by Megan Abbott
6 a.m. workout before school. Stretch, run for 15 min. Half-hour of conditioning, 25 min stretching or ballet, then squat jumps and pull-ups, then start with beam. I had trouble with my front pike half, but the rest went ok. Coach says I am achieving. He pumped his fist at me three times.
Reading it, standing the whole time, leaning against the window for light, Katie was struck by how different it was from her own private ramblings at fourteen, all boys and song lyrics and fake IDs and where to hide the purloined pint of Jack Daniel’s for Friday night.
But then, closing the diary, her eye caught a photo pasted inside the back cover.
A snapshot taken in that very room, her bedspread visible. The boomerang of Devon’s mutilated right foot, close up.
Under the light, her desk lamp, it looked like it was glowing.
It was horrifying, and beautiful.
Why was it the picture felt more intimate, far more intimate, than a secret disappointment, a boy-crush confession?
And why did looking at it feel even more like a violation?
Beneath it, Devon had written:
I had the dream again last night. The one where I look down and my right foot is ten times its size with skin like scales. So I take a knife from the kitchen drawer, the one Mom has to use with both hands, and I chop it off. The blood is like a fountain.
But Dad sees me and runs up the basement stairs. He ties his belt around my ankle and pulls it tight. The buckle is shining.
You need this, he says, grabbing my foot, twisting and molding it like art-class clay. It’s your superpower.
And I know he’s right.
What is this? Katie thought, covering her mouth. It was like turning over a heavy rock and finding something alive there, wriggling. Prying something open and pulling at its hot wires.
That can’t be Devon, she thought.
Who was this girl?
Katie put the diary back into its tight wedge and vowed never to look at it again.
“Mom,” Devon said that night, calling out as Katie walked past her doorway, “were you in here?”
“What? No. Just cleaning. Why?”
“Nothing. I just thought maybe you were.”
Katie didn’t want Devon to see her face. She was worried her face would reveal something.
All she could think of was the photo, and Devon’s dream. The strangeness of the foot, the belt. But dreams were that way, weren’t they? And they were private, maybe Devon’s only private things.
Never again, she told herself. I won’t be that mom. She needs someplace to be herself. To be messy and sad and human. Real.
To be whatever she was becoming.
II
Necessity is what you do in life when there is only one path, choice, or desire.
—Nadia Comaneci, Letters to a Young Gymnast
Chapter Four
Eighteen Months Later
“Today, some of the most anticipated moments will be when Devon Knox takes the floor,” the play-by-play announcer said, voice hushed as if this were the Olympics. “Just shy of sixteen, Devon has proven the most formidable talent in the region who has not yet gone Elite. That may all change in six weeks, when she’ll take her chances at the Senior Elite Qualifiers.”
High in the stands, Katie and Eric watched. The purr-purr of Devon’s feet during her floor routine, the zinging violin strokes of “Assassin’s Tango” skittering through the air—she was excelling.
Katie had seen the routine a hundred times or more, but it looked different today. She couldn’t say why.
“She’s more confident,” Eric said, as if reading her mind. “That’s what it is.”
Katie wasn’t sure, but her daughter’s body—slithering on the mat, then rising—seemed alive in ways she had never seen before, her scarlet leotard like a flame, leaping and flickering and flaring hot.
“Now at the vault,” the announcer said, punctuating with dramatic pauses, “Miss…Devon…Knox.”
Grabbing for each other’s hands, Katie and Eric watched Devon wait patiently for her cue.
Standing at the foot of the runway, the massive Flip into Spring Invitational banner behind her, all the playfulness of her floor routine gone, Devon wore the face of a stone Artemis.
It was remarkable, when Katie thought about it. How her daughter, so strong already, her body an air-to-air missile, had metamorphosed into this force. Shoulders now like a ship mast, rope-knot biceps, legs corded, arms sinewed, a straight, hard line from trunk to neck, her hipless torso resting on thighs like oak beams. Sometimes Katie couldn’t believe it was the same girl.
