Return to You (Letters to Nowhere Part 3)

by Julie Cross

  Stevie really wants to win Nationals. Both of us are here training head-to-head with our biggest competition and she’s coming out ahead.

  I bite back the semi-jealous, semi-anxious feelings and close my eyes, mentally working through my routine. But the second I attempt to visualize my dismount, my head is slamming into the high bar again. I can’t envision a proper outcome.

  By the time Stevie finishes and Nina’s turned her attention to me again, waiting for me to redeem myself from the last turn, my heart is flying again and nausea and muscle weakness invade my body.

  I can’t do this. I Can’t. Do. This.

  “Can I…” I start to say, grabbing Nina’s attention, “can I have a break? I mean—I need a break. Fifteen minutes. There’s something I really need to, um, take care of.”

  Nina folds her arms across her chest and stares me down. Needless to say, everyone is staring me down. Breaks are dictated by coaches, not gymnasts. After what feels like an eternity, she sighs and gestures toward the door, indicating that I can go. My body is numb while I grab my small gym bag and head out.

  What am I doing? Where am I going?

  I need to talk this through with someone who gets it, but Jordan is resting and he needs to be resting. I remove my cell phone from my bag and roll it around in my palm. If I call Bentley, he’ll probably be on the next flight here. Blair’s at practice right now so she won’t answer her phone and calling the gym to ask for her would tip off Bentley.

  My finger is already scrolling down the contact list in my phone, pausing on one number. I glance back at the gym to make sure no one is coming outside before hitting the call button.

  “Doctor Carson’s office,” a familiar voice says after only one ring.

  “Hi… um…” I check the door again. “I need to speak with Jack—I mean Doctor Carson. If she’s available.”

  “Are you a current patient or prospective patient?”

  “Current,” I say lowering my voice when a small group of campers passes in front of me on their way to Gym II.

  “One moment, please,” the secretary says.

  Before I can even tell her who’s calling and mention that I’m not having a mental crisis or anything too severe (even though I kind of am) she’s transferred the call and Jackie’s picking up.

  “It’s Karen Campbell,” I say quickly. “I’m sorry to call you, especially if you have an appointment right now—”

  “Hi Karen, how are you? Is everything okay?” Her tone is warm and free of any sense of urgency or that careful code-voice people sometimes use when carrying on a conversion with someone else in the room who isn’t supposed to hear said conversation.

  “I’m okay.” I walk around the building, hunting out a shady spot where I can sit down. “It’s just that… this morning…”

  “What happened this morning?” she prompts. “I’ve got time.”

  I give a nervous laugh and then proceed to explain the drama of my first fall and how I ran from the gym crying with over a hundred campers watching. By the time I finish the story, my voice is shaky and I’m on the verge of tears again.

  “First of all,” Jackie says after I finish, “you need to separate your fear of hurting yourself on the uneven bars from that feeling of emptiness you experienced when the one boy…”

  “TJ,” I fill in, finally locating a spot of shade in the grass where I can lean against the building.

  “When TJ mentioned your parents.”

  Now that I know about Jackie’s past, about her own parents’ deaths, the door seems to be open for me to ask a whole new set of questions that I’d assumed she couldn’t answer before. “Does it ever go away? That feeling like someone just punched you in the gut when you realize that you’d forgotten they’re gone and then suddenly remember?” The hollowness, the carved-out insides—please say that it will stop someday.

  She was silent for several long moments before saying, “It gets better.”

  My gut twists again. “Just better? Not gone?”

  “Right now, you need them so much and their role in your life hasn’t been replaced with anyone else, or even with yourself. So of course it’s not only incredibly painful, but also really scary—all these decisions to make on your own…”

  “Like whether I should get my own apartment,” I mumble, another wave of anxiety rushing over me as I’m reminded of yet another current problem.

  “What was that?” Jackie asks.

