Tumbling (10 page)

Grace nodded. His critique was unfair, as usual. She said nothing, as always.

He turned his back on her and scanned the gym, seeming to look at nothing.

Was he punishing her? Had he found her phone? Had he taken the time to go on her fan page on his phone?

Did Dylan post again?

If he kept it up, Grace would have to tell Dylan Patrick to stop. She'd be freaking out about him until the Olympics, even through the Olympics, if she didn't put a stop to it. They were stupid messages from some patriotic celebrity, and it would be 100 percent mortifying to acknowledge them with more than a simple “like” button. But she'd have to do it. All those silly fantasies that sometimes danced in her head when she was outside the gym—dates and candlelit dinners and midnight phone calls—she couldn't have them anyway. Even if that was what Dylan Patrick meant when he said
hot.

So Grace would reply to him on her fan page and say, “Thanks for the good luck message! Please don't post on my page anymore. I can't afford to be distracted by boys.” That would placate her dad. And then it would be over . . . Dylan . . . her crush . . . her distraction from the world of beams and bars and vaults . . .

It would be over. Soon. She'd take care of it before her dad found out, hopefully.

But Dylan had called her
hot
.

Maybe Leigh was right. Maybe her father wouldn't bother to check her fan page.

“I think you probably got what we need to take the lead, though,” her dad said, turning back to her.

Grace nodded again, even though she knew better than that. She gave a stellar beam routine. It was more than they needed. Why couldn't he admit that?

A dinging rang between them, bursting out of Grace's gym bag.
Dylan again?

Grace's father's eyes flicked to her bag and then back to her. He dared her to check her phone. She swallowed.

Then he was gone.

Where did he go?

Grace grabbed a water bottle, glancing around, trying not to be obvious as she looked for where she should be and who she should be talking to. She wished again that Leigh was in her rotation and she could go plop down next to her. Grace hated feeling lost and shy, especially in the middle of a meet.

She saw her dad then, his blond crew-cut head dashing between the podiums, rushing to the folding chairs beside the floor.
Oh yeah
, Grace thought. Monica stood in the corner of the floor, her head thrown up to the ceiling and her arms folded over her chest.
He has to watch Monica, too.

Now would be the perfect time to check her
phone. Now, when her dad couldn't look at her. But there was a camera next to her. And that probably wasn't Dylan again anyway.

Grace wandered toward the floor podium. Fans liked when you cheered for your underdog teammate, she reasoned. It looked good. As focused as Grace was, it was impossible not to think of the people who might be watching her at home when all the cameras surrounded her like this. People like Dylan Patrick. And, maybe, people like her mom.

Not that Grace knew anything about where her mother was or what she was doing. It had been eight full years since Grace had laid eyes on her mother; the woman had been gone ever since a few months after Max was born. She hadn't heard a word from her since her twelfth birthday, when they had a brief phone call, but her mother refused to tell Grace where she was calling from. Then she had said she'd been reading about Grace online. She'd been following her career. Grace didn't know if her mother followed gymnastics anymore. But if she won Olympic trials, if she was the favorite for gold, if she was on all the magazines and in commercials and maybe even on
The Tonight Show
, her mother would have to see her face again.

Not that that's why Grace wanted to win.

“Hey!” Leigh said, walking up beside her.

Grace nodded at her friend.

“Did you see?” Leigh blabbed, the words falling out of her mouth too quickly and carelessly as if she didn't
realize where they were. “I don't know if you saw, but he messaged you
again
. It's been after, like, every event. And you know what? I only asked him to wish you good luck the first time. He must be watching the meet!”

Grace turned to Leigh's bouncy smile. Didn't Leigh realize she was losing? Didn't she know a stupid new message didn't matter? And what did that message say?

“Are you gonna reply?”

Leigh was crazy. Leigh was a boy-crazy lesbian.

“No,” Grace said, a little too loudly. What had Dylan written that made Leigh think Grace should respond?

Just then, the piano notes rained softly down on the gym, and Monica began her routine. She was a talented dancer. Grace knew that from the ballet classes her father insisted all his gymnasts take to support their floor and beam routines.