“She’s up,” Eric said, pointing to the judges.
“Stick it this time, Knox!” someone called out behind them, and Eric’s head swiveled around, red charging up his face.
Katie pressed her hand on his arm until he turned back to the floor.
A moment later, she snuck a glance behind her, but instead of the heckler, her eyes snagged on Ryan Beck, his delicate face in repose. Like a sculpture, Handsome Youth.
“Here she goes,” Eric said, face still flushed. “Here goes Devon.”
On the floor, Devon bounded down the runway, her knees churning like pistons, face impenetrable.
Leaping from the springboard, legs tight together, toes like arrows, she flew. Front handspring, double tuck, twist.
And landing, a hard slap on the mat. Because of course Devon stuck it, her legs like steel pikes, her arms flung elegantly above her head, wrists bent, a ballerina pose.
“Stellar performance,” the play-by-play man intoned, “which definitely bodes well for Miss Knox at qualifiers six weeks from today.”
And after, walking off the mat, she waved up at the crowd, at Katie and Eric.
Puffs appeared, like magician’s smoke, fairy dust. The chalk that never left her hands.
“You nailed it, champ,” Eric said as they walked through the parking lot, Devon moving slowly, punch-drunk. “When I saw that Yurchenko, my heart almost stopped.”
“I got it. I finally got it,” Devon said. Then she looked up at him with an expression Katie had never seen, almost obscene in its pleasure. “That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”
It almost made Katie blush, and Eric dropped his keys, flinching at the sound.
The triumph was short-lived. When they returned home, all the things postponed until after the meet—laundry, groceries, printer out of toner, wrapping paper for Lacey Weaver’s birthday present, rock salt for Drew’s fourth-grade science project—toppled back into their laps.
The evening blurred by and before Katie knew it, she was crawling into bed.
But a few hours later, a distant car radio, a radiator rattle, something, woke her at two a.m., bringing with it that unexpected, that tantalizing thing: rousing to Eric’s hands on her, one in her hair. The surprising way he came at her, like the world might break to pieces if he didn’t have her. Her face pressing into the pillow. The way he shivered against her after, clutched at her before sliding away. The other side of the bed seemed so far. She loved him so much.
The next day, back at the gym for a four-hour Sunday practice. But no one could find Coach T. And nothing began without the Mighty T.
Katie could not remember ever walking into the gym and not immediately seeing his retired colonel’s brush cut, the expanse of his pink neck, the swath of his red polo shirt stretched across his former footballer’s body, the lumbering gait of a longshoreman. And not hearing his bark: “Dev-on! Ice Eyes, girl. Come on!”
Except today there was no Teddy.
Six weeks before qualifiers and he wasn’t there.
Nor was Hailey, whose honeycomb locks, long past her shoulders, could always be seen, even from high in the stands.
It shouldn’t have felt significant, Teddy’s absence, but it did. Not just to Katie but to the whole buzzing parent brigade.
“Where is he?” Gwen said, her phone, as ever, in her hand, like a weapon, a discus she might hurl.
> “I don’t get it,” Molly Chu said. “I don’t understand.”
The girls, in their scarlet leotards, dotted the floor, the older ones doing split stretches, handstands, but the youngest ones ambled anxiously, hopping on their tiny red feet.
Finally, the skills coaches began leading drills, but the feeling was haphazard without the organizing thunder of Coach T.’s voice, the polestar, the heart.
“You listen to Amelise, Lacey Weaver,” came the familiar, flinty shout of Gwen Weaver, who was calling to her daughter even as she ascended the stands. “You are wasting everyone’s time.”
From the beam, Amelise’s grip on Lacey’s tined legs, Lacey nodded, hair as white-blond as a Hitler Youth’s.
Hands still cupped around her mouth, Gwen turned to Katie, two rows down.
“Six weeks,” she said, dropping her hands. “Lacey’s first shot at Junior Elite, and I just cannot get her to self-discipline.”
Katie nodded. “It’ll come.” But not soon enough, she knew.
