Tumbling

by Caela Carter

  Monica stared at him, wide-eyed. Why would he choose this moment to lay out this information? Why would he wait until minutes before she was about to mount the podium for the first event in the biggest meet in her life to tell what her stakes were?

  “And, kiddo, they’re watching you. Almost every other gymnast in this room has given up her eligibility to compete in college gymnastics by taking endorsements and going pro. Not you. You are still technically an amateur. And that means the colleges, the NCAA programs, will be after you. They’ll be paying extra attention to you today. And you’re taking this gymnastics thing to college, right? That’s always been our goal, right?”

  Monica nodded. Most of the other GymCade elite gymnasts dreamed of Olympics and Worlds teams and nailing gold medals into the wall, but Monica wasn’t that kind of gymnast.

  Monica was a second-best kind of gymnast. An almost-good-enough-but-not kind of gymnast. It had been that way since she was a little kid: always the second best in her gym, the red ribbon at the meet, the silver medal. And that was okay.

  “It almost doesn’t even matter how you do today, Mon. You’re at the Olympic trials! We get you through the weekend with no disasters, we keep you healthy for two more years, and you should have a college scholarship in the bag. That’s the goal, right?”

  Monica whispered to herself the goal she always set: “Don’t fall.”

  Ted laughed. She hadn’t realized she’d said it out loud.

  “Sure,” he said, like he was brushing her off. “Don’t fall. Also, let’s get you an NCAA scholarship one day.”

  “And now on uneven bars,” the announcer’s voice called through the Metroplex, “Monica Chase!”

  Her heart pounded, her kneecaps vibrated with nerves. Here she was, about to begin the most important event of her career—what was he doing writing all her goals in this minute? Here she was competing alongside stars like Wilhelmina Parker (who was Monica’s secret gymnastics hero) and Leigh Becker (who was as nice as everyone said she was) and Georgette Paulson (who had wished her luck before the meet today). Now was the time to be steady and focused and to not fall.

  “Have a good day, Mon,” Ted said. “That’s all I’m saying. Just have a good day.”

  Monica nodded.

  She approached the platform with that mantra running through her head. Just have a good day. Just have a good day.

  She chalked her hands and turned to salute the judges. Just have a good day.

  Before she threw her hands over her head, she noticed the cameras were gone. She glanced around. There were some at the vaulting table where Wilhelmina Parker was warming up. There were several gathered around Leigh where she sat on the floor munching on a PowerBar. There was one still zooming in too closely on her coach. Even at a meet this small—twelve competitors as opposed to twenty-four at Nationals and fifty at Classics—Monica would be ignored.

  Her heart slowed just in time. That camera had been interested in Ted, the Coach of the Stars, not Monica. No one was paying attention to her. It was as if she were invisible. It wasn’t a happy thought, but it was a calming one as she stood beneath the bars. This was like any day at the gym, any day at practice, any silly Level 9 dual meet like the ones at which she’d won silver after silver a few years ago.

  Just have a good day. Don’t fall.

  Monica saluted the judges and piked onto the low bar. She transitioned off it in a straddle, launching her hips over the height of it and extending her arms so that her entire body hung in the air for a moment before she grasped the high bar.

  She raised her body into her handstand, knees straight, toes pointed. Then she spun on her hands, a double pirouette, and swung her entire body around the high bar in a giant.

  This was Monica’s favorite event. It was like ballet, but upside down. She felt precise whenever she worked bars: her legs extended and split, knees straight and toes pointed, making her look like a human arrow.

  Most of the time, in her tiny body, with her sheepish smile, Monica felt awkward and silly. But it was different in the gym. On bars, she felt beautiful.

  When she released the bar, she flew feet above it and heard a few gasps from the audience. By the time she grasped it again, she was smiling.

  She did two more giants, then her twisting backflip dismount.

  She landed on the blue mat as if she were a butterfly on a windowsill. She stuck it. She saluted the judges.

  No falls, she thought. A good day.

