Tumbling (15 page)

Leigh shrunk under Ted's gaze. Her heart cowered
behind a rib. She didn't like Ted. She was tiny in his presence, no matter how well she'd performed that day. And even though her vault was great, Leigh had had far from a perfect day.

Ted put his other hand on Grace's shoulder.

“You were great today, Monica,” Leigh said, purposefully leaving out Grace. “I mean, don't worry about the vault. You were so amazing on everything else.”

The mousy girl tilted her head and gave Leigh a confused look. Grace and Ted walked away.

“Yeah, sorry,” Leigh said. “I know how it feels when you fall. I shouldn't have said anything. I can't stop thinking about my messed-up beam.”

Monica shook her head.

“What?” Leigh said.

“Never mind,” Monica said.

“No, what is it?” Leigh pushed.

“I heard what you said about me earlier,” Monica said.

“Huh?” Leigh said.

“What's wrong with you? You can't just pretend . . . You're . . . you and Grace . . . you're . . . mean.”

“Oh,” Leigh said. The butt glue. The snickering. Had she really done that? It felt like someone else had said those things and smiled that nasty smile. “I . . . I'm sorry.”

Monica was still shaking her head.

Leigh felt even smaller than she had with Ted. Like she was shrinking until she was Monica's size. Like she didn't know where or who she was anymore.

“I'm sorry,” Leigh said again. “It wasn't . . . nice.”

Monica snorted, then flinched at her own noise.

Leigh faltered. She didn't want Monica to be so mad. She didn't know how to explain that the girl who had made fun of Monica wasn't who she really was. That outside the meets she'd always been nice. That she sometimes had issues with her own butt glue.

Ted called Monica.

Leigh watched the three of them disappear from the gym. Ted, Monica, Grace: they were all mad at her.

A terrifying thought rippled through Leigh's body: What if That Girl wasn't someone she liked?

STANDINGS
AT THE END OF DAY 1

Evening Limbo

GRACE

Grace stood, frozen, and stared. There was a buffet of food for the gymnasts and their coaches spread out across the table along the back wall of the hotel conference room.

Grace gawked at the full salad bar with every type of vegetable that grew out of the ground, chunks of tofu and freshly roasted turkey breast, a platter of grilled chicken decorated with bright yellow lemons, a basket of whole-grain breads and rolls, and bowls of red and green apples, fuzzy peaches, glistening nectarines. The options were healthy, but the sheer amount of food was terrifying. Each basket and plate and platter was brimming over. Each fruit was plump, each veggie plentiful, each roll the size of Grace's fist.

It was such a cruel thing to do to athletes in a sport where a few pounds could mean the difference between being shattered and being immortalized.

Grace was not the only gymnast standing four feet from the table and staring at the food.

She knew that almost every gymnast had food issues. Every one of them could recite her weight down to the hundredth decimal. They all dreamed of pizza and candy and doughnuts when they slept. Each one had her own struggles trying to be healthy and wondering if it was even possible to be healthy when she thought this much about food. Grace knew she was not alone in all of this.

But Grace also knew that her food issues were worse.

For now, she blended in. Or, rather, the fact that her face could never blend in helped her mask the shrinking of her body. She looked like the Chinese-Chinese gymnasts, who were always skinny. So, as she stood with several other girls, no one noticed that she was by far the slimmest among them. It was the one gift her mother had left her: the ability to wither into wires undercover.

The coaches were finished at the food table. They'd selected their food easily, like normal people, and taken a table in front of the girls'.

But Grace's dad sat at the back table by himself, not with the other coaches. Grace knew she would have to join him. So would Monica. Ted didn't like to let his gymnasts eat at the table with the other girls because he was afraid that the chatting and laughter would distract them from the importance of eating correctly, eating the combination of protein and grains and calories that would lead to higher release moves and tumbling passes. If it weren't for all the other people in the room,
Grace's dad would probably make her plate himself. But they were both a little embarrassed about the amount of control he wielded on Grace's life.

She grabbed a dish, feeling the cool edge of the porcelain against her palm like the barrel of a gun.

This is going to be hard
, Grace thought.

Because while Grace's father thought he was controlling everything, while Grace was happy to let him control most things, there was one thing he knew nothing about.

