Tumbling

by Caela Carter

  Leigh saluted the judges and slunk off the podium.

  She felt like crying.

  Her coach intercepted her as soon as she hit the floor. He hugged her, patting her back. She tried to walk away, to get a moment to herself at her bag to wonder what happened between bars and beam. Ten minutes ago she thought she could rule the world. Now she was in damage-control mode.

  But Phil put his hands on Leigh’s massive shoulders. He forced her to stop moving, to look at him. “You nail floor and vault, and this won’t matter, okay? You do your routines like you have a million times and it’ll be fine.”

  This morning they hadn’t needed a strategy. They were so sure she’d be placed on the team. Now, things were different.

  “Do you think I should try it?” Leigh asked. “Should I try our new vault today?”

  Phil thought for a second. “I hope you don’t have to. Let’s see where we are after floor. For now, don’t think about anything else. Focus on floor.”

  Leigh stared at him. She didn’t want to nod because that felt like it would be a lie. People were always telling her to focus on this or think about that, but it wasn’t that easy. Leigh couldn’t always control what she was thinking. Sometimes words and pictures and sounds snuck into her brain before she could stop them.

  Words like linebacker.

  “What happened out there?” Phil asked finally.

  Leigh shrugged.

  She and Phil hadn’t talked about that article after Nationals a month ago, but she’d noticed that he didn’t hang it on the wall in his office with the rest of the articles about his gymnasts. The reporter might have tried to claim “compliment” when Leigh’s publicist called to complain, but the article was ugly. The sounds he said Leigh made on the beam. The way the bars flexed under her weight. The way the floor dipped under her “power.”

  Phil was still staring at her, so Leigh said the one word: “Linebacker.”

  To Leigh’s surprise, Phil knew exactly what she was talking about. He swallowed hard and mumbled, “That asshole.”

  That’s all he said. He didn’t tell her to forget about it like her dad; he didn’t explain how it was intended as a compliment like her mom. He said, “That asshole,” and walked away. Leigh almost smiled.

  She kept her eyes away from the competition, her ears closed to her score, and fumbled in the bag for her ChapStick. Her pulse felt shaky in her chest, her gut wobbly, as if, in some alternate universe, she was still at risk of falling off the beam.

  As soon as Leigh could handle it, Grace was by her side.

  “That wedgie-picking queen is not going to beat you,” Grace said.

  Leigh nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll crush her. And her cheap butt glue.”

  Her eye twitched. It was funny, what she was saying, but it stressed her out, too. She didn’t want to be focused on crushing Monica. She wanted to crush Grace.

  No. God, these meets could get her so confused. Leigh didn’t want to crush Grace or Monica or anybody. She only wanted to do well enough today to compete in the all-around at the Olympics.

  “Monica’s plain delusional if she thinks she’ll make the team,” Grace hissed. “She’s like my-DTY-will-beat-Camille’s-Amanar delusional.” They were both laughing. “She’s like Dylan-Patrick-is-in-love-with-me delusional.”

  It was a low blow. Monica was delusional about gymnastics, maybe, but not about everything.

  But Leigh laughed anyway. They laughed and laughed.

  WILHELMINA

  The chalk-coated fiberglass of the uneven bars spun in Wilhelmina’s palms. That’s what it felt like when she was having an “on” day. Like her body stayed in one place while she manipulated the bars around her straight knees and her pointed toes. Instead of a straddle release, where she flew over the bars with her legs kicked out to each side, today she shoved the high bar beneath her and sat in the air while she waited for it to rejoin her hands. Instead of a transition kipping beneath the low bar to a handstand on top of the high bar, she threw the entire apparatus over her head, then spun it around in her fingers until it rested beneath her body, perpendicular.

  Bars were widely known as Wilhelmina’s worst event, but it was sometimes her favorite. She would receive deductions for imperfect lines and separation between her feet because of the way she was built. It was impossible to have the “long, lean lines” the judges love when you have muscular, curvy legs that never look perfectly straight. It was nearly impossible to keep your knees glued together when your quad muscles touched with your knees still inches apart.