  “Good job, kiddo,” Ted said when she hopped off the podium. He put one arm around her and patted her head. She stood still next to him, her blue-and-silver chest heaving for air, her muscles hot and taut, her abs flexing behind the silver fabric to keep the air in her lungs.

  Then, in a blink, Ted was gone, the cameras trailing him across the floor as he searched for the real reason he was here.

  “You were so good!” Kristin came up squealing behind her. She hugged her friend tight, then hugged the other gymnasts who lined up to congratulate her.

  Leigh was last. “Good job, kiddo?” she whispered, mimicking Ted into Monica’s ear.

  Monica let go of her, took a step back, and lowered her eyebrows at Leigh.

  “What’s with that: ‘Good job, kiddo’?” Leigh asked.

  Monica swallowed. Did Leigh think she didn’t do a good job?

  “He’s your coach. He owes you more than ‘good job, kiddo,’” she said. “First of all, that was amazing. And, secondly, if you were Grace, he’d be telling you about every out-of-place pinkie toe.”

  Now Monica’s eyes got wide. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Well . . . you know . . . it’s the Olympic trials . . . and Grace . . .”

  Leigh shook her head and bit her lip. “I’m sorry. Not my business.”

  Monica stared.

  “I just think you did a really great job,” Leigh said again.

  Inside, Monica squealed.

  Then the numbers came booming across the gym speakers. Immediately both of their faces fell—Monica’s to shock and Leigh’s to horror.

  Monica had just outscored the national champion on bars.

  WILHELMINA

  Wilhelmina hated her birthday.

  For the past four years, it felt like it had shown up just to remind her how screwed over she was.

  No, it wasn’t today. If it were today, August 2 instead of January 4, everything about her life would be just fine.

  She stood next to Camille and Samantha, halfheartedly shaking out her shoulders as she watched tiny Annie Simms launch her feather-like body over the vault.

  “Remember when we looked like that?” Camille laughed.

  Wilhelmina stretched her lips like rubber bands, hoping they looked like a smile. Camille was the only other one left from their old group of gymnast friends. They’d been friends because they were around the same age and started elite gymnastics at about the same time. They weren’t best friends or anything. There was a whole group of girls, and they were each members of it, but they rarely spoke just the two of them. Wilhelmina and Camille hadn’t been a pair of friends until the rest of the group disappeared.

  And now Camille really wanted to be Wilhelmina’s friend, and Wilhelmina was trying not to be a jerk about it. She’d managed not to hate Camille all year, which was impressive, considering their history.

  But Wilhelmina was mad that Camille was here a second time when she hadn’t even gotten a first chance yet. And then Camille woke her up last night, disturbing her sleep right before the biggest meet of her life, for a truly silly reason. Mina couldn’t help but be annoyed about that.

  “Welcome to the fogies club, ladies,” Samantha said. Once an all-around gymnastics sweetheart, Samantha wore her full warm-up suit because she wasn’t even competing on vault today. At this point, Samantha competed only on bars and beam. But Wilhelmina knew
that underneath the fabric she was still slender with ropelike muscles lining her pale arms and legs. Even her white-blonde hair, pulled into a bun, was thin.

  Camille was built more like Wilhelmina—thick muscles clustering onto every bone, breasts and hips and a butt that made her look like an actual woman, enough body fat to have rolls on her stomach if she sat slouched over. They were like gymnastics twins: same shape, different color. But they weren’t the same. Camille had been a skinny, feathery gymnast once, but Wilhelmina was always built like this. And, back when they were in their prime, Camille had been given a chance. Most of their friends had been given a chance. Wilhelmina hadn’t.

  “I wouldn’t want to be that skinny,” Wilhelmina said.

  She liked being larger. She was built like a tree. Instead of flying above the equipment in the gym, she took it sailing with her, becoming a part of the vault, a part of the beam the way an oak is rooted to the earth no matter how fast the planet rotates. Wilhelmina was so solid that when you watched her perform—when you saw her flying above the vault or bars or beam all smooth, dark skin and bright leotard and muscles, muscles everywhere—you couldn’t imagine her falling.