“I need to motivate her. Like you did with Devon.”
“We didn’t do anything,” Katie said. “Devon always motivated herself.”
“Lacey’ll be twelve next month,” Gwen said, not seeming to hear. “You have to eat the apple when it’s ripe.”
Fifteen minutes passed before Bobby V., the gym’s administrator, walked in, an odd slump to his shoulders, his shoes squeaking on the waxed floor.
“I have very bad news,” he said, hands shaking slightly. “There’s been a car accident.”
There were gasps, and Katie raised her head from Drew’s science book. Scanning the gym quickly, she spotted Devon in perfect straight-is-great pose, rib cage lifted, tummy in, toes forward.
“Our Hailey, she…” Bobby started, voice rising high and stopping.
A whimper came from somewhere and a swooping gasp, breaths held.
Not Hailey! Oh God! came the scattered murmurs.
“No, no,” Bobby blurted, running a hand through his brush cut, just like Teddy’s—all the men in the gym like 1950s astronauts. “I’m sorry. Hailey wasn’t in the accident. It’s Ryan, though. Well, he’s dead.”
Katie felt a jag in her chest.
Ryan. Hailey’s sweet Ryan. He’d been in the stands just the night before, cheering the squad on. He’d been in the background for so much of their gym life, which was their life, for the past two years. He was the one who once opened Katie’s car door with a coat hanger to retrieve her keys. Who’d rescued Devon’s retainer from the bottom of the tumbling pit. Who danced with all the moms at that booster tiki party a few months ago—remember that? He’d even danced with Katie; the chip in one of his front teeth when he smiled. When he dipped her, everyone whooped, Katie’s hair grazing the confettied floor.
Several parents began eyeing the bleacher steps anxiously but not moving, not yet. Forbidden from the floor during practice, they were helpless, like spectators behind glass.
Katie’s eyes fixed on Devon, on the tight braided knot at the back of her head. Her rigid neck.
Two rows behind, the booster parents drew closer.
“Terrible,” said Molly Chu, hands pressed to her cheeks. “Just terrible.”
“I wonder if someone was drinking. Or texting,” whispered Becca Plonski, the social chair. “Or drinking and texting.”
“God,” Katie said, “his parents. I don’t even know where his family is.” She vaguely remembered Hailey saying his mother lived on the other side of the state somewhere.
“Gwen, did you know already?” Molly asked. For the past year or more, Ryan had been working as a line cook at one of her Weaver’s Wagon restaurants. You could see him through the kitchen window, under the bank of heat lamps.
“No,” Gwen said, shaking her head, tapping her manicure on her phone case, watching Bobby as he tried to comfort Amelise, the other skills coaches. “No, I did not.”
“We don’t know much,” Bobby said, clearing his throat over and over. “He was by himself when it happened. And he died over at St. Joe’s. Teddy’s there with Hailey now.”
Down on the floor, the girls began clumping together, their leotarded backs hunching forward, shuddering like red birds.
Fourteen-year-old Jordan Siefert’s palms were pressed against her eyes, her sparrow’s body trembling.
Off the beam now, Lacey Weaver had sunk to the mat, was sitting on her hands and staring up, searching for her mother.
“Mom,” a voice said, and it was Drew, beside Katie, fingers on her arm.
But at that moment Devon’s seal-slick head finally turned and Katie could see her profile, a faint quiver of her chin.
“Mom,” Drew said again, tugging on her sleeve, “shouldn’t we call Dad?”
Katie looked down at her son, that grave face, his long-lashed eyes.
Nine years old going on ninety.
He was only a few blocks away, catching up on work e-mails at a diner.
“Eric,” she whispered into her phone, “can you come here now?”
“I’ve still got another couple hours to go on this job—”
So she told him.
“Oh God,” he said, after a long pause, a long breath. “Ryan. That poor kid.”
Moments went by without anyone knowing what to do, Coach T.’s absence creating a formless confusion, Bobby V. fiddling with his clipboard, checking his phone, avoiding the parents’ glare.
