by Caela Carter
LEIGH
Leigh stood next to the uneven bars podium, face-to-face with Monica. Monica’s mousy eyes were wide, the pale pink lipstick unevenly applied on her little mouth shaped in a small O.
This stupid little girl just beat me. Leigh could barely believe it.
“I—I’m . . .” Monica stumbled.
“God, don’t say you’re sorry,” Leigh interrupted her.
“I wasn’t going to,” Monica said quietly, but Leigh rolled her eyes. Of course Monica was about to say she was sorry. Seriously, what kind of competitor apologizes for doing well? Once again, Leigh found herself wishing for Grace’s focus. Grace would never let something as bland as friendliness get her into this kind of a mess. Maybe if she were allowed to devote herself to the gym the way Grace and Monica and everyone else was, she’d learn how to focus like that.
But Leigh wasn’t that lucky. Her parents insisted that she attend high school, that she go on family vacations, that she have a backup plan. All their rules and philosophies confused Leigh. Like: Always be nice, even to your competition. Like: A balanced life is a better life. Like: Of course we’ll keep your secrets until you’re ready to let them go. That’s your business.
Leigh didn’t understand why they decided some things (her sexuality) were her business and others (her gymnastics) were theirs.
They totally accepted Leigh as a lesbian. As a gymnast? Not so much.
• • •
It was only a little more than two years ago that Leigh had finally won that one argument with her parents. She’d lost all the other ones, before and after. But this one time, she won.
Leigh’s mom and dad were both in the airport when she and her old coach, Julie, had arrived home from Gym Camp. She was trying to make the national JO team for at least one year before she became a senior. The decision would be made soon, Leigh knew. And Leigh couldn’t get there with Julie.
Julie had never had a gymnast on the national team. Julie’s goal—stated on all the material she sent for elite gymnasts and their families—was to send gymnasts to college, not the Olympics or Worlds or any of the National meets. But Leigh was the best gymnast Julie had ever coached, she thought. Leigh had a shot at a national team. She needed a coach who believed in her, and in Katja Minkovski.
At the baggage claim, Leigh’s mom spread her arms open while Leigh was still ten feet away. Her dad smiled and called out, “Leigh-bee!” his embarrassing nickname for her. For a second, Leigh was happy to see them. But then her heart fell to her feet.
They were her parents and she loved them. But she was so sick of fighting.
The family greeted and then said good-bye to Julie in the parking lot. As soon as Leigh was strapped into the backseat of her parents’ car, she breathed a huge sigh and said, “I need to move to Virginia with Aunt Carol.”
“What?” Leigh’s mom had said. “What are you talking about?”
Her dad laughed.
This is always how it started when she wanted to be taken seriously. When she wanted her gymnastics to be taken seriously.
“I need to train with Phil McMann. He pulled me aside at dinner last night at camp. He told me he could get me to the Olympics, and he can. He can, Mom. And he’s nice. He’s a good coach. He never yells and he had banned weigh-ins before the coaches even had to. He cares about his athletes as people, too. That’s what he told me. He’s a really good option. And he’s right in Virginia, right outside DC. So I could just live with Aunt Carol. And Dad works there one week every month anyway, so I’ll see him then. And I can come back on Sundays. It’s only a few hours from Philly.”
Leigh’s dad was laughing like she was hysterical now. Like she was a little kid who thought singing “I’m a Little Teapot” meant she could win American Idol.
Leigh was so angry, she was shaking.
“Dad!” she yelled.
“Sorry,” he said, flicking the blinker and switching lanes. But he was still laughing.
“Leigh, come on,” her mother said. “You’re only fourteen. We aren’t ready for you to move away from us.”
“The Olympics, Mom,” Leigh said.
“What about school?” her mother asked. “You already missed a week for camp, and you’ll miss another in two months. What would happen if you moved to Virginia?”
“I didn’t miss anything,” Leigh said. “I did every bit of homework. I always keep my promises, and you guys never ever do.”