  And she never had. Wilhelmina had pulled off the almost impossible: a long career in gymnastics with zero major injuries. Yet now Wilhelmina was almost unknown.

  “It’s awful to be a skinny mini,” Camille said. “Trust me. I know.”

  Wilhelmina sighed and dropped into a split beside her. It would be impossible to avoid Camille all day. Wilhelmina was going to have to try to get along with her. After all, they were roommates for the weekend.

  But it was hard to stand the sight of her because there was a good chance Camille was about to steal Wilhelmina’s Olympic dream. There were Magic Markered, multicolored poster boards lining the stands with the phrase Comeback Cammie for a reason. Camille was a fan favorite as well as one of Katja’s pets. And she was a hell of a vaulter. If she landed her four vaults in this meet, she was jumping on a plane to Europe.

  Wilhelmina was like a ghost. The only people in the stands who remembered her name were probably her parents. And Davion. (Because he was here. He said he would be. But Wilhelmina wasn’t going to let herself get distracted by any boy—especially not today.)

  Phil came over to the group and pulled Camille away. Wilhelmina’s mouth relaxed out of its forced smile.

  It was too hard to think about being nice. Wilhelmina was here to prove something. To prove everything.

  • • •

  Four years ago, when Camille and Samantha were named to the Olympic team, Wilhelmina could have beaten both of them with her arms tied behind her back. But four years ago, Wilhelmina’s sixteenth birthday was four days shy of allowing her to compete as a senior.

  In the year leading up to that Olympics, the FIG—the International Gymnastics Federation—was rethinking the rules about what age constituted a senior gymnast. Decades ago, there was no age limit. Then it was fourteen, then fifteen, then sixteen. The year Wilhelmina was fifteen, an Olympic year, her coach Kerry kept telling her to keep her fingers crossed. “They’re talking about moving the age back down to fifteen, huh?” Wilhelmina would nod. “If they do, you’ll be ready, huh?” Wilhelmina would nod. She’d kept her fingers crossed so tight they hurt.

  The weird thing about the FIG is that it doesn’t care when your birthday is. It’s all about your birth year. So if you were fifteen in August but would turn sixteen before the end of the year, you were considered a senior already. Wilhelmina was born at the beginning of the year. She didn’t want that to screw her over.

  But the FIG had maintained the age limit. A girl would not be considered a senior gymnast until the year she turned sixteen. And a junior gymnast could not compete at the Olympic level.

  It was such an unfair, arbitrary rule that had robbed Wilhelmina of this experience when her body was most ready for it. She’d won the Junior National Championships and watched the Olympics on television. The next year, when Wilhelmina was finally a senior, she went to the World Championships as the USA star. She’d been one measly point away from beating the Chinese girl and winning the gold medal.

  When she’d gone back to the gym after Worlds, Kerry had pulled Wilhelmina out of her warm-up drills. It was surprising. Kerry was more focused on warm-ups than any coach Wilhelmina had ever heard of.

  “We have some strategizing to do, huh?” Kerry had said when they got to her office. Her Romanian accent was similar but not identical to Katja Minkovski’s Russian one. And, though Kerry was sure of everything she said, she ended many sentences with “huh?” It was a tic Wilhelmina found endearing.

  Wilhelmina had smiled. “Do you think I can do it?” she’d asked.

  But Kerry wasn’t smiling as she had been in Germany a few days ago when Wilhelmina had won that silver medal. “That’s what we have to talk about. What exactly the it is,” Kerry said.

  Now, it was Wilhelmina who said “Huh?”

  Kerry swallowed. She cleared some papers from the big desk between them. “I pulled you from the camp roster for next month.”

  “What?” Wilhelmina almost-shouted. “I have to go to camp. If I don’t go, Katja will be mad. At me. I can’t just skip camp right after proving I’m the best US gymnast!”

  Kerry nodded. “I know. She’ll be mad.”

  “So why—”

  “I see you walking around that hotel in Germany with bags of ice taped to your hips and knees. I see you popping Advil like little candies. You think you can sneak these things from me, but you can’t, huh?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking,” Wilhelmina protested quietly.

