by Caela Carter
So she said, “I’ll ask Andrew about the Olympics.”
Her mom had perked up immediately. “Okay!” she’d said. “I’ll meet you at the gym after school tomorrow and we can ask him together.”
And Andrew had come up with the plan to make her a specialist. He’d explained that was how Camille could graduate from regular high school and still have some time for studies (and her boyfriend, though he didn’t say that). She’d be a vaulter.
Camille’s heart had broken: she loved the floor and the beam. She didn’t want to be only a vaulter.
But when Andrew told her mom about the vault, how it had the highest DODs and the lowest chance for deductions, how Katja had consistently chosen the top vaulter for all Olympics and Worlds teams for the past ten years, whether that gymnast could contribute anything else or not, Camille knew it was over. The smile on her mother’s face was huge.
“See, Cammie?” she’d said. “It’s perfect. You can train part-time and still make me an Olympic Mom.”
Camille had swallowed and her cheeks had burned with the lie she was about to tell. “Sounds perfect,” she said.
“Let’s talk about going professional,” her mother had said immediately. “You have such a great story with the car accident, I’m sure we could get your name out there quickly.”
Camille had looked at Andrew, panicked, and he’d come to her rescue right away.
“There’s no rush here,” he said. “The Olympics are still a few years away, and most of the public will not be interested in the athletes until it’s over. A lot can happen in a year, as you both know. Camille should hold on to her NCAA eligibility until she makes the team.”
“Good idea!” Camille had said. “Might as well play it safe.”
And so they’d struck a deal. Camille would keep her NCAA status and she’d become a vaulter. She wasn’t worried.
Andrew had never had an Olympian. Andrew would never get her to the Olympics. That’s what Camille had thought. That’s what it seemed like back then. Camille didn’t know she was committing to sacrificing her future. She thought she was only buying her house a few months of peace.
WILHELMINA
They were walking down the hall, side-by-side. It was a comfortable silence. Wilhelmina’s legs were tingly from the ice and Monica’s were bright red.
Monica’s voice was repeating over and over in Wilhelmina’s brain. Just don’t fall.
Kerry would love that goal: it was in Monica’s power and control. It was a goal no one else could ruin.
Could Wilhelmina get through a meet with a goal like that? It’d been years, a lifetime, since she thought that way. But Monica and Kerry were right. If she didn’t find a goal like that, she was here depending on other gymnasts messing up just a little bit more than she did. Wilhelmina couldn’t control how much they messed up. She could only keep herself on her feet.
Just don’t fall.
Was that enough?
She looked down at Monica’s floppy ponytail. Was this girl a genius or an underachiever?
They reached Wilhelmina’s room and she could still hear Camille’s voice going-going-going on the other side of the door. Wilhelmina froze. “Hey,” she said. “Do you want to come to Leigh’s room with me?”
Monica made a face. Wilhelmina thought it must be confusion but it looked more like disgust.
“Katja’s doing some interview on espnW. I guess I want to see what she’s thinking. . . .” Wilhelmina smiled.
“You do?” Monica asked. “I didn’t think you’d care about stuff like that.”
“Everyone needs to care about stuff like that,” Wilhelmina said.
Monica seemed to shrink. “Oh,” she said.
Oh. Like Monica didn’t care about what Katja thought. Maybe Monica was only able to focus on herself so well because the rest of the gymnastics world was fair to her.
Oh.
Wilhelmina forced her eyes not to roll. Gymnastics had been so unfair to her. Life was being so unfair to her. How could she explain that to this little gymnast without sounding like a whiner? It was awful that no one ever understood the particular kind of unfairness that plagued Wilhelmina’s gymnastics. It should be obvious just to look at her.
“Well, I do care. I want to hear what she’ll say. So . . . come with me?” Wilhelmina said. “I can’t stand anyone else.”
“Okay,” Monica said. “Let’s do it.”
There were already a few girls gathered in the hotel room, and several more wandered in just as Wilhelmina and Monica arrived.