“There’s more to school than homework, Leigh,” her dad said.
“There doesn’t have to be!” Leigh wailed. She hated that she was too loud. She knew she had good and important things to say, but she always wound up sounding like that little kid singing about teapots. She could never make her arguments sound right to her parents. They were always so much better in her head. “If I move in with Aunt Carol, I can just be homeschooled. Lots of other elites do it. I’ll go to school on my computer like a normal girl.”
Her dad laughed again and Leigh almost growled, so he said, “Sorry.”
She shook her head.
“But seriously, Leigh,” he went on, “we want you to have the other parts of high school. What about school sports and going to football games? And making friends?”
“And going on dates?” her mom added.
Leigh’s face burned. She hadn’t told them yet that she wasn’t sure who she would be dating once she started. But she knew she didn’t want to start until after her first Olympics.
“Those things don’t matter to me,” Leigh said. “Gymnastics matters to me.”
“You only get to go to high school once,” her mother had said.
“I only get to be young once,” Leigh said. “That’s when I’m going to be the best at gymnastics. Sixteen is the average age for a gymnastics peak, and the Olympics will be when I’m sixteen. A coach like Phil McMann could take me there. But Julie is planning for me to peak when I go to college, years after the Olympics. I need a new coach.”
Then Leigh swallowed. She was about to play her gold card. If this next statement didn’t win the argument for her, nothing would.
“Why should I have to spend the next few years the way you would be happy and not the way I would be? I want to be homeschooled. I want a new coach. I want to commit fully to my dream. Why should I have to waste my time on football games when what I want is to be a gymnast?”
Her parents looked at each other. They said nothing. They were totally, frustratingly silent.
Leigh knew they were inching closer to her. But she couldn’t take the silence. Finally she said, “Just call him, okay? Just call Phil.”
And they nodded.
In the end, her parents had come up with a “compromise.” That’s what they’d called it. Her dad had requested a transfer to the DC office, and they’d all moved to Virginia. Leigh started training with Phil. She got that part. Her parents got everything else. She enrolled in public high school. She maintained friendships with normal girls because that’s what her parents had insisted on. She went to the occasional movie and football game. She pretended to be a regular girl when she wasn’t in the gym, because that was the deal.
She’d gotten Phil, and that’s what she needed to get here.
But still, Leigh always thought, imagine how great I would be if I were allowed to commit to gymnastics the way Grace did.
• • •
Monica was still staring at Leigh. Leigh wanted to shove her.
Instead, she gathered her stuff so they could commence their ridiculously feminine march to the balance beam.
Leigh led the six gymnasts around the uneven bars podium to the folding chairs next to the balance beam. She felt Monica’s breath on her neck.
That pip-squeak just beat me on bars.
Sometimes Leigh hated her body. Not her whole body: just the mountains and globs of muscle.
/> Leigh watched as the other line of gymnasts approached on their march toward the bars. Really, Leigh was watching only one of them. She was about to walk right past! As much as Leigh hated her own muscles and curves, she loved Camille’s. The girl’s eyes were dark, dark midnight blue, as if they were masking her own secrets. She looked right at Leigh when they passed.
Leigh hoped Monica wouldn’t see the goose bumps that suddenly dotted her shoulders.
She looked at me! She looked at me! Before she could help it, Leigh was smiling like a crazy person.
She shook her head. All crushes had to be turned off, shut down. They were only distractions. Especially when the object of her crush was a girl with a boyfriend.
Leigh ran through her warm-up, then paced the floor with her water bottle, keeping her legs warm and visualizing her routine. But mostly she was screaming at herself inside her brain: Focus, focus, focus!
She couldn’t afford to think about Monica’s score or Camille’s cushy lips when she was up on the four-foot-high, four-inch-wide beam. Beam was the event that terrified Leigh the most. She had to be calm and steady up there—two traits that didn’t come naturally.
