by Caela Carter
Camille hadn’t paid attention to the rest of the names. She hadn’t realized that she’d been placed opposite Grace and Leigh and Georgette and the others who would likely be named her teammates later this evening.
Her heart turned heavy. Leigh’s vault wouldn’t help her after all. There was nothing she could do anymore.
Camille felt her face betray her. She smiled back. She nodded. She said, “Thank you.” It was a lie. So was the smile. Why did she always have to be so obedient?
Camille joined the other gymnasts who gathered in the gray cave under the bleachers, waiting to be announced for a second time. Some of them hugged each other the way they did yesterday. Some of them stood still with their hands clasped, praying or meditating. Some of them stretched and jumped up and down. Some of them chatted in whispers.
Camille leaned against the wall. Her heart beat wildly. Her eyes spun in her head.
What could she do? Katja said she’d be an Olympian and so that was it. One vault would seal her fate.
Unless I don’t go over it.
If only vault was first. If only she could march right out of the gate and immediately launch herself into this dream she didn’t want anymore. If only she didn’t have to get through two hours of self-torture before obediently committing herself to this dismal Olympic future.
Camille didn’t want to be a weapon or a key. She wanted to be a person. A gymnast, yes. But a person even more.
When Camille watched those NCAA meets on TV, she rarely looked at the actual competitors. Instead, she watched the sidelines. She watched as a group of young women acted like a sponge, enveloping the competitor who had just dismounted from beam or floor. She watched the line of athletes on the sideline of the floor who waved their arms and shimmied their shoulders and kicked their legs, dancing in unison with the one member of their team who was competing. Camille wanted a team to dance with.
So maybe she didn’t want to go over the vault.
But she had just decided she would!
It was so exhausting.
Camille sunk into a sitting position on the floor. How could they still be here? How could this meet have not even started yet?
Camille saw Wilhelmina chatting with Samantha on the side of the crowd and she turned her head away. The last thing she needed was to see the fire in Wilhelmina’s eyes right now.
When two blue sneakers appeared next to her eyes, she was sure it was Wilhelmina coming over to yell at her some more.
She looked up hesitantly, but it wasn’t her roommate.
It was Leigh. America’s Golden Child. Grace’s number two. Despite the fact that everyone was predicting that all three of them would be on the Olympic team, Camille had barely ever spoken to Grace or Leigh. They were only a few years younger than her, but in gym time, they were a different generation.
Right now, Leigh looked down on her with wide eyes and a concerned smile. “Are you—are you okay?” she mumbled.
Camille shook her head no. Though she would deny it to her mother or Bobby, or even Wilhelmina, she didn’t owe this gymnast, this one who had actually beaten her vault score, anything.
Leigh sat cross-legged next to Camille. “Is this okay?” she asked. “I just thought, you know, you helped me out earlier today, so maybe I could help you out, if you want, I mean.”
Camille looked at her. She was wearing barely any makeup, and her dark blonde hair was in a simple ponytail and almost as frizzy as Camille’s. She was pretty, but in some ways she was regular-girl pretty, not gymnast pretty. She had the scores of a young gymnast with the body of an old one.
“You go to high school, right?” Camille asked. She’d read this whole article in Sports Illustrated about how Leigh was single-handedly improving the face of gymnastics by being a balanced leader, by going to high school, and, most importantly, by actually eating. The article ignored the fact that there had been a mix of muscle among the stick-skinny gymnasts for a decade now.
The article made Camille feel invisible. Camille had enjoyed it.
Leigh nodded.
“Do you think that makes your life more normal?”
Leigh rolled her eyes. She leaned back against the concrete wall next to Camille. “I don’t know. I mean . . . I have some normal friends. You know, who aren’t gym ones? So, I guess. But . . .”
“But what?” Camille asked.
“But I still always wonder, you know? What it would be like to be one of them. To be normal. To only work out to stay in shape, to get to hang out after school, or try a new sport each season? To worry about your grades and stuff? To be able to tell . . . We all wonder these things, I guess.”
Camille nodded slowly. I know that answer, she thought. I’m probably the only one here who knows that answer. Maybe that’s why it was so hard this time.
“So . . . what’s wrong?” Leigh asked again.
Camille shuddered, but she said it. “It’s hard to make a comeback,” she said.
Leigh raised her eyebrows. “But you’re killing it! You’re the face of comebacks. I mean, do you see all of these posters? People love you. And your vault—I mean, I know what happened yesterday but my vault isn’t, like, consistent or whatever. I think I’m gonna do an Amanar today anyway. Oh . . . I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Um . . . So yeah, your vault is, like, the best. Or whatever. Or . . . yeah.”
Camille was almost shaking. “No,” she said. “I don’t mean it’s hard to get your tricks back. That’s not easy, but that’s the part everyone knows about. It’s so much harder than that.” Now that the words were coming out of her mouth, Camille couldn’t stop them. “To do it. Just to do it. It’s almost impossible and it’s almost impossible not to. To give up that normal life once you’ve had it. To go back to gymnastics but change your personality and body and style and to be entirely unsure who you are . . .” Leigh was nodding. Leigh shouldn’t be nodding. Leigh shouldn’t have to hear this. Still, Camille couldn’t stop. “To have felt your body break . . . to know that gymnastics almost killed you once . . . and to still . . .”
