by Jane Lawes
They walked Emily, Adam and Luke home, then said goodbye. The ice on the roads had melted, Tara noticed. They could get to Silverdale now, no problem, but her training session had finished. She realized she hadn’t really thought about it all day – she’d been too busy enjoying herself. And she didn’t think that even gymnastics would have been as much fun.
Mum was feeling a bit better when they got home, and Anna sat on the sofa with her, telling tales on Dad and Tara. Tara could see that Mum was trying not to laugh.
“All ready for school next week?” Dad asked Tara, changing the subject. “New term, lots of new things to learn. I bet you can’t wait.”
Tara rolled her eyes at his joke, but she was kind of looking forward to a new term and a new start. It had been difficult to adjust to secondary school last term, but she hoped that things would be better this time and she’d find a way to cope with the work and gymnastics training, and spend more time with her best friends.
“Have you got any homework left to do?” Mum asked.
“A little bit,” Tara answered. “I’m going to do it now.”
Mum smiled. “Good. Come and show me if you need any help.”
“Thanks,” said Tara. She went upstairs and got out her maths book. Even though she’d been given the maths homework before Christmas, she still hadn’t done it. She’d meant to, right at the start of the holidays, but there always seemed to be something more fun to do and, anyway, she didn’t think the questions would take that long to do…
She sat at the little desk in her room, chewing the end of her pen, and wondering if she’d be able to get to Silverdale for the extra competition practice the next morning. She hoped the roads stayed clear overnight. Then she switched into school mode, opened her maths book, and tried to get on with it. The questions weren’t hard but they took longer than she’d thought, especially because she kept thinking about getting started on the new routine at the gym. She’d be performing it at the Nationals, a bigger competition than she’d ever dreamed of, so it was going to have to be really good.
Eventually she finished the maths questions, then she stood up and looked out of the window. Most of the snow had melted. Anna’s snowman was still there, but no new snow had fallen. Good, Tara thought. Now she just needed it to hold off tonight.
Chapter Three
The next day, Tara ran downstairs to look out of the front window as soon as she woke up. The roads were clear, and she was relieved. That morning was the first of the special training sessions for the Nationals and she just couldn’t miss it.
She nagged Dad so much about getting her to the gym on time that she ended up arriving at Silverdale really early. She’d never been the first one there before. Without all the noise of gymnasts working on the bars, trampolines and the tumbling track, and with no chatter in the changing rooms, it was like a different place.
Soon other gymnasts of all ages began to bustle through the doors, and it wasn’t long before Silverdale was as buzzing as ever. Most of the Sunday morning groups, taught by other coaches, did Artistic Gymnastics, working on the beam, bars, floor and vault, and Tara enjoyed catching glimpses of them while her Acro group worked on one of the floor areas. It felt good to be at Silverdale on a Sunday morning again.
Tara waited impatiently in the changing room for Lindsay to arrive, and started to worry that her road might still be too icy for her to come. If her partner didn’t get here, there wouldn’t be much point in an extra training session. After missing out on a whole two hours of gymnastics the day before, Tara was desperate to make the most of this morning. Just as she was beginning to give up hope, Lindsay rushed in.
“You made it!” cried Tara, her face lighting up.
“I wouldn’t miss this for anything,” replied Lindsay. “We’re training for a National competition, you know.”
Tara grinned. “Really? I’d almost forgotten.”
Lindsay smiled back, and tugged her T-shirt over her head. She had an emerald green and black leotard on underneath. The dark colours made her long blonde hair look even lighter.
Tara was wearing her Silverdale tracksuit top over her own leotard. She’d been given an official club tracksuit and leotard for the Regional competition. She’d only worn the leotard once so far, to compete at Regionals, but she wore the tracksuit to keep warm at the beginning of most training sessions. She loved the navy blue and white top, which said Silverdale Gymnastics Club on the back in white letters. She felt like a real gymnast whenever she wore it. Now she unzipped it, and shivered in the cold of the changing room. “Let’s go in and start warming up,” she suggested.
For once, all the gymnasts were glad of the ten laps round the floor that Clare made them run at the beginning of the session. It was the best way to get warm.
“Your leotard matches the weather,” Megan said to Tara, when they were sitting in the splits at the end of the warm-up.
“And the temperature in here,” joked Lindsay. Tara looked down at the leotard Mum and Dad had given her for Christmas. The body was ice blue and velvety, and it had long white sleeves made of a shiny material. Around the neck, shiny white shapes spiked down like icicles.
When they were fully warmed up, they got to work. Clare asked each pair to go through their routines from Regionals again. Tara wished they could just start learning all the new things for Nationals, but she gritted her teeth and got on with it. Everything in gymnastics took a lot of work and a lot of time.
“Your routines for the Nationals will follow the same basic choreography,” Clare explained, “but we’re going to use the next two and a half months to make them much better than they were at Regionals. Some of those extra points will come from the new balances and more difficult gymnastics skills I talked about on Friday. But a lot of them are going to come from practice, practice, practice!”