  The best bar workers were always built like Grace Cooper or Annie Sims. They were all limb and no torso. They were more bone than fat, more bone than muscle, even. Gymnasts like Wilhelmina were expected to dazzle with the space they managed to put between their bodies and anything that anchored them to the floor.

  Still, Wilhelmina loved the bars. Yes, all of those deductions were frustrating, but when it came down to it, working the bars was like swinging on a playground.

  She bent her elbows and launched her body away from the bar, curled into a double-double—two tucked backflips, each with a full twist—and made sure her feet stuck to the floor when she landed.

  She turned to the judges with her hands over her head and a smile already on her face. There was so much cheering and applause behind her, she felt like taking a bow.

  Surprise! she told the crowd, the judges, the other athletes.

  Wilhelmina and Kerry had been working for this moment for the past three years and here it was. She wasn’t a vault specialist. She wasn’t only competition for Camille. She’d just nailed her worst event.

  All-around, here I come!

  She hopped off the podium and, after the obligatory hugs, stuck her earbuds in, hoping Beyoncé would block out her score when the announcer screamed it. She didn’t want to hear her scores until the meet was over. She didn’t want to think about her place when she should be focusing on her gymnastics.

  If she had six more performances like this, maybe she wasn’t here for nothing. Maybe she would make the Olympic team. Maybe the past four years hadn’t been a waste and maybe her birthday hadn’t cursed her completely.

  She didn’t have to beat Grace or Leigh or Georgette.

  She only had to beat everyone else.

  The dream had been so close and then so far, it seemed impossible that it was back within her grasp.

  When she glanced at Katja, the woman was frowning right at her. But that was okay. As long as Mina made the team, Katja’s feelings didn’t matter. She’d come here to prove you could make the Olympics a different way, a non-Katja way. She was here to prove you didn’t have to beat up your body with constant gym camps, you didn’t have to push yourself to train forty hours a week, you didn’t have to suffer through eating disorders and broken backs. You could do this gymnast thing and keep your body intact. Wilhelmina had come here to prove Katja wrong, because her body and her birthday had required that was how she do it.

  “Where did that come from?”

  The words cut through the music pumping into Wilhelmina’s brain. She turned to find Camille behind her. She pulled a wire until her right ear was free and forced herself to smile.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “That was amazing,” Camille said. But she didn’t sound enthusiastic. She sounded confused. “Where have you been?”

  Wilhelmina stared.

  Just because you became a dirty gymnast who rests on one perfect Amanar doesn’t mean I’m going to, Cammie.

  “Why weren’t you at camp last month?” Camille pressed. “Why have you only been there for the required team practices? Why didn’t you do bars at Nationals?”

  Wilhelmina shrugged. She felt her personality shrinking inside her at this barrage of questions. She didn’t want to let Camille in on her strategy. Camille had
her own strategy and it was clearly working for her a second time around. Why couldn’t she let Wilhelmina do her thing in peace?

  Strategy and safety: they were what brought Wilhelmina to this place. Unknown. But uninjured.

  Of course it would upset some people. Of course some of her competitors would think it unfair that they didn’t know exactly who they were up against before this meet. Some of them might think this was dishonest, like Wilhelmina thought it was dishonest of Camille to suddenly adopt the vault, which had been her worst event four years ago. But Wilhelmina knew her plan was different. She wasn’t being lazy. And she wasn’t being dishonest with herself.

  “What’s it matter to you?” she hissed. “It’s not like you’re even doing the uneven bars.”

  Wilhelmina meant it as a dig, but Camille’s face didn’t change.

  She tried again. “Anyway, it’s not like they’d take me over Comeback Cammie. Even if I am as good on vault and an all-arounder.”

  Camille stared. She wouldn’t budge. She wouldn’t get angry back.

