Tumbling

by Caela Carter

  So what if Dad was ignoring her? She always knew exactly what he’d say anyway. She could do it without him. He hadn’t said anything to her, hadn’t looked at her for over an hour, and she did it. That amazing beam routine. That close-to-perfectly executed and extremely difficult beam routine.

  She’d be closer to Leigh and Wilhelmina at the end of the rotation. If one of them messed up a little bit, she’d be ahead.

  Take that, Dad. I’ll do it without you.

  This time her father was there to meet her when Grace exited the podium. “Where was that on bars?” he said.

  Grace shrugged and tried to move past him.

  He followed her over to her gym bag. “Well, good job,” he said.

  Grace braced herself for the “But watch—” or the “Only—” that was sure to follow. It didn’t. He left it at good job. Then he went over to say something to Wilhelmina’s coach.

  Grace breathed a sigh of what she knew should be relief but it came out shaky. She watched the back of her father’s head and wondered why a simple “Good job” didn’t feel like she always thought it would. It felt empty. It felt shallow. It felt . . . like he was giving up on her.

  She watched her father walk over to Monica and whisper to her. Is that how Monica always felt?

  Grace knew the look on his face: he was critiquing Monica. Whispering to her about unpointed toes or space between her knees or even strategy while Grace sat on a folding chair five feet away, drinking water and telling her empty stomach that it was full.

  Leigh mounted the beam with her signature front-tuck mount and the crowd cheered as if it were the hardest trick in the books.

  Why don’t you ever fall?

  LEIGH

  I hate you, Leigh told the beam as she stood at the end of it, following her first tumbling pass. She had to have the beam routine of her life in order to be chosen as an all-around gymnast in the Olympics. Right now she was winning the Olympic trials; she had set herself up to make the team, no questions asked. For the third time this summer, she was on top at the biggest meet of her life. She couldn’t let the beam defeat her now.

  I hate how skinny you are, how high off the ground.

  At some point gymnastics came down to math. And the math was on Leigh’s side. She couldn’t let the beam defeat the math.

  I hate those stupid noises you make.

  Leigh was less than 180 seconds away from being a front-runner for Olympic gold, from being a gymnast who would be discussed all across not only America, but Russia and Great Britain and Romania and Japan and China. One hundred eighty seconds from magazine covers and television interviews and autographs. This sixteen-foot plank of fake wood could not take all of that away from her.

  You can’t stop me.

  Leigh did her standing tuck on the beam. It said bang. But Leigh closed her ears. She did her dance poses, trying to go for a little extra flair, to raise her leg a little higher, to wave her arms a little more confidently. To be her cheerful self, even when she was on the beam. She made her way to the end and took a deep breath. Don’t listen, she told herself. Just flip.

  Leigh felt the air rush by the bottom of her body from her ponytail to her pointed toes as she completed two back handsprings and a back layout. Though she landed squarely, the wall of applause from the crowd was so loud it almost knocked her back off the beam. She smiled. She’d never gotten that much height before.

  She followed it up with a long, high flip, a connected switch leap, and an almost perfectly solid full turn. Leigh felt the muscles in her body work to keep her upright and balanced. She felt them flex and release, allowing her to scale the air, defying gravity by more than should be humanly possible.

  And she understood. It was good to be big. It was maybe also good to be graceful and balletic like Grace. But for Leigh, it was better to be the linebacker.

  Leigh the Linebacker.

  She would embrace it. She would use it. She would use it to win Olympic gold in the individual all-around.

  So as she began her second tumbling run, Leigh opened her ears again. She let the banging of the beam confirm that she was doing things right. She was flying high above it. She was landing squarely on it. She was a gymnast. She was herself.

  Bang. Boom. Bang.

  She bathed in the sounds she was making.

  Leigh felt every eye in the stadium on her, every mouth in the stadium smiling as she danced the five hundred centimeters down the beam, as she did a standing back tuck, as she leaped and twirled and landed herself at the back of the beam.