  I take a few minutes to explain the situation of Grandma suggesting it would be “more appropriate for a young lady of my age to live on her own rather than with her forty-something-year-old coach.” When I finally finish explaining all this to Jackie, I notice a pair of dark feet on the sidewalk beside me. I glance up and Stevie is standing there looking as if she can’t decide if she should turn back.

  “I think my break might be over,” I say to Jackie. Before hanging up, we quickly agree on a time to have regular phone sessions over the next three weeks. I tuck my phone away in my gym bag, feeling about ten percent better even though we didn’t really create a plan of action or accomplish anything. But it’s not the first time that merely speaking truths out loud has lifted some weight off my shoulders.

  “Nina sent me,” Stevie blurts out when I stand and brush grass off my butt.

  “I figured.”

  I glance sideways at her a couple times on the way back to the gym. She looks like she wants to say something, which makes me wonder how much of my phone conversation she’d overheard. I clamp my mouth shut because I really don’t want to talk to Stevie about my therapist at the moment. Blair, Coach Bentley, and Jordan were the only ones who knew about Jackie. Okay, and Tony knows.

  Maybe it’s not that tight of a secret after all.

  I figure Nina’s waiting around to lecture me the second I walk back into the gym, but instead it’s TJ who’s standing by the door, fidgeting with his pocketknife.

  Stevie lets out a dramatic sigh at the sight of him. “What are you doing in here? Don’t you have work to do? Kids to coach?”

  He grins at her, not responding, then turns his attention to me. “So, yeah… are you like, okay?”

  I laugh, but there’s not much humor in it. “Sure, TJ, I’m fine.”

  “Hold up,” he says, holding on to my upper arm. “I didn’t know.”

  About my parents. That’s what he can’t say. My gaze drops to my feet. “Not many people here know.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Seriously, drop it,” I say, lowering my voice. “I was tired and I shouldn’t have done that last routine.”

  TJ folds his arms across his chest and leans back against the wall, studying me. “Maybe you were tired, but it didn’t show. You kicked ass on that routine.”

  “A compliment from TJ,” Stevie says, rolling her eyes. “That’ll get you far.”

  He shoots a glare at Stevie. “Tell her then. Tell her that her routine wasn’t fucking awesome, if I’m wrong?”

  Stevie shrugs. “You’re playing the ‘what if’ game. Karen and I know better than to fall back on that. Everybody we compete against is good. Maybe even phenomenal. We’re always one good bar dismount away from gold and so are they. Karen doesn’t need me to give her the ‘you could have been great’ speech.”

  TJ’s mouth falls open, but Stevie walks off before he can reply.

  “I’d better go,” I mutter. “I’m already in trouble.”

  “You’re scared,” he says before I can escape.

  Anger flares up in me. I don’t need someone like him to state the obvious. “Really? Thanks for pointing that out. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Grow a pair and march over there and do it before it gets any worse,” he says, ignoring my obvious desire for him to butt out.

  I look away from him, focusing on the balance beams. “I will.”

  “When?”

  “Soon, if it will get you to shut up.”

  He gives me a nod of approval and heads
back to the bleachers. I close my eyes again, fighting off flashes of my head hitting the high bar.

  Just do it, Karen. Grow a pair, like TJ said.

  chapter five

  ~jordan~

  “Have you looked at your throat?”

  I shake my head, unable to provide a verbal response while the camp’s doctor has a stick pressed against my tongue.

  He removes the wooden stick and steps back, clicking off his flashlight. “Not only is your rapid stress test positive, but you’ve got a ton of swelling and pus going on back there. You’re tonsils are huge.”

  I swallow, biting back the pain and nausea that just hit me after creating a mental image of pus in my throat. “So it’s bacterial?”

  “The strep and the tonsillitis both.” His eyebrows shoot up. “I’ll have to start you on some antibiotics, but with three recent rounds cleaning out your system, you’re at risk for all kinds of other infections, like C-diff.”

  I’m dizzy now and sweating from the nausea, but I’d rather not look like a wimp by lying back on the exam table.