“Line up!” The meet coordinator’s voice interrupted their moment. “Get in order in your heats and line up!”
Leigh was staring at Camille wide-eyed, though. Like she was shocked.
“Don’t tell anyone, okay? Please?” Camille asked her. “It’ll just—”
Leigh interrupted. “Don’t worry. I have . . . secrets . . . too.”
Camille nodded. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone about your vault plans today.”
And she wouldn’t. Her face was already on fire. Her heart was a stone in her chest. She shouldn’t have told Leigh all of this. Camille had scarred her, scarred another gymnast before she’d even managed to apologize to Wilhelmina.
Leigh stood and reached down to pull Camille to her feet. Camille turned to line up with the other heat when she felt Leigh’s arms thrown over her body in a tight, desperate hug.
“I had no idea,” Leigh whispered, “what you were going through.”
“Look,” Camille said, wiggling out of the hug. “Don’t think about it, okay? Don’t worry about it. It’s not that bad.”
Leigh let her go abruptly and they lined up.
Stupid, stupid. Camille told herself. All she’d done since she got here was rain negativity on the happy gymnasts.
Camille marched behind Annie, out of the dark cave and into the applause. The other gymnasts would suck it in, savor it. It made Camille shrink inside herself.
One fan in the crowd started the “Comeback Cammie!” cheer.
Camille turned to smile at him the way she was supposed to. And her eyes went wide. He was in the first row. Green shirt that highlighted piercing eyes. Curly brown hair. Freckled face. Wide smile.
Bobby was here?
WILHELMINA
Wilhelmina realized she was free. Without Katj
a and the Olympics on her mind, she could focus on herself. She’d do this meet differently.
Today was about Wilhelmina and Wilhelmina only. And that magic 9.5.
Later, when the meet was over and they were all out to dinner—Wilhemina and her parents and Kerry and, she guessed, Davion and his brother, whose presence would be a surprise to everyone else—she and Kerry would have to accept her family’s hugs of congratulations and be grateful to them on top of the impossible-to-avoid disappointment. But then Wilhelmina would announce her retirement to all of them. She knew her parents wanted the Olympics for her, too. She knew that Kerry had worked as hard as she had, or maybe harder, and that she would love to bring another athlete to the Olympics, even as an alternate. She knew that Davion, while he might be happy, would also be worried that she was leaving this dream behind for him, somehow. That it was his fault. They would all worry that she was just plain quitting, that one day she would regret it. And she would have to explain that there was nothing to be gained for her physically or emotionally or spiritually by busting her butt invisibly while the Olympics happened nearby. They might not understand. They might never understand. But the whole thing would be easier if Wilhelmina made sure that everyone had fun today. Especially Wilhelmina herself.
(And later-later she’d have a different kind of fun. A kissing kind of fun. That would get her through the day.)
Wilhelmina led her new squad of gymnasts out of the locker room and onto the floor, and the crowd erupted as they marched toward the vault. The first thing she did was scan the crowd. It was hard to make out anything up there, in the dark above the lights that shined down on the gym floor, but Wilhelmina found them anyway, in the second row where she knew they would be. Two brown faces in a sea of mostly white ones with two smiles that lit up the stands. Her parents.
She waved. She raised both of her hands over her head and waved like a maniac, a happy maniac.
She’d never done that before. She’d never bothered to think about her parents in the stands when there was a scoreboard to worry about.
Next, she found Monica stretching her legs on the podium. Monica would be up first, but Wilhelmina wouldn’t be watching. She liked Monica. Monica was quiet like Wilhelmina but smart like Kerry. Monica had given Wilhelmina the key to getting through this meet now that the dream was dead.
Wilhelmina plopped down next to where Monica was stretching, swinging her feet off the podium.
“Where’s your coach?” Wilhelmina asked.
Monica shrugged and looked around. Her eyes landed on Grace, who was sitting slumped in a chair with the two girls’ coach leaning over her.
“Oh.” Wilhelmina wanted to tell Monica that she was up first, so Ted should be talking to her. She wanted to tell the girl that she needed a new coach.
But instead she lost herself for a second, studying Grace’s skinny legs as they hung off the folding chair. Wilhelmina swore she could see through Grace’s quadriceps to her femur. Even when Grace was bent over, her hip bones were visible. Wilhelmina didn’t want to know that Grace had a problem, but she knew. Watching Grace toss her entire lunch in the garbage today—and spit out the bite that was already in her mouth—was only the confirmation. Grace might try to claim she didn’t eat her full lunch today because of nerves, but Wilhelmina could see all her bones, and they told a different story. Wilhelmina had seen too many gymnasts end up out of the sport, in hospitals, screwed for life because of what gymnastics did to their relationship with food.
“Does she ever . . .” Wilhelmina tried. Monica looked at her.
. . . eat?
But she couldn’t finish the question.
