by Caela Carter
Grace paused her clapping and turned to study her best friend’s profile. A thought went zinging through her brain, jolting her from her skull to her fingertips. A thought that she didn’t like as much as she thought she would.
What if this meet isn’t about beating Leigh? What if I’m going to the Olympics without her?
LEIGH
Leigh stood panicked as Monica saluted the judges and exited the podium to a storm of applause. Her heart hammered with anger, fear, shame.
“Monica is going to beat me,” she whispered to herself. She said it out loud. Of course. Stupidly.
Good-bye, Olympics. Good-bye, lifelong dream.
“Use it,” Grace said into her ear.
Leigh’s head jerked toward her. She’d forgotten she was standing next to her friend. “What?” she asked.
“Use it,” Grace said again, a twisted look spreading across her face. “Look at her. She can’t beat you.” They watched Monica’s smile disappear like a switch had been flicked as Ted pulled her off the podium. “You’re the national champion and Monica Chase is . . . her. You haven’t peaked. You’re not done. Get angry. Let it motivate you.”
“You’re trying to help me?” Leigh blabbed before she could stop herself. Her blood was zipping quickly through her veins. If Grace was trying to help her, she was in trouble. Her voice was still motoring. As usual, Leigh was powerless to stop it. “How did everything get this bad so fast? How did this happen?” How was her Olympic dream in doubt?
“Get ready,” Grace said before Leigh could speak again. “You’re next.”
Damn it, Leigh thought.
She rushed to her gym bag for a final sip of water and tried to re-clasp some of her hair clips. Phil came up behind her and put his palm on the spot where her left shoulder became her neck.
He said only one word. “Focus.”
Leigh shrugged him off and stared into her gym bag until she felt the adrenaline build through her veins again. She had to be That Girl when her music began filling the stadium.
It’s simple, she told herself as she climbed the steps to the floor podium. I’m better than Monica. I’m better than Kristin and Georgette. I might be a little better than Grace.
Leigh dipped her feet into the chalk and watched the white powder spread over her peach skin.
Leigh was a winner. Monica was not. Little wedgie-picking Monica should not be intimidating Leigh.
By the time Leigh stood in her opening pose in the corner of the blue mat awaiting the first notes of the guitar that would play her floor music, she was That Girl again. She transformed the blue mat into her playground. Her dancing was a bit clunky as usual, but her tumbling made her dancing invisible. Leigh had speed and height as she launched her body into double Arabians and twisting tuck punch-fronts. The audience would be sitting on the edges of their seats anticipating her next tumbling trick and gasping at the amount of air she managed to put between her upside-down head and the floor.
Then it was over. The music trickled away and Leigh stood in the middle of the mat, sucking in oxygen, listening to the roar of the crowd and attempting to savor the moment, to memorize it so she could replay it over and over in bed tonight when she was back to being Normal Leigh and she wasn’t That Girl anymore.
Leigh jumped off the podium and threw her arms around her coach.
Leigh was going to claw her way back to the top, she decided. She wasn’t going to let Monica or Katja or Grace or anyone else intimidate her. She was going to win the meet.
It was possible. Vault was next. It was all in her control.
“I want to do it,” she told Phil. “I’m ready.”
He took a step back and looked at her calmly. “You sure?” he asked.
She nodded. “I want to be winning at the end of the day,” she said. “I can do it.”
“Okay!” he said. “Keep your focus! This will either clinch the top shot or ruin your chances.”
Leigh nodded. That was all fine. Nothing would stop her now.
Leigh hugged Grace and Kristin and Annie. Everyone lined up to hug her. She was passed from girl to girl to girl until she found herself embracing a body that was bigger than her own, her cheek only inches from the warmth of another cheek, her neck being tickled by curly hair, her chest pushed up against . . . It was Camille.
Leigh froze. Electricity zapped through her veins. Her heart pounded harder than it had on the floor. She was both burning up and covered in goose bumps.
Camille was hugging her, actually pressed against her body, like Leigh had imagined so many times in the privacy of her own head.
“Oh!” she said, before she could stop herself.
“Nice job,” Camille whispered right into her ear.
It woke Leigh up and she let go of her crush as suddenly as she had clung to her. “Th-thanks,” she stuttered. “I was really nervous. You know, I haven’t been doing too well today, so I needed to do those double Arabians . . . to land . . . well, thanks.” Leigh bit her lips to keep the words back. Was she smiling too big? Was she being totally obvious?
Camille shrugged. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” she said.
Yes, I do, Leigh thought.
Leigh didn’t trust her voice anymore, though, so she kept her lips sealed and only smiled.
She watched Camille wander back toward the girls in her own rotation.
Stop it. Stop it. No crushes. Not right now.
Leigh had demolished the floor. She’d done so well, she’d pulled Camille over to the side of her podium like a magnet.
Turn crushes off.
Leigh shook her head and shut her eyes. She replayed that end-of-routine moment in her brain already, even though it was only a few minutes ago. It had to be the best floor routine she’d ever performed. She was on top of the world. She was so high, so empowered, so sure of her ability to control destiny.
