by Caela Carter
After five more routines, a lifetime of work might come to a close.
She almost wished she could be another kind of gymnast. The kind who would message Dylan Patrick something suggestive tonight to get under Grace’s skin. The kind who would quote that most recent article about Leigh right to her face: Pretty good for a linebacker. She wished she could be the Camille kind of gymnast.
Kerry came up behind Wilhelmina.
“Camille said Katja doesn’t like surprises,” Wilhelmina said. “Which means she’s going to hate me.”
Kerry shook her head. “Katja loves winning. More than anything. You’re going to help her get there.”
“Are you sure? Because—”
But Kerry was shaking her head. “Mina-Mina,” she said. She put a finger to her lips.
“I know,” Wilhelmina said. “I can only control me. I know, I know.” She felt like rolling her eyes. She was the gymnast kind of gymnast, and that was it.
“I’ve trained you well, huh?” Kerry said.
Shut up, Wilhelmina felt like screaming. Why wouldn’t Kerry just tell her once and for all if fourth place would put her on the team? Why wouldn’t anyone tell her that? Why did she always have to remind Mina of her limits instead of making promises?
Kerry smiled. “Go get ’em.”
Wilhelmina walked away from her coach angry, but as soon as her feet hit the podium steps, she felt her blood slow. She’d be mad again in two minutes. For now she was focused.
Life was easiest when the eyes of a stadium were on her.
Wilhelmina spread the white chalk across her palms and the soles of her feet. She wondered why the chalk always had to be white. Organically, chalk was more of a tan or beige, but gymnastics chalk was always bleach white, standing out on her legs and streaking her arms in obvious ways that would go unnoticed on a milky gymnast like Leigh Becker.
That’s what she was thinking about when she heard her name. Chalk. Stupid, trivial stuff. It was nice.
Her brain was similarly clear when the upbeat drumming that preceded her floor music beat into the stadium.
Wilhelmina took two steps and swung each arm in a graceful arc, embracing the stands. She was inviting them to join her. She was ready for their eyes.
Then the keyboard and horns started in an instrumental Motown medley and Wilhelmina took a breath, bounced on her toes, and smiled.
She was off, running halfway from one corner of the mat to the opposite before launching into her first tumbling run. Her hands hit the ground for her roundoff and back handspring, then they didn’t touch it again as her feet and legs propelled her body upside down four successive times in a double layout, double tuck.
The crowd went wild, and when she danced down the length of the square, she heard them begin to pulse with the music. They were clapping. All of them. It didn’t matter what she was going to place on vault or where Grace and Leigh and Georgette were. It didn’t matter who was ahead and who was the star and who was the Comeback Queen and who was the most famous. Right now, as Wilhelmina did a triple full twist, then dropped to the ground and pushed herself back up on her hands, the entire place was watching her. They were cheering for her. Their hearts were beating with hers, their hopes were flying with her as she soared in an Arabian double back at the end of her second tumbling run. She was the star.
Wilhelmina danced to the middle of the mat and pointed both fingers to the top of the crowd as she spun in a triple full turn. Again, the cheers rained down on her.
She somersaulted into a handstand and cartwheeled out of it so that she landed in the corner. She did her dance positions, then paused momentarily before her final tumbling run. She was memorizing the moment. She was holding on to it. She had to. She needed these moments to get her though the rest of the meet. The unfair parts. The awful parts.
And then she flipped her way back across the floor, saluted the judges, and bathed in the applause.
I dare you not to love that surprise, Wilhelmina said to Katja in her head. Kerry had to be right. Camille was just trying to scare her.
There was no way Katja wouldn’t want that floor routine on her team.
LEIGH
Even though her body had been finished competing for more than twenty minutes, Leigh’s heart still beat wildly in her rib cage as she stood next to Grace and smiled at the NBC Sports reporter who pointed a microphone at their mouths.
“So, you did the impossible,” the reporter said, smiling at Leigh. “You beat the Queen of the Vault, scoring higher than Camille Abrams on her signature event. How did that feel?”
These questions were so stupid. How did that feel? It felt right. It felt like destiny.
It felt like relief. Because the vault had the highest point potential, her triple twisting Yurchenko more than made up for her screwups on beam and bars.
Beating her crush had been exactly what Leigh was thinking about as she stood on that vault runway. Proving to herself that she was the best by squashing the score of the girl who gave her electric jolts and goose bumps.
But, of course, she couldn’t say any of that. She had to be sweet for the public.
“Camille is an amazing vaulter,” Leigh heard herself saying with a sheepish giggle. She hoped that Grace and the reporter didn’t notice the way her cheeks turned pink just from saying Camille’s name out loud. “Of course I didn’t set out to beat her. I was just trying to do my best.”
“Well, you certainly did that.” The reporter smiled through too much sticky-looking hot-pink lipstick. “So, how did it feel?”
