Letters to Nowhere

by Julie Cross

  The pick returned to his fingers and his mouth turned up into a charming half smile before he started playing something much faster than the two previous songs. The opening line was, “Mama Pajama rolled out of bed and she ran to the police station . . .”

  It was about someone named Julio and a schoolyard, and sticking someone in the house of detention.

  He got nearly to the end and I was laughing really hard and Jordan had a big smile on his face when Bentley suddenly appeared shirtless in the doorway, rubbing his eyes.

  Jordan slapped a hand to the front of his guitar, cutting off all the sound. His eyes were wide and he looked ready for an argument.

  “It’s late, Jordy,” Bentley said. “Karen’s got practice and you’ve got school in the morning. Let’s get to bed, all right?”

  There was no trace of anger or frustration in his voice, but Jordan leapt to his feet anyway, stuffing the instrument back in the closet. “Sorry, Dad.”

  Then I saw Bentley, so very briefly, like it almost didn’t happen, step inside the room and pat Jordan on the head before leaving. I followed after him, shutting the door behind me. “He’s really good,” I said, deciding to break the icy silence.

  “His mother was very musical.” Bentley already had one foot on the steps, ending this discussion.

  His mom. That’s where he got it from.

  I went into my room and shut the door before pulling out my phone to do what Jordan and I had been doing for the past few nights. Texting.

  ME: So…your mom…?

  JORDAN: She played cello in the London Symphony Orchestra

  ME: Wow

  JORDAN: I thought I mentioned that before? Guess not. But I know what you’re thinking…talented parents. Slacker kid…lol

  ME: I wasn’t thinking that. Your dad doesn’t like you to play?

  JORDAN: I don’t know. Guess I’ve just been afraid to. Maybe he doesn’t even care. Not sure

  ME: He didn’t look angry. And I liked your arrogance better than your self–deprecation

  JORDAN: Haha…okay. I’m awesome and sexy. How’s that?

  ME: 7.2

  JORDAN: I think we should go on a real date

  ME: Are you asking? I couldn’t tell

  JORDAN: KAREN, WANT TO GO ON A DATE WITH ME? Better?

  ME: Much. What about Coach Bentley?

  JORDAN: I’ll take care of my dad. Don’t worry

  ME: Ok. Then yes

  JORDAN: Friday after practice?

  ME: Ok

  Dear Mom,

  I’m going on a date with a boy…a really cute older boy (Well, a few months older). Please don’t tell Dad.

  Love, Karen

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When Jordan walked into the kitchen for breakfast, Coach Bentley was leaning against the counter reading the paper and drinking coffee, like every morning. Jordan grabbed a bowl and a box of cereal and sat down across from me. I knew he had said he’d take care of Bentley and the date issue, but I had no idea it would be right away and that it would be so easy.

  “Hey, Dad? The new Batman movie comes out Friday…”

  Bentley looked up from the paper. “I’m filling in for Patrick Friday evening. Sorry, bud.”

  Jordan faked disappointment and shoveled a bite of cereal into his mouth before speaking again. “Karen? What about you?”

  I looked up at him, my eyes wide, then stared down at my bowl, trying to shrug like it wasn’t a big plan he’d come up with without notifying me. “I guess…if I’m not too tired after practice.”

  Jordan shrugged, too, and picked at his fingernail. “Cool.”

  “Not too late, though,” Bentley said to me. “You’ve got practice Saturday. You and Blair were a little sluggish last week after that sleepover.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I couldn’t look at either of them, so I don’t know if Jordan reacted to that at all. Jordan finished his cereal without another word, and that was that. We officially had a date.

  March 4

  Coach Bentley,

  Are you really this good at turning off the practice drama at home? Or is this only going to last for a little while and eventually we’ll start talking shop twenty–four–seven? I’m still DYING to know what the hell is going through your head most of the time! How did Jordan survive seventeen and a half years of this unnatural calm? How have I survived eight or so months of it?