“He's right, too. Dylan is. You were great,” Leigh whispered. “I think that's the best I've ever seen you do on beam.”

Grace returned Leigh's fake smile. There was no way Leigh's smile and compliment were real. She was trying to get under Grace's skin, but she should know by now that it wouldn't work.

They turned back to watch Monica dancing.

Grace squinted at Monica's bottom, looking for signs of loose-leo. She tried to think of another butt-glue joke to bring her real friend back, but she found herself captivated. They both were. Monica controlled the floor.
Her movements were graceful and precise and perfect. Her arms and legs commanded attention, pulled the spectator onto the floor with her. She was taller than her height should allow her to be. And her tumbling looked like dancing.

When she struck her final pose, Grace and Leigh clapped along with the rows of fans in the stands, their jaws dropped in awe.

Leigh's smile was gone. “Shit,” she breathed.

Grace started adding up past scores in her head. Leigh could still beat Monica on floor. Monica's performance was close to perfect, but Leigh's difficulty was greater, so her maximum potential score was higher. Still, Leigh wouldn't be able to blow her away. At the end of the day, Monica was likely to still be ahead of Leigh.

And Monica was not going to the Olympics.

Leigh was the national champion (thanks to Grace's fluttery heart), so, to a lot of people, it seemed like Katja had to choose Leigh no matter how she performed today and tomorrow.

But Leigh was not only far from second—she was behind Wilhelmina and Georgette and Maria and Monica. Monica!

“If all these girls beat me . . .” Leigh trailed off, but she didn't have to finish the thought. Grace knew the end of the sentence.

Katja had some leverage as to whom she chose, but these trials were on television. If Leigh came in toward
the end of the all-arounders, Katja and the Olympic Committee would not be able to explain picking her. So they wouldn't.

Grace paused her clapping and turned to study her best friend's profile. A thought went zinging through her brain, jolting her from her skull to her fingertips. A thought that she didn't like as much as she thought she would.

What if this meet isn't about beating Leigh? What if I'm going to the Olympics without her?

LEIGH

Leigh stood panicked as Monica saluted the judges and exited the podium to a storm of applause. Her heart hammered with anger, fear, shame.

“Monica is going to beat me,” she whispered to herself. She said it out loud. Of course. Stupidly.

Good-bye, Olympics. Good-bye, lifelong dream.

“Use it,” Grace said into her ear.

Leigh's head jerked toward her. She'd forgotten she was standing next to her friend. “What?” she asked.

“Use it,” Grace said again, a twisted look spreading across her face. “Look at her. She can't beat you.” They watched Monica's smile disappear like a switch had been flicked as Ted pulled her off the podium. “You're the national champion and
Monica Chase
is . . .
her. You haven't peaked. You're not done. Get angry. Let it motivate you.”

“You're trying to help me?” Leigh blabbed before she could stop herself. Her blood was zipping quickly through her veins. If Grace was trying to help her, she was in trouble. Her voice was still motoring. As usual, Leigh was powerless to stop it. “How did everything get this bad so fast? How did this happen?” How was her Olympic dream in doubt?

“Get ready,” Grace said before Leigh could speak again. “You're next.”

Damn it
, Leigh thought.

She rushed to her gym bag for a final sip of water and tried to re-clasp some of her hair clips. Phil came up behind her and put his palm on the spot where her left shoulder became her neck.

He said only one word. “Focus.”

Leigh shrugged him off and stared into her gym bag until she felt the adrenaline build through her veins again. She had to be That Girl when her music began filling the stadium.

It's simple
, she told herself as she climbed the steps to the floor podium.
I'm better than Monica. I'm better than Kristin and Georgette. I might be a little better than Grace.

Leigh dipped her feet into the chalk and watched the white powder spread over her peach skin.

Leigh was a winner. Monica was not. Little
wedgie-picking Monica should not be intimidating Leigh.