  “You don’t even act like you care,” Wilhelmina said. “Staying up all night cooing to your boyfriend, keeping me awake—”

  Camille’s eyes finally went wide.

  Wilhelmina wanted to sit down. Being mean was as exhausting as being friendly.

  Camille leaned her mouth close to Wilhelmina’s one free ear. “You really want to go, don’t you?” she whispered.

  That knocked Wilhelmina’s guard down so fast, she almost fell with it. “To the Olympics?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Camille scrunched her lips to the side of her face.

  Wilhelmina nodded. Of course she really wanted to go. Didn’t they all? Wasn’t that the only reason to be here today?

  “Don’t you remember Melissa?” Camille whispered, her voice barely audible above the gym-chaos behind them. “And Caitlin? And Danielle?”

  “Yes. . . .” Wilhelmina said.

  Those girls had been on her brain constantly the past few years. Those girls who also shirked the system. Who had coaches who refused to play by all of Katja’s rules. Who skipped camps or added events last minute.

  None of them had gotten to the Olympics.

  “But I’m better than all of them,” Wilhelmina said. “Everyone is going to see that today. I can do the all-around. I can help us win team gold. The committee will choose me.” Inside she said, Be quiet. Don’t spill your secrets.

  Camille shook her head. “Katja doesn’t like surprises.”

  Wilhelmina wanted to scream, “Who cares?” across the gym. She wanted to pound Camille’s head into Katja’s knee.

  Camille went on: “Katja is . . . She won’t . . . If she’s mad at you, you’re done.”

  Wilhelmina rolled her eyes. Camille was trying to get under her skin. She didn’t remember this dirty side of Camille from four years ago, but she hadn’t spent this much time with her back then. “If I prove I’m one of the best five gymnasts here, or one of the best four all-around gymnasts,” Wilhelmina said, “Katja will take me. She’s not going to hurt the USA’s chance at gold just because I didn’t do it her way.”

  Camille was shaking her head. “That’s what Melissa said, remember?” Camille said. “She was ready for the last trials. You weren’t at the selection camp four years ago, but believe me. She was better than everyone, almost. She totally should have made the team. Katja refused.”

  “But—” Wilhelmina protested.

  “You’re better than she was,” Camille said. “Or you might be. I don’t know. I don’t think it’ll matter. It’s too risky for Katja.”

  Wilhelmina stared, dumbfounded. Camille couldn’t be right. There was no way she knew what she was talking about.

  “If you go to the Olympics,” Camille was saying, “you prove that all of those camps aren’t necessary. You prove that you don’t have to train constantly six days a week, eight hours a day in order to be an all-around gymnast. If you make the team, you prove you can do it without Katja.”

  “Exactly,” Wilhelmina said.

  “Yeah . . . that’s why she’s never going to choose you,” Camille said. “If you make the team, you prove she’s pointless. You threaten her power. You kill her job . . . her whole life.”

  Despite herself, Wilhelmina froze.

  “If you want to go, you have to make it impossible for her not to pick you,” Camille said.

  Wilhelmina wanted to tell her to shut up. She wanted to unleash an angry barrage of gymnastics right on Camille’s wide cheekbones.

  She said, “You’re saying I have to win the meet?”

  “No,” Camille said. “Probably not. You just have to beat someone she wants to bring. You have to beat Georgette or Leigh or Grace. Or else you have to . . .” Camille trailed off. But Wilhelmina knew how her sentence ended.

  She said it: “Or else I have to beat you on vault.”

  Camille snapped her jaw shut.

  Truth: it wouldn’t be as simple as eight great routines after all.

  The other truth was that Camille was evil: the only reason to say all of that to Wilhelmina in the middle of the meet was to try to get her to choke.

  At least now Wilhelmina could stop trying not to hate her.

  CAMILLE

  Why did I say that?

  Camille’s chest was jumping with electric bolts of alarm for her friend. Wilhelmina stood in front of her, her eyes lit up with a fire that had drained out of Camille’s a long time ago.