  —Karen

  P.S. I’m going on a date with your son and I’ll probably kiss him again and might even use my tongue. Would that get you a little riled up?

  ***

  Before I started my tucked fulls for conditioning (the skill Bentley had made me do at least a hundred of last night), I made sure he was watching. I wasn’t going to have eighty failed attempts today.

  Bentley was helping Stevie through her press handstands, but I caught his eye after making sure Blair held the foam tube at exactly the right height. My lower abs screamed at me from last night’s overuse as I launched myself into the first flip. My chest came up a little short.

  “Tuck your hips under, Karen!” Stacey shouted from across the gym.

  “It was really close,” Blair said. She was being unusually sweet. I think me getting kicked out last night created this walking–on–eggshells atmosphere for everyone except my coaches.

  I drew in a deep breath, channeling my frustration from last night into my next attempt, which I nailed, finishing with my chest higher than the foam. After five more attempts (three good, two bad) I was starting to get the feel of timing the flip and twist just right to be able to open up sooner and land with my chest upright like Bentley wanted, all while still keeping it in the back of my head that I’d be doing this on a balance beam only four inches wide and four feet above the ground.

  It took forty tries to make twenty good back fulls and I was the last one to move on to the rest of my conditioning. Of course, Blair hadn’t had to do any flips, and Stevie and Ellen were only doing regular standing back tucks—no full twists.

  After beam and bars, Bentley left us with my old level 99 coach, Patrick. The one I’d had a major crush on five years ago. Patrick was coaching us on vault today while Bentley had a conference call in his office with Nina Jones, the God of gymnastics.

  It was a well–known fact among us elite girls that whenever one of the other coaches filled in for Bentley, we could usually get away with things we couldn’t with him around. Something about them being excited to work with us and us being some of the top gymnasts in the country gave me and my teammates a tiny power trip.

  A power trip I decided to take advantage of today.

  I walked over to the vault runway that landed into the loose foam pit, rather than the competition landing mats, and shouted to Patrick, “I’m going to add the extra half twist this time!”

  Even from the distance of over eighty feet, I could see his eyebrows push together like he was thinking hard. “I didn’t know you were working on Amanars.”

  Okay, so truthfully, I hadn’t worked on Amanars before. It was the most difficult vault that female gymnasts were doing today, so difficult that when Romanian gymnast Simona Amanar had performed the Yurchenko with two and a half twists at the 2000 Olympics, the International Gymnastics Federation had named it after her. So yeah, it was hard. But Bentley had said several times in the past few weeks that if I kept nailing my Yurchenko double full, I could add another half twist. I’d seen Stevie train for this vault years ago and compete it, though she hadn’t yet progressed to doing them again since her comeback and was lucky to squeak around a double on a good day.

  A thin mat sat on top of the loose foam blocks at the end of the vault table. That meant my landing would be easy; even if I didn’t make the two and a half twist all the way around, it wasn’t going to hurt or anything. Plus, the foam pit vault was lower than the regular landing mat vault and it gave me more time to finish the twist.

  I took off running before Patrick had a chance to think about it too hard or ask Bentley if it
was okay. The Yurchenko vault is tricky even without any twist because you basically cartwheel onto the spring board and then do a backward dive onto the vault table. If you don’t hit the board just right, it can screw everything up. Or if you don’t get a big push off the table with your hands, you might not make the flip all the way around, let alone two and a half twists. But I’ve been doing a Yurchenko since level 8, when I was only eight years old. The beginning of the vault hasn’t changed at all for me in nine years, only the part after I push off the table.

  I got a huge push off the table and easily added the extra half twist, but landing in the pit with only one mat always caused me to over–rotate and I had to jump into a forward roll after my feet hit the mat.

  “Wow!” Patrick said from beside the other vault Stevie and Ellen were using. Blair was over on bars doing more leg–free work with Stacey. “The block you’re getting is just incredible, Karen. You’re at least a foot or two higher than the last time I watched you. Your run is much more efficient, too. Have you been doing drills?”

