“I’m sorry. You’re totally right. Congratulations! You’re gonna be amazing. When do you leave?”
I’m only half-listening as he drones on about the specifics; instead, I work on shoving my feelings down because avoidance beats actually dealing with real life, am I right? I’ll take it out on the vault or beam later, Natasha will praise me for how aggressive my skills look, and my perfectly happy family will stay perfectly happy. Why rock the boat?
Saturday, May 21, 2016
76 days left
I’m just one vault away from my “weekend,” which is really just the rest of this afternoon and tomorrow, but I’ll take it.
Sprint, round-off, back handspring, push, tighten, twist, land. It’s over in a flash, I get a “yes!” from Natasha after sticking it, we listen to some post-practice notes, and then we get the go-ahead to leave. This week has been hell, mentally and physically, at home and in the gym. A nonstop suckfest of pretending everything is super duper when in reality I couldn’t be more stressed.
Actually, aside from feeling like my body belongs to an 80-year-old with 30 broken bones, gym has been an escape, allowing me to take out every frustration and asking for nothing in return. I’m forcing myself to be happy for my dad, but the spoiled little brat inside me can’t get over not seeing him every day. I know it’s temporary, and that I’m lucky because at least my parents are still together and I’ll see him on weekends and can FaceTime him whenever I want, so I’m trying to make myself be mature about it.
But at the same time, I can’t get over how much this change in routine is already affecting me mentally. Logically I know in the grand scheme of things not much is going to be different, but the little things he does – turning off my bedside fan every morning to gently wake me up, the “just for fun” mid-week surprise gifts he leaves on my bed, cooking the worst meals ever together when my mom has to work late which is always – are going to be hard to forget.
I’m being a baby, and I know it, which is why I’ve kept my feelings a secret. Plenty of people have it way worse, and he’s right. I’ve held him back long enough. Besides, if I can’t survive not seeing my dad five days a week, how will I survive making it to the Olympics? I need to get my life together.
“You doing anything tonight, Mal?” Ruby asks, hopping in the shower.
“Dinner. Homework. Sleep. And I couldn’t be happier. Minus the homework part.”
“Wanna grab dinner in the city? My host family is out of town and I have car access.”
“I have to check with my parents, but actually, as exhausted as I am, that sounds great. I need a change of scenery. Between gym, school, and my parents, I am going stir crazy.”
“You were literally just in San Diego,” Emerson chimes in.
“Yeah, doing gymnastics,” Ruby retorts. “It’s not like we were on a luxury vacation, or a vacation at all.”
“Do you want to come with us, Em?” I ask once Ruby steps back into the shower. Ruby’s probably gonna be pissed but I feel bad, especially considering that she’s new here, has literally no friends, and we’re not generally known for treating her like a pal.
“Umm…I have to look into some things but sure, if Ruby doesn’t mind.”
“Look into some things,” I repeat in my head with a pity eye roll. As if. But also, sad. Damn my conflicting emotions.
I shower, change into jeans and a t-shirt, call my mom, get the okay, and then as I’m blow drying my hair, Emerson heads out of the shower bank. “I can come!” she announces.
Ruby laughs. “With us?”
“I invited her,” I hiss.
“I mean, the more the merrier and teammate bonding and all that good stuff, but I hope we don’t bore you to death with our lameness and nerdery. Get ready for the least exciting night of your life.”
We pile into Ruby’s fake parents’ car, Emerson in the passenger seat and me behind them like the child that I am, even though I’m sure most people would agree I’m more mature than the two of them combined. It’s sometimes weird to remember that they’re both older than me by three or four years. In the gym, you get used to being friends with people of all ages, but in real life the gap between 18 and 19 (them) and 15 (me) is pretty wide.
Ruby wants to go to the University of Washington area, so we drive off in that direction, talking about practice the whole way over because it’s the one thing we all have in common.
“I’m so glad Natasha’s letting you keep the Chow on bars,” Ruby mentions. “You look a billion times better.”
“Yeah, not having to worry about the stupid half twist is making it so much easier. Like, that one skill going away fully makes me more confident with that routine by a billion percent.”
“It looks like it. Seriously, you wrap your mind around something like that and it becomes your sole focus and you ignore everything else. I’ve been there.”
“I don’t get why Natasha would have you keep it in all that time if you couldn’t do it,” Emerson remarks. “You’d think she would have taken it out if you were struggling all this time. My coach would have.”
