I smile but don’t break concentration. I bounce in place for a few seconds, stretch my toes, and do a final straightening of my leotard, a deep ocean blue long-sleeved competition leo with lighter blue accents along the sleeves and down my sides.
“You’re officially wedgie-less,” Natasha remarks just as Amaya Logan lands her bars dismount on her knees. Ouch. Been there. “Just like practice, okay?”
I take my place at the start of the track and wait for my cue, the green flag. When it goes up, everything sets into motion. I take a large step back with my left foot, putting my weight on it while pointing my right foot, which I then gently place down before sprinting forward on the left.
When I sprint down the narrow track, I reach around 17 miles per hour, a superhuman feat. My run is so well-timed, I know it takes exactly 12 long strides down the blue carpeting to reach the vault table.
On the last step, I hop my left foot forward to join the right before launching into my roundoff. I know how my hands need to be positioned as I cartwheel over, and muscle memory helps my feet hit the springboard exactly where they need to be.
From there, I launch backwards, back arched and my arms outstretched behind me, ready for the brief but violent contact with the padded table. That backwards push with my hands, called a block, is what propels me into the air; the stronger the push, the higher I fly. If my hands touch even a centimeter higher or lower than my sweet spot, my block will be way off, which could result in a crash and possibly even a career-ending injury. I’ve seen it happen.
Once in the air, I jerk my arms inward, pulling them tightly against my torso to increase my torque, helping me quickly get the two and a half twists around while I’m simultaneously doing a back flip in the layout position, making sure my body is fully stretched – one long straight line from my shiny bun down to my perfectly pointed toes.
I’m in the air for less than two seconds, but if I do everything precisely right, I land facing away from the vault table, feet together, knees slightly bent to absorb the impact, controlling the landing so I don’t have to take any steps or hops.
My feet smack the thick blue mat a nanosecond after I finish twisting. I reach my right arm forward tentatively in case I need to steady myself, but when I realize I’m fine, I flare both arms up. I hold the stick for a moment, and then turn to the right to salute to the judges.
My mind is racing. I stuck the vault. I didn’t just hit it. I. Stuck. It.
Natasha is waiting for me off to the side, all smiles with both hands up for high fives.
“That was effing ridiculous,” she says as I run towards her. “Yeah, sure, you could’ve gone for a bit more distance…but your body looked straight and your legs were glued. Glued. I have no idea how you did it, but you were phenomenal.”
I finish my bottle of water, grinning from ear to ear.
“Just like practice.”
***
The rest of my competition goes well, though it’s not totally up to my impossible standards. I missed a connection on bars, but I nailed beam and hit floor – my worst event – about as well as I could.
After vault, I didn’t watch a single routine, choosing to stay in my zone. With my eyes down and my earbuds in, my rivals fought to stay on or fell, struggled on landings or stuck them, and I was oblivious to it all.
Tugging on my white yoga pants, I glance around the gym to get a feel for the vibe. Ruby, who finished her day on beam, looks radiant. I smile, happy she’s kicking butt at this camp. She needs it after her disastrous summer last year. Then I search for Emerson, whom I spot by the door to the locker room, hands on her hips, face completely stoic. Is it bad if I was hoping for a sobbing mess?
“Line up!” Vera calls, holding a clipboard with the day’s results. I glance at Natasha quickly, nervously, but she shoos me onto the floor.
“Most of you did really well today,” Vera starts once we’re all in order. “You all need to do some work between now and this summer, especially on landings and on the little details. And that’s okay. We don’t want you to hit a peak here, or anywhere but the Olympics. The best performances of your life need to be in August.”
Vera squints down at the list in front of her. “If you are called for the top five, step out of line and salute. I’ll give score sheets and full results to your coaches after we finish. Fifth place, Irina Borovskaya.”
Everyone claps while Irina steps forward. I bite my cheek. Irina was the silver medalist at nationals the year before and won bars at worlds. There’s no way I scored higher.
“Fourth place, Amalia Blanchard.”
Okay then.
I glance at Natasha, who looks totally unsurprised, giving me a thumbs up.
“Third place, Emerson Bedford. Second place, Maddy Zhang. First place, Ruby Spencer.”
I can’t believe it. I didn’t beat Emerson, but one spot behind is huge. The whole point of verification is proving readiness for competition and showing that you can hit under pressure. If I can get fourth place here, I can definitely be in the top five at the Olympic team trials.
At the farm, Vera only gives medals to the first-place senior and junior all-arounders and to the winner of physical abilities testing, usually a tiny but muscular junior with the endurance to last through a rope climb, a handstand hold, the flexibility test, and endless reps of press stands and leg lifts. She places the medal over Ruby’s head, and then grasps her shoulders while speaking directly at her, Ruby nodding and beaming in response.