  She took a deep breath. Back handspring, back layout, full in–full out. Get enough height to stick the landing.

  Leigh took off with speed and agility and power. She was like a cheetah as she flipped down the length of the beam; she would always land on her feet; she always knew where the surface was; she could never mess up because her muscles and her power wouldn’t let her.

  After her layout, her feet released her off the end of the beam, straight into the air above it. The audience gasped at how high Leigh got. She tucked her body into a ball and turned it over with a twist. First her head was up, then her head was facing away from the beam, then it was facing the flag behind her, then it was down, then bang.

  A hammer bashed into her forehead just above her right eye. Her body stiffened and her blood was sharp and painful, like razors running through her veins, and her eye was going to fall out and roll on the floor, that floor, which was coming up beneath her limbs much too quickly, and then, thankfully, she blacked out.

  CAMILLE

  Camille sat with her warmed-up bottom balancing on the edge of the toilet bowl and hissed, “What are you doing here?” into her cell phone. Her breath was short from the floor routine she’d just nailed.

  “Supporting you,” Bobby answered, like it was no big deal.

  “You told me you weren’t coming,” Camille whispered.

  “I think you’re making a mistake,” Bobby said. “But I love you, Camille. I want to be with you, even when you make your mistakes.”

  “Bobby . . .” Camille didn’t know what to say. Yesterday she’d wanted nothing more than for Bobby to show up, to call her, to text her, to anything. But now that he was here, she felt confused. He’d broken up with her right before one of the biggest events of her life. That didn’t feel loving. She couldn’t magically morph back into the person she was before he said they were breaking up.

  And even in that moment, things hadn’t been perfect. When was the last time the air between them felt like magic?

  “I thought you’d be happy to see me,” Bobby said quietly.

  “I am,” Camille said. Though she wasn’t sure it was true.

  “You don’t sound like it,” Bobby said.

  Camille sighed. “Let’s talk about this later, okay? I’m not even supposed to be on the phone right now.”

  “Come on, Camille. I came all the way down here and . . . I was hoping maybe you’d let me . . . take you home?”

  “I’ll talk to you about it after the meet, okay, Bobby?”

  “No, Cam, that’s not what I mean. I mean, don’t finish the meet. Just leave. With me. Now.”

  Camille thought for a second. She pictured herself leaving the meet. She pictured the locker room without her at the end of the night. Everyone who was named to the team would want to go. She could stay right here. It would solve so many problems but it still didn’t seem quite right.

  Camille heard the door to the bathroom open and breathed a shhh into the phone as she listened to someone else wash her hands and then leave.

  “I gotta go, Bobby,” she said. “They’ll disqualify me if I keep talking to you now.”

  Bobby chuckled. “Then let’s keep talking,” he said.

  Camille immediately saw a picture of her mother in her mind’s eye. Her mother in her faded robe,
bent over a dinner Camille had made that she refused to eat.

  Why did that sound like something her mother would say? Her mother would never tell her to skip a meet, but something about it was familiar.

  “If we stay on the phone,” Bobby was saying, “you’ll get kicked out of the meet and you’ll be free.”

  Camille wanted to be free. But she didn’t want to be banished from gymnastics. What was she yearning to break free from?

  She thought about those college athletes dancing on the sidelines. She’d never get to dance along, but that’s what she wanted.

  Bobby was trying to be funny, so Camille laughed to rush him off the phone. “I doubt I’d ever even be welcome on a college team if I left like that.”

  “But,” Bobby said quietly, “I thought you were going to go to college with me.”

  That was it. Something bright lit up in Camille’s brain. She was shocked she’d never seen it before. The way Bobby fed her pizza and soda and made her feel like she wouldn’t look good without the extra pounds. The way he convinced her to trick her mother into believing in her second-rate coach. The way he put off college for a year so that she would go with him. The way he broke up with her and when she didn’t come running back, showed up where he swore he wouldn’t.

