by Jane Lawes
Chapter Eleven
Tara arrived at the gym that afternoon determined to make up for Wednesday’s mistake. She changed into her black and silver leotard and sat down on a bench in the changing room, waiting for Lindsay and the others. Then she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. She was so tired. She’d hardly slept the last two nights because she was worrying about the balance going wrong again. Shopping with Kate had been fun, but they’d spent almost the whole day walking around the big shopping centre in the middle of town. Her legs felt worn out.
When the others arrived and the training session got started she pulled herself together and after a vigorous warm-up, she felt ready to work harder than ever. Tara and Lindsay tried and tried to get the Y-balance working again…but it was no good. The harder they tried, the worse the balance got. After about an hour, Clare came up to them and asked them to go through their routine. When they got to the difficult standing-on-shoulders Y-balance, Tara wobbled and fell. She knew she was tired, but the problem was bigger than that – the balance felt completely gone, as if they’d never been able to do it at all.
“Tara! What is the matter with you?” shouted Clare. Everyone stopped what they were doing, and looked at them. Their coach rarely shouted. “Lindsay? I know it’s half-term and you’re on holiday from school, but you need to take this seriously.” Lindsay and Tara nodded, but said nothing. “Again, please. I want to see you do that balance properly.”
They tried again. If Tara hadn’t already been red-faced from the exercise, she would definitely have been pink with shame. She bit her lip hard and hoped that she wouldn’t cry. They managed to hold the balance this time, but not very steadily. As Tara jumped down she heard Sam mutter, “It’s not like it’s difficult. I guess this is what you get when you let a new girl compete.”
“Work on it,” Clare said. She looked so cross with them that Tara couldn’t meet her eyes. She wondered if her coach agreed with Sam. Did everyone think she was going to let the club down?
She hardly spoke to anyone for the last half an hour. She was afraid that if she did, she would melt into a mess of childish tears. Lindsay was quiet too, but then she always was. Tara held on until they’d got changed and she and Lindsay were walking out to the car park. Once they were outside, Tara allowed the tears to roll down her flushed cheeks.
“Hey, don’t cry,” said Lindsay gently. “Clare won’t be angry any more by tomorrow.”
“It’s not that,” sniffed Tara. “It’s…what are we going to do?”
“Get better at it, I suppose,” replied Lindsay.
“I don’t see how!” cried Tara. “We’re already practising every day at school as well as here. What more can we do? Maybe I’m just not good enough to be a gymnast.” But the thought of not doing gym filled her with horror. “Oh, but I have to be!”
“You could come round to my house after training tomorrow,” Lindsay offered. “We can work on our balances all afternoon. We’ll get lots more done without the others, and we’ll have more time than we do at school.”
Tara blinked away some tears and looked up at her, amazed. Doing even more extra practice was such an obvious idea, but only someone as calm as Lindsay would be able to think of it in the middle of such a crisis.
They managed to get through training the next morning without making Clare angry again and by the time they got back to Lindsay’s house afterwards, Tara was already feeling better. She looked around. The living room was comfortable and tidy. There wasn’t any of the clutter that seemed almost part of the decoration in Tara’s home. But she did spot a pair of ballet shoes tucked away in one corner.
“Do you do ballet as well as gym?” she asked, knowing that Lindsay didn’t have any sisters or brothers who the shoes might belong to.
“Yeah,” Lindsay replied, frowning slightly. “Please don’t tell Clare though. We’re not supposed to do ballet because it works your muscles in a different way.”
“I won’t tell,” Tara promised worriedly. She didn’t want Lindsay to get in any more trouble with their coach, but she couldn’t help feeling anxious that Lindsay was doing something she wasn’t really allowed to. And what about the one hundred per cent commitment that Clare wanted? Didn’t doing other things take Lindsay’s focus away from gymnastics? “Have you kept it a secret the whole time you’ve been at Silverdale?”
“No. When I first started Acro I was already doing ballet. It was fine for a few years, but when I was put into Clare’s group and started competing, Clare said it would be a good idea to stop ballet. I did stop, but then about a year ago Clare organized a one-off ballet class to help us be more graceful and elegant when we perform. I realized how much I missed it, so I started classes again. Just twice a week. I hate lying to Clare, but I know she’d make me stop.”
“Don’t you worry that it will interfere with your Acro training? I mean…if Clare said it’s not good to do both, that must be true.”
“I do worry about that sometimes,” said Lindsay. “I really do love gym. But I love ballet as well. We spend so much time training at Silverdale. We should be allowed to have other interests too.”
Tara nodded thoughtfully. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Lindsay still looked very serious.
“Shall we make some lunch?” offered Lindsay, suddenly changing the subject. “And then we can get to work.”
They ate cheese sandwiches at the kitchen table with Lindsay’s mum and then went upstairs to Lindsay’s bedroom. Her room was fairly big, and covered from floor to ceiling with posters and pictures of ballet dancers and gymnasts. A few gymnastics medals hung from the bedpost at the end of her bed. Tara stared at the walls. She’d had no idea Lindsay was such a ballet fanatic!
