Tumbling (12 page)

Grace or Leigh or Georgette
.
I only have to beat one of them
, she thought.
And everybody
else.

STANDINGS
AFTER THE THIRD ROTATION

Fourth Rotation

GRACE

Grace was winning.

She was mid-meet with a lot to lose, and so she knew she should have been focusing exclusively on her own gymnastics. But she couldn't.

Leigh was losing. In fact, there was now a small chance Leigh wouldn't even get chosen for the team.

Did it matter?

Grace's heart was calm now. Her body felt strong after half a bottle of water and a full stretch during the break between beam and floor, before she started talking to Monica.

Grace led a short line of gymnasts as they marched around the bars toward the floor.

The Olympics without Leigh
. The thought made her tilt, like she might fall doing a simple march from one podium to the next. Grace swallowed air and blocked the thought. She couldn't start thinking about Leigh now. She couldn't let her own gymnastics suffer for the sake of her friend.

The solution was simple: if Leigh wouldn't be at the Olympics, Grace had to make one new friend. It hadn't worked with Monica, but Monica probably wouldn't be there anyway. Grace would have to find a new-new friend.

Grace went to her new folding chair to reorganize her bag like she did at each apparatus. She pulled out a water bottle and took a long sip, feeling the coolness of it reach beyond her esophagus, down her arms and legs, and into her fingers and toes like her entire body was empty except for H
2
O. She loved that feeling. She was ready for floor. She'd be up first.

She mounted the podium to run through a quick warm-up and practiced a few tumbling passes.

She did a roundoff-back-handspring-double-Arabian across from the north to the south corner of the floor. Then she stood frozen and watched Wilhelmina cross her X. If Leigh didn't make the team, it was possible the spot would go to Wilhelmina.

“Nice job,” Grace called to her down the length of the floor.

Wilhelmina gave Grace a quizzical smile.

Camille came tumbling down the path Grace had just made and stood behind her.

“Do these trials feel the same? Like four years ago?” Grace asked.

Camille stared for a second, then shrugged.

So much for Operation New-New Friend.

No one liked Grace. No one except Leigh. She imagined the Olympic Village without Leigh: being the one
member of the team without a roommate, always feeling awkward when they traveled to the gym, sitting alone on the bus every day.

No one liked her.

Except, maybe, Dylan Patrick. If Leigh was right, if he had somehow noticed Grace the way she had noticed him, if he somehow had a crush on her, too, would that change things? Was he able to see what Grace and her father and most people couldn't—the part of her that was deeper, the part of her that was sometimes not a gymnast?

She shouldn't be hoping for it, but she was.

Maybe she could win him, too. Probably, he didn't really like her specifically. Maybe Dylan Patrick liked the
idea
of a gymnast girlfriend the way Grace liked the idea of a pop-star boyfriend. Maybe something would happen if she flirted back.

Ha.

Grace landed a tumbling run and bounced off the podium. She ran over to her gym bag to reapply her ChapStick before she was called to chalk up.

Grace looked over her shoulder. Leigh's blonde head was clear across the room, on the other side of that vault. Grace expected to see her laughing or whispering with some other girl. Grace expected to see the smile her best friend wore almost like her skin was frozen that way. Instead, Leigh was squinting at the vault, staring it down the way Grace had three rotations earlier.

Almost like Leigh was
afraid.

And Grace should be grinning. She shouldn't care whether she shared a room with anyone. She shouldn't care about a message from a crush or girl talk or pretty nails. All of that stuff mattered, but it only mattered when life didn't. Life only counted for the four hours this weekend that she'd be on the gym floor, the eight to sixteen hours during the Olympics that she would be competing. So, life, the part that mattered, would be easier if Leigh stayed here. Winning the Olympic all-around would be easier if Leigh stayed here.

Her heart pulsed and broke, unconvinced by her brain.

“What are you thinking about?”

Her father's voice was angry behind her. Grace buried her eyes in her gym bag and shrugged.

“You should know the answer, Gracie. It should always be the same thing.”

Somehow, he always knew when she was thinking about friendship and roommates. When she was being a normal girl instead of the robot he loved.

The Same Thing was gymnastics. Everything was gymnastics. It was how they got through that first awful time eight years ago after Max was born and her mom left: gymnastics, gymnastics, gymnastics.

“My floor routine,” Grace mumbled, turning to face him.

He stared at her for almost a full minute, like he thought he could open her skull and prove that her mind had been elsewhere a minute ago.

“Don't relax. You're not done yet, Gracie. Today doesn't count when you compare it with tomorrow, right?”

Grace nodded.

“And tomorrow doesn't count really, either. When you compare it with the Olympics.”

Tomorrow doesn't count in his eyes?

Grace nodded.

“Okay,” he said. He jerked his head up and down quickly like he was satisfied with his job of tearing down her almost-perfect day. He put his arm around her and smiled as he whispered in her ear, “Keep your legs together during your double Arabian. You had so much air between your feet during your warm-up, I'm surprised you didn't start a mini-tornado. Don't get sloppy.”

Grace pursed her lips. “Okay, Dad,” she said. The Olympics without Leigh would mean her dad would be the only person who talked to her for those two weeks. And Grace wasn't even allowed to answer him.

Without Leigh there, they'd drown in sorrow and unspoken words about how unfair it was that she was the star of the Olympic team without a parent in the stands.

He patted her lower back. “Go get 'em, Gracie,” he said.

She closed her eyes and talked herself through her routine.
Throw head back. Arm arches. Foot-foot-foot, roundoff, back handspring, double Arabian.

By the time she climbed the podium a few minutes later her brain beat with the rhythm of the music that was about to pour down on her, her body was solely
focused on keeping her legs together during her Arabians and hitting each of her landings, finishing the day as well as she started it.