  “I hate to break this to you, but you need to get those tonsils out and soon. Very soon.”

  Cold sweat trickles down the back of my neck as I absorb those words. No freakin’ way. Not a chance in hell I’m going under the knife for a sore throat. Maybe not for anything.

  He’s got his back to me now, looking up something on his laptop. I can’t stay upright any longer, so I take advantage of the opportunity to lie back without him watching me carefully. I feel a little better the second my cheek hits the cold polyester exam table.

  “Aren’t tonsillectomies like a thing for little kids?”

  “They’re a thing for people with huge tonsils like yours and chronic infections,” he says sternly. “There’s an ear, nose, and throat specialist in town. Looks like I can get you in next Wednesday.”

  I shake my head, causing the white paper of the exam table to crinkle. “I can take care of that when I get back home.”

  He turns to face me before I can sit up again. “When you get home? As in at the end of the summer?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “If you want me to give you antibiotics and clear you to coach again in twenty-four hours, then you need to agree to see a specialist next Wednesday. If she clears you to wait until the end of summer, then that’s fine, but I wouldn’t count on that happening. The complications you’re potentially facing are very serious, so don’t be an idiot.”

  I scrub my hands over my face and groan. I don’t want to deal more doctors, with worrying, with going home and leaving Karen.

  Karen.

  I shoot upright again. “Oh shit…”

  His eyebrows go up waiting for me to expand on the swearing.

  “Hypothetically speaking,” I ask, “How contagious is this strep/tonsillitis combo?”

  “I’m afraid to ask why?”

  I let out a breath. I should have been more careful. The last thing Karen needs is swollen tonsils. “My girlfriend is here at camp…” I figure that should be enough details for him.

  He nods and turns back to his laptop. “What’s the staff member’s name?”

  “Karen Campbell. But she’s not staff.”

  He lets out a low whistle under his breath as he types her name into the database. “Nina Jones is not going to be happy with you.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, so what else is new.”

  “No drug allergies, no recent illness,” he says to himself before opening a drawer and pulling out two boxes. He tosses both lightly into my lap. “One Z-pack for you and one for the girlfriend as a preventive measure. Tell her to replace her toothbrush and come see me if she has any nausea, rash, vomiting, and so on…” He also hands me a tiny paper cup with one white pill and one brown pill. I look them over carefully, but don’t make a move to take them. “Steroid to reduce inflammation and a pain pill. You’ll have to come here for each dose of these. Can’t have them floating around staff quarters.”

  I’m pretty sure pain pills and anti-inflammatory meds are already floating amongst the staff.

  He jots down the details for next week’s appointment and hands me a sticky note. “No coaching for two days. Which translates to, stay in your cabin and don’t kiss anyone, got it?”

  “Got it.” I slide off the table, my hands full of pills and paper. On the way back to my cabin, I debate calling my dad and updating him on my recent health issues but decide against it. I’m eighteen now, I don’t have to run everything by him.

  ***

  After downing three different medications, I took a three-hour nap and woke up after dinnertime. Apparently, while I slept, Nina Jones ordered the camp directors to move all of “her gymnasts” to the cabin next door for fear of my bacteria finding its way into their mouths. Or at least that’s what TJ said when he explained to me why Karen and Stevie’s room is now empty. And he used air quotes, so I’m assuming that’s exactly how Nina had worded it. But seriously? There’s only a chance of one girl getting infected by me.

  Speaking of that girl…

  “How do you feel?” Karen steps through the door of my room and comes right in to sit beside me. Her keeper must be far away because she’d have a fit. “I brought sick food.”

  I sit up on my bottom bunk, and check out the spread she’s just dumped on my sleeping bag. “Yeeeess, popsicles!” I unwrap the purple frozen treat and stick it in my mouth. “Grape is my favorite.”

  “I was told you have a present for me,” she prompts, holding out a hand.

  Guilt eats at me while I dig for her box of antibiotics. “I’m sorry. I should have been more careful.”

