Text copyright © 2012 by Dominique Moceanu and Alicia Thompson
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.
ISBN 978-1-4231-5430-3
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Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Gymnastics glossary
Balancing Act
One - Preview
Gymnastics fans past, present, and future, I dedicate this book to you. Your devotion is the most essential part of our sport. I have only the greatest affection for you.
—D.M.
For my sister, Brittany Lee, who inspires me
—A.T.
It was late, and my parents and I had been driving through the same state for four hours. I just wanted to go home—well, to my new home, which I’d only seen in pictures—but my mom insisted on driving past the gym first.
“After all,” she said, turning toward the backseat to smile at me, “it’ll practically be your home away from home, right?”
“I guess.”
“Aren’t you excited? This is such a wonderful opportunity for you.” I realized she was waiting for me to smile in return, and so I did, figuring that her neck would probably hurt if she kept her head in that position for too long. Satisfied, she beamed at me and turned back to face the front.
When my parents told me we were moving to Austin, Texas, so I could train with an Elite team, “excited” was certainly not what I felt. It was like everything happened in slow motion—first I heard moving, and I thought about everyone I would have to leave behind and my bedroom with the window facing my neighbor’s birdbath and the fact that next year for my birthday we were going to play paintball, and I felt sad. Then I heard Texas, and I remembered this boy at my gym who used to wear a shirt that said, don’t mess with texas! in huge letters, and I was scared at the idea of moving to a state that seemed to be all about picking fights for no apparent reason. Ohio doesn’t care if you mess with it or not. I mean, obviously it would prefer that you didn’t, but if you do, no big deal.
Team, though—that was a little exciting. I used to wish for a teammate. My best friend at my old gym, Dionne, was good, but it would be at least a couple of years before she qualified as Elite, and in the meantime we were split up when it came time to work on specific moves in our routines. With teammates, however, everything would be different. We’d get together in the locker room and say, Hey, what was up with Coach today? Mood swings much? At competitions, we’d wear matching French braids and make up silly cheers to spur each other on. During practice, we’d push each other to be better than we’d ever thought possible. I could see it all, running through my head like credits for a sitcom on the Disney Channel as we chalked up the bars for each other and playfully wiped some of the chalk on each other’s nose.
When we finally pulled up to the gym, though, it didn’t look like the place I’d imagined. For one thing, it was totally deserted. That made sense, considering there aren’t too many gymnasts who train at eleven o’clock at night, but it still gave it this really creepy vibe, like it was a ghost town.
“Wow, it’s big, huh? Can you believe you’ll be training here?” my mom said as my dad parked the truck by the curb. “Come on, let’s just take a peek inside.”
It wasn’t just big. It was gigantic. From the outside, it looked like an airplane hangar, or the world’s largest indoor flea market or something. Weird, when you think that most of the people who trained there were probably under five feet tall. And when we pressed our faces up against the glass and peered inside, it looked as if it stretched on forever, a wide-open desert with shadows of beams and bars instead of cactuses.
Behind us, I could hear the truck idling as my dad waited for us inside.
I traced the raised letters of the sign on the front door with my fingers: TEXAS TWISTERS: HOME OF STATE BEAM CHAMPION NOELLE ONESTI!
Back in Ohio, my gym had been attached to the Aquatic Center. People would walk into the reception area and go, “Wait a sec, those are leotards, not bathing suits. . . .” and then the receptionist would explain that, yeah, the big building wasn’t just an indoor pool, it actually had a whole separate gymnastics facility as well. When I made the Elite team, months ago, they put a congratulations message up on the marquee outside for two days, but then they took it down to make room to wish Mrs. G. a happy seventeenth anniversary as office manager.
“Well?” my mom said now. “What do you think?”
All I could think was that it was way cooler to announce a state beam champion than someone who’d just made the team, and how raised letters seemed pretty permanent, while the crappy plastic ones they put on the marquee at my old gym kept falling off so it read congra s instead of congrats. Rather than French-braiding each other’s hair, we’d be competing for titles and medals, and it looked like the girls here were way ahead of me on that score.
Yeah, all of a sudden, the whole team thing didn’t seem so exciting.
My mom was smiling at me again, and I forced myself to smile back. “It’s awesome,” I said. “When do I start?”
I started a couple of days later, once we’d had the chance to settle into our new house, which was one story high and smelled a little of stale smoke, although my mom said it was nothing a little Lysol wouldn’t take care of. So now, it smells like stale smoke and Lysol.
“Oh, sugar,” she said to me as we pulled up to the gym, this time in daylight. It wasn’t said as an endearment, since my mom’s not big on those. It was simply what she said when she wanted to say something else, but had to watch her language.
“What?” I asked.
“No, nothing,” she said, giving me a hasty smile. “It’s just that I forgot I was supposed to go in early this morning to meet the furniture delivery guys—we’re getting a couple new rockers for the infant room. And there was a mom who wanted to talk to me about moving her son to the three-year-old group. I keep telling her we can’t do that until he can use the big-boy potty, but you know how moms can be.”