After a brief announcement about tomorrow’s practice – the last before we get to go home – we’re dismissed. The second Vera finishes speaking, Ruby is already at my side screaming, “Congratulations!” while jumping up and down.
“Me, what about you?! First place?! That’s amazing, Rubes.”
“Yeah, the reporters who said I was ‘finished’ last summer can eat a dick.”
“Nice visual,” Natasha says, joining our little team. “And please, you’ll be the subject of every single fluff piece before every competition this year. The sugary headlines are already making me nauseous, America’s Sweetheart.”
“As if she’d even give anyone an interview,” I say, hugging Natasha.
“I knew you guys would be awesome. You seriously rocked it today. I’m gonna go wait to grab results and then I’ll probably hang out in the viewing room to get some work done while watching the juniors. I’ll meet you in the dorms after dinner?”
“Yeah, see ya,” Ruby says. There are a million more tight hugs before our coach leaves, and then we run off to grab our things.
“Did you watch any of it?” I ask, slipping into my warm-up jacket.
“Some,” Ruby replies. “But I couldn’t watch you. I felt more nervous for you than I did for any of my own routines. But I did see Emerson eat mat on bars.”
“She fell?!” Sweet. Karma.
“Yeah, on her Jaeger of all things. The rest of her routine was gorgeous, but she looked like she wanted to kill someone after she finished. Totally a fluke, but you could tell she was rattled.”
“Wow.” Naturally I’m thinking of my comments right before vault. I feel the slightest bit guilty, though honestly, not enough to truly care, sorry not sorry. Emerson still placed third, and probably would have won without that fall. So it sucks for her, but it’s not like she crashed and burned.
“Whatever,” Ruby shrugs. “She deserves a kick in the ass every now and then. Let’s watch a movie.”
We head into the locker rooms to shower and change into sweats before heading back to the dorms. I’m more physically and mentally exhausted than I can ever remember feeling, but as I turn around before stepping through the door, I get a glimpse at Vera from across the gym. She happens to look up right at that moment, catches my eyes, and smiles for a split second before returning to her laptop.
The exhaustion, the nerves, the shooting pain in my ankles from all of today’s hard surface landings…all worth it.
***
“I
can’t believe vault was my best event.” I’m poring over the results in the common room with Ruby and Natasha after dinner. “Vault has never been my best event.”
“Ahhh, the beauty of the Amanar,” Natasha says. “Your start value is a 6.3 and you’re so clean, you’ll probably get at least a 9.5 in execution every time you hit it. Automatic super high score. The only other event you come close to matching is beam, and there are way more deductions there, so you’d need to have the best routine of your life if you want it to match your vault score.”
I look at the scores again, which at first glance are totally confusing. The majority of my career has been in the Junior Olympic system, which uses old-school perfect 10 scoring. Elite is a different animal with combined difficulty and execution scores, and I’m a little obsessed with analyzing everything.
“I still can’t believe you got a 60 in the all-around,” Natasha says. “I was hoping for 59, but thought even that might be a stretch. A 60 in your first senior elite competition…that’s some prodigy nonsense.”
“I could have done better,” I huff. I’m a total type-A perfectionist, so I’m annoyed at losing difficulty on bars and beam due to missed connections, and I could’ve been cleaner on floor. Bars hurts the most, though. I should’ve had around a 6.1 start value, so getting knocked down to a 5.8 stings.
“You’re fiiiiiiine,” Ruby sighs, rubbing oatmeal lotion on her golden brown skin. “You heard Vera. ‘Don’t peak until the Games.’ Today was all about the mental competition…can you handle it, are you tough enough, blah blah blah.”
“Ruby’s right,” Natasha agrees. “We have two months until trials. That’s more than enough time to make sure your difficulty’s maxed out and to put the finishing touches on floor.”
They’ve been doing this for years, so I know they’re right. I trust them and change the subject.
“Ruby, I didn’t see your scores!”
“Oh, yeah.” Ruby gets up to search. I want to frame my results sheet, but Ruby has already crumpled hers up and forgotten about it.
She finds it under a magazine on the floor and hands it to me before plopping back onto the couch. She is way more into this Grey’s Anatomy rerun than gym talk.
I see straight away that Ruby’s difficulty is pretty balanced on all four, ranging from a 6.1 to a 6.4. Even bars, Ruby’s weakest event, has tons of hard skills packed in. She isn’t always the best at executing that difficulty, but with routines that complex she’d always pull in top scores if she just hit, period.