  Camille remembered that fire. Camille and Wil-helmina had been friendly until four years ago, when their birth years and the last Olympic trials came up between them. It felt like Wilhelmina would never forgive Camille for being born eleven months before her. And since the last Olympics, nothing about gymnastics politics had gotten more fair. Katja Minkovski was still the only voice of power in determining who would make the international teams, who would make the national team, who would compete at different meets. Wilhelmina hadn’t been at the last trials to see how unfairly Katja treated some of the girls behind closed doors. And Wilhelmina had missed so many of the camps in which Katja was at her worst also.

  But it wouldn’t help Wilhelmina to hear any of that today. It would only freak her out.

  Camille had once again made everything worse instead of better.

  Wilhelmina was staring at her, brown eyes narrowed and angry. Then she sucked in a hot breath, turned on her heel, and stalked away.

  Camille knew she had just lost a friend again. Do gymnastics, lose her boyfriend. Quit gymnastics, lose her mom. Say something stupid, lose Wilhelmina. She always lost.

  Except on vault.

  Camille sunk into one of the folding chairs and dug in her bag for her water bottle.

  • • •

  At the last Olympic trials, Camille had been sixteen, the perfect age for a gymnastics peak during the perfect year, an Olympic one. The gym had been swarming with the stars of her youth, the girls she had looked up to four years before, when she’d screamed at her television throughout the entire Olympics. Now she was here, among the Gym Goddesses, and she was ready to beat them all.

  Since she was a new senior, no one knew what to expect from her (except Katja, who kept pace on all the juniors). Camille had choked at US Nationals and barely made the cut for the Olympic trials. Back then Camille was a wisp, a weed, a skinny thing, all legs and elbows and frizzy hair. She had dreams too big for her tiny frame: multiple gold medals around her neck and tears in her eyes as she listened to the national anthem over and over. It was a long shot. Her old coach kept telling her to see what happened. She was projected to get the last of the five spots on the team or to be one of the alternates.

  She wanted to be the star.

  She debuted her Amanar and, though it was weak compared to her vault now, she stuck it. She did a double back off the beam. She
had the entire stadium clapping and gasping throughout her powerful floor routine.

  She hadn’t won the trials: she placed third, behind only Maria Vasquez and Melissa Doyen, two well-established superstars. But it was close enough to get her name on the list of almost-definites.

  Then she’d gone on to Olympic Selection Camp and nailed everything again, day after day after day. The articles about America’s smallest athlete started popping up all over the Internet. She was getting encouraging e-mails and texts from everyone she’d ever spoken to: distant cousins, old neighbors and classmates, girls from her temple. Some girl in the suburbs of Seattle started a Camille Abrams fan site.

  The summer was kismet. Her chances grew and grew, her future got brighter and brighter as the Olympics inched closer.

  Then there was the day. She stood lined up with the fourteen other gymnasts who had been duking it out at camp throughout the week. She held her breath. She knew she deserved to be on the team. She stood, her tiny four-foot-ten frame filled with confidence, her dark blue eyes radiating that fire, and waited for her name to be called.

  And it was.

  She’d let out her breath in one hot rush, her heart feeling cool and slow all of a sudden. It wasn’t joy she felt, or accomplishment, or even happiness. Not yet.

  Instead, what overwhelmed her, what rushed through her blood like ice, was relief.

  It had all been worth it. All the sacrifice. All the heart-wrenching choices. All the grueling practices even through injuries and the flu. The physical therapy. The diets. The pushing through off days. The names her coach had called her. She was one of the best. She was an Olympian.

  For a few hours.

  GRACE

  Grace was a willow tree on bars. Something natural and beautiful to look at. Something certain and steady yet light and flexible. Something long and lean and wispy.

  Grace spun on her hands on the high bar in pirouettes that looked like they were powered by the wind. She floated to the low bar like a leaf in autumn. She straddled, and her straight legs and pointed toes embraced the audience.