On the bookshelf were some framed photos of Lindsay in different costumes. In one of them she was a cute little girl – maybe only five or six years old – wearing a little white tutu and holding up a wand with a silver star on the top. She was smiling in a way Tara had never seen the teenager Lindsay smile in the gym. It reminded Tara of the way she herself had looked in the photos Dad took of the Silverdale Summer Display.
“I’m just a little bit obsessed. Maybe,” joked Lindsay.
“This is why you’re always so calm about the gym competition.”
Lindsay nodded. “It’s not that I don’t care…I do. It’s just not everything to me.”
“It’s everything to me,” replied Tara.
“It doesn’t have to be. I love Acro, but I need other things to take my mind off it sometimes. When things go wrong or I’m worrying about a balance, I think about ballet instead and then I realize that gym isn’t the only thing in the world. Gymnastics can’t be the only thing you care about. You’d go mad.”
Even though it was the beginning of November, the sky was clear, with brilliant sunshine. They had both put long-sleeved tops and their Silverdale tracksuit trousers on over their leotards at the end of their training session, and once they’d warmed up properly in Lindsay’s bedroom, they were not too cold to practise outside. Lindsay’s garden was small, but they had enough space to work on balances, even if they couldn’t fit in the whole routine. All afternoon, they worked on standing on shoulders and their other balances. They didn’t fall from balances or try anything dangerous, so it didn’t matter that there weren’t any mats. By five o’clock they were worn out, but pleased with how they were getting on.
Tara thought about Lindsay’s ballet bedroom all evening, and remembered what her partner had said. Was she right? Was gymnastics going to take over her whole world until there was nothing left? At Lindsay’s house they’d worked hard, but they’d also chatted and laughed and had a lot of fun. For that afternoon they were simply two friends doing gymnastics together because they enjoyed it, instead of serious gymnasts training for a competition. Maybe being more relaxed had helped them to hold their balances better, Tara t
hought. It was hard to balance when all you could think about was how terrible it would be if you didn’t.
She was starting to realize something else, too: being with Lindsay and her other friends was one of the things she loved most about Silverdale. Without them, gym wouldn’t be as much fun. And without Emily and Kate, school – no, life – would be unbearable.
“Morning, girls!” Clare called from the office, as Tara and Megan hurried to the changing room on Sunday morning.
“Lindsay and I have been practising loads,” Tara said earnestly.
“Great,” replied Clare. “I’ll look forward to seeing your routine today, then.”
When they did show their coach their routine, Tara wasn’t worried at all. She and Lindsay had managed to get their balances almost perfect when they practised in the garden. Doing them in the gym would be just the same. As they moved through the familiar steps and balances, Tara pretended that she was at Lindsay’s house, and that it was just the two of them, with no pressure to get it perfect, and no one to judge them. It worked.
“Much better!” cried Clare, when they finished. She even clapped. “You actually looked like you were enjoying yourselves. I don’t know what’s happened since Friday, but you two have made a real improvement. Listen, you’re a new pair and I took a risk entering you in this competition but I honestly think you could have a shot at a medal. I really want to see you do well, and I believe you can. We’ve got less than two weeks to go till Regionals now, so whatever you’ve been doing, keep doing it.”
Tara and Lindsay looked at each other. Tara knew that the afternoon practising at Lindsay’s house, where they’d been able to relax, had made all the difference. But she couldn’t do that again today – she’d already made plans with Kate and Emily.
“Do you want to come back to mine and get in a bit more practice?” asked Lindsay when they were in the changing room.
“I can’t,” said Tara. “I’m going to Emily’s.”
“Oh,” replied Lindsay, surprised. They both knew it wasn’t like Tara to refuse extra practice, especially after what Clare had just said. “That’s fine,” she said with a smile, after a second. “I have last-minute homework to do anyway.”
When they came out of the gym, it was raining. Tara held her bag over her head and ran to the car, where Mum was waiting to take her to Emily’s house. She had changed out of her leotard into jeans and a jumper. She’d forgotten to bring a hairbrush though, so she pulled her hair out of its ponytail and shook her head, combing through the blonde strands as well as she could with her fingers.
“Your hair’s always so scruffy,” sighed Mum. “You’re going to have trouble getting it neat enough for the competition.”
Tara just shrugged, then looked out of the window. She had way more to worry about for the competition than what her hair looked like. She flicked that thought away as she shook her hair again.
Emily’s family owned a bakery and they lived above it. Mum pulled the car up by the row of shops and Tara opened the door immediately.
“Thanks! Bye!” she yelped, leaping out onto the pavement and making a dash for the bakery.
“Hi, Tara,” said Mr. Walter, Emily’s dad, who was standing behind the counter in the shop. “Go on upstairs, Kate’s already here.”
“Great, thanks,” said Tara and she went through the door at the back of the shop, past the kitchen and up the stairs to the Walters’ flat. She could hear music coming from Emily’s room and smiled to herself, imagining Kate singing and dancing along.
“Tara!” Emily smiled and jumped up off the bed when she came in.
“You’re just in time,” announced Kate, standing up on Emily’s bed.
“For what?” Tara asked with a questioning smile at Emily.
