Return to Sender

By Julie Cross

Copyright © 2013 Julie Cross

B
ars.

If I had to pick one event I’d rather not begin with during my very first senior international competition, it would be uneven bars. So naturally, that’s exactly where Team USA is starting for Day One of the Pan American championships.

I’m leaning over the chalk bowl, reminding myself to breathe, and watching my oldest teammate, Stevie Davis, warm up her routine when Coach Bentley comes up behind me, resting his hands on my shoulders.

“Words of wisdom,” he says.

I inhale and nod, staring straight ahead. I could use a few notes from the former World Champion.

“Enjoy it while you can,” Bentley says.

I turn around, my forehead wrinkling. “What?”

He cracks a smile, but his focus is one hundred percent devoted to Stevie, who’s finishing up her routine. “The National Team committee wants you here for the experience. If you screw up, it’s no big deal, but after this—”

“I get the veteran label.” I swallow back the fear and shake out my arms.

Bentley rushes up to the competition stage as Stevie lands her dismount. Each of the four pieces of equipment gets its own podium to sit on so the crowd has a good view of each performance. Of course this set up only happens at major elite gymnastics competition. He’s right beside her, giving corrections and advice quietly, making large gestures with his hands.

I pace in front of the chalk bowl, blowing air through my cheeks.
It’ll be fine.
I’m gonna nail it and then no UCLA this month. No leaving Jordan.

Focus.
Boys out. Gymnastics in.

My gaze travels up the stands until I spot Blair and Ellen, my younger teammates who train at my gym in St. Louis. They’ve already won their competition. The junior teams competed this morning. Both are wearing identical warm-ups and have gold medals hanging around their necks.

I really want a gold medal.

My stomach cramps up. I rub my knuckles over the front of my blue and white Team USA leotard, making sure not to ruin the perfect chalk-job I did on my grips. Brazil is hot and the food is weird. We’ve been here two weeks and my digestive system is just now going back to normal. Hopefully, I can get through a bar routine without an emergency run to the bathroom.

The Canadians over on floor exercise are stirring up loud cheers from the full-house crowd and there’s a Brazilian gymnast on vault whose name is screamed from the stands at least once a minute. We aren’t the favorites here. Though we
are
favored to win. It gets a bit uncomfortable when those two things don’t line up.

I wish my parents were here. I wish they were alive to witness this. My lawyer father often walked into courtrooms with half the room hating his guts. He’d have the perfect joke about this crowd’s animosity toward Team USA to loosen me up. Or he’d reference some rock band from his time that I’ve never heard of, but were apparently famous for “sticking it to the man,” and lecture me about how they performed despite negativity because they believed in their music so strongly. And then I’d Google image search the band and ask when I’d be allowed to tattoo my body to show my passion for gymnastics.

My chest tightens, thinking about my parents. Thinking about all the conversations that we won’t have.

God, I miss them
.

Alicia, another Team USA member, finishes her warm-up bar routine, signaling that it’s my turn to charge up the steps. Bentley’s already adjusting the bars to my settings, chalking the high bar for me. He gives me a nod and I jump into my mount.

I haven’t competed up on a podium in nearly a year and never for a crowd this big and diverse.

While swinging through my circling skills to a handstand on the low bar, I’m thinking about Bentley’s words of wisdom. Enjoy it while you can. But what does that mean? What am I going to feel at the next meet? More pressure, more nerves? Will I want to hold back and not go for more amplitude and height out of fear of falling on my face?

I catch my release from low bar to high bar perfectly and after changing my grip in preparation for my new release move, a layout Jaeger, I decide my method of enjoying the moment means going full-out and taking this release as high as I possibly can.

Coach Bentley is positioned underneath me. This new skill still makes him nervous, though he hides it very well. I swing under the bar, my back and hips leading the way at first, my toes flying past my coach and heading toward the high arena ceilings. I release the bar, flipping high above it, giving me tons of time to see the bar and reach for it.

I reach.

And reach.

My fingertips make contact with the high bar and then just as quickly, they’ve slipped off and my body is heading for the deep blue sea of mats beneath the uneven bars.

“J
esus Christ!”

“I’m assuming that wasn’t her dismount?” Tony says, leaning over me to get a closer look at the laptop resting on the coffee table.

We’ve been huddled in the same spot pretty much all day, watching the Pan-Am games online. It’s not the Olympics or anywhere near an Olympic year, which means NBC’s not covering it on TV.

“No, that wasn’t her dismount and even if it was, the goal is to land on your feet.” I rub my forehead. The tension and shouting have made my already throbbing headache twenty times worse. And the headache is much more tolerable than the sore throat. Right now, it feels like I’ve swallowed a cactus.

I wipe my palms on my sweatpants, my stomach twisting in knots watching Karen peel herself off the mat after landing flat on her stomach, her face hitting just as hard. That layout Jaeger release is totally kick-ass when she catches.

“Dude, those judges are like watching her,” Tony says. “She’s not gonna get scored on her warm-up, right?”

I shake my head, my eyes glued to Karen as she walks over to the chalk. My dad is standing there waiting for her. I expect to see him all serious, mumbling some words of correction that we can’t hear in this online streaming, but instead they’re both grinning and then Karen actually starts laughing, while chalking up.

What the hell is going on?

I snatch my phone off the coffee table and send Dad a text.

The camera shifts to the Canadians on floor and thirty seconds later, Dad replies.

“I’m crazy, right?” I say to Tony. “Be honest.”

He snatches the near-empty bag of chips placed between us and stuffs his mouth full of Cool Ranch Doritos. “Probably the fever. You should really get that checked out.”