“We need to bring my floor difficulty up,” I decide, jumping up from my seat. I’m in the mood to waltz into the gym to get to work right this second.
“Mal, even if we add a skill or two, it won’t matter,” Natasha tries to reel in my crazy. “If you fit into the Olympic team puzzle, beam and vault are where you’ll add value, with bars as a back-up. The U.S. team has plenty of good floor workers. At best, you’d go up in qualifications, and I wouldn’t even bet on that. If your beam is the best in the country and your Amanar’s consistent, your floor won’t matter. Trust me.”
I chew my lip and stare at the TV, watching but not paying attention. I can’t get floor off my mind.
Natasha groans, grabbing both results sheets from my hands. “Enough of this. You’ll only make yourself insane. I’m gonna go hang out with the other coaches. Gonna try to get them to go cow tipping with me. Spice things up. Bed by 10, okay? Travel day tomorrow.”
“‘Night, Tash.” I curl my feet under my butt and bite my nails.
“Peace out,” Ruby says, her eyes still glued to the medical drama unfolding on the screen.
Moments after Natasha leaves the room, Emerson slips in. It’s only the three of us plus a couple of the youngest juniors, who can’t be more than 12 and are freaking out – loudly – as if Emerson can’t see or hear them.
I keep my face focused on the screen, no longer feeling as ballsy as I did during our last confrontation.
“Hey Ruby,” Emerson says, squeezing between the two of us on the couch. “Hi Amalia.” Her voice goes up a million octaves on my name.
Ruby gives her a brief, albeit fake, smile before turning back to the TV. I manage a weak “hey” in response.
“Good job today,” Emerson turns to me as she talks. “I didn’t think you’d get close to fourth.”
“Thanks?” It’s a clear insult masked as a compliment. I’d been planning on playing nice, but not after that comment. “Shouldn’t you be doing better than third?”
Emerson stares at me for an awkward amount of time before opening her mouth again. “Look. You’re really good. I don’t want to bitch at each other every time we’re in the same room. If we both make it to the Olympics, we have to be on the same team. We can’t be juvenile little frenemies.”
“Yeah, I get it. I didn’t mean to be a bitch.”
“I did,” Emerson smirks. “But you took it like a pro. One time I told Sophia Harper her arms looked doughy before bars at nationals and she fell three times. It’s hilarious how little it takes to make people lose their minds.”
I don’t even know how to respond. The whole conversation is bizarre to me.
“Whatever,” she continues. “I’m competitive and I express that in obnoxious ways sometimes. But I made a bad first impression. I don’t actively want anyone to hate me.”
“I mean…” I start, and then try to gather my thoughts. “Like, you told me I was nothing before my first verification ever. You can’t possibly feel that threatened by me?”
“Please. I am threatened by no one. I was testing you. Congrats, you passed! Fresh start?”
I shake my head, but know I have to do some adulting here and forgive her. “Fine. I don’t want to have a problem with anyone, especially if we end up on the same team.”
“Good.” Emerson pauses. “I watched your routines, by the way. Your beam is seriously our best chance at gold on that event. Like, I seriously can’t believe this was your first elite competition.”
“Thanks. Actually, I did the Open last year, but I was terrible. I fell a million times and didn’t qualify to nationals. I didn’t watch anything today, really…but I did see your vault.”
“Eh, not my best. And you missed my fall on bars.”
I pretend Ruby hadn’t already told me, and that I hadn’t smiled in response. “Wow, that sucks…”
“My hands slipped on my Jaeger,” she huffs. “I caught it, but couldn’t hold it. I blame whoever went before me and I hope whoever it was seeks help for her hand sweat issues.”
“I missed some connections on bars, if that’s any consolation.”
“I’m just pissed because if I didn’t fall, I would have been first.” Emerson glares in Ruby’s direction, and then pulls out her results. “I mean, even Maddy beat me today. The laws of the universe are, like, set up to ensure that never happens. She’s my friend or whatever but dear Lord she’s a mess.”
I peer over at her sheet of paper, mostly to get a glimpse at her difficulty scores. In the sake of friendly competition, I need to see how I compare.
She was right. That fall on bars cost a full point in execution, knocking her down to a 7.5; with a 60.2 total score, she would’ve finished higher than Ruby by at least a tenth if she didn’t fall. And her difficulty is even more balanced than Ruby’s…almost impossibly so at 6.3 or 6.4 on every single event. Every gymnast has a weakness but she could realistically get a 15 or better on any routine.
“Well, at least you don’t have to prove yourself,” I offer. “You’re pretty much the only girl here who sealed the deal ages ago. Everyone knows you’re going to Rio.”
Finding Our Balance Page 3