  She shrugs and takes the box from my hand, examining the directions and dozens of warnings about ways you might die from taking these pills. “I feel fine, but whatever, I’ll follow the doctor’s orders. He also said to make sure that you drink plenty of fluids.” She taps one of the three bottles of Gatorade that she brought me.

  I pick the orange flavor and take my time peeling the plastic off the cap, while the popsicle hangs from my mouth. She talked to the camp doctor. Does that mean she knows about the potential surgery that isn’t going to happen no matter what? I’m refusing.

  “So what is this specialist going to do?” she asks.

  Okay, she doesn’t know everything. “Not sure, probably see if I have an allergy or something that’s causing the repeat infections.”

  Worry creases her forehead. “All right. I guess that’s a good thing.”

  TJ comes storming in right then, interrupting us. He looks right at Karen. “Did you do it?”

  Her eyes widen and her face turns pink. “Uh…”

  “Come on, Campbell,” TJ says, “What’s the problem? Get back on the horse, right?”

  My gaze bounces between the two of them. “What did I miss?”

  “Nothing,” Karen clips so fast, I can’t help spinning theories in directions they shouldn’t be going in. She turns to me, giving me her judges smile. “Seriously, it’s nothing. TJ has a distorted perception of the word fearless.”

  TJ’s jaw tenses, but he doesn’t argue with her. What the hell is going on? Karen jumps up from the bed and grabs TJ’s arm. “The scavenger hunt starts in five minutes.”

  I flop onto my back again and groan. “Dammit. I’m missing the scavenger hunt. That’s like the best evening activity all week.”

  Karen flashes me a genuine smile this time. “We’ll do it again next week, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I grumble.

  The second they’re both out of sight, I dive into action, trying to figure out whatever silent words were just exchanged between the two of them. I reach for my phone, pull up YouTube, and type in Karen’s name to see if there are any new videos. The most recent is still Karen’s fall from this morning, the one that my dad had seen already. Not only does it have thousands of views, there’re also two hundred and twenty comments. I scroll down and begin reading.

  DanceFreak666: Ouch.


  JosieGrossy: Why is she touted to be a surprise potential uneven bar gold medalist at Worlds? Stevie Davis could beat that routine on her worst day.

  LevelEleven: she sucks.

  GymnGrandMommy: Overrated, over-hyped, and obviously in over her head.

  JeffCoach24: some serious air time on that layout Jaeger… if only the dismount had gone a little bit better…

  LocalHero: You guys are all assholes. Especially you, GrandMommy.

  JunkCollector: badass routine. Until the end…

  StevieDavisFan228: this was gymgasmic. Except for the dismount. But then again, hot guy diving to her rescue, not a bad way to go down, right?

  I stuff my phone under the pillow, forcing myself to stop reading the idiotic comments, but as I lie there staring at the underside of the top bunk, I can’t keep my mind from drifting to these dark corners. Karen having secrets with TJ isn’t something I’m particular fond of, but it’s not a jealousy issue either. Not against TJ. But I wonder if Karen really is mine. I told Liberty that things were different with her, but I only know that because I’ve had the opportunity to have some messed-up relationships first.

  Karen’s only had me. What if I’m her experimental phase?

  CHAPTER SIX

  ~KAREN~

  Dear Mom,

  I’m keeping things from Jordan and I think he’s keeping things from me. Is this a bad sign? Or does it mean we’re becoming a real couple? I lost count of how many times you bought me something at the mall and said, “Don’t tell Daddy” and Dad was terrible about letting me have gobs of junk food and candy, saying, “Don’t tell Mom.” Maybe secrets are normal?

  Love, Karen

  ***

  I release TJ’s arm and shove him hard. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to the scavenger hunt.”

  The frustrated groan that I release only makes him smirk at me. “You know what I mean. Jordan’s got enough to deal with. He’s spent enough time worrying about me. Besides, there’s nothing to worry about.”