“Bobby,” Gwen shouted down to the floor, “are you going to keep us in the Mama Cage forever?”
Bobby looked up, scratching his neck anxiously.
“I guess you all can come down here, comfort your girls,” he said.
Spry Gwen was down on the floor in seconds, and the stands started unfilling with worried parents.
Taking two steps at a time, Katie hurried down, but Devon was nowhere to be found amid the satiny nuzzle of leotarded girls and all those identical ponytails.
“I never would’ve gotten to Level Seven without Hailey,” little four-foot-seven Cheyenne Chu was saying softly, a hand dragging along the suede-topped trainer block. “She was the best tumbling coach I ever had.”
Her mother, Molly, palms still planted on the sides of her face, seemed unable to speak, staring plaintively at Katie.
“Honey, nothing happened to Hailey,” Katie said, touching Cheyenne’s jutting shoulder. “She’ll be okay.”
But it was hard not to worry for Hailey, Coach T.’s heart’s darling. Soft lilt and side-tilting head, she’d become more than a tumbling coach. She pitched in at the fund-raising car washes, sometimes bringing soy lattes for the parents who’d driven far. Laughed with the girls, gossiped with parents, even told the occasional salty joke. And, after every meet, could be seen dangling one of those long tan swimmer arms around her uncle’s neck and kissing his leathered cheek.
“There she is,” Drew said, startling Katie, who’d almost forgotten he was beside her. “There’s Devon.”
He pointed to the far side of the gym, Devon lingering by the chalk bowl, face red from the dust.
Just as she was about to push through the scrum, Katie felt a hand on her arm.
“I think he was going to propose.” It was Becca Plonski, standing behind Katie, so close her fleece collar tickled Katie’s neck. “I think he bought a ring.”
“No,” Katie said. “I don’t think so.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. Or why she thought she might know better.
“I don’t think so either,” Gwen said, walking up to them. “After all, I sign his paycheck.”
But Becca insisted she’d spotted Ryan at Ahee Jewelers the week before, his hands curled atop the glass cases, rocking anxiously on his feet, the ribbed neck of his windbreaker zipped up over his chin.
“No way,” Gwen said, shaking her head. “A boy who wants to get married doesn’t duck his girlfriend’s calls.”
Before Katie could ask what she meant, Eric rushed up, face flushed, his phone nearly slipping from his hand.
“I’
m here, I’m here,” he said breathlessly, his other hand damp in hers. “How’s Dev?”
Arms wrapped around Drew, Katie watched from outside Coach T.’s windowed office as Eric spoke with pouch-eyed Bobby, who kept shaking his head.
When he returned, he pulled Katie aside.
“A hit-and-run,” he whispered.
“Was Hailey with him?”
“No,” he said. “The police are over at St. Joe’s now, talking to the Belfours. But let’s keep that quiet, okay?”
Katie nodded. The police. And she didn’t know how anything like that could be kept quiet. Not among these parents.
“Sounds like it was instant,” Eric said, his face pinched. “Snapped his neck.”
A picture came to her: Ryan Beck laughing at something someone said, rubbing his nape, sun-brown always. “Oh, Eric,” Katie said, covering her mouth.
From several yards away, Devon turned and looked at them both. She couldn’t have heard them, not with all the chattering parents and the yelps of the younger girls, but she seemed to.
They walked over to her.
“What happens now?” she asked, looking up at her dad.
“We go home,” he said, gently tugging her ponytail. “And think good thoughts for the Belfours.”
“And no practice?” she said, looking down at her chalked feet. “Qualifiers are in six weeks—”
“Devon,” Katie said quickly. Feeling eyes on them. Parents’, other gymnasts’. Seeing Gwen and Becca turn and look at them. Eyes were always on Devon. “Everyone needs to go home now.”
Devon looked up at both of them, her palms pressed together in front of her, and nodded.
The four of them made their way across the thronged gym floor, the families slow to disperse, the gymnasts seeming to find comfort in remaining there, with one another.