“It’s more my fault than hers,” I say quickly, before Ruby can yell at Emerson for questioning Natasha’s coaching methods. “I wanted it in the routine, and I was too stubborn to ask to change it. Natasha always knows when I physically can’t do a skill, so she lets me work at it until I either get it or give up. Besides, this wasn’t an ability thing. It was a mental block.”
“I mean, I could tell it was a problem the first time I saw you doing it, so that’s the only reason I bring it up.” She shrugs.
“Whatever,” Ruby says. “Natasha’s one of the best elite coaches in the country, but she also has a million J.O. kids who just finished nationals and regionals and states, so she’s not going to catch every under-the-surface freak-out from Amalia. No offense, Mal.”
“None taken.” My inner crazy is infamous at our gym.
“Either way, it’s fixed, and the routine does look much better now,” Emerson concedes. “Even if bars aren’t really your thing.”
“Thanks?”
“What about you?” Ruby asks. “How are you liking it at MGMA?”
“It hasn’t really made much of a difference aside from the few little collaborative drills Natasha and Sergei put together. I’m still Sergei’s athlete, just at a different gym.”
“Why did you and Sergei come here?” Ruby asks. “Especially this close to the Olympics. I still don’t get it.”
Emerson turns red. “The owners of my last gym…”
“Yeah, blah, blah, blah, they tried to make you sign a contract, they wanted you to earn money for them, that’s what the press and everyone is saying. But it’s weird because you’ve never turned down money-whoring schemes before. What’s the real reason?” Ruby’s pushing it now. But no one in the gym world has bought that story from day one, and honestly, I’d like to know the truth as well.
A moment of silence. Emerson crosses her arms and I watch her right fingers lace around her left elbow, squeezing tight. “It’s none of your business,” she finally hisses.
We’re silent for the rest of the ride until Ruby parallel parks on University Way and cheerfully announces, “we’re here!”
What a super fun team bonding night this will be!
***
Thankfully, dinner at Samir’s Mediterranean is less stressful than the car ride. Now that we’re face to face, daring Ruby is less apt to dig into Emerson’s personal life and the atmosphere is much more chill.
We’re all pretty limited in what we can order, so we each put in very particular requests. The wait staff is only slightly annoyed by we three preteen-sized gals with abnormally defined arm muscles picking apart each dish to get it Olympic-diet approved, but we’re used to it. I automatically add in a “sorry” under my breath with each minor alteration.
“Realistically, at this point,” Ruby says in between bites of her vegetarian plate (half the rice and hold the pita bread), “who do yo
u think will make the Olympic team?”
Ugh. I glance at Emerson, my eyes begging her to answer first, mostly because I want to know if I’m included in her picture. She doesn’t answer or even look at me, choosing instead to pretend the lemon in her tea is super interesting.
“Um,” I start, not sure to include myself or not. Do I really have that little faith? I just think I’ll sound absurd if I actually say my own name.
“Well, you guys, duh.” I’m just gonna end there. Easy.
“No, you have to give all five members!”
I sigh audibly and Ruby’s eyes twinkle. She loves to see others in pain and I hate her more than anyone else who has ever lived.
“There are like a billion other people who could fill those spots,” I whine. “Like, so many injuries can happen between now and then, someone could come out looking amazing, someone else can come out looking like crap…it’s impossible to say.”
“Booooo, it’s no fun being diplomatic. Name the first three off the top of your head. NOW.”
“FINE, Maddy, Charlotte, and me.”
Emerson wrinkles her nose.
“What, you disagree?” I huff, my nostrils flaring.
“No, it’s a good team, and you went the safe route, picking the top three at the Open, so basically the top five all-arounders in the country right now. But that team isn’t really balanced at all.”
“I don’t know,” Ruby says slowly, plotting her perfect team in her head. “Vault, fine, we’d all have Amanars except Charlotte. Bars is fine, beam would have three of the best routines in the world, floor is great too. What’s wrong with it?”
“Bars is grotesque. No offense, but neither of you are bar workers. You’d have me, and then two mediocre routines.”
“My bars score at the Open was a 15.4!” Ruby says, slamming her fork down.
“Home scoring,” Emerson scoffs. “You’ll never get that internationally.”
“Fine, then who would you include?” I ask.
“Sophia or Irina,” Emerson says, folding her used napkin neatly instead of crumpling it up like a normal person.
“Instead of…” Ruby and I press on simultaneously.