And, she did.

Then she made her way across the gym to the line of girls standing next to the vault. She knew how to fix everything. And who cared if she was a little mean?

Grace needed Leigh.

MONICA

Grace and Leigh were standing too close to her, snickering again. They were pretending to be whispering, but Monica could hear every word.

“You cannot let the Wedgie-Picker beat you,” Grace said.

Leigh chuckled. “It won't be a problem.”

Don't look at the scoreboard
, Monica told herself, bending over in her straddle stretch.
Don't look. Walk away.

They might not know the scores anyway. Most times, most gymnasts avoided looking at and hearing their scores. Most times they kept tabs on themselves and one another without doing much math. Or at least, they tried.

Monica hadn't heard or seen any of her scores since bars. And she hadn't meant to hear that one. Ted always told her that looking at scores would do nothing but mess with her mind. And he was right. Usually when she
paid no attention to the scores throughout a meet, she was pleasantly surprised to see the final results.

• • •

Last month, at Nationals, Monica had ignored the scoreboard completely. Instead she'd focused on her individual routines, taken her quiet time after the third rotation, and ignored her overly enthused mother.

She'd looked at the board once the meet was over. She'd done well. She hadn't fallen. It didn't matter where her name was. Monica started reading at the bottom of the list of twenty-five names. She wasn't in the last five. Or the last ten. She wasn't in the last fifteen. At this point, Monica had held her breath until: there it was.

10 MONICA CHASE

She'd placed tenth. Everyone in the arena must have been shocked. Tenth was an automatic entry into the Olympic trials.

That night, Monica had been sitting back-to-back with Grace at the banquet that USAG hosted for the gymnasts and their families. She was at an entirely different table from any gymnasts because her family required their own table in order to fit her mother and father and grandparents and stepdad, brothers, and sisters. She was mortified at the size of her crowd. The only gymnast with a table close to her size was Leigh Becker, and
honestly, Leigh deserved the fanfare: she was the new national champion. Monica sunk lower in her own seat as her family carried on way too loudly about how great she'd been and how they couldn't wait to see her in the Olympics.

“I have no chance to make the Olympics,” she'd whispered to her mother who was talking too quickly and too loudly and waving her hands too much as usual. “Please be quiet.”

Over Monica's shoulder, she heard Grace snickering.
Is she laughing at me?
Monica wondered.

“Man!” Monica's stepsister had yelled across the table, brandishing her iPhone. “There are, like, no hotels left in Rome. I can't find a single open room for the Olympics.”

This time, Monica heard Grace speak. She was clearly listening to her family's conversation. “But Max got a room, right, little dude?” Grace said. “All of the rooms already went to the families of gymnasts who actually have a chance.” Grace was singsonging like she was sharing some sort of wonderful news and not attacking Monica behind her back.

Monica heard a little boy answer, “Right!”

She turned. Grace and her dad and a little black-haired boy were at their table. Alone. Grace was leaning over the boy's plate, slicing up his meat.

“I get the first room we find!” Monica's mother had shouted gleefully. “I'm the one who pushed her out after all.”

“Mom,” Monica had whispered, her face burning. “Please be quiet. There's no point in yelling like that. It's not going to happen.”

Behind her Grace was laughing. It was the kind of laugh you pretend is silent but that clearly is meant to humiliate someone.
Why doesn't Ted say something?
Monica thought. Why was her coach letting Grace rake her over the coals like this?

Her mother had turned to her, her tan eyes leveled seriously on Monica's. “This victory isn't yours alone, kiddo. We've all sacrificed to get you this far. We've all gotten up early to get you to practices and traveled across the country to see you at meets and put in thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to getting you to this level, this level that is so much farther than anyone else predicted. You did not do it alone.”

Monica stared at her, wide-eyed. Her mom could not hear Grace's laughter, even though it kept going and going. Or her mom didn't realize Grace was laughing
at them
.

“And we have proven so many people wrong already. We've gotten so far. So you need to let us have this moment of victory, you hear me, honey? You need to let us celebrate.”

Monica blinked at her mother. She'd said that Monica needed to
let them
celebrate. Not to join in. Not to celebrate with them.

She'd said it like Monica was a tool to happiness, not a person whose success was her
own.

Her father had leaned across the table toward her and said in a low voice, “Don't you want to go to the Olympics, Mon-Mon?”

He'd stared at her until Monica nodded sheepishly.

Of course she wanted to go. But that didn't mean she would. It didn't make her good enough. A lot of girls wanted to go to the Olympics. A lot of girls dedicated their whole lives to that goal and still fell short. Wanting it was not enough to make it happen.

There was so much she could do in the sport without going to the Olympics. It was something her non-gymnastics family would never understand. They thought the Olympics were a be-all and end-all. But Monica wasn't a gymnast because she dreamed of Olympic glory.

She was a gymnast because she couldn't be any other way.

Monica had leaned back in her chair to try to put some distance between herself and the picture in her family's head. The fantasy that shouldn't be theirs when it wasn't even hers.

She heard Grace whisper to her father, to their coach: “Are all gym moms as delusional as that one?”

Monica's cheeks had burned bright and her heart had sped up with the stress of anticipating what Ted would say back. Her mouth stayed shut.

“Let them have their moment,” Ted had said.

Monica had risked turning her head at that point, looking at their table, and she'd felt a little sorry for Grace. She sat sandwiched between her father and
brother. There was no one else. The other side of the table was filled with the spillover from Leigh's entourage. There was no mother. No extended family. No one to feel proud of Grace in the way her brother couldn't and her father wouldn't.