And Leigh needed to hit on beam. Leigh knew she’d make the team. She was the national champion, after all. But her beam work was lacking. Leigh wanted more than to make the team: she wanted to be selected as one of the two gymnasts who would compete in the individual all-around during the Olympics. In order to get that spot, she had to hit on beam today and tomorrow. At camp last month, Katja had noticed that her beam work had gotten worse instead of better since Nationals. Katja had made it clear that she’d better hit on beam today if she wanted a chance to compete in the individual all-around.
Leigh put down her water bottle and kicked into a handstand. It was easiest for Leigh to focus when she was upside down.
Stay on the beam. Stay on the beam.
“Hey!” Leigh heard. She saw Grace’s pink toenails underneath her nose. “I’m last up on bars, so I thought I’d come cheer you on.”
Leigh dropped out of her handstand and embraced her friend. “You were so good!” she squealed. “We’re doing it! We’re getting to the Olympics.”
Grace smiled at her, but her brown eyes stayed steady. Later tonight, in their hotel room, they would bounce and yelp and gossip and plan out the rest of their summer together. But not yet.
“How’d you do?” Grace asked Leigh. “Sorry, I missed it.”
Leigh knew what she meant: I’m beating you, aren’t I?
Grace was competitive. She was even competitive with Leigh. And Leigh accepted that. Part of being Grace’s best friend was loving all of her, even the parts that were sort of ugly. But Leigh didn’t answer. She said, “How’s it going for you?”
Grace shrugged. “Safe for now,” she said.
Leigh lowered her eyebrows, confused for a second. “Safe?” she said. Then, “Oh! You mean your dad didn’t look at your fan page?”
Grace let out a hushed breath between lips that were almost pressed together. “Not yet. I should just delete it.”
“No!” Leigh said. “Don’t do that. Dylan would probably be so insulted. Besides, your dad is not going to care.”
Grace bit her lip and Leigh sighed. Grace was always worrying about nothing.
“How’d you do?” Grace said again.
Leigh knew that Grace wouldn’t want to talk about publicity or privacy or any of the layers behind what she was going to say, but she had to say it. Besides Phil, Grace was the only person in the arena who knew about Leigh.
“So . . . I mentioned to Monica that I wished Dylan had written on my fan page. . . . Well, it’s not true, obviously, but I made it seem like . . . but only because I don’t want anyone to think . . .”
Grace wrinkled her nose like Leigh was the one being crazy.
“What?” Leigh said.
“No one knows,” Grace said, more annoyed than soothing. “No one suspects anything.”
Leigh had seen that look every time she had worried out loud that there might be some hidden meaning to the word linebacker. (As if the straightforward meaning wasn’t hurtful enough.) Grace had always been the safest person to know about Leigh because Grace didn’t care. If it wasn’t about gymnastics, it was nothing to Grace. It was stupid that Leigh had to keep this secret locked up so tight anyway—it’s not like most gymnasts had time for girlfriends or boyfriends, so what did it matter which one they’d eventually prefer? But there’d never been an out-and-proud gymnast before. Leigh didn’t need to be the Michael Sam of the gym.
Her mother always said that the world could be a terrible place, but that wasn’t even Leigh’s first concern.
She was scared about more people writing enthusiastic articles about her in Sports Illustrated and International Gymnast. She was afraid her first mention on ESPN would be about her sexuality instead of her vault. She was worried that if she came out as a lesbian she’d become the Lesbian Gymnast.
“You really think no one knows? Or I mean, not knows. Suspects? Because that reporter said ‘linebacker,’ and, you know, linebackers are, like, husky or whatever, and—”
“Will you calm down about it?” Grace said.
Grace was right: she was being crazy.
Leigh changed topics. “What do you know about this Monica Chase?” she asked.
An emotion flashed across Grace’s face for a second, her eyebrows raising and her thin lips curling in toward her cheeks. Pure condescension. “Monica from my gym? Why?”
Leigh shrugged. “She beat me on bars.”
