitive black lines of Sharpie. I don’t want to dwell on the reason she’s moving out, but there’s still so much I’m dying to understand. Once she leaves here, that will all be in her past—today feels like the last chance I have.
“Do you ever think you would’ve had a real relationship with Dimitri if he weren’t our coach first?” I ask.
She looks up from the box she’s taping shut with a sour, stunned expression. “No. We wouldn’t have known each other.”
“How did it happen? We weren’t really… talking then,” I say awkwardly.
Even after all these years, I still can’t picture it.
She returns to taping the box, maybe so she doesn’t have to look at me as she explains this part.
“I did a TV segment at a news station in Boston after the Olympics,” she recalls. “He came with me—he was on-air, too. Instead of driving me straight back home afterward, he said he was in the mood for a drink, and so we went out to this Irish pub.”
He probably didn’t invite her out; he probably just told her they were going, and that was that.
“He ordered beer after beer after beer,” she says. “I didn’t order anything; I was just twenty, not old enough to drink legally yet, and I was too afraid of being recognized to even try. He gave me sips of his beer when he thought the bartender wouldn’t notice. And then, right there at the bar, he kissed me. I didn’t know what to do—it’s not like I was going to say no to him.”
“Were you okay with that?” I ask.
“Not at first! I was terrified,” she says.
“But as time went on, it wasn’t so bad?” I ask.
“You have to remember, Avery, I didn’t have anything to compare it to,” she says sadly. “No other boyfriends. My mom had been single practically my entire life. It’s not like I had other friends my age with regular relationships, either. So… in time, it felt normal. That’s all I knew. Plus, he was established, respected, he had money… When he wanted to get married, it didn’t even cross my mind to say no. I thought this is just what people did.”
She pushes the box to the side and starts on another one.
“We were so sheltered,” I say.
“Mm-hmm,” Jasmine agrees. “It’s nice that Hallie has you, someone she can talk to, someone she can trust. We didn’t have anyone like that at the gym growing up.”
She absentmindedly fidgets with her necklace, surveying the spread of clothes still laid out on the bed.
“I guess,” I say. I still find it hard to take a compliment.
An idea comes to me, half-formed and fuzzy.
“We could do something,” I say, trying to pin down the exact thought. “I mean, we could help these girls. We’ve been through enough to know what they need.”
“You mean like a support group?” Jasmine asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, gymnasts know to take care of their bodies… but I don’t know if most of them take care of their minds, too. I didn’t. What if we help connect girls to mental health resources? That way, they can get the support they need, no matter what they’re dealing with.”
“That would be so cool!” Jasmine says.
“If anyone could do it, it would be us,” I point out. “I mean, mostly you—you still have a real name in gymnastics. You could get people to care.”
Jasmine leans onto the bed, too, and tilts her head.
“We could do that, couldn’t we?” she says, awestruck. “We could really help.”
“This could change girls’ lives,” I say.
Jasmine gives me a knowing look. I don’t have to spell it out for her. The fact is if you train and compete as an elite gymnast, you get hit one way or another, if not multiple ways: maybe you get molested by a doctor or maybe you fail out of college because you’re too depressed and disoriented to give a shit anymore. Your body breaks down: your spine aches if you stand for too long, or your ankle is held together with metal screws, or you never fully shake off the habits you picked up to starve yourself.
“I like this a lot. And god only knows I’ll need something to keep my mind off…” She waves her hand vaguely around the bedroom. “All of this.”
We finish packing up Jasmine’s bedroom and bathroom quickly. The entire time, we work through ideas: what the group needs to do, how to make it happen, and even a name. We settle on the Elite Gymnastics Foundation, which would provide mental health services and support to top gymnasts.
I feel the same flood of adrenaline and desperate sense of longing I felt when I first fought for the coaching job at Summit. It’s not a new feeling, either; I remember the tangled rush of emotions from my own gymnastics career. Wanting things—wanting things so badly, my heart races and the hair on my arms stands on end—makes me feel alive and full of energy. Right now, I feel like I could stick a double-twisting layout flyaway off the high bar.
I’m not naïve—I don’t expect two former athletes to change the sport overnight. But if gymnastics taught me anything, it’s that if you work long and hard at something, astronomical, unfathomable success can be yours.
When Jasmine tapes up the final box, we carry everything downstairs to the foyer so the movers can pick them up later this afternoon. (All those years of conditioning really did come in handy.) We sit on the cool tile floor in the front hallway, leaning against the cardboard boxes with our feet splayed out in front of us.
“Girl, thank you,”
Jasmine says, exhausted.
“This? This was nothing,” I say truthfully.
I’m happy to help her with whatever she needs. She should know that by now.
“I don’t mean just the boxes,” she says. “That was clutch, but I mean everything—the boxes, your friendship, this idea. It’s a big idea.”
“It is,” I admit. “And there’s nobody better in the world to do it with. It has to be you and me.”
Suddenly, her eyes sparkle, and she bolts upright.
“Huddle up?” she asks mischievously.
The old memories of our competition ritual, our good-luck charm, come flooding back.
“Let’s huddle up,” I say, beaming.
We loop our arms around each other’s shoulders. I’m not sure what to say.
“We can do this,” she declares.
I squeeze her tighter and join in.
“We can do this, we can do this, we can do this,” we chant.
It feels like coming home.
• CHAPTER 27 •
It’s tough to focus at practice on Monday. When I’m working one-on-one with Hallie—warming up, drilling tumbling, fine-tuning her techniques on floor—I feel present. But otherwise, my head is adrift. I clean crash mats and wonder about Jasmine’s move out of Dimitri’s house; I organize the supply closet and daydream about the Elite Gymnastics Foundation. The idea felt fresh and exciting when I first came up with it, but here, at Summit, it feels even crisper. I watch Hallie sprint down the vault runway and catapult herself through the air, and my heart surges with the desire to protect her. Brainstorming with Jasmine felt more abstract, but here, it’s impossible to ignore the very real person at risk right in front of me.
That’s why I have to talk to Ryan. I can’t sit by and watch as he takes Hallie into a dangerous situation. Arguing with him didn’t work the first time, but maybe then, I didn’t give it all the effort I had—maybe I held back out of fear of damaging our relationship. That’s not a concern I have anymore, obviously. If he ignores one last-ditch effort to deter him from joining Dimitri, then at least I can say I’ve truly tried my best. But I have to try now, before it’s too late.
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