Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story) (16 page)

“You bet!”

“Hey! I need your autograph!” she held out a card and a pen.

“Really?” he said taking them.

She turned her back so he could sign on her shoulder. “Of course! I want to show all my friends that I really did know ya. Write, ‘To Ell Donsaii, signed in Olympic Stadium.’”

“Have you really been getting autographs?”

“Sure, except Michael Fentis. He was a real jerk about it. Would you twist him into a pretzel for me?”

He wrinkled his brow, “Why didn’t you just hit him with your purse, kick him in the nuts and put him in the hospital?”

“Oh!” Ell put her hand over her mouth at the little exclamation she’d just let out. “Will you ever forgive me? I really
am
sorry.” The crinkles around her eyes said she wasn’t too sorry.

“Yeah… Hell…” Phil laughed. “I deserved it.”

The next morning the gymnastics team, all wearing their brand new red, white and blue sweats, went out to catch the early bus to the arena. Coach Benson wanted them to get in some warm-ups before the actual competition started. Ell knew that it would be better for her to rest, as her biggest enemy was fatigue, but she was too wired to sleep in anyway. After they pulled out of the gate of the athletes’ housing complex, she rested her head against the window of the bus to watch the city go by. She was startled to see a small group of people wearing Team USA sweats standing at one of the corners. She decided that they must be fans but they were arguing with one another and didn’t even seem to notice the bus going by.

In the gym, Ell commandeered a corner where she pretended to stretch but mostly tried to be unobtrusive in order to avoid the coaches’ attention. Nonetheless Benson found her and dragged her over to the vault, “This is your best event, Ell. You should do a few to ‘stick them’ into your motor memory.”

“Yes sir.” Ell said, carefully repressing the sigh that nearly escaped. She did one vault, making sure that Coach Benson was watching. She suppressed the zone, but did an excellent vault so he wouldn’t demand that she do more, then snuck back over to her corner.

She had been thinking about it and had decided that the Olympics would be her last gymnastics competition. Next year she wanted to get back to focusing on academics. Sitting at the “training tables” wouldn’t be as important once she was a cadet third class. After all, she had refused to take an athletic scholarship for college because she wanted to focus on physics and engineering. Therefore she contemplated doing at least some of the events as well as she possibly could. Would it cause trouble? Her mother and grandmother had flown into Dallas three days before. The owner of the diner where Kristen still worked summers had become one of Ell’s biggest fans and had given her mother time off with pay, though of course she was forgoing her tips. One of the USA Olympic sponsors had sprung for airline tickets for the two of them and put them up in a nice hotel. Ell had been able to go out to dinner with her Mom and Grandma the night before the lighting of the flame. Jake, of course, hadn’t come to Dallas, though her mother claimed he had become quite proud of his stepdaughter and watched all the news feeds about Ell. He might have changed his attitude, but Ell still couldn’t imagine liking him. Since Ell had broken Jake’s arm she and her mother had had several long discussions and Kristen now understood something about Ell’s strange abilities. She had always wondered how Ell had so handily overcome Kristen’s assailant when she was only eleven. In reality, Kristen was a little freaked out by the whole thing.

They had talked at length about Ell’s gifts as they related to the Olympics. Both of them were concerned that her strange talents in the zone should be kept secret for fear of people reacting badly to something they didn’t understand. On the other hand they wondered whether, if she didn’t use her talents, she would always wish she had actually seen just what she could do against the best in the world. How could she pass up this chance to see how she really compared? After agonizing about it she’d decided that she’d never know what “could have been” if she didn’t do at least one event as well as she could. Since she was starting on vault she’d decided to do just as well as she possibly could on her first vault. No one paid much attention to first events anyway, so she could see what was possible without too much risk.