Wilhelmina hovered inside the doorway as the rest of the gymnasts huddled together on the two beds and the floor between them. She watched them link arms, giggle, gossip, theorize about whom Katja loved, whom she hated, what she would say. But they talked about other things, too. She listened to them compare fan pages and celebrity mentions and pictures of crushes. She watched them tease and brag and pout. She observed them as if they were animals on the Discovery Channel: a totally foreign species to Wilhelmina’s world.
It wasn’t just that she didn’t give a flying split leap about white boy bands. It was that she, and apparently she alone, didn’t give a flying split leap about boys. She was focused on her gymnastics. Her mind was so firmly rooted in her meet tomorrow that it didn’t even matter that she had a freaking awesome boy waiting to give her a huge hug after it was all over. She was making him wait.
Wilhelmina looked around the room for the gymnasts who might beat her. Maria Vasquez and Samantha Soloman sat on the corner of Leigh’s bed giggling and whispering, even though they were both twenty-two and should know how to focus. Leigh Becker was showing something on her iPhone to Georgette Paulson. Grace Cooper, who sat by herself in the office chair at the side of the room crunching ice cube after ice cube between her teeth, could not tear her eyes from the ticker on the side of the TV screen that was slowly scrolling through women’s Olympic updates in track and swimming to “Gymnastics Trials First Day Breakdown with Katja Minkovski.”
Maybe there was one other pure gymnast in the room.
Grace looked lonely, like Wilhelmina felt. Her legs were much too skinny as she kicked back and forth in the black chair. Her wrists were barely thicker than the cubes of ice she popped into her mouth. Wilhelmina had mortified herself outside those elevators earlier that night. She had thought Grace might be as mad about Leigh’s triple-twister as Wilhelmina was. Wilhelmina had been so concerned about that vault that she hadn’t remembered until right now what was weird: Grace was leaving dinner with a tray full of food.
Wilhelmina watched the bones in Grace’s ankles shift as she swung her chair back and forth. A familiar sickness climbed into her throat. Wilhelmina suspected what was going on. She’d seen it over and over again in so many gymnasts for so many years. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it.
Wilhelmina found a spot on the wall next to the door and leaned against it. She pretended to watch the screen while instead she watched the chummy competition around her. At least Camille wasn’t there. Maybe Camille was getting ready for bed. Maybe Wilhelmina could stay in Leigh and Grace’s room long enough to avoid Camille all night.
Then the door slammed and in she came: purple pj’s, wet, frizzy hair piled on top of her head, tiny star necklace hanging around her neck. Damn.
LEIGH
“Yeah, he was totally flirting with you,” Georgette confirmed. This plan was working perfectly. Grace was still pissed, Leigh thought. But she didn’t care. Grace’s feelings didn’t matter anymore. And as far as everyone else knew, Leigh was straight.
Georgette passed Leigh’s iPhone back to her, and Leigh smiled. She was having fun with Georgette. Leigh took in the long, black braids down her back and her high, dark cheekbones and her vanilla-smelling body lotion and wondered if Georgette might be a good roommate in Rome.
“Flirting? You think?�
�� Leigh asked. She fake-squealed. She snuck a look around to Grace, who was sitting about three feet away from them, to see if she had heard.
Instead she caught a glimpse of a curvy body in purple pajamas.
Camille was here!
Leigh’s breath caught. She lost herself for a second, staring at the way her hair was pulled back from her face, the way her necklace rested in the crook of her collarbone, the way the satin fabric moved across her silky skin.
“Totally!” Georgette was saying. “I’m so jealous! I wish someone famous would write on my fan page. Like, someone I actually find hot. Not, like, the governor’s husband or whatever.”
Leigh shook her head to clear it and tried to give Georgette a laugh. Probably a little too late.
Camille was in her room. Leigh’s room. Right now.
It wasn’t going to be like it had been in Leigh’s fantasies last night. When Camille had sat down with Leigh on her bed and told her she was dumping her boyfriend because she’d realized she thought Leigh was so much hotter. And then had laid down next to her and . . .