She practically skipped over to her gym bag. And she almost tripped on two little legs sticking out from a body slumped against the back wall. Monica.
Monica was scowling at her.
That was not okay.
Then Monica looked away and pulled a PowerBar out of her bag.
What was wrong with this girl? No one was this petty just because someone else trumped a great performance. Leigh had not acted this small after bars.
Leigh had to ignore the Wedgie Queen. She had more important things to worry about than being nice. She would have to beat Monica to get to the Olympics. She would have to pull herself several places above where she stood right now.
She had to have the vault of her life.
MONICA
Monica sat on the red carpet, her back against the purple-matted wall of the stands, her warmed-up legs in a straddle, her mouth munching on a PowerBar. She was grateful Leigh was gone, grateful to have a minute of peace and rest while the drama of the meet slithered around her.
She was always exhausted during the third rotation. By then, all her adrenaline had run its way out of her system and it seemed like the meet would stretch on forever. Plus, there were all the people. By the third rotation Monica had chatted with and hugged and smiled at so many girls so many times over and over, and it wasn’t that she didn’t like people, but they wore her out. She knew from previous meets that her fourth event would go much better if she took a little breather after her third routine. Meets were exhausting always, and today was worse. Monica could only stand crowds of nice people for so long.
She knew how to congratulate her competitors when they bested her.
She wasn’t used to the opposite. She wasn’t used to beating people. It was so tiring.
Right now, Monica needed to use a few moments to have a little snack and turn off her brain. She relished the solitude.
But within minutes, there was a cameraman crouched a few feet in front of Monic
a’s toes, his lens pointed directly at her.
The same thing had happened a minute before Leigh came up to her.
Monica tried to look away and choke down her mouthful of PowerBar. She hoped there wasn’t purply-gray goop gumming up her teeth or anything. She pointed and flexed the toes on her left foot repeatedly, staring at her navy-blue toenails as they vanished and then reappeared in her vision.
What was with all these cameras? Why were they in her face all of a sudden?
Monica caught a frantic movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to look at the man in black. He was balancing the camera on one shoulder now, leaning to the side so it looked like he was about to fall on his hip, and shaking his other hand back and forth in the air in hectic repetitions.
Monica squinted. What is he doing?
Grace appeared behind the squatting man. She smiled and waved. She was looking right at Monica like Monica was a real girl and not a garbage can, and there was a camera there, so that didn’t give Monica much choice. She smiled and waved back.
The cameraman gave her a thumbs-up and disappeared.
Grace didn’t. She plopped down next to Monica. What is she doing?
“They always want you to wave,” Grace said.
“Oh,” Monica said.
“The people at home like when you smile and wave, like you care about them, you know?”
Monica wished she could tell Grace that the “people at home” were leaving messages all over Grace’s fan page and none on her own, so she didn’t care one bit about them or Grace or anyone else. But that was too risky.
Monica knew all about Grace from sharing a gym with her every day.
If Grace spread some ugly rumors about her, there’d be no way to get revenge. Grace didn’t care what people said or thought about her. The only thing Grace cared about was gymnastics.
I should be the same way.
Monica needed to do her own thing right now. She could feel her blood running slower and slower. If she didn’t get a few more quiet minutes to recharge, she might not make it over the vault at all.
Just as she was gathering the guts to ask Grace to leave her alone for a minute or two, there was another camera. The girls waved and it went away again.
“Why does that keep happening?” Monica whispered.
Grace smiled at her. It looked stretched and awkward on her red-lipsticked lips. “They’re talking about you.”
Monica tilted her head. They were? “What are they saying?” she asked. As soon as she asked it, she tried to swallow the words back from the air. There was no reason to trust Grace’s answer.
“That you’re having an amazing day. That you’re beating people no one thought you ever could. That no one knew your name this morning, but now you might be placed on the Olympic team.”
Monica’s head whipped around; she studied Grace’s profile. What is she trying to do to me?
“The Olympics?” Monica asked through her teeth. The word felt like an ice cube too big for her mouth. She didn’t want to swallow it. She didn’t want to hope.
Grace shrugged. “You’ve got a chance.”
Monica chomped on her PowerBar. Grace cracked her skinny knuckles and stared out into space.
“You should at least be an alternate,” Grace said, after too much time had gone by.
Monica turned. Grace’s lips were twisted into that strange smile again.
“Wouldn’t it be great? Being in Italy? At the Olympics? Together?” Grace said.
Monica forced her jaw not to drop, but her eyes kept growing.
Grace was up to no good.
But another camera focused on her face. It came so close, she could tell it was looking at her alone, and not at the superstar next to her.
These cameras had to mean something.
Monica was having the best gymnastics day of her life.
It was possible that Ted never mentioned the idea of alternate because, to Ted, being an alternate wouldn’t count for anything. Ted was an all-or-nothing kind of coach. He wouldn’t care that much if Monica was the Olympic alternate. The country wouldn’t care about the alternates. They wouldn’t compete or be interviewed on TV or any of that. Monica’s own family might not care if she was named alternate.
But Monica would.