When she was called for the vault she felt the butterflies coming and only suppressed them a little as she walked over to the runway. She stepped up to her mark and let the rush of the zone flood over her. With a little tremor she decided to go ahead with one of her “secret weapons” that no one else had ever seen. She threw her arms high and dropped her center of gravity to begin her run, the low throb of each foot strike thundered through her as she flew down the runway, then skipped into her round-off.  Deep into the zone, she seemed to have forever to align her hands so that they struck the springboard together, exactly in the center. She hid with just exactly the resilience in her arms that she knew from hundreds of practice sessions would launch her perfectly to the table. Spin over once, still deep in zone’s slow motion, allowing her to place her hands perfectly in the center of the table also, and thrust hard, up off the table into the air for two and a half rotations in layout, with two and a half twists as well! Because no one had ever done such a vault before, she knew it was going to cause judging problems. While turning, she realized that, this deep in the zone, she had thrust herself higher in the air than she’d ever been in a vault before. Despite the spinning and twisting, the world flowed slowly enough that as the mat slid past beneath her she could determine that she was perfectly centered in the lane. She noted that her rotation was slightly too fast and so stretched her body even more to slow it. Then she stuck her landing, exactly centered between the lines, perfectly balanced over feet that struck side by side as a single unit. She flexed her knees just enough to absorb energy and keep from bouncing, then stood back up, throwing her arms up high and wide. She smiled broadly at the judges, knowing in her heart that she had just
perfectly
executed a vault that
no one
had thought was possible before now!

Ell let the zone go and the rest of the world gradually came up to her speed. As she turned from her landing her eyes passed over round eyed judges. As she came back down to earth she heard a roaring noise and turned to see people leaping to their feet, cheering wildly, shaking fists. She looked around to see if something had happened but even the girls waiting to do other events were staring over at the vault section in general and her in particular.

Phil had had Chuck notify him when Ell started her first Olympic routine and he watched it live on his HUD. He hadn’t actually watched her before, and had not actually seen many gymnastic events at all. In fact, he didn’t really understand the vault and wondered, as she started down the runway, just what she was going to do, or was supposed to do for that matter. The first thing he noticed was that she seemed to be running very fast. He wondered if it was a video artifact but then Radin Venta, one of the gymnastics announcers said, “My God! Look at her go! I’ve never seen a vaulter sprint this fast. Will she really be able to handle that velocity when she hits the table?”

Then Phil saw her spin end over, hitting the springboard, next the table and then fly much higher and farther into the air than he had ever dreamed might be possible, all while turning end over end. He thought she might be twisting too but it was hard to tell?
Were there special springs in the apparatus that let her do that?
he wondered

The woman announcer, Eva Escanescue, gasped.

Phil watched Ell land, after all that incredible twisting and twirling, an amazingly long distance from the table where she had launched herself, right in the center of the lane. She was facing straight ahead, flexing her knees a little and then standing up and throwing her arms in the air! You would have thought she just hopped down off a chair, as effortless as she made the landing look. She bowed towards the judges and then the other direction. Then Ell turned to trot back to the waiting area.

Phil turned to Joe Ingvul, one of his new friends on the USA Olympic wrestling team who had been watching too. “Wow! I didn’t know gymnasts could do that kind of stuff.”

“Holy shit! They can’t! They can’t, that was out the lock!”

Venta, apparently having been stunned into silence, came back on the air, “I have… never—never seen a vault like that! I’m pretty sure that was a layout “
double
” with
two and a half twists
which has never been performed before in competition and I would have sworn—was impossible. Despite the fact that it must be the most difficult vault ever performed, I could
not
see anything that wasn’t perfect,
absolutely perfect
form. Maybe the slow motion will show some error but the judges judge in real time. I can’t imagine what they could possibly deduct for.

Escanescue stammered a little, “And, and, and, a double with even one twist has never been done before. Much less a double in the layout position! And, that had to be the biggest, highest, longest vault I’ve ever seen.”

Phil’s eyebrows rose as he noticed that the stands had erupted into pandemonium. Apparently a lot of other people thought that that was a pretty good vault too. Then the slow motion replay started showing. Phil’s mouth fell open as he now saw clearly how much spinning and twisting had actually been going on during Ell’s flight through the air! How could she possibly even land without hurting herself, much less land elegantly like she had?

Radin Venta said, “Our analysis people tell me that the speed gun clocked her max speed during the sprint to the springboard to be 29 miles per hour! Michael Fentis has been the record holder for the fastest human footspeed or sprint speed at 28.1 miles per hour at his fastest during the 100 meters! Of course she only runs about 25 meters for the vault but Fentis doesn’t reach top speed until about the 60th meter. This is so, so hard to believe! We’ll have to have them clock it off the video to confirm. We’re also trying to get confirmation that she just set world records for height and distance in addition to being the very first in the world to perform a vault that no one thought could be done! Even reviewing the slow motion video, I don’t see any flaws in that vault. We may have just seen the best vault in history! The very best by a very, very large margin!”

Escanescue broke in, “The judges have actually given her a 10.0! That’s not supposed to be possible anymore. But honestly, I don’t know how they could have done otherwise.”

