Tumbling (29 page)

Grace would stay in Katja's favor.

Grace had to show them all that Katja's way was the right way.

Because it was the only way she knew how to live. Katja was the third most important person in her life. Dad, Max, Katja, Leigh. That's all Grace had.

If Dylan were into me . . .

If Mom were here . . .

Grace squeezed her eyes shut and tried to shut her entire face. What was happening? What had flirting with Dylan done to her? It had been so long since she'd let herself miss her mother.

Grace wiped the pain off her face and signaled the judges.

This was not the way it was supposed to be. It should not feel this awful to be coming in third at the biggest American gymnastic event in four years. Later today, Grace would hear her name listed among those going to the Olympics. In only a few weeks she would be on an international stage fighting to etch her name into history
next to Nastia Liukin and Gabby Douglas and Carly Patterson and Mary Lou Retton. Right now, the stands were full of Americans who had followed her career. They were full of people who believed in her. Her little brother, Max, was up there, somewhere in the dark, waving a sign around and screaming her name.

Yes, she was in third. Yes, she might stay there.
But still
, Grace thought,
this should feel better
.

She should feel confident, proud, excited. Instead of mortified and hurt and like a terrible daughter and a terrible gymnast and a terrible friend.

Her heart was pumping sludge, sinking lower and lower in her torso, and it would keep sinking until it was caught by the hip bones that protruded from her navy leo. Her arms felt so heavy that it was an effort to lift them over her head when the flag turned green.

But luckily Grace's gymnastics did not depend on her emotional state. She squinted at the beam, like her coach had taught her, and watched it grow. She flipped the switch. She erased her feelings. She let her brain and heart die, and her body took over.

Foot
, she said to herself as her left foot launched her off the springboard.
Foot
, she told herself patiently, and her right foot landed on the beam.

Spin.
She did a full twist with her left leg kicked out to the side. It was a difficult trick and the audience—the crowd of thousands whose belief in her somehow still couldn't erase her father's disappointment—awarded her with applause.

By the time Grace stood with her toes lined up on the end of the beam, her arms raised over her head, ready to catapult her body into its first tumbling run, she was herself again.
Hand-hand-feet.
Her roundoff.
Feet.
Her back layout.
Feet.
Her back tuck.

She landed squarely on the beam, her right foot in front of her left in ballet's fourth position. She posed with her arms over her head and smiled toward the ceiling. That was it. Her body was listening again.

Grace felt her confidence build. She let her body do what it always did, let her muscles take her through the routine, let her spirits rise with her body's abilities.
Standing back tuck. Check. Switch leap. Check. Dance poses. Perfect. Second tumbling run. Awesome
.

Everything connected. Everything square.

By the time she landed her double-tuck dismount, the applause falling down on her like the confetti that would after she was announced to the team, she didn't need to force her smile.

So what if Dad was ignoring her? She always knew exactly what he'd say anyway. She could do it without him. He hadn't said anything to her, hadn't looked at her for over an hour, and she did it. That amazing beam routine. That close-to-perfectly executed and extremely difficult beam routine.

She'd be closer to Leigh and Wilhelmina at the end of the rotation. If one of them messed up a little bit, she'd be ahead.

Take that, Dad. I'll do it without you.

This time her father was there to meet her when Grace exited the podium. “Where was that on bars?” he said.

Grace shrugged and tried to move past him.

He followed her over to her gym bag. “Well, good job,” he said.

Grace braced herself for the “But watch—” or the “Only—” that was sure to follow. It didn't. He left it at good job. Then he went over to say something to Wilhelmina's coach.

Grace breathed a sigh of what she knew should be relief but it came out shaky. She watched the back of her father's head and wondered why a simple “Good job” didn't feel like she always thought it would. It felt empty. It felt shallow. It felt . . . like he was giving up on her.

She watched her father walk over to Monica and whisper to her. Is that how Monica always felt?

Grace knew the look on his face: he was critiquing Monica. Whispering to her about unpointed toes or space between her knees or even strategy while Grace sat on a folding chair five feet away, drinking water and telling her empty stomach that it was full.

Leigh mounted the beam with her signature front-tuck mount and the crowd cheered as if it were the hardest trick in the books.

Why don't you ever fall?

LEIGH

I hate you
, Leigh told the beam as she stood at the end of it, following her first tumbling pass. She had to have the beam routine of her life in order to be chosen as an all-around gymnast in the Olympics. Right now she was winning the Olympic trials; she had set herself up to make the team, no questions asked. For the third time this summer, she was on top at the biggest meet of her life. She couldn't let the beam defeat her now.

I hate how skinny you are, how high off the ground.

At some point gymnastics came down to math. And the math was on Leigh's side. She couldn't let the beam defeat the math.

I hate those stupid noises you make.

Leigh was less than 180 seconds away from being a front-runner for Olympic gold, from being a gymnast who would be discussed all across not only America, but Russia and Great Britain and Romania and Japan and China. One hundred eighty seconds from magazine covers and television interviews and autographs. This sixteen-foot plank of fake wood could not take all of that away from her.

You can't stop me.

Leigh did her standing tuck on the beam. It said
bang.
But Leigh closed her ears. She did her dance poses, trying to go for a little extra flair, to raise her leg a little
higher, to wave her arms a little more confidently. To be her cheerful self, even when she was on the beam. She made her way to the end and took a deep breath.
Don't listen
, she told herself. Just flip.

Leigh felt the air rush by the bottom of her body from her ponytail to her pointed toes as she completed two back handsprings and a back layout. Though she landed squarely, the wall of applause from the crowd was so loud it almost knocked her back off the beam. She smiled. She'd never gotten that much height before.