  It wasn’t that Bobby thought gymnastics was bad for Camille.

  It was that Bobby didn’t want to share Camille with gymnastics.

  “You’re manipulating me,” Camille said quietly. Like Mom does.

  They were both using their relationship with her as leverage to convince Camille that she had to do what they wanted.

  No wonder it was so hard for her to figure out what she wanted for herself.

  “What?” Bobby was saying. “No, Cam, I—”

  If her mother hadn’t been so manipulative, Camille probably wouldn’t be here, and she might be happier. But there was nothing she could do about that now. For now, she had to think about what to do from here, how to proceed. And she didn’t want to be an Olympian, but she also didn’t want to be a quitter. Not with a body that could fly over the vault like hers could.

  “I’m going over the vault,” she said.

  “Don’t do it, Cam,” he said. “Run away with me. You don’t want to be a gymnast anymore.”

  “Maybe not forever, but right now I do. Right now I’m at the Olympic trials. I shouldn’t be hiding in the bathroom talking to my ex-boyfriend,” she said.

  “Ex?” he said, like that was the part that mattered.

  “I’m one of the best gymnasts in the world. I am the best vaulter in the world. And it’s awesome to be the best at something. So, whether or not I should be, I’m here, and while I’m here, I will enjoy it.”

  “Camille—” He tried to protest again.

  “No,” she said. “Not now. I have an Amanar to land.”

  Camille hung up before he could say anything else. She tucked her phone into the waistband of her warm-ups and rushed back into the arena.

  She was feeling better than ever when she jogged through that gray tunnel. She was running past the bars toward the beam, wishing she could keep running until she went down the runway and catapulted herself over the vault. Out of the corner of her eye she was watching Leigh flip-flop through a dismount and then—

  It was like slow motion. Leigh’s body went straight up instead of up-and-out. Leigh’s head plunged toward the beam. Camille tried to run. She felt like a million tiny wires were wrapped around her wrists and ankles, dragging her backward, as she fought to get to Leigh in time. She didn’t know what she would do. What could she do? But she needed to get there.

  “No!” Camille shouted. She shouted so loudly that all the spectators and gymnasts and coaches who had been watching floor routines turned to see it happen.

  Leigh’s head whacked into the corner of the beam. Leigh’s body went stiff, then fell four feet and crashed like a baby bird on the sidewalk. A deafening pop rattled through the stadium. Leigh had popped.

  Leigh didn’t move.

  Camille didn’t, either. She stood stock-still between the bars and the beam. Her legs were still, one in front of the other. Her arms were frozen in front of her like her hands were trying to push the reality of the scene away from her.

  “This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening again,” she mumbled to herself. Over and over.

  It was all her fault. She’d freaked Leigh out. She’d messed up the meet for Wilhelmina and for Leigh and still managed to send herself to the Olympics. This was not how it was supposed to be.

  Camille saw Leigh’s coach signal for more help. She saw the paramedics get her on a stretcher. She saw them carefully pass the stretcher from the podium onto the main level.

  She did not move until she was in the way of Leigh and the four men who were carrying her.

  She wanted to deny everything she’d said before about comebacks. Even though it was true, she wanted to take it all back and let Leigh make up her own mind.

  She wanted to apologize.

  She wanted to clutch Leigh while they talked about how hard it is to give up the one and only thing that defined your entire childhood.

  “Where are you taking her?” Camille yelled out once they were almost past her.

  One of the paramedics shouted, “Johns Hopkins.”

  Camille had to get there. Fast.

  WILHELMINA

  The arena was freezing. As if when they carried Leigh out through the gray tunnel under the bleachers, she took all the warmth with her. No one was moving. No one was on floor. Wilhelmina was not on beam. The coaches were not walking toward their gymnasts. The gymnasts had not turned their heads. The stands above them were still, because none of the forty-five thousand spectators were thinking about the bathroom or the snack bar or even calling out to their own beloved gymnast.