Venta said, “She’s not going to take a second vault. She’d be absolutely crazy to try such a dangerous vault again after a perfect first try!”

Phil could hear the crowd going crazy in the background as the arena announcer boomed, “What a start to these Olympics! In one of the very first gymnastic events of the competition and in the very first Olympic event for this almost unknown gymnast she gets the first 10.0 score in decades!”

Ingvul punched Phil on the shoulder, “Man, your girlfriend is something else!”

Phil shook his head in bemusement, “She’s not my girlfriend, but you don’t know the half of her ‘something else!’”

The big screens over the arena were showing Ell’s vault over and over in slow motion as the crowd became increasingly giddy. Ell was called out for another bow. The team and coaches were going crazy. She had not really expected her vault to cause this much commotion even if no one had ever done one like it before. She wondered whether or not to continue to do her best on the other events too. As Ell walked back from her second bow Anna stared at her wide eyed. Ell wondered what she might be thinking now. The stare morphed into a glare and as Ell walked past Anna hissed, “You must be taking drugs!”

Coach Benson came up grinning foolishly and gave Ell a huge hug. She whispered in Ell’s ear, “I’d say ‘I knew you could do it!’ but I had
no
clue. You’re gonna ruin me as a coach if you tell the world I had no idea that anyone could do a two and a half – two and a half! You know it’ll be named a ‘Donsaii’ and no one else will
ever
be able to do one?” She stood back and clapped as Ell walked the rest of the way off the floor to her little corner.

On the net Venta said, “It has been brought to my attention that Donsaii has a history of performing at the highest levels only when it really matters. While other athletes crumble under pressure; that has been the only time that she turns in her best performances. It’s like she thrives on pressure! We can only wonder, ‘how will she perform in the other events under the crushing pressure of the Olympics?’ The vault has always been her best event, but will she deliver unbelievable, ‘first ever’ performances in other events here at these Games?”

Ell looked up into the stands for her mother and grandmother. She picked them out in their assigned seats. She shrugged her shoulders. Her mother shrugged hers back, then grinned and put both thumbs up and pumped her fist. Ell decided that that meant her mom liked having her daughter “kick some butt.” Should she keep “going for it”? The bars were next and Coach was trying to get her to “warm up a little.” This time she simply insisted on resting, trying to conserve everything she had for the actual performance. Benson looked at her for a moment as if she might try to order her to warm up. Then she grinned and shrugged her shoulders, “After that vault, I’d be
crazy
to try to tell you what to do.” To the bewilderment of Ell’s teammates she lay down and actually took a brief nap while waiting for her turn to come up. Going into the zone always left her drained, so it was easy to drop off for a moment.

Benson shook her awake and she came up without any muzziness. As Ell walked out to the bars she was startled to hear another rush of thunderous applause. She looked around to see what had happened but it wasn’t obvious so she looked up at the big screens to see if they were replaying whatever had happened. Her own face was in the monitors! The crowd was cheering before she even started! She felt her adrenalin levels start to spike and suppressed them with a couple of long calming breaths. As she stood and dusted her hands she looked around and to her astonishment realized that the girls at the other apparatus had all paused and were waiting to watch her on the bars. She’d never seen anything like this at a meet before. Apparently, they were all waiting to see if she produced another bit of Olympic gymnastic history and unwilling to miss it if she did. She shrugged, deciding that she would go ahead and do her very best on this routine too. She mentally reviewed her “secret weapons” for the bars. After another deep breath she used her usual simple mount and then dropped into the zone, feeling the world slow. The arena became nearly silent as thousands of people held their breath. A couple swings around the upper bar and then she rocketed into the air above the bars for a double flip before catching the low; the first of the bar elements she had been working on after midnight when no one else was in the gym. When she finished the bars with a back triple dismount, she had performed three extremely high difficulty elements on the bars that had never been seen before, and she’d performed them like she owned them, perfectly. As Ell stood from her flawless, wobble free “stuck” landing and threw her hands high, the arena came to its feet for another standing ovation. Ell looked around the arena as she came back down out of the zone and saw that the gymnasts waiting at the other apparati had still not started their own routines and after a moment her eyes moistened as each and every one of the other gymnasts on the floor began applauding too! Shortly thereafter the judges awarded the second “perfect 10” Olympic gymnastic score in decades and the big screen began showing this bar routine in slow motion, over and over to admiring gasps.