Grace laughed lightly. “I don’t think we need to worry about Monica Chase,” she said, as if the name itself smelled like a rotten banana. Grace was almost laughing in the middle of a meet. It was unheard of. “My dad’s prepping her for the NCAA.”
Leigh tried to minimize the superiority threatening to puff up her chest. She chewed her cheek to stop her smile. She was not here thinking about the NCAA. She was better than that.
“I don’t think it matters how great a day she has,” Grace said. “She could have her best day and you could have your worst and you’d still beat her twice over.”
Leigh nodded. She took a deep breath to try to steady her twitching heart.
“I mean, look at her,” Grace went on.
The two friends turned their heads to see the tiny gymnast crouching a few feet away with her back to the purple-mat-lined bleachers. Monica’s arms were twisted behind her back.
Leigh couldn’t help giggling. “What is she doing?” she whisper-squealed. “Is she . . .”
To Leigh’s surprise and delight, Grace was giggling, too. And for a split second, they weren’t talking in code about whose name was higher on the scoreboard. The sight of Grace’s tiny, pesky teammate pretzeling her body in an attempt to pick her leotard out of her butt without drawing the attention of the crowd was too much for even the most stoic gymnast. “Cheap butt glue!” Grace whisper-squealed, a hand on her stomach so her laughter wouldn’t be visible through her red leo.
“Oh, God,” Leigh said. “Leo wedgie! And she’s picking it! In front of everyone! Poor thing.”
Grace brought a hand to her mouth. “Poor thing?” she breathed. “She could put her pants on.”
“Or buy better butt glue! That’s one way to not be the Wedgie Queen!” Leigh squealed.
Monica looked up.
Oh, God. Did she just hear?
No. No. She didn’t. She couldn’t.
Leigh would not let herself feel guilty. Today was not the day to be nice to every baby gymnast with delusional dreams.
With another quick squeeze from her best friend, Leigh took her place beside the beam.
I’m ready, she told herself. I’m the best.
When the green flag raised, she rushed at the springboard and flipped onto the beam. She moved on
autopilot now, her muscles working through her dance positions while her brain spun in happy, thoughtless circles between her ears.
She heard Grace and Phil and Georgette cheer her name just before her first tumbling pass. She did a roundoff (bang) followed by two back handsprings (bang-boom-bang) and landed solidly with her heels (boom) barely edging off the end of the beam.
The crowd applauded and her name was shouted but all Leigh heard was the metallic crashing of the equipment below her.
Stop listening to the beam, she told herself.
The reporter meant it as a compliment.
She split leaped, another boom. She did a full turn and wobbled out of it. A wolf jump (bang), she landed with her foot half off the beam. She squeezed her toes around the corner of it as her upper body swung dangerously backward. She squeezed all the muscles in her right leg, her right hip, her abdomen together and managed to send herself upright again. She missed another connection.
She did her backflip. (Boom.) Another wobble.
Is the beam always this loud?
She danced to the end of the five hundred centimeters for her dismount, and she stood still.
Back handspring, back handspring, double back tuck, stick the landing.
But her brain was echoing the metallic crashes. The noise that rang every time her feet hit the beam. Even with the whole stadium cheering her on, the crashing noise was the loudest in her ears. It was what that Sports Illustrated reporter had meant when he called her the Linebacker of Gymnastics.
Fluffy Monica and balletic Grace would never make the balance beam echo the way she did.
She couldn’t chase the thoughts out of her head before she was flipping down the beam, listening to the crashes below her limbs.
As soon as her feet launched her off the end of the beam, her head tucked into her chest so she could attempt her double-tuck dismount, she realized she didn’t have enough height. She flexed all her muscles, trying to get around a second time, and landed crouched too close to the mat. Her knees were bent too deeply, her butt was hovering over the floor, her feet backpedaled, moving her away from the beam in a series of steps until she finally regained her balance. She didn’t fall. But she might as well have.