  I suppressed a groan, thinking about the monotony of drills I’d done recently. Last August, Bentley had—in his quiet manner—simply told me that I needed to remeasure my steps, and that led to me to starting ten feet farther back, and that led to dozens of drills with an orange band around my arms to keep them as tight to the sides of my head as possible while diving back onto the table. That was supposed to give a better push and obviously a higher vault. I think the reason the change had frustrated me was that Coach Cordes had never told me my run was wrong or anything, and when I asked Bentley about it, he said I’d probably grown taller and Cordes didn’t want to make changes during meet season.

  “Thanks, it felt pretty good,” I said to Patrick before queuing up the video replay system we had rigged at every event in the gym. I didn’t use it too often, but with Bentley not here to correct me, I decided to see the first attempt at the Amanar before making a second try.

  “I’m gonna do a two and half also!” Stevie shouted from the end of the runway.

  I hit pause on the video using the remote and watched, holding my breath as Stevie charged down the runway, her dark, muscular legs flexing in response. Stevie hadn’t even attempted this vault in the pit yet since returning from retirement.

  She made the two and a half twists just fine, which was a surprise considering her struggle with doubles, but she had to take a couple big steps sideways to control the landing. She headed right over to the TV and gently plucked the remote from my hands, fast–forwarding to watch her vault. I stood there beside her as she looked it over, then she flipped back and watched my vault.

  “Yours is higher,” she said, setting the remote down without looking at me.

  Shock at her blunt statement rendered me temporarily silent. “Well…I was landing in the pit. There’s only one mat in there right now.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Karen.”

  My hand froze on the remote. “I’m sorry—”

  “And don’t apologize!” she snapped, spinning to face me. “I’m so tired of everyone treating me like I’m a diseased person and no one has the heart to tell me I’m dying! I said your vault was higher, but I meant to say, it’s higher for now.”

  This scary and exhilarating tension built between us as we stared at each other. My fingers were tingling, ready to attack something. I tore my eyes from Stevie and glanced at Patrick. “I’m putting another mat into the pit.”

  Hopefully that would get me closer to doing the Amanar on the real vault landing mats.

  Stevie looked over her shoulder at Patrick, too. “I’m adding a mat here, too. A four–inch.”

  I knew what she was doing. It was a technique Nina Jones loved to push on us at training camps—tumbling up—landing higher than you needed to in competition to add amplitude. And something about looking down at the vault from the other end of the runway and seeing the landing surface raised, mentally tricked you into getting more height. It was like if someone swapped your hurdle on a track for one two feet higher, you’re automatically going to jump harder when you try to clear it.

  After dragging another eight–inch mat into the pit, I attempted the new vault again and landed with only a small hop.

  So did Stevie.

  Ellen could sense the tension and didn’t say anything to either of us, just whistled under her breath a couple times and kept her eyes away from mine while continuing to do her Yurchenko doubles with no problem.

  I wasn’t sure how close I actually was to doing this vault, but I figured it didn’t hurt to be going head–to–head with the vault world champion from two years ago. Unfortunately, my duel with Stevie didn’t allow me to notice Bentley exiting his office and reentering the gym. He waited until I returned to the end of the vault runway, joining me there before asking, “Did you do your doubles on the regular vault already?”

  I felt my heart pounding, knowing I’d screwed up big–time. Again. “No, I—”

  He turned his back to me and said, very low, “You owe me ten extra competition vaults tonight before doing any more of the new vaults into the pit.”

  “Okay,” I said, barely above a whisper.

  “Your run looks fantastic,” he added, then clapped his hands together and raised his voice so all four of us could hear. We were usually the only ones in the gym in the morning besides some preschool classes, and they had their own area. “Take a five–minute break, and then I need you in my office for a Skype with Nina Jones.”