She followed it up with a long, high flip, a connected switch leap, and an almost perfectly solid full turn. Leigh felt the muscles in her body work to keep her upright and balanced. She felt them flex and release, allowing her to scale the air, defying gravity by more than should be humanly possible.

And she understood. It was good to be big. It was maybe also good to be graceful and balletic like Grace. But for Leigh, it was better to be the linebacker.

Leigh the Linebacker.

She would embrace it. She would use it. She would use it to win Olympic gold in the individual all-around.

So as she began her second tumbling run, Leigh opened her ears again. She let the banging of the beam confirm that she was doing things right. She was flying high above it. She was landing squarely on it. She was a gymnast. She was herself.

Bang. Boom. Bang.

She bathed in the sounds she was making.

Leigh felt every eye in the stadium on her, every mouth in the stadium smiling as she danced the five hundred centimeters down the beam, as she did a standing back tuck, as she leaped and twirled and landed herself at the back of the beam.

She took a deep breath.
Back handspring, back layout, full in–full out. Get enough height to stick the landing.

Leigh took off with speed and agility and power. She was like a cheetah as she flipped down the length of the beam; she would always land on her feet; she always knew where the surface was; she could never mess up because her muscles and her power wouldn't let her.

After her layout, her feet released her off the end of the beam, straight into the air above it. The audience gasped at how high Leigh got. She tucked her body into a ball and turned it over with a twist. First her head was up, then her head was facing away from the beam, then it was facing the flag behind her, then it was down, then
bang
.

A hammer bashed into her forehead just above her right eye. Her body stiffened and her blood was sharp and painful, like razors running through her veins, and her eye was going to fall out and roll on the floor, that floor, which was coming up beneath her limbs much too quickly, and then, thankfully, she blacked out.

CAMILLE

Camille sat with her warmed-up bottom balancing on the edge of the toilet bowl and hissed, “What are you doing here?” into her cell phone. Her breath was short from the floor routine she'd just nailed.

“Supporting you,” Bobby answered, like it was no big deal.

“You told me you weren't coming,” Camille whispered.

“I think you're making a mistake,” Bobby said. “But I love you, Camille. I want to be with you, even when you make your mistakes.”

“Bobby . . .” Camille didn't know what to say. Yesterday she'd wanted nothing more than for Bobby to show up, to call her, to text her, to anything. But now that he was here, she felt confused. He'd broken up with her right before one of the biggest events of her life. That didn't feel loving. She couldn't magically morph back into the person she was before he said they were breaking up.

And even in that moment, things hadn't been perfect. When was the last time the air between them felt like magic?

“I thought you'd be happy to see me,” Bobby said quietly.

“I am,” Camille said. Though she wasn't sure it was true.

“You don't sound like it,” Bobby said.

Camille sighed. “Let's talk about this later, okay? I'm not even supposed to be on the phone right now.”

“Come on, Camille. I came all the way down here and . . . I was hoping maybe you'd let me . . . take you home?”

“I'll talk to you about it after the meet, okay, Bobby?”

“No, Cam, that's not what I mean. I mean, don't finish the meet. Just leave. With me. Now.”

Camille thought for a second. She pictured herself leaving the meet. She pictured the locker room without her at the end of the night. Everyone who was named to the team would want to go. She could stay right here. It would solve so many problems but it still didn't seem quite right.

Camille heard the door to the bathroom open and breathed a
shhh
into the phone as she listened to someone else wash her hands and then leave.

“I gotta go, Bobby,” she said. “They'll disqualify me if I keep talking to you now.”

Bobby chuckled. “Then let's keep talking,” he said.

Camille immediately saw a picture of her mother in her mind's eye. Her mother in her faded robe, bent over a dinner Camille had made that she refused to eat.

Why did that sound like something her mother would say? Her mother would never tell her to skip a meet, but something about it was familiar.

“If we stay on the phone,” Bobby was saying, “you'll get kicked out of the meet and you'll be free.”

Camille wanted to be free. But she didn't want to be banished from gymnastics. What was she yearning to break free from?

She thought about those college athletes dancing on the sidelines. She'd never get to dance along, but that's what she wanted.

Bobby was trying to be funny, so Camille laughed to rush him off the phone. “I doubt I'd ever even be welcome on a college team if I left like that.”

“But,” Bobby said quietly, “I thought you were going to go to college with me.”

That was it. Something bright lit up in Camille's brain. She was shocked she'd never seen it before. The way Bobby fed her pizza and soda and made her feel like she wouldn't look good without the extra pounds. The way he convinced her to trick her mother into believing in her second-rate coach. The way he put off college for a year so that she would go with him. The way he broke up with her and when she didn't come running back, showed up where he swore he wouldn't.

It wasn't that Bobby thought gymnastics was bad for Camille.

It was that Bobby didn't want to share Camille with gymnastics.

“You're manipulating me,” Camille said quietly.
Like Mom does.

They were both using their relationship with her as leverage to convince Camille that she had to do what they wanted.

No wonder it was so hard for her to figure out what she wanted for herself.

“What?” Bobby was saying. “No, Cam, I—”

If her mother hadn't been so manipulative, Camille probably wouldn't be here, and she might be happier. But there was nothing she could do about that now. For now, she had to think about what to do from here, how to proceed. And she didn't want to be an Olympian, but she also didn't want to be a quitter. Not with a body that could fly over the vault like hers could.

“I'm going over the vault,” she said.

“Don't do it, Cam,” he said. “Run away with me. You don't want to be a gymnast anymore.”

“Maybe not forever, but right now I do. Right now I'm at the Olympic trials. I shouldn't be hiding in the bathroom talking to my ex-boyfriend,” she said.

“Ex?” he said, like that was the part that mattered.