But Camille was here. In Leigh’s room—well, her room for the weekend. Her feet touching Leigh’s carpet. Her hand on Leigh’s wall.
Leigh had to stop staring at her. Leigh’s eyes fell on her roommate sitting alone in the office chair.
Grace was scowling, but that was usual.
Leigh had invited all of these people into their room to make Grace squirm. She’d done it to prove, once and for all, that though Grace might be winning in the gym, Leigh was winning everywhere else. (And, okay, a little bit to see if maybe Camille would show up and say something to her about her vault or the fan message or anything.)
Grace spun on her chair and chomped down on a handful of ice.
Leigh wanted to smile, but didn’t. She was surprised to see how well this little get-together had worked. She didn’t know that gymnasts had this kind of socializing in them, not in the middle of the biggest meet of their lives anyway. There were so many gymnasts she deeply respected in this room—Camille and Samantha and Maria—Leigh decided it had to be a good thing. They all needed a break. They needed to turn their brains off for a minute before performing tomorrow. They needed a reminder that their competitors were also people.
Then Leigh felt Georgette squeeze her upper arm. “It’s starting,” she whispered.
Katja’s face filled the television screen that Leigh had hooked up to her computer. They were suddenly all silent and attentive like good little girls. Good little gymnasts.
CAMILLE
Camille thought about approaching Wilhelmina right there in that crowded, chatty, giggly room. She thought about walking up to her where she stood frowning against the wall by the door and explaining that it had been a mistake. But what would she say? “I don’t want to go to the Olympics anyway”? “I sort of wish you’d beat me so that they’d choose you over me”? Wilhelmina wouldn’t believe any of that. Plus, she had been kicking butt all day ever since Camille had made her so angry. Maybe Camille should let her stay angry until the end of the meet. If Leigh’s vault somehow meant Wilhelmina got to go to Rome and Camille got to stay home, she’d try to explain after that.
It was awful that Wilhelmina was mad at her now. The list of people who hated her always seemed like it was growing.
Camille shot Wilhelmina a weak smile, then plopped on the floor in front of Samantha and Maria. “Hey, fogey,” Samantha said, nudging Camille with a knee.
She shouldn’t be here, in this room. Katja loved her. Her vaults were quick and easy and fun and probably enough to get her into the Olympics. And she didn’t want to go. She should not be here surrounded by these hopeful gymnasts. She could be killing one of their dreams and making herself miserable in the process. Everyone in this happy room should be as mad at her as Wilhelmina was right now. But, the wrath of a gaggle of gymnasts seemed easier to take than the incessant silence of her boyfriend/ex/whatever-he-was-now.
Still, maybe she should leave. Maybe she should stop trying to pretend to be one of these girls, to want what they wanted, to think how they thought. Sixteen-year-old Camille belonged in this room, but that girl was gone. Camille moved toward the door.
Then, suddenly, the crowd hushed. They all seemed to sit straighter. Some even folded their hands.
“It’s good to be here, Jim,” Katja Minkovski said. “Thank you for taking the time to pay attention to our little sport of gymnastics.”
Jim giggled. Several of the girls giggled.
Camille almost retched.
Katja was going on national TV or whatever this was to call gymnastics little?
Somehow they were all supposed to believe it was little? Like just because the athletes were young and small, the sport was insignificant?
Why had they—why had she—given up their whole life for a sport if the figurehead was going to call it little?
And then, even though she knew it might make some more people hate her, Camille stormed out.
MONICA
Does Katja ever even think of me? Monica wondered as the wrinkly face filled the screen and she explained her role as Olympic team coordinator.
“Each year the rules are different. They are set by the USAG, the committee that determines the rules for American gymnastics in particular. Not the Olympics. Or the FIG, the international organization. So different countries do it differently. This year there is the guaranteed spot and the trials televised from beginning to end. When the selections must be made, it will be quite, quite difficult. I am used to putting the puzzle together with more time . . . and freedom . . .”