By the time Leigh stood in her opening pose in the corner of the blue mat awaiting the first notes of the guitar that would play her floor music, she was That Girl again. She transformed the blue mat into her playground. Her dancing was a bit clunky as usual, but her tumbling made her dancing invisible. Leigh had speed and height as she launched her body into double Arabians and twisting tuck punch-fronts. The audience would be sitting on the edges of their seats anticipating her next tumbling trick and gasping at the amount of air she managed to put between her upside-down head and the floor.

Then it was over. The music trickled away and Leigh stood in the middle of the mat, sucking in oxygen, listening to the roar of the crowd and attempting to savor the moment, to memorize it so she could replay it over and over in bed tonight when she was back to being Normal Leigh and she wasn't That Girl anymore.

Leigh jumped off the podium and threw her arms around her coach.

Leigh was going to claw her way back to the top, she decided. She wasn't going to let Monica or Katja or Grace or anyone else intimidate her. She was going to win the meet.

It was possible. Vault was next. It was all in her control
.

“I want to do it,” she told Phil. “I'm
ready.”

He took a step back and looked at her calmly. “You sure?” he asked.

She nodded. “I want to be winning at the end of the day,” she said. “I can do it.”

“Okay!” he said. “Keep your focus! This will either clinch the top shot or ruin your chances.”

Leigh nodded. That was all fine. Nothing would stop her now.

Leigh hugged Grace and Kristin and Annie. Everyone lined up to hug her. She was passed from girl to girl to girl until she found herself embracing a body that was bigger than her own, her cheek only inches from the warmth of another cheek, her neck being tickled by curly hair, her chest pushed up against . . . It was Camille.

Leigh froze. Electricity zapped through her veins. Her heart pounded harder than it had on the floor. She was both burning up and covered in goose bumps.

Camille was hugging her, actually pressed against her body, like Leigh had imagined so many times in the privacy of her own head.

“Oh!” she said, before she could stop herself.

“Nice job,” Camille whispered right into her ear.

It woke Leigh up and she let go of her crush as suddenly as she had clung to her. “Th-thanks,” she stuttered. “I was really nervous. You know, I haven't been doing too well today, so I needed to do those double Arabians . . . to land . . . well, thanks.” Leigh bit her lips to keep the
words back. Was she smiling too big? Was she being totally obvious?

Camille shrugged. “You don't have anything to worry about,” she said.

Yes, I do
, Leigh thought.

Leigh didn't trust her voice anymore, though, so she kept her lips sealed and only smiled.

She watched Camille wander back toward the girls in her own rotation.

Stop it. Stop it. No crushes. Not right now.

Leigh had demolished the floor. She'd done so well, she'd pulled Camille over to the side of her podium like a magnet.

Turn crushes off.

Leigh shook her head and shut her eyes. She replayed that end-of-routine moment in her brain already, even though it was only a few minutes ago. It had to be the best floor routine she'd ever performed. She was on top of the world. She was so high, so empowered, so sure of her ability to control destiny.

She practically skipped over to her gym bag. And she almost tripped on two little legs sticking out from a body slumped against the back wall. Monica.

Monica was scowling at her.

That was not okay.

Then Monica looked away and pulled a PowerBar out of her bag.

What was wrong with this girl? No one was this petty just because someone else trumped a great
performance. Leigh had not acted
this
small after bars.

Leigh had to ignore the Wedgie Queen. She had more important things to worry about than being nice. She would have to beat Monica to get to the Olympics. She would have to pull herself several places above where she stood right now.

She had to have the vault of her life.

MONICA

Monica sat on the red carpet, her back against the purple-matted wall of the stands, her warmed-up legs in a straddle, her mouth munching on a PowerBar. She was grateful Leigh was gone, grateful to have a minute of peace and rest while the drama of the meet slithered around her.

She was always exhausted during the third rotation. By then, all her adrenaline had run its way out of her system and it seemed like the meet would stretch on forever. Plus, there were all the people. By the third rotation Monica had chatted with and hugged and smiled at so many girls so many times over and over, and it wasn't that she didn't like people, but they wore her out. She knew from previous meets that her fourth event would go much better if she took a little breather after her third routine. Meets were exhausting always, and today was worse. Monica could only stand crowds of
nice
people for so long.