“Oh.” I knew how my mom could be. She managed a day care center, and her job was the most important thing in the world to her. She had been wheeling and dealing on her cell phone the whole car ride down, and even though we’ve been in the South for less than seventy-two hours, she’d already spent a lot of them at the day care, making sure the transition was smooth.
“So…I take it you’re not going to stay for the whole practice,” I said.
She gave me another stressed-out smile. “Sorry, Britt. Maybe once I’m settled in at the day care, I can come watch you. You ready to go inside?”
“I guess,” I said.
In the gym, everything was very white, and with the harsh sunlight coming through the windows, it all looked bigger than it had in the shadows. The ceiling was high enough in this gym that there was no danger of the rhythmic girls throwing their hoops in the air and hitting it. That used to happen all the time at my old gym.
The little kids couldn’t throw their hoops hard enough for it to matter, but the competitive rhythmic girls would have to chase after the hoop when it bounced off the ceiling and went flying across the gym.
Rhythmic gymnasts used props like balls and ribbons and clubs as part of their routines, which consisted of more dancing and leaping and fewer tumbling skills. Of course, the brochure that I had found on my mom’s nightstand said that this place didn’t offer rhythmic classes. So all that extra ceiling height was a total waste.
The brochure also had biographies of the coaches, a couple who had emigrated from China, and featured a glossy picture of a very beautiful girl standing on one tanned leg, the other curved behind her until her toes almost brushed her dark ponytail. Was that the famous beam champion Noelle? Or was it just a model hired to look like a gymnast?
My mom headed straight for the front desk, which was over by the pro shop. At least this was familiar. Gyms always have pro shops, and they’re inevitably right by the front desk, so that while parents are filling out boring paperwork, kids can roam around and decide which things they want to put on their gift wish lists. If I weren’t so distracted right now, I could probably convince my mom to get me a three-pack of sparkly scrunchies.
There were three pillars dividing the front area from the gym, where I could see girls practicing on the beams (there were twelve beams—totally excessive!). I wanted to check the girls out, but my mom was beckoning to me.
“I’m Mrs. Morgan, and this is my daughter, Brittany,” she said to the woman at the desk, placing her arm around me to draw me closer. “I believe we spoke on the phone? I faxed over the final enrollment paperwork yesterday.”
The woman’s name tag said melanie, and she was all business. “Level?” she asked, looking at me over the rims of her glasses.
She probably thought I was a Level Seven or something, since I’m so short. I’m twelve years old, but I look nine. You know you’ve got serious issues when you’re a gymnast and you’re still considered tiny. “I’m a Junior Elite,” I said quickly.
“I see,” she said. “Well, your group is just finishing up on the beam. You’ll have to do some stretches first, of course, but would you like to join them now?”
I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“Mrs. Morgan, you’re welcome to stay. We have a comfortable viewing area for the parents, and a full concession stand with snacks and drinks available.”
I glanced at my mom, looking for some sign that she was at least tempted. That she was considering watching me practice, even for a second. It wasn’t that she was a bad mother. She made sure I ate breakfast every morning, and on the weekends sometimes we would do something fun, like go to the aquarium or the mall. It’s just, you know how little kids are always calling out to their moms when they’re in the pool, or on top of the jungle gym? Look at me! Mom, look! I saw her glance at her watch, obviously worried about getting back to Ben and the big-boy potty, and wondered when she had stopped looking. She used to cheer when I did somersaults in the living room, but she hadn’t even come to my last competition, because it was Parents’ Night Out at the day care.
“Don’t worry,” I said to her before she could answer. “I’ll be fine. And if I fall and break my neck, they have your info, right? So they’ll call you.”
“Britt, don’t even joke about something like that,” my mom said, giving a little laugh like, Kids say the darnedest things, don’t they? “But I do have to get going. You behave yourself, okay? I’ll be back to pick you up after practice.”
“On time,” I said. My mom had a habit of being late to everything. Her autobiography could have been titled I’m on My Way: The Pamela Morgan Story, because she’s always saying she’s “on the way” when in fact she’s just about to jump into the shower, or she’s still putting on her makeup.
“I’ll do my best. But if I’m not here by then—” She dug through her purse, which was this huge lumpy designer thing that was like an abyss for receipts, credit cards, and cell phones. Finally, she pulled out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to me. “Just buy yourself a snack, all right?”
“Fine.”
She tugged on my short blond ponytail and gave me a smile. She thinks it’s the greatest thing that I’m a natural blonde, because she’s not—she goes to the salon once a month to get her color touched up. She says by the time I’m her age, my hair will have turned a light brown, too, and that I’ll be “pleased as punch” if and when I have a blond daughter who’ll match my dye job and make it look natural. I’m not even kidding—she actually thinks about things like that.