She could see herself in an Olympic leo, boarding the plane to Italy. She could see herself smile and . . .
But the idea came from Grace. Who was still talking. Some part of Monica’s brain detached and flew out to that fantasy world.
“We could get ready together. You know, go shopping for whatever we’ll need. Get our nails done before our flight—”
“What are you talking about?” Monica said finally.
Grace snapped her jaw shut. “I was trying to be nice,” she said. “God.”
Then she was quiet. But she didn’t move. She sat there, her shoulder almost touching Monica’s, her breath ruining Monica’s silent moment, her words destroying Monica’s strategy.
Don’t fall, she told herself. Don’t fall. Have a good day.
But when she closed her eyes, the five Olympic rings were tattooed on the inside of her eyelids.
She had tried so hard not to want the impossible. Not to set herself up for disappointment. Her heart was breaking already and the meet wasn’t half over.
Monica took a deep breath. She held the vault in her eyes and held her goal in her gut: don’t fall.
WILHELMINA
Camille’s words were running through Wilhelmina’s brain as she warmed up for beam. Katja doesn’t like surprises.
It was awful. Camille had seemed scatterbrained and distracted and lazy. Not like a cutthroat, manipulative, insecure gymnast who would start psychological wars. Turned out, somehow, she was both.
Wilhelmina hated those kinds of gymnasts. They made a mockery of her sport, her life.
Katja doesn’t like surprises.
Katja loved winning more than she hated surprises. That’s what Kerry said. That’s what they were banking on.
Still, Wilhelmina hadn’t thought about the full ramifications of trying to disprove Katja’s system until Camille said it to her like that. And since a lot of the previous trials took place at private selection camps, Wilhelmina could only be so sure that she was better than all the other girls who had tried to do it their own way before.
If Camille was right, here’s what it meant: unless she managed to beat Grace or Leigh or Georgette, each time Wilhelmina performed well on any apparatus except for vault, she would be hurting her chances at making the Olympic team. Katja would view her dismount on bars and her tumbling series on beam as insubordination or trickery. It meant that Kerry was wrong, that Wilhelmina was dreaming this dream impossibly, and that—for the second time—she was destined to miss the Olympics by the skin of her teeth.
It meant that Wilhelmina was entirely dependent on Leigh messing up like she did on beam. Or else once again her talent and training would be dismissed for rules and politics.
Wilhelmina’s entire life had been cursed.
She did her tumbling series, and her left heel landed off the tape on the floor that represented the beam.
The stupid, stupid comment. Four silly words had managed to rewrite Wilhelmina’s entire day. Katja doesn’t like surprises. Katja. Doesn’t. Like. Surprises.
Wilhelmina walked away from the tape without practicing her dismount and went to her gym bag for some water. She would be last up, anyway.
Next to her, Annie and Georgette leaned across an empty chair to peer at Georgette’s phone. “Do you see this?” she heard Annie whisper. “He’s only writing on Grace’s page because Leigh, like, begged him to.” Wilhelmina rolled her eyes.
Georgette shrugged. “I’m not really into Out of Touch,” she said. “But it’s cool for Grace, I guess.”
&nb
sp; Wilhelmina did not care. She and Georgette were probably the only girls at that meet today who couldn’t name a single Out of Touch song. Black girls just don’t do white boy bands. But it also wouldn’t have mattered who messaged Wilhelmina or who called her in the middle of the freaking night (or who was waiting for her in the stands); all she would think about today was gymnastics. She was so sick of the fact that she was the one who knew where she was and how important it was for her to be right here, right now, and yet she was also the one who was almost certainly going to get screwed out of her rightful spot on the team.
Wilhelmina didn’t like them poking fun at Grace. She didn’t like Grace, but she respected her. At least Grace was in it for the gymnastics.
Wilhelmina shot Camille another dirty look where she sat next to Georgette. Thanks, Comeback Cammie. So nice of you to point out the futility of my own comeback, right in the middle of the Olympic trials.
Annie was still looking at her phone, holding it out to Maria, one seat over.
Then, since she couldn’t take the unfairness anymore, Wilhelmina plopped her butt down right on the folding chair that had been serving as a stage for Annie’s phone. She sat so quickly, Annie almost didn’t have time to pull her arm away before it got snapped beneath Wilhelmina’s muscly behind. The two girls shut up, and that was good.
There was an inch for her somewhere. Leigh had messed up on the beam. Grace had a few falls in Nationals and Classics earlier this summer. Georgette was not as good as either of them. But Wilhelmina had spent many hours with a calculator, adding up DODs and potential execution scores. A few mess-ups would not guarantee she could beat these girls. Every gymnast had a few mess-ups every meet, Wilhelmina included. There might be an inch for her to sneak into one of the top three spots. But it was narrow.
And of course this didn’t account for anyone else. Every girl here was trying to wiggle her way into that inch.
She watched in silence as Georgette, then Grace, then Annie performed nearly flawless beam routines. Samantha mounted.
A tear started in the middle of Wilhelmina’s heart, pulling the two sides of it farther and farther apart with each high score.