Everyone in this room seemed to have an opinion about Katja. Or a relationship with Katja. Or a theory about how Katja felt about her.
Of course Katja knew Monica. She’d known her forever. Monica was on the national team and went to all the camps. She followed all of Katja’s rules about food (the right amount, the right kinds) and sleep (eight hours every night) and workouts (seven hours, six days a week, rest on the rest day) and life (only short family vacations, no other sports, no dangerous leisure activities like skiing or horseback riding, plan your calendar around the gym season).
But Monica had never wondered what Katja might think of her.
Jim laughed, like Katja was being charming, while she talked about having her pick and how it was difficult to choose the perfect Olympic team without Olympic selection camp. Monica knew what Katja liked about camp. All the gymnasts knew what Katja liked about camp. But Katja didn’t say it. She didn’t say that camp allowed her to make her choices in private. She didn’t say that it allowed her to play favorites without the rest of the country catching on.
“Wouldn’t you pick the top girls anyway?” Jim asked.
“Usually yes, of course. But sometimes . . . the meet goes differently.”
Monica didn’t know what Katja was trying to say this time, but it was something. Something real. A hidden meaning hung on her words.
Jim didn’t see it.
“Well, how do you think our girls did today?” he chirped.
“The meet, so far, is going well,” Katja said.
The girls around Monica were still, so still, not even breathing.
“When you see a girl perform to the level that is expected, that is what makes my job the easiest.”
“Aha,” Jim said, like he understood what she was saying. But he didn’t. There’s no way. Monica barely understood. And it wasn’t the accent.
“She’s speaking in code,” Wilhelmina whispered under her breath. Monica had to agree.
“And can you give us a sense of who that was?” Jim asked.
“Grace Cooper did quite well today,” Katja said. “And Georgette Paulson.”
Of course, Monica thought. And Leigh.
But Katja didn’t say Leigh.
“Still, they’ll bot
h need to do as well or better tomorrow to impress me. You see, Jim, we look for consistency. We don’t look for who is doing well in one meet only. We look for who is getting better every day. Who is on the up instead of the down. The Olympics are a two-week process. If you are already tired at the trials, you will never make it through the ultimate test. This is why I prefer to have a selection camp after the official trials. It will be much harder to choose girls with stamina when we have only one meet to go off of.”
Jim didn’t seem to be paying much attention, but the girls in the room were so silent, so alert, like they were eating Katja’s words for dessert.
“I see,” Jim said. “So you don’t want any bad surprises.”
“Yes,” Katja said. “We don’t want those. But if they are going to happen, we want them to happen now. We’d rather weed out a bad surprise at this point than be faced with it in the middle of the Olympics.”
Some of the girls sucked in a breath. Monica could feel her shoulders tense. “Weeding out a bad surprise” meant weeding out a gymnast. A person. Katja and Jim both seemed to forget that.
“Also,” Katja was saying, “we don’t always want good surprises.”
“Huh?” Jim said. He tilted his head at Katja. But he was still smiling.
“You see, a good surprise to you is someone like young Monica Chase.”
Monica felt all eyes go to her suddenly. She was itchy. Her bones might have torn out of her skin, she was so uncomfortable.
“A good surprise to you, I say, because I am not surprised by Miss Chase today. I follow her. She does what she is supposed to. I have seen her get better at one camp and one meet and one camp and one meet until today when she looks like a true elite. Like a star.”
Monica’s face was on fire. Her throat was twisting in two. She couldn’t get a breath down.
Katja was saying good things about her. Good things!
Why did this feel so awful?
“But other girls, they do surprisingly well, and I have not seen them along the way. I have not seen the slow progression of developing the skills. How do I know it’s not a fluke? If she has been hiding, how do I know I can trust that one to get us the Olympic gold? How do I know if she’s tired? How do I know if she’s peaking at trials? When a girl shows up like this at trials with tricks and routines we did not know were coming, it feels like a slap in the face to my process.”