“For me to paint your nails with my new nail varnish!” Kate replied, waving the tiny brush in the air with one hand, and holding the little glittery bottle up with the other.
“Is that the one you bought when we were shopping on Friday?” Tara asked. She sat down and untied her shoelaces, tugging off her Converse and shoving them in a corner.
“Yes,” said Kate. “Now come here and I’ll make your hands sparkle like mine and Em’s.”
“You went shopping without me?” asked Emily.
“For secret birthday things,” Tara said, grinning. Kate giggled, taking one of Tara’s hands.
“That’s alright then,” said Emily. “Go on as many secret birthday shopping trips as you want.”
Emily and Kate started chatting about school. Tara half-listened to them for a while…but the trouble was that now she was here, she couldn’t get rid of the niggling thought that she should be working on the routine. She tried to push it away. She was here with her best friends, and this was where she wanted to be…so why did she feel so guilty? But deep down she knew why: Clare expected her to do everything she could to win at Regionals. Tara looked at the glitter on her fingernails. This wasn’t doing everything.
“So, about my birthday,” said Emily suddenly. “Do you want to go to the cinema on Friday after school? I’m going to ask some other people from our year too. And you two could stay over afterwards.”
“Yeah!” said Kate. “I thought you were never going to decide what to do for your party.”
Tara stared down at her hands in silence. She had gym after school on Fridays and she’d secretly been hoping Emily would have a birthday party on the Saturday instead. It was one thing to choose her friends over extra practice at Lindsay’s house. It was something completely different to decide not to go to Silverdale. Since Clare had told them about Regionals, none of the competing gymnasts had missed a single session. If it had been any other time of year…but with the competition only two weeks away, she didn’t think she really had a choice.
“I don’t think I can,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry, Em. I can’t miss training. Not this close to the competition.”
“That’s okay,” Emily said quickly, before Kate could start an argument. “I thought maybe…well, never mind. Maybe you can just come and sleep over?”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Tara, thinking of the training session she would have on Saturday morning. Could she possibly make it through two hours of gymnastics after a sleepover?
Kate stared at Tara. She opened her mouth to say something, but then looked at Emily, who was obviously trying not to look hurt, and stopped. “Let’s watch a film,” suggested Kate.
Tara and Emily both sighed with relief, glad for a chance to pretend nothing was wrong. But Tara couldn’t keep her mind on the story in the film. She kept replaying the birthday conversation in her mind, silently cringing at the look on Emily’s face when she’d said she couldn’t come.
This time, when Mum came to pick her up, it was Emily that she hugged fiercely. She wasn’t sure that she’d made the right decision. But the party clashed with training at Silverdale – what else could she do? It was so hard though. She’d felt guilty about not doing extra practice, but that was nothing compared to this.
In bed that night she told herself that she had to choose gymnastics, even over Emily’s birthday. But when she pulled the covers up over her head, she knew it wasn’t true.
Chapter Twelve
“I can’t believe you’re not going to Emily’s birthday,” said Kate, as soon as Tara answered her phone the next evening. Tara hadn’t seen her best friends at all during their first day back at school, except in maths. They’d disappeared at break time and lunch, and the “no mobiles” rule had made it impossible to find them. What made it even worse was that she’d told Lindsay she wanted to have lunch with her friends, so she didn’t even see her gym partner. For the first time since starting secondary school, she’d felt completely alone.
“I can’t. I wish I could.” Tara curled her feet up underneath her on the sofa.
“You could if you wanted to. Em’s too nice to say anything, but she’s really upset.”
“I have gym after school on Friday,” Tara replied. “You know that.”
“So? It wouldn’t matter if you missed it once. You just don’t want to.”
“I do,” Tara began, but it was too late. Instead of Kate’s voice there was only silence. Tara could almost see her friend jabbing her finger on the end call button in a huff.
She was quiet during dinner that night feeling hurt by the way Kate had spoken to her.
“Mum,” she said at last. “Do you think it would matter if I missed gym on Friday and went to Emily’s birthday instead?”
“I’m sure missing one training session won’t hurt,” replied Mum thoughtfully. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to do both, but I can’t.”
“Well, which one is more important?” asked Dad.
Tara thought about it while she twirled some spaghetti around her fork. “The gym competition is really, really important and I need to train for it every minute I can,” she said. She paused and bit her lip. “But I think if Emily didn’t come to my birthday, it would feel horrible.”
Mum nodded and smiled at her.
“I think you should go to Emily’s,” said Anna, looking up from the mess of spaghetti she’d made on her plate. “Birthdays are much more fun than boring gymnastics.”
Tara wished it was that simple.
Monday turned into Tuesday, and that became Wednesday. By Wednesday afternoon, Tara still hadn’t decided what to do. She was almost sure she was going to skip Friday’s training session, but she hadn’t got up the courage to ask Clare yet, and she hadn’t told Emily. She wanted to go to the cinema with the others, to have fun and sing “Happy Birthday” to her best friend, but something was still holding her back. She wanted to be a good gymnast, and great gymnasts took their training seriously. Was there a way to have both things – to be a good friend to Emily and to be a serious gymnast too?