It would do no good. Grace was winning the meet and Katja had pretty much told Wilhelmina she had no chance this morning. If Wilhelmina reported Grace, Katja wouldn’t believe her. She’d think it was some sticky political plan. And if Wilhelmina didn’t say anything about watching Grace spit that one bite of sandwich into the garbage over the top of her lunch, Grace might . . . She could . . . It didn’t matter. Wilhelmina couldn’t do anything about it. Besides, today was supposed to be about Mina-Mina-Mina.
“I wanted to wish you good luck,” she finally said.
“You too,” Monica said. She added, “Thanks for talking to me last night, too. I needed to be put in my place.”
Wilhelmina laughed. “You’re the one who helped me.”
Monica had opened her mouth, like she was going to question this when they both heard Ted’s heavy voice say her name. “Monica. You’re up first. Go chalk up.”
Monica climbed the podium and Wilhelmina turned her head. She heard the crowd clap politely when the announcer called Monica’s name, but she didn’t register anything else. She paced with her back to the vault and meditated on her own Amanar. She’d be next.
She wouldn’t watch anyone else. She wouldn’t think about anyone else: not their gymnastics, not their fan pages, not their eating disorders, not their boyfriends. She’d only have one thought all day: nine-point-five, nine-point-five, nine-point-five.
Then Wilhelmina was on the podium, her toes lined up on the end of the runway, staring at the vault. There you are, old friend, she thought. It seemed impossible that she had stood in this exact position only twenty-four short hours ago with stars in her eyes and dreams so big, they didn’t fit in her heart. How many times had she stood on a vaulting runway like this for the past twelve years? How many times had she stared down the mat and envisioned herself landing a perfect ten, the way she was right now? How many times had she dreamed those big dreams?
And it came down to this: to these ten seconds that were about to begin the last meet of her life.
MONICA
Monica felt her smile disappear as soon as Wilhelmina’s feet hit the mat and stayed right where she put them. Monica was clapping. But her heart was sinking farther into her tiny frame until it was almost hiding behind her spinal cord.
It would be harder than she thought, competing with this squad, she realized.
She turned to glance at Ted and Grace, their heads bent together, Grace’s perfect black braids so shiny they almost reflected Ted’s blond crew cut.
She had been repeating her goal in her head: One person. Beat at least one person.
She’d performed her DTY well and then said it to herself again and again. One person. One person. One person.
But the people she had a chance to beat were far away on bars. And she was here with the stars on vault. Monica knew it was flattering to be placed in this squad. Just like it was a compliment when Katja had mentioned her last night. She knew that Katja had big plans for her one day, and that was thrilling. But it was all sort of weird and uncomfortable and embarrassing.
Everyone was wondering why Monica was in this squad.
But she only had to keep her mind on her own goal. She only had to fake her confidence. She only had to pretend.
Monica saw Ted release Grace’s shoulders from his grasp and send her toward the podium.
Go wish her good luck, Monica told herself. She had to make up for the way Grace had scared her in the lobby of the hotel. She had to make sure Grace knew she couldn’t destroy her.
She’s your teammate! Monica reprimanded herself. Get over it. Go talk to her. Grace was hugging Leigh. They were right next to her. In less than a minute, Grace would climb onto the podium and Monica would be relegated to cheering like a fan instead of whispering good wishes like an equal.
Monica had proven herself as close to equal as she possibly could. Monica was placed in Grace’s squad. The better squad.
Monica turned when Grace and Leigh pulled away.
You have to stop being so afraid of these people.
Finally, just before Grace took her first step up to the podium, Monica pulled on her elbow. “Good luck, teammate,” she squeaked.
God, why did she have to sound so pathetic?
Grace smiled with too many teeth. “Thanks, you too. And”—she shrugged—“sorry your rotation got switched. I hope you’re okay competing with Natalie and them from across the gym. You know, it was really hard on my dad yesterday when we were so far away from each other. They must have figured it would be easier on him if they put you with us.”
Grace gave her another smile and Monica tried to imitate it.
Grace was being mean, but still.
All of that was probably true.
“You should be able to beat them, though, you know. You should be our alternate,” Grace said. It was like she’d forgotten all about the threat she’d leveled on Monica only a few hours ago.
Was that a real smile or a fake smile? It was so rare for Grace to smile in the gym that, even though they practiced in the same building for six to eight hours a day, Monica didn’t have a frame of reference for what Grace’s smile should look like.
“You have a chance at alternate, really,” Grace said. “Just do your best and don’t watch the scores, right?”
Monica nodded. She made herself say, “You too.”
But she didn’t mean it. Was this what it was like to be Grace?
GRACE
Grace stood at the end of the runway, smoothing the chalk over the soles of her feet while her body buzzed with adrenaline or nerves or weakness. Grace couldn’t tell the difference anymore. It felt like her blood was running in teeny zigzags through her veins. Was that normal? Was this how she always felt at the start of the meet, full of nerves and excitement, tingling with anticipation? Or did the buzzing mean something else?
She was glad they were starting on vault, though it bore an advantage for Leigh. Grace had managed to finish yesterday as the leader, but only by a hair. And Leigh was so good at vault, if she did a triple twisting Yurchenko like yesterday, she’d pull ahead in this rotation.