Eventually, Clare sent them off to a corner of the floor where they could work on balances by themselves, while she watched Megan and Sophie go through their Regionals routine again. When Tara and Lindsay had gone through all the balances they could do, they decided to work on backflips. Clare hadn’t put one in their routine yet, because Tara had only just managed them on her own.
“Do you think Clare will let us put backflips in our routine?” Tara asked Lindsay.
“I don’t know.” Lindsay frowned. “I wish she would, but you’ve only just learned how to do them. It might be a risk.”
“We’re not showing up at Nationals without a backflip in our routine,” Tara said determinedly. “Without it, we’ll never get near the medals!”
She glanced over at Jasmine and Sam, who were working hard on an amazing new balance. “I can’t wait until Clare gets us started on our new balances!” she said, grinning. But beneath her excitement, she couldn’t help wishing she’d started gymnastics when she was three or four, like Jasmine and Sam. They were competing in Level 4 at the Nationals, while Megan and Sophie were Level 3 gymnasts. Tara sometimes felt far behind them competing at Level 2. She’d learned such a lot since starting at Silverdale last summer, but it wasn’t enough. She was desperate to be able to do the things that Jasmine and Sam could do. Jasmine was tiny for a fourteen year old, and Sam, the oldest girl in their group, was really strong. That, and the fact that they’d both been doing Acro almost their whole lives, meant they were the stars of Clare’s group. Tara dreamed of catching up and one day being as brilliant as them.
That evening, Tara went over to Emily’s to watch a film. She sat on the sofa in between Emily and Kate, her two best friends in the world. Kate had forgotten to bring the DVD she’d been given for Christmas and which she’d promised they would watch, so they’d picked the first Harry Potter film instead. Tara felt like she really understood how Harry, Ron and Hermione felt, starting at a big, scary new school. Even though she’d got used to secondary school a bit, she still sometimes felt very small when
she was surrounded by all the older girls and boys. And, of course, everything was different to how life had been at junior school. Maybe not quite as different as school life was for the characters on the screen, but it was strange to have a different teacher for every lesson, and they were given so much more homework than they’d ever had in Year Six!
“I wish we could learn spells and magic for homework,” said Kate.
“School would be much more fun if we got to learn how to fly a broomstick,” agreed Emily.
“In my perfect school, every lesson would be gymnastics, and the only homework would be stretching and practising balances,” Tara said, smiling as she nibbled a Christmas biscuit. Emily’s parents ran a bakery, and they lived above it. One of the brilliant things about watching Sunday night films at Emily’s was that there were always a few leftover biscuits or cakes from the shop, especially at Christmas time. On the table in front of them was a plate full of gingerbread men and Christmas-tree cookies. Emily reached for a gingerbread man and bit one of its feet off.
“Oh, I don’t want to go back to school,” sighed Kate. “It’s so tiring and the holidays have been so much fun!”
“Me neither,” said Tara. “I hope we don’t get too much homework this term. I won’t have time for stupid maths and boring geography – I’ve got the Nationals coming up!” She noticed an anxious look on Emily’s face. “Don’t worry, Em,” she said. “There’s no way I’m letting gymnastics come between us again.”
“There’s no way we’ll let you,” said Kate, and Emily smiled.
There was a pause while they all watched an exciting part of the film. Then:
“The holidays were great, but it’ll be good to get back to normal,” admitted Tara.
“Back to gymnastics, you mean,” said Emily, with a grin.
Tara laughed and nodded. Her friends knew her so well.
Chapter Four
The three friends met at the school gate on Tuesday morning.
“Here we are again,” grumbled Kate. She yawned and pulled her coat tighter around her. “It was so hard to get up this morning!”
Groups of older girls and boys pushed past them, shouting and laughing. It is just like the beginning of the autumn term, Tara thought. She’d felt small and completely lost then, a new girl at a big, noisy school. Now that she and her friends were starting their second term here, she hoped that things might get a bit easier. It was sort of comforting to be going back to the same form room, where there’d be familiar faces all around her, and the same old maps and geography posters on the walls. She only wished that Kate and Emily would be there too; she still hated the fact that all three of them were in different forms.
They hurried off to registration, and then on to their first lessons. History first thing is a good start to the term, Tara thought. They were starting a new topic and Mr. Bruce, her teacher, always made everything interesting and fun. This term they were going to be learning about castles, and Tara hoped they’d get a good school trip out of it.
As usual, Mr. Bruce split the class up into groups. Tara’s group passed around the pictures of castles they’d been given and pointed at some of the features Mr. Bruce had talked about. But after a minute or two, everyone was chatting about the Christmas break. Tara hadn’t seen anyone in her history class during the holidays and it was fun hearing about all the things they’d got up to.
“We had a massive snowball fight on my road,” said Matt. “The kids from all the houses came out and we had two big teams – girls against boys.”
“Who won?” asked Tara.
“The girls, obviously,” said Natalie, who lived on Matt’s road.