That stupid question again.
“Fun,” Leigh said. “The higher you jump, the more fun it is.” She laughed again.
Leigh felt all puffed up and powerful and, even though Grace was still winning (for now), she felt superior. But she was giggling shyly.
Apparently That Girl was also a liar.
“So, you two find yourself in pretty much the exact same positions you were in after the first day of Nationals,” the reporter’s raspy voice went on. “Leigh, will you be gunning for Grace tomorrow? Grace, what will you be doing to try to put some space between the two of you? Or would you both just be happy to make the team?”
“Oh, no,” Leigh heard herself continue to lie. “It doesn’t really matter.”
She wanted to beat Grace. She wanted to beat everyone.
“Grace?” the reporter said. “It must be difficult to always be competing when you two are so close.”
Grace laughed one staccato ha that was so out of character, it made Leigh turn and pay attention to what she was saying. “Well, we’re friends. But we aren’t close-close. If you know what I mean. There’s nothing . . . like, scandalous or anything going on here. I’m not like that.”
It was like a hammer hitting Leigh in the stomach.
Grace’s face flinched into a nasty look and just as quickly it melted back into a sugary-sweet smile.
“We’re best friends,” Leigh blurted. Although she didn’t feel like they were at the moment.
She narrowed her eyes at Grace, trying to make them say, What are you doing? Why would you try to destroy me right in the middle of the Olympic trials?
“Yes,” Grace said. “We’re best friends . . . we’re only friends. Nothing more.”
Leigh almost choked. It was like being stabbed in the back right in front of her face.
“Okay . . .” the reporter said slowly.
What had happened? Only a few minutes ago they were working together to trip up Monica. That whole plot had been Grace’s idea and entirely for Leigh’s benefit. Now, suddenly, Grace was trying to destroy Leigh?
“Well, you’re on top now, Grace,” the reporter said, trying to get her bearings. “What’s your strategy for tomorrow?”
Leigh barely listened as Grace muttered the standard things about hard work and focus
and doing her best.
It was a crock. Grace didn’t only try to do her best. She tried to keep every other gymnast down.
“Thanks so much, ladies. Best of luck tomorrow,” the reporter said, and the two of them waved identically perky waves at the camera.
As soon as it disappeared, Grace rolled her eyes at Leigh. “I hate those questions,” she said. “Especially the how do you feel question.”
She smiled.
Leigh’s jaw dropped. “What was that?” she demanded.
“What?” Grace said, innocent.
“Why the hell would you say that? ‘We’re not close-close,’ ‘I’m not like that’?”
Grace shrugged, wide-eyed, smiling.
Leigh was going to slap her. If it weren’t for the cameras still in the vicinity, her hand would be imprinted on Grace’s face.
“What’s wrong?” Grace said, too high, too nasally, too fake. “We are only friends, right?”
She started to walk away. Leigh reached out and caught Grace’s wrist with her palm, spinning her too hard so that they would be face-to-face. “Explain,” she spat.
“We’re only friends,” Grace said. “We aren’t even best friends, I guess.”
“What?” Leigh asked. “Why?”
“You should have told me,” Grace said.
“I did tell you,” Leigh said. “You’re like the only person I’ve ever told. And you just said it to that reporter—”
“Not that. God, no one cares about that, okay, Leigh?”
Leigh lowered her eyebrows. She told Grace everything. Everything except her crush on Camille. But there’s no way Grace knew about that.
What was Grace talking about?
It was for only an instant that the best friends stood like that, staring and unseeing. Then a shadow fell across their tension. They looked up to see Ted standing above them, his hand on Monica’s shoulder.
“Get your things,” he said. “You’ll eat with Monica and me.”
Had her dad found the Dylan Patrick messages? Was Grace mad now, a whole day later, that Leigh had tried to have a little bit of fun?
It didn’t make any sense. Leigh had sent that message to Dylan last night, last night before the trials even started, last night when they were . . . friends, when she was just . . . Leigh.
Leigh shrunk under Ted’s gaze. Her heart cowered behind a rib. She didn’t like Ted. She was tiny in his presence, no matter how well she’d performed that day. And even though her vault was great, Leigh had had far from a perfect day.
Ted put his other hand on Grace’s shoulder.
“You were great today, Monica,” Leigh said, purposefully leaving out Grace. “I mean, don’t worry about the vault. You were so amazing on everything else.”
The mousy girl tilted her head and gave Leigh a confused look. Grace and Ted walked away.
“Yeah, sorry,” Leigh said. “I know how it feels when you fall. I shouldn’t have said anything. I can’t stop thinking about my messed-up beam.”
Monica shook her head.
“What?” Leigh said.
“Never mind,” Monica said.
“No, what is it?” Leigh pushed.
“I heard what you said about me earlier,” Monica said.
“Huh?” Leigh said.