I stare at the bag of Doritos and imagine swallowing even one chip right now. It’d be like knives stabbing the back of my throat. He’s right. I’m in need of a trip to the doctor ASAP.

“I’ll go as soon as this damn competition is over.” This is the closest I’ve come to seeing my girlfriend in three weeks. The ER will be there in a couple hours.

Instead of watching the Canadians on floor, Tony and I rehash graduation and then he gives me explicit details on the wild party he threw two nights ago. I’d wanted to stop by, but I was already feeling like shit.

Stevie and that chick from California, Alicia, both hit their bar routines, bringing in decent scores for Team USA. Then Karen’s standing in front of the low bar; her reddish-brown hair has been restyled from a ponytail to a bun in the twenty minutes she’s been waiting. My stomach is doing flip-flops.

Seeing my dad off to the side, wringing his hands and completely focused on Karen, comes with mixed emotions on my end. Of course, I want him focused so she doesn’t get hurt, but at the same time, he and I have never gone on a trip somewhere like he and Karen have. Not that it’s just the two of them in Brazil together, she’s got her teammates, but she spends hours every day with him and I don’t remember the last time he and I have even spent more than one hour together.

I blow air out of my cheeks, forcing back the anger. It’s not Karen’s fault. And it’s not exactly Dad’s fault that his gymnasts all made the Pan-Am team and that the USA Gymnastics National Committee made them all go to Houston first for a weeklong training camp and then straight to Brazil for two weeks.

Karen jumps into her mount and I quickly replace the air I just released from my lungs, holding it in. There’s an eerie calm to her expression that makes me ten times more nervous, like one of us has to do the worrying and if it’s not gonna be her…

She takes every handstand to the very edge and I know by the time she gets to her most difficult release move that this is daredevil Karen. Normally, daredevil Karen is my favorite because she’s totally bad-ass, but right now, I just want her to catch the bar even if that means she loses some height.

No such luck. She’s so high above the bar, the commentators actually gasp, anticipating another face-plant.

But this time she hangs on and when she finishes the rest of the routine with only a small hop on her dismount, I’m physically exhausted and have to slump back against the couch.

“That was good, right?” Tony asks.

I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing the Advil wasn’t so far away in the other room. “Yep, very good. Now she needs to stay on the balance beam.”

I
can’t stop staring at the medals weighing down my neck. Three gold—team, all-around, and vault. Two silver—uneven bars and balance beam. One bronze—floor exercise. I medaled in every event possible. Bentley and I are both shocked about the floor medal because there were several girls with much higher difficulties and we haven’t added any upgrades to my routines (yet, if I have anything to say about it), but one injury and two major mistakes by the frontrunners and the door swung wide open for me.

All this has led to Stevie, Bentley, and I being forced into a Brazilian dinner with Nina Jones, National Team coordinator (aka—female elite gymnast dream maker/crusher), and a head publicist for USA Gymnastics to discuss our futures.

A waiter sets down a basket of bread and Stevie, who’s seated beside me, leans in to whisper in my ear, “Don’t touch the bread. Nina will flip.”

I jerk my hand back and rest it in my lap, but stare at the basket, drawn by the delicious scent of white flour and yeast. I needed that bread. Or at least something plain that results in lengthy digestion.

“My stomach can’t take any more mystery meat covered in mystery sauce.”

Bentley’s sitting on my other side and he must have overheard me because he waits for Nina and Riley, the publicist, to be deep in conversation before leaning toward us. “Your stomach’s been upset?”

I nod and Stevie adds, “Mine, too.”

“Why did neither of you say anything?” Bentley asks.
Because we don’t feel like talking about bowel movements with our coach.
He shakes his head. “Let me order for you, okay?”

Stevie and I both agree to this. I hadn’t even planned on eating much anyway. Bentley waves over a waiter and proceeds to give a lengthy order in Portuguese, pointing to Stevie, then to me, then to himself. My mouth is hanging open in shock, I glance over at Stevie and she says, “Well, that’s handy.”

“No kidding,” I mumble.

The waiter returns seconds later, setting glass bottles of Coke in front of each of us. Nina looks at our beverages and frowns, but Bentley holds up a hand to keep her from commenting. “I ordered for them. They need some adequate calories to replace what they burned at the meet today.”

“Well then,” Nina says, clapping her hands together and flashing her I’m-being-nice-because-you-won smile, “First of all, wonderful job at the meet today, both of you. Karen, you surprised everyone. They never saw you coming and Stevie…” Stevie straightens up in her chair, hanging on Nina’s words. “Two silver and one gold is nothing to be disappointed with, considering you’re just now getting back into shape. I think you have an excellent chance of getting back on top of the world.”

Stevie’s face tightens into a very impassive expression and all she does is nod.

Bentley’s eyes bounce between the two of them. “Of course she has a chance at winning Worlds, but she hit her personal best score for both bars and balance beam today and came very close to her record high all-around score.”

“Exactly,” Nina says as if her praise even came close to matching Bentley’s. “What I’d like to talk to you girls about tonight is the possibility of spending a month training at a gymnastics camp in Pennsylvania. As you know, the training center in Houston is undergoing renovations this summer and with the looming World Championships in the fall, I’d like to isolate the top eight senior girls and have all of you work together under my coaching—”

“Wait a minute,” Bentley interrupts, “No way are these girls going to agree to be without their personal coaches for an entire month.”

Nina’s jaw tenses, but she nods. “Yes, we anticipated that, so the invitation is extended to personal coaches for part or all of the four weeks.”