Once she was gone, Melanie stood up to lead me toward the Excessive Beams. She nodded at my duffel bag, which had the name of my old gym, Loveland Gymnastics, emblazoned across the side. “Do you have a leo in there, or . . .”
I unzipped my hoodie, showing a shiny blue leotard underneath. “A girl’s always gotta be prepared, right?”
She laughed. Now that my mom was gone, she didn’t seem so uptight. “Very true. And your name is Brittany?”
“You can call me Britt,” I said.
There were three girls practicing on the beams, and as we walked up, one of them did a perfect punch front tuck, landing squarely on the four-inch-wide balance beam. I do a back tuck in my routine, but it’s not nearly as hard-core—you can see the beam as you come down, so it’s easier to land. The punch front has a completely blind landing.
There was the Chinese woman I recognized from the brochure—the head coach, Mo Li—directing another girl, who was practicing full turns. “Keep your eyes focused ahead,” Mo kept saying. “Look at one spot on wall. Are you looking at one spot?”
Full Turn Girl spun around once more and wobbled slightly. “I’m trying,” she mumbled. I don’t know if the coach heard her, but I did.
Maybe later, I thought, I could start up a conversation with Full Turn Girl. “Hey,” I would say casually while we were at the fountain filling up our water bottles. “I totally feel you on the full-turn thing. I mean, ‘do a complete three-sixty but keep your eyes on one spot?’ How is that even possible?”
It was a start, but I’d have to make it funnier. “Did you ever see that movie where the girl gets possessed or whatever? My mom wouldn’t let me watch it, but once I came downstairs to get a Coke and I saw the girl’s head spinning all the way around. I bet you she could do that full turn, no problem!”
It would really have helped if I’d remembered the name of that movie, or if I’d seen more of it. Maybe I’d just pretend I had seen the whole thing. Then Full Turn Girl wouldn’t think I was a baby.
On the third beam, a tall girl with a long, curly ponytail executed a flawless full turn. I recognized her instantly: Brochure Girl. She was even more gorgeous than she’d looked in the picture, and I was suddenly very conscious of my small, pale legs and the way my too-short ponytail jutted out from my head instead of cascading down my back.
“Mo,” Melanie said, trying to get the coach’s attention, “this is Britt. She’s the Junior Elite from Ohio.”
Mo looked me over with sharp eyes, from my flip-flops with my bright pink toenails peeping out to the top of my white-blond head. “No gum,” she said.
I’d played this scene in my head several times on the drive over and imagined many two-word introductions. Hello, Britt, maybe, or Oh, fantastic! or even You’re just the gymnast we’ve been waiting for!—which is more than two words, but still. I hadn’t really considered the idea that the first words my new coach would say to me might be No gum.
But I wanted to show her that I was serious, so I swallowed it whole, making an exaggerated gulping sound, then smiled. “No gum,” I agreed.
From her position high up on one of the beams, Brochure Girl rolled her eyes.
“I introduce you,” Mo said. “Britt, these are your new teammates: Jessie, Noelle, and Christina.”
Noelle was the one with the awesome punch front, so it made sense that she was the state beam champion. She had the
perfect body for a gymnast, too—she was small and compact, like me, but she didn’t look nine. Although she smiled at me when I looked at her, her brown eyes were very serious, and I knew she was going to be competition.
That’s okay, though. I like a challenge.
Brochure Girl was Christina. She was slim, and supertall—for a gymnast, anyway. It’d be a while before I could even dream of being five feet tall, so anyone who came close seemed like a giant to me. She also didn’t look very friendly. Maybe her ponytail was too tight.
The girl who’d been struggling with the full turn was Jessie. She gave me a little wave, and I waved back. Suddenly the friendly conversation I’d imagined with her by the water fountain didn’t seem so impossible.
I wriggled out of my pants, shoving them into my bag with my hoodie, and started to climb up onto one of the beams, but Mo shook her head. “We move to floor, but stretch first.”
Mo quickly listed the succession of stretches she wanted us to do before walking over to talk to someone at the front desk. I didn’t catch the exact order, but I figured I could just follow what everyone else was doing. Jessie took a spot on the floor next to me, and Noelle and Christina faced us, stretching out into a straddle position. This was my first chance to speak to them, and I tried to think of something to say. Something clever, preferably. Something that would make them think, Man, that new girl’s all right.
“So,” I said. “Is it all work and no play here, or what?”
Christina snorted. “It’s an Elite gym,” she said. “What did you expect? For us to take turns jumping on the trampoline?”
“No, that’s not—” I tried to think of a better way to phrase it. “I mean, I was training Elite back in Ohio, too. I just meant . . .”
“Lay off, Christina,” Jessie said, her voice muffled as she reached to touch her toes. She lifted her head, looking at me. “How long have you been in gymnastics?”
“I started when I was three,” I said. “My mom says I was always doing somersaults and rolling off the couch, and she started to worry about me cracking my head open.”
Winning Team_Go_for_Gold Gymnasts Page 1