“What’s wrong with you? You can’t just pretend . . . You’re . . . you and Grace . . . you’re . . . mean.”
“Oh,” Leigh said. The butt glue. The snickering. Had she really done that? It felt like someone else had said those things and smiled that nasty smile. “I . . . I’m sorry.”
Monica was still shaking her head.
Leigh felt even smaller than she had with Ted. Like she was shrinking until she was Monica’s size. Like she didn’t know where or who she was anymore.
“I’m sorry,” Leigh said again. “It wasn’t . . . nice.”
Monica snorted, then flinched at her own noise.
Leigh faltered. She didn’t want Monica to be so mad. She didn’t know how to explain that the girl who had made fun of Monica wasn’t who she really was. That outside the meets she’d always been nice. That she sometimes had issues with her own butt glue.
Ted called Monica.
Leigh watched the three of them disappear from the gym. Ted, Monica, Grace: they were all mad at her.
A terrifying thought rippled through Leigh’s body: What if That Girl wasn’t someone she liked?
STANDINGS
AT THE END OF DAY 1
1.
Grace Cooper
60.705
2.
Leigh Becker
60.100
3.
Georgette Paulson
60.025
4.
Wilhelmina Parker
59.850
5.
Maria Vasquez
56.950
6.
Kristin Jackson
56.670
7.
Monica Chase
56.655
8.
Annie Simms
56.455
9.
Natalie Rice
54.050
10.
Camille Abrams
29.985
11.
Samantha Soloman
29.980
12.
Olivia Corsica
29.738
Evening Limbo
GRACE
Grace stood, frozen, and stared. There was a buffet of food for the gymnasts and their coaches spread out across the table along the back wall of the hotel conference room.
Grace gawked at the full salad bar with every type of vegetable that grew out of the ground, chunks of tofu and freshly roasted turkey breast, a platter of grilled chicken decorated with bright yellow lemons, a basket of whole-grain breads and rolls, and bowls of red and green apples, fuzzy peaches, glistening nectarines. The options were healthy, but the sheer amount of food was terrifying. Each basket and plate and platter was brimming over. Each fruit was plump, each veggie plentiful, each roll the size of Grace’s fist.
It was such a cruel thing to do to athletes in a sport where a few pounds could mean the difference between being shattered and being immortalized.
Grace was not the only gymnast standing four feet from the table and staring at the food.
She knew that almost every gymnast had food issues. Every one of them could recite her weight down to the hundredth decimal. They all dreamed of pizza and candy and doughnuts when they slept. Each one had her own struggles trying to be healthy and wondering if it was even possible to be healthy when she thought this much about food. Grace knew she was not alone in all of this.
But Grace also knew that her food issues were worse.
For now, she blended in. Or, rather, the fact that her face could never blend in helped her mask the shrinking of her body. She looked like the Chinese-Chinese gymnasts, who were always skinny. So, as she stood with several other girls, no one noticed that she was by far the slimmest among them. It was the one gift her mother had left her: the ability to wither into wires undercover.
The coaches were finished at the food table. They’d selected their
food easily, like normal people, and taken a table in front of the girls’.
But Grace’s dad sat at the back table by himself, not with the other coaches. Grace knew she would have to join him. So would Monica. Ted didn’t like to let his gymnasts eat at the table with the other girls because he was afraid that the chatting and laughter would distract them from the importance of eating correctly, eating the combination of protein and grains and calories that would lead to higher release moves and tumbling passes. If it weren’t for all the other people in the room, Grace’s dad would probably make her plate himself. But they were both a little embarrassed about the amount of control he wielded on Grace’s life.
She grabbed a dish, feeling the cool edge of the porcelain against her palm like the barrel of a gun.
This is going to be hard, Grace thought.
Because while Grace’s father thought he was controlling everything, while Grace was happy to let him control most things, there was one thing he knew nothing about.
She glanced over the white warm-up fabric on her shoulder and saw her father sitting at the back table, staring at her from beneath bushy blond eyebrows as if to say, Get over here already.
Monica wasn’t even in the conference room yet, so it wasn’t like Grace was the only one keeping him waiting.
There was no way around it today. Not with everyone here. Not with her father staring at her that way. Grace was going to have to eat.
She looked down at her chest. That’s what you want anyway, right? she asked her heart.
Grace made a salad. She piled spinach and tofu and turkey and broccoli and cauliflower and hearts of palm onto her plate. She dressed it with only a little balsamic vinegar, no olive oil. She grabbed a bottle of water and added a small roll that she had no intention of actually eating to the side of her plate.
As she carried her tray back to the table at the back of the room, she passed the one where all the girls were sitting. Leigh’s head was thrown back in laughter as she listened to a story Maria was telling about the last Olympic trials.
Well, Grace didn’t want to talk to her anymore anyway. Grace was done with friends.