  “You know what happens at the camps. You’re overworked on old equipment. You’re working out too hard for too many hours. Then you come back feeling like everyone is ahead of you. Not you personally. All the gymnasts do. Those camps create competition between our girls. A little bit of competition is a good thing, yes. But what happens is you go and you work too hard and then you come home and you keep working too hard.”

  Wilhelmina had never thought about it like that. She liked the competition. She liked working hard. But Kerry was right. It always took weeks to recover from camp. Or from any event where Katja was in charge. And the camps happened almost monthly, so it was like she was always recovering. “I have to go,” Wilhelmina whispered.

  “If we go to that camp, you’ll come back broken,” Kerry said. There was no huh. Wilhelmina knew she was serious.

  Wilhelmina didn’t say anything.

  “We have options, Mina. We have different ways to proceed now. But if you keep going as Katja wants, if you keep going to all the camps and all the meets, if you keep training forty hours a week for years, you won’t make it to the next Olympics. You’re getting older. It’s something I hate saying to a sixteen-year-old girl, but the sport, the way we play it, it makes me.”

  Wilhelmina sat silent and shocked. Days ago she’d been on top of the world, on top of Worlds, literally. Now her heart was being broken.

  “If the Olympics were next year, it’d be different, huh?” Kerry said. “So we have to talk about your goals. If you want gold at Worlds a year from now, if that’s what you want most, we’ll keep going like we have been.”

  Wilhelmina was shaking her head.

  “That’s what I thought,” Kerry said. “You want the Olympics.”

  Wilhelmina sucked in breath; she summoned that moment when she almost won the World medal; she reminded herself that she was good enough. Then she said it. “I want an Olympic medal in the women’s all-around.”

  Kerry didn’t laugh. She nodded. “Okay, then. I need to keep you healthy for three more years. I need to keep you safe. I will not play by Katja’s rules. I will not break your body. So here’s what we do. We take a year to relax, to heal. We withdraw from all the camps, from the national team, from everything. You train and stay in shape, go
to physical therapy and get the kinks worked out. Then you come back. But we only go to the three mandatory camps each year. We don’t go to the other monthly ones. We keep you healthy. And . . . you only compete on vault.”

  “What?” Wilhelmina said. “No, I want to do the all-around.”

  Something about specializing didn’t sit right with Wilhelmina. It seemed disingenuous for an athlete like her who loved all events, who excelled at them all.

  “I know,” Kerry said. “We’ll train on them all. But in the years leading up to the Olympics—at Nationals, Classics, Worlds, Pan-American, whatever—we’ll only enter you on vault, huh?”

  Wilhelmina was shaking her head.

  “It’s scary, I know. But at the Olympic trials, you’ll enter the all-around. You’ll qualify by the vault, then enter that way, okay? And worst-case scenario, we’ll keep you the best vaulter in the world, so you’ll be a vaulting specialist. You know the best vaulter will always get to go to the Olympics.”

  “It just feels . . . I mean, Katja—”

  Kerry interrupted her. “I know Katja likes you now, because now you are a star. But look back on the other gymnasts Katja has loved, huh? What has happened?”

  Wilhelmina thought about it. And Kerry was right. A lot of her friends her age or a year or two older were starting to drop the sport, whether they’d made an Olympic team or not. They were breaking backs and spraining the same wrists over and over again. They were in braces and casts. They were hospitalized due to eating disorders or emergency surgeries. A lot of them had once been Katja’s favorites, too.

  “I’m not saying this is fair, huh?” Kerry said. Wilhelmina realized she must look heartbroken. “It’s not fair. The Olympics being only every four years is not fair to gymnasts, huh? And Katja—the way she does this, the amount of control she has—it is not fair, huh?”

  Wilhelmina was surprised. People whispered about Katja. People invoked her name to tease each other. But people rarely stated this problem outright. Katja was too scary for that.

  “You know you can try it Katja’s way,” Kerry was saying. “You know you can go to all of the camps and push and push and push yourself until you break, huh?”