Emerson looks down at her controlled mess, inspects a nail though it’s perfectly manicured, and “ahems” before responding. “Amalia.”
My heart flips over.
“It’s nothing against you. I’m just thinking about the team and my opinion is that we need someone more on bars, not beam. It would suck leaving you behind because your beam is like…like, you could win a gold medal for your beam. But you have to think about the team. Ruby and I have really great beams, and Maddy’s is good when she hits and she can win a vault medal. She outranks you.”
“That’s crap,” Ruby says. “What about Charlotte? Mal would make it over Charlotte.”
“Charlotte has experience and is a better all-arounder.”
“My silver to her bronze at the Open begs to differ.”
Emerson shrugs. “By what, two tenths? You have two really high-scoring events and two, no offense, kind of pathetic ones. Hers average out to be the same so if the team needed someone in a pinch, she could go up anywhere and be reliable. If it was me in charge, I’d rather take a zero in qualifications than use your floor.”
“You’re just being a bitch for no reason,” Ruby says. “Charlotte can’t win individual gold on anything, and Mal can. My team would be me, you, Mal, Irina, and Maddy. Bars and beam are covered. Charlotte is useless.”
“I respectfully disagree, but it’s not like any of this matters anyway. We’ll see what Vera says when the time comes.”
I don’t know if I want to cry or punch Emerson in the face. Like, she does have a point, I really only would be useful on one event in the team final, and it’s an event we’re already decent at. But Charlotte? For her experience? This girl totally bombed at worlds last year. I highly doubt Vera would trust her in Rio.
It honestly sounds like Emerson is threatened by me. No, I’m not a better gymnast than Emerson Bedford. I probably never will be. But I could very well beat her on beam and she knows it. Any bid to keep me off will open up one more medal spot for her.
“Would you ladies like the check?” the waitress asks. She has been standing there listening to us scream at each other for about five solid minutes.
We all cough up some money, Emerson and I both tense, Ruby just being Ruby, off in Rubyland where the state motto is Schadenfreude. Look it up.
As we’re about to pile into Ruby’s car, Ruby turns to us and waves. “See you Monday!”
Whoops, I didn’t exactly plan how I was getting home. Perfect. I say goodnight back and debate between a million-dollar cab ride or calling my parents, who won’t be thrilled about the twenty-minute drive each way.
“No ride?” Emerson asks, swiping through her phone, not looking at me.
“Nah, my mom’s on the way…I mean, after I call her, she’ll be on the way. It’ll be awhile…do you need a ride home? We can probably take you.”
“I’m just gonna Uber it.”
We tap away on our iPhones in silence, and I’m about to call my mom when I realize she and my dad are at a dinner tonight. Fantastic. Is it possible to sigh aggressively?
“Hey, my car’s gonna be here in like three minutes,” Emerson says. “If you want I can get it to take you home after.”
“Don’t you live in the city? I live crazy far out of the way.”
“I’m in Magnolia.”
“Yeah, well I live like a half hour from there, so…”
“Hey, what if…I mean, do you think your parents would mind if I crashed at your place for the night?”
L-O-L. What the eff? I play it cool. “I doubt it, why?”
“I’m just so sick of being with my host family all the time, with like middle-aged adults and a bratty little kid, and I’m forced to either spend time with them or shut myself in my room for a hundred hours. It’s not like I know anyone here.”
“Um…yeah, it’s fine.”
“Cool, I’ll just have Uber bring us to your place then. Address?”
I tell her, and then text my mom to let her know we’ll have company. “Be prepared for the most awkward sleepover of my life,” I type. Emerson grins at me, like this is the happiest day of her life. I hit send, smile back, and internally freak out when I realize there’s still a magazine clipping of her on my dream board, embarrassing on top of embarrassing. If I have to burn the whole house down so she doesn’t see it, I will.
***
“The bathroom is through that door, and I have shorts and a t-shirt you can borrow for pajamas.” I motion to my dresser while making a ninja-esque move toward my desk, positioning myself in front of the bulletin board where I’ve kept various gymnastics-related clippings over the years for inspiration.
“Your room is really neat,” she says, turning to face the window, allowing me to stealthily rip her photo from the board and crumple it into a tiny ball. Nailed it.
“Thanks? I guess it’s not that bad…but still super babyish. I’ve been begging my parents to let me redecorate for like three years.”
Emerson laughs. “No, like, clean. Do you really think I would use ‘neat’ meaning like, cool? Am I Greg Brady?”
Finding Our Balance Page 16