She glanced over the white warm-up fabric on her shoulder and saw her father sitting at the back table, staring at her from beneath bushy blond eyebrows as if to say,
Get over here already.

Monica wasn't even in the conference room yet, so it wasn't like Grace was the only one keeping him waiting.

There was no way around it today. Not with everyone here. Not with her father staring at her that way. Grace was going to have to eat.

She looked down at her chest.
That's what you want anyway, right?
she asked her heart.

Grace made a salad. She piled spinach and tofu and turkey and broccoli and cauliflower and hearts of palm onto her plate. She dressed it with only a little balsamic vinegar, no olive oil. She grabbed a bottle of water and added a small roll that she had no intention of actually eating to the side of her plate.

As she carried her tray back to the table at the back of the room, she passed the one where all the girls were
sitting. Leigh's head was thrown back in laughter as she listened to a story Maria was telling about the last Olympic trials.

Well, Grace didn't want to talk to her anymore anyway. Grace was done with friends.

Still, it was stupid that Grace couldn't eat at that table. That she couldn't sit down right next to Leigh and keep punishing her. Why did Leigh do that? Why would she hide something so huge from Grace? Just to win? Leigh was acting like . . . like . . . Grace. It was something Grace would do—keep a major trick in her back pocket and not even tell Leigh she was planning to use it. But Grace hadn't. Grace was desperate to beat Leigh, but she'd never even thought of trying to fool her. Trying to destroy her. In fact, Grace had spent today trying to destroy someone
for
Leigh.

Was this what all the Dylan Patrick stuff was about, too? Was Leigh trying to distract Grace last night so that she didn't ask about new tricks, about strategy? So that she went into the meet blindfolded?

Grace was desperate to win the meet, to beat Leigh. But she'd believed her best friend when she had said that all she wanted was for the two of them to get the top two spots, to make the team and qualify for the individual all-around. Could it be that Leigh was just as desperate to beat Grace? Desperate enough to fake friendship? Desperate enough to hide huge point potential and distract her with a cute boy?

It was worse than that. Leigh had given Grace hope.
Hope that someone else might eventually like her. Hope that there was a space for her outside the four walls of her dad's gym. Leigh didn't know what that hope had meant to Grace. She already had so many other friends. She already had a
life
.

Grace plunked her tray down across from her dad and tried to give him a smile.

He glanced at her food but didn't comment on it. Grace relaxed a little bit.

She was going to eat. It felt weird, but it would actually be good for her gymnastics. It would make it so her heart didn't jump and split like that anymore. Grace picked up her fork and forced a chunk of tomato into her mouth.

One meal will not make you too heavy to fly
, she told herself. But she sucked in her stomach before biting down.

“Listen, I'm not mad at you, Gracie, okay?” her dad said.

Grace looked up sharply, so shocked that the thoughts of food were actually gone from her mind. “About what?” she asked.

“Your fan page. I saw it. And it's okay.” He smiled a rare smile. Well, rare for Grace. Max got his smile all the time. For learning to tie his shoe or repeating a joke he didn't quite understand. Max—Grace's adorable little brother who chased their awful mother away just by being born with Down syndrome—usually got all of their dad's soft side. But Grace could see a little of it in his eyes now, and it was pointed to her.

“I can't be mad at you because your supposed friend took advantage of your vulnerabilities,” her dad said. “That's not your fault. You didn't message that singer guy.”

“I didn't!” Grace said. “I swear!”

She was so distracted by this real family moment, she took a bite of cucumber, chewed, and swallowed. Almost without thinking.

Her dad actually chuckled. “I know,” he said. “I believe you. You would never spend your meet thinking about some stupid boy.”

Grace nodded. She managed another bite. Maybe this conversation would get her through a whole meal.

“I followed the whole thread, Grace, from your fan page to that Dylan boy's to Leigh's. Leigh started the whole thing. Leigh. Your so-called friend. She did it to distract you.”

Grace paused mid-chew. That's what she had just thought of, minutes ago. Was the whole Dylan Patrick thing a part of Leigh's strategy?

She had to be careful now, with her words, with her bites.

“She . . . Leigh . . . she said we were just having fun.”

“Oh, Gracie,” her dad said. “What have I always told you about friends in the gym?”

But this was in the hotel room.

Grace didn't say anything.