“Only because there were way more of you!” cried Matt.
Tara and the others in the group laughed and someone else started a story about a New Year’s Eve party. Tara thought about the most exciting things she’d done in the holidays…but she didn’t think anyone would want to hear about learning to do a backflip.
At the end of the lesson, Mr. Bruce asked them to research one type of castle. Tara scribbled the instructions down in her homework diary. She didn’t mind doing that kind of homework; she thought it might be really interesting.
If only the homework had stopped there. Tara had science after history, which was nice because it meant she got to sit next to Emily, but which also meant another piece of homework. Then art was after break. Tara didn’t enjoy art. She wished she could draw like Emily, or come up with good ideas like Kate, but she could never make her paintbrush paint what she wanted it to, and things never turned out how she imagined they would. In junior school, art had been one of her favourite lessons, but now it was hard work. Their teacher seemed to think that the homework she gave them would be great fun, but Tara knew that researching the painter they’d be learning about was going to take ages.
After lunch, the three friends finally had a lesson all together: maths.
“I have so much homework already,” sighed Kate, leaning against the wall in the corridor, while they waited for the class before them to leave the maths room.
“Me too,” Emily and Tara said at the same time.
“And it’s only the first day back!” continued Kate.
“Let’s hope Mr. Spencer doesn’t give us another four pages of maths questions like he did for the holidays,” said Emily.
“That would be too mean!” said Kate, with a look of horror.
Tara laughed at Kate’s expression, but inside she was seriously worried. She already had so much to do that she couldn’t possibly do it all tonight. That meant she’d have to leave some until tomorrow, but she had gym after school on Wednesdays, so she wouldn’t be able to get anything done then. Her mind was spinning as she tried to work out when she was going to do everything.
She felt a prod in her back and realized that her class were going in. As she took her usual seat in the front row, Kate and Emily trudged past to their seats together at the back, and Tara thought, as she always did, that having to sit in alphabetical order was really unfair. She watched the rest of the class come in and settle down. Everyone seemed really tired. She hoped Mr. Spencer would take pity on them and make the lesson easy.
They escaped from maths with only a few questions for homework, and then it was just music left. Tara sank into her seat in the music room with relief. At least she knew there’d be no homework from this class. She looked at the things she’d already written in her homework diary and tried to work out what she might get asked to do tomorrow. She flicked the book shut and put it away. It would all get done somehow, she thought. She just wasn’t going to think about when.
Chapter Five
Tara tried to start on her homework as soon as she got home from school that evening, but even though it was only the first day back she was really tired after a full day of lessons. After dinner she did more homework, but she wasn’t anywhere near finished when her eyelids began to feel heavy, and she had to stop and go to bed before she’d got everything done.
It felt like the only time Tara wasn’t doing stuff for school was when she was at the gym. And, of course, evenings at the gym meant that no homework got done at all – by the time she’d got home and had dinner, she was so tired that all she could do was shower away the day’s hard work and crawl into bed.
On Wednesday and Friday, she and Lindsay worked on their old balances at Silverdale, making sure they were as perfect as they could be.
“I think it’s time for you two to start learning a new balance for your routine,” Clare finally said on Saturday morning. Tara was going to learn to do a straddle lever on Lindsay’s hands. Clare asked Jasmine and Sam to demonstrate how it worked and what it should look like, which was amazing! Tara watched Jasmine’s movements closely, hoping to pick up some tips to get it right. Then she and Lindsay tried it themselves.
Lindsay had to lie on her
back with her feet planted on the floor so that her knees pointed to the ceiling. She held her arms up to the ceiling, too, with her hands flat, palms facing upwards. Tara stood behind Lindsay’s head and pressed her own hands down onto Lindsay’s. Then she had to take her feet off the floor, one at a time, and stretch her legs out diagonally in front of her into a straddle lever position, as if she was sitting on the floor with her legs out to the sides, but actually balancing in the air on Lindsay’s hands. Tara knew that if they could do it, it would look brilliant. She understood what she had to do, and she could see it perfectly in her mind. The problem was, she couldn’t actually manage it. She couldn’t even hold herself off the floor long enough to straighten her legs, never mind hold a straddle lever for a whole four seconds. It was the beginning of January and the competition was in the middle of March. A million years wouldn’t be long enough to learn this balance, she thought – two and a half months definitely wasn’t enough time.
“Don’t worry,” said Clare, seeing the crushed look on Tara’s face. “You need to build up strength in your arms and legs. Then you’ll find it much easier.”
“How am I going to do that?” asked Tara.
“Wait here,” said Clare, with a mysterious smile.
Tara looked at Lindsay and shrugged.
“Try using this,” said their coach, returning with a piece of equipment Tara had seen Jasmine using sometimes. It was two wooden blocks, each about the size of an adult’s hand. Each block was stuck on the top of a long rectangular block. These were standing upright on a flat wooden board, and they were about as far apart as Lindsay’s hands would be when Tara balanced on them. The whole thing came up to above her knees.