  We all looked at each other and Bentley just shrugged. “You’ll find out in five minutes, all right?”

  Ellen bounded over to her mother in the viewing area. Ellen’s mom was meticulous about watching nearly every practice. It would have driven me nuts if my mom did that; now I couldn’t help the wistful feeling I had whenever I saw them together.

  Stevie and Blair came up on either side of me as we walked to get drinks and snacks from our gym bags.

  “How’s Jaren doing?” Stevie asked, lowering her voice, eyes dancing with amusement, like we hadn’t just been enemy competitors a few minutes ago.

  “Jaren?” I asked.

  “You know, Jordan and Karen,” Blair whispered.

  “It’s our code name,” Stevie added. “For your relationship. Don’t want E or Bentley to hear us.”

  I could feel my cheeks heat up and I dropped my eyes to the floor. “It’s not exactly a relationship. I mean, not yet. We text from our bedrooms. That’s pretty much it.”

  Blair nudged her shoulder into mine. “Like sexting?”

  “No!” I said even though I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what actually defined sexting. Maybe that was something I could ask Jackie?

  “Come on,” Blair pleaded. “We need more details. He was totally watching you last night during practice. I caught him looking our way several times when he was supposed to be teaching his classes.”

  “Yeah,” I grumbled. “Probably trying to figure out why his dad decided to torment me.”

  “Totally,” Blair agreed. “Bentley is so sneaky with the hard–ass coach stuff. He’s gradually hitting us with new corrections and then he has this way of making it sound like this was the plan all along and we just forgot.”

  “Maybe it was the plan all along,” Stevie said, pulling a Kashi bar from her bag.

  I sat on the floor and started peeling my banana. “I think he’s too nice to tell me I’m not good enough to add these new skills and he thinks I should figure it out on my own, and honestly, I wish he’d just tell me. Coach Cordes would have told me.”

  Stevie’s eyebrows shot up and she opened her mouth to say something, but Bentley stuck his head out of his office and yelled for us to come in. My stomach tumbled with nerves and I dumped half my banana into the garbage can before springing to my feet.

  “Sorry, just the girls,” Bentley said to Ellen’s mom, who had appeared behind Ellen at his office door.

  Blair and I stifled giggles and dragged Ellen inside before h
er mom could fuss over her hair or tell her how to sit on the couch properly during a Skype with Nina Jones.

  The office door was shut, leaving Ellen’s mom outside. The four of us squeezed onto the brown leather sofa behind the desk and watched Nina and her clipboard appear on Bentley’s monitor. He slid his desk chair to the side so we could see and he leaned back as if he wasn’t at all worried about this virtual meeting.

  “Girls,” Nina said, getting right to the point. She doesn’t do hello. “First off, the March training camp is canceled.”

  None of us said a word or made any kind of face, but I knew we were all cheering silently. I so wasn’t in the mood for Houston next weekend.

  “We’ve decided to take two gymnasts to Australia for a junior competition at the end of the month,” Nina said.

  Stevie and I both relaxed back into the couch. We wouldn’t have to face rejection today. Neither of us were juniors, thus not eligible for this competition.

  “The committee and I have chosen Ellen and Kayla Dallas to represent the US.”

  Ellen squealed beside me and I tossed an arm around her, giving her a little squeeze. Blair was on the far end of the couch, but from the corner of my eye, I could see her biting her nails, staying silent but hurt, I was sure. It might have been because of her leg, or it might have been because she wasn’t good enough in their eyes. I wasn’t sure which Blair preferred to be the truth, but I was betting on it being the injury.

  “Congratulations, Ellen,” Nina said. “On to my next topic. Since nearly all the girls have decided to compete in Chicago the weekend before the American Cup, the National Committee and I have decided to hold the April training camp in Chicago at the competition arena. We’ll be doing a three–day verification meet, and from that we’ve decided to choose the six–member junior and senior teams for the Pan American Games in Rio this May.”