Tumbling (8 page)

Wilhelmina meant it as a dig, but Camille's face didn't change.

She tried again. “Anyway, it's not like they'd take me over Comeback Cammie. Even if I am as good on vault
and
an all-arounder.”

Camille stared. She wouldn't budge. She wouldn't get angry back.

“You don't even act like you care,” Wilhelmina said. “Staying up all night cooing to your boyfriend, keeping me awake—”

Camille's eyes finally went wide.

Wilhelmina wanted to sit down. Being mean was as exhausting as being friendly.

Camille leaned her mouth close to Wilhelmina's one free ear. “You really want to go, don't you?” she whispered.

That knocked Wilhelmina's guard down so fast, she almost fell with it. “To the Olympics?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Camille scrunched her lips to the side of her face.

Wilhelmina nodded. Of course she really wanted to go. Didn't they all? Wasn't that the only reason to be here today?

“Don't you remember Melissa?” Camille whispered, her voice barely audible above the gym-chaos behind them. “And Caitlin? And Danielle?”

“Yes. . . .” Wilhelmina said.

Those girls had been on her brain constantly the past few years. Those girls who also shirked the system. Who had coaches who refused to play by all of Katja's rules. Who skipped camps or added events last minute.

None of them had gotten to the Olympics.

“But I'm better than all of them,” Wilhelmina
said. “Everyone is going to see that today. I can do the all-around. I can help us win team gold. The committee will choose me.” Inside she said,
Be quiet. Don't spill your secrets.

Camille shook her head. “Katja doesn't like surprises.”

Wilhelmina wanted to scream, “Who cares?” across the gym. She wanted to pound Camille's head into Katja's knee.

Camille went on: “Katja is . . . She won't . . . If she's mad at you, you're done.”

Wilhelmina rolled her eyes. Camille was trying to get under her skin. She didn't remember this dirty side of Camille from four years ago, but she hadn't spent this much time with her back then. “If I prove I'm one of the best five gymnasts here, or one of the best four
all-around
gymnasts,” Wilhelmina said, “Katja will take me. She's not going to hurt the USA's chance at gold just because I didn't do it her way.”

Camille was shaking her head. “That's what Melissa said, remember?” Camille said. “She was ready for the last trials. You weren't at the selection camp four years ago, but believe me. She was better than everyone, almost. She totally should have made the team. Katja refused.”

“But—” Wilhelmina protested.

“You're better than she was,” Camille said. “Or you might be. I don't know. I don't think it'll matter. It's too risky for Katja.”

Wilhelmina stared, dumbfounded. Camille couldn't
be right. There was no way she knew what she was talking about.

“If you go to the Olympics,” Camille was saying, “you prove that all of those camps aren't necessary. You prove that you don't have to train constantly six days a week, eight hours a day in order to be an all-around gymnast. If you make the team, you prove you can do it
without
Katja.”

“Exactly,” Wilhelmina said.

“Yeah . . . that's why she's never going to choose you,” Camille said. “If you make the team, you prove she's pointless. You threaten her power. You kill her job . . . her whole life.”

Despite herself, Wilhelmina froze.

“If you want to go, you have to make it impossible for her not to pick you,” Camille said.

Wilhelmina wanted to tell her to shut up. She wanted to unleash an angry barrage of gymnastics right on Camille's wide cheekbones.

She said, “You're saying I have to win the meet?”

“No,” Camille said. “Probably not. You just have to beat someone she wants to bring. You have to beat Georgette or Leigh or Grace. Or else you have to . . .” Camille trailed off. But Wilhelmina knew how her sentence ended.

She said it: “Or else I have to beat you on vault.”

Camille snapped her jaw shut.

Truth: it wouldn't be as simple as eight great routines after all.

The other truth was that Camille was evil: the
only reason to say all of that to Wilhelmina in the middle of the meet was to try to get her to choke.

At least now Wilhelmina could stop trying not to hate her.

CAMILLE

Why did I say that?