“You have to be cautious. Especially when you have so-called friends as worldly and educated as Leigh.
Leigh spends half her time outside the gym. She knows how to be a typical teenage mean girl in a way you just don't.”

That was true, Grace conceded.

“But how do you know she was doing it to distract me? How do you know she knows more about being a teenage mean girl than a teenage nice girl?” Grace asked. There had to be some of the nice kind, too, somewhere out there.

“Well, did she tell you she had a triple twisting Yurchenko?”

Grace dropped her fork. “No,” she said.

“Listen, don't let all of this get to you. If you spend tonight thinking about Leigh or thinking about some boy, her plan will have worked. You two are both going to be on the Olympic team. You can figure out if you want to be friends with her after the trials are over. Don't think about her tonight. You can't get distracted. You have to do better tomorrow, Gracie,” her father said. “I was hoping you'd have more of a lead by now. We don't want this to be like the second day of Nationals.”

Grace nodded. She barely heard him, though. She was forcing the cube of turkey to squish between her molars.

“Now, that girl, she had a good day,” her dad said. Grace followed his eyes to the door where Monica was walking in, smiling at Kristin.

Grace forced herself to swallow. “You mean
Monica
?” she said.

He nodded. “She impressed me today,” he said. “Did you see how she flew on bars? And her legs are so long and straight and perfect? You see, you always have to watch out, Gracie. She's our own and she still came out of nowhere. There will always be younger, newer, talented girls on your heels.”

Grace watched Monica load a plate with chicken and vegetables and fruit like she wasn't even thinking about it. At once she was hating Monica's skinny frame and wishing she hadn't interfered, wishing that Monica was still beating Leigh.

Grace flashed back to herself two years ago, at fifteen. She'd still been growing a little bit and with the workouts she was doing, her body would churn up all her calories almost as soon as they hit her tongue. At fifteen, Grace would not have been terrified by this buffet, either.

But would her dad understand that? Would he respect the fact that she'd pared herself down to three hundred or five hundred calories a day just to be able to keep up with the skinnies like Monica who were waiting in the wings? Could he possibly understand that in the past year, since Worlds, her body had slowed down and she couldn't speed it up? That if he kept talking about how high the skinnier girls in her gym flew and how perfect their lines were and how graceful their legs looked, Grace might stop eating completely and then she'd never be able to stay on the bars?

“She's fifteen,” Grace said. It was a start.

This whole meal would be better without Monica. Normally, as in back-when-she-was-eating, Grace had enjoyed sitting with her father when the competition was over. He'd let his guard down a little and they would laugh at something silly a fan had written on a poster. They'd talk about Max and all the funny things he and his babysitter had yelled out from the bleachers that day. They would giggle at the girls who were so clearly gunning for her but who had no chance. But her coach couldn't morph back into her dad tonight because Monica was there and she'd have to eat with them as well.

So, in two words, Grace tried to explain the obvious. Yes, Monica was smaller. She was also younger. Two and a half years younger. Max, who was eight, was also smaller than Grace, but her dad didn't hound her about that.

“And she fell on vault,” Grace blurted before she could stop herself.

Just then a tray tapped down beside her. Monica sat and began arranging her napkin and utensils and water bottle and pretending she hadn't heard Grace, even though Grace knew she had. Her face burned.

This time she
hadn't
meant for Monica to overhear. Now that she was wishing Leigh would disappear, Grace wanted to build Monica up, not tear her down. The other girls probably thought Grace was mean, the way her dad thought Leigh was mean. But that wasn't quite the truth for Grace. It didn't have anything to do with Monica when Grace talked about her behind her back. It
wasn't about being mean: it was about being in control. Monica wouldn't understand that.

Grace looked at her food. How could she touch it now with this skinny mini next to her and her dad smiling at the gymnast who was not his daughter? It was hard to eat in the best circumstances. Now it would be close to impossible.

Monica shoved a huge bite of chicken into her mouth, and Grace's father said, “I was just telling Gracie how impressed I am with your performance today.”

Monica nodded.

“You did a great job, kiddo.”

Grace's jaw dropped, but it didn't matter. Neither of them was looking at her.

She couldn't believe that silly little Monica was able to pull a compliment out of her father after that average performance. How long had Grace yearned for a sentence like that? One that wasn't followed up with “but” or “just watch.” One that was purely a good job? And the little pipsqueak even got a nickname?