  Instead, ninety thousand eyes stared at the black hole through which Leigh the Gymnast had disappeared.

  Wilhelmina wasn’t sure if it was seconds or minutes or hours or days before she started to feel the energy shift back into the room. Some of the people in the seats wiggled or sneezed or whispered to each other or answered their phones. Some of the gymnasts shook their heads. Some of the coaches put an arm around their athletes.

  Wilhelmina didn’t move.

  She could see the gym in front of her, technically. She could see Annie climb the floor podium and slowly step toward the chalk. She could feel Kerry’s hands touch her shoulders lightly.

  But the image of Leigh’s head snapping back with the force of the beam blocked everything out. Leigh’s neck about to crack and her skull about to roll across the floor. Leigh’s leg folded under her hips at a grotesque angle when she landed. Leigh’s toes still pointed even when she was being transferred to the stretcher, unconscious. All Wilhelmina could hear was the sound that ripped through the stadium when Leigh’s skull hit the wood of the balance beam.

  She could have died.

  Wilhelmina knew she didn’t. But still.

  “It’s your turn,” Kerry said softly in Wilhelmina’s ear. “Get your nine-point-five.”

  Wilhelmina looked at Kerry. Was she serious? Did they really think Wilhelmina could climb onto the beam right now like nothing happened? Would Wilhelmina be expected to perform even if her fellow gymnast had died?

  But somehow, making her jaw work—asking Kerry how she could expect Wilhelmina to get up on that tiny four-foot-high platform and be powerful and beautiful and perfect right after another girl’s entire world had shattered—seemed even more impossible than flipping and spinning.

  So Wilhelmina took a step toward the chalk. She was surprised her body knew how to move.

  Grace was standing next to the chalk bowl. She might have been the only person in the stadium who had stayed still longer than Wilhelmina.

  When Wilhelmina dipped her ha
nds into the bleach-white chalk, Grace turned her head to look at her. Wilhelmina was shocked to see tears dancing in her eyes.

  Grace opened her mouth.

  But before she could say anything—before Grace could yell at Wilhelmina for thinking more about gymnastics and competition than Leigh’s life—Wilhelmina spit out the words, “I don’t want to hear it. It should have been you.”

  For a second they were both shocked. It was so unlike Wilhelmina to stoop to mean comments in the middle of a meet, at least outside her head. But she hadn’t intended the words to be cruel. It could have been Grace. It could have more easily been Grace. Grace was starving herself into nothing when she could have been the best in the world. It made Wilhelmina hot-angry.

  Even more surprising, Grace nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’m a terrible friend.”

  Wilhelmina was too mad for the pity party. She wiped her chalky hands on her thighs, leaving white streaks on her muscles. “That’s not what I meant. I know, okay? You haven’t been eating. It’s so stupid, Grace. Do you want to get hurt? Do you want to make sure you’ll never be as good as you used to be? You can’t survive in this sport if you don’t eat.”

  Grace had tears in her eyes. But she didn’t yell. She said, “Use it.”

  “Huh?” Wilhelmina forced the syllable out of her mouth.

  Grace said, “Use it. Use your anger. Leigh would. Leigh would use it.”

  So Wilhelmina nodded. Gymnastics had been unfair to Leigh, too. She finally wasn’t alone. Leigh had been minutes away from winning the Olympic trials, and now she was, at the very best, disqualified. And Wilhelmina had been handed the massive job of performing right after her.

  She took a big, shaky breath and climbed the stairs to the podium.

  She looked up into the stands, hoping to find Davion. Hoping he could give her a wink or a smile. Something to build her up.

  But her eyes landed instead on Katja. And the woman very carefully stared at Wilhelmina and shook her head back and forth, back and forth. As if she was telling Wilhelmina not to do well on beam.