Camille's chest was jumping with electric bolts of alarm for her friend. Wilhelmina stood in front of her, her eyes lit up with a fire that had drained out of Camille's a long time ago.

Camille remembered that fire. Camille and Wil-helmina had been friendly until four years ago, when their birth years and the last Olympic trials came up between them. It felt like Wilhelmina would never forgive Camille for being born eleven months before her. And since the last Olympics, nothing about gymnastics politics had gotten more fair. Katja Minkovski was still the only voice of power in determining who would make the international teams, who would make the national team, who would compete at different meets. Wilhelmina hadn't been at the last trials to see how unfairly Katja treated some of the girls behind closed doors. And Wilhelmina had missed so many of the camps in which Katja was at her worst also.

But it wouldn't help Wilhelmina to hear any of that today. It would only freak her out.

Camille had once again made everything worse instead of better.

Wilhelmina was staring at her, brown eyes narrowed and angry. Then she sucked in a hot breath, turned on her heel, and stalked away.

Camille knew she had just lost a friend again. Do gymnastics, lose her boyfriend. Quit gymnastics, lose her mom. Say something stupid, lose Wilhelmina. She always lost.

Except on vault.

Camille sunk into one of the folding chairs and dug in her bag for her water bottle.

• • •

At the last Olympic trials, Camille had been sixteen, the perfect age for a gymnastics peak during the perfect year, an Olympic one. The gym had been swarming with the stars of her youth, the girls she had looked up to four years before, when she'd screamed at her television throughout the entire Olympics. Now she was here, among the Gym Goddesses, and she was ready to beat them all.

Since she was a new senior, no one knew what to expect from her (except Katja, who kept pace on all the juniors). Camille had choked at US Nationals and barely made the cut for the Olympic trials. Back then Camille was a wisp, a weed, a skinny thing, all legs and elbows and frizzy hair. She had dreams too big for her tiny frame: multiple gold medals around her neck and
tears in her eyes as she listened to the national anthem over and over. It was a long shot. Her old coach kept telling her to see what happened. She was projected to get the last of the five spots on the team or to be one of the alternates.

She wanted to be the star.

She debuted her Amanar and, though it was weak compared to her vault now, she stuck it. She did a double back off the beam. She had the entire stadium clapping and gasping throughout her powerful floor routine.

She hadn't won the trials: she placed third, behind only Maria Vasquez and Melissa Doyen, two well-established superstars. But it was close enough to get her name on the list of almost-definites.

Then she'd gone on to Olympic Selection Camp and nailed everything again, day after day after day. The articles about America's smallest athlete started popping up all over the Internet. She was getting encouraging e-mails and texts from everyone she'd ever spoken to: distant cousins, old neighbors and classmates, girls from her temple. Some girl in the suburbs of Seattle started a Camille Abrams fan site.

The summer was kismet. Her chances grew and grew, her future got brighter and brighter as the Olympics inched closer.

Then there was the day. She stood lined up with the fourteen other gymnasts who had been duking it out at camp throughout the week. She held her breath. She knew she deserved to be on the team. She stood, her tiny
four-foot-ten frame filled with confidence, her dark blue eyes radiating that fire, and waited for her name to be called.

And it was.

She'd let out her breath in one hot rush, her heart feeling cool and slow all of a sudden. It wasn't joy she felt, or accomplishment, or even happiness. Not yet.

Instead, what overwhelmed her, what rushed through her blood like ice, was relief.

It had all been worth it. All the sacrifice. All the heart-wrenching choices. All the grueling practices even through injuries and the flu. The physical therapy. The diets. The pushing through off days. The names her coach had called her. She was one of the best. She was an Olympian.

For a few hours.

GRACE

Grace was a willow tree on bars. Something natural and beautiful to look at. Something certain and steady yet light and flexible. Something long and lean and wispy.

Grace spun on her hands on the high bar in pirouettes that looked like they were powered by the wind. She floated to the low bar like a leaf in autumn. She straddled, and her straight legs and pointed toes embraced the audience.

They watched her with reverence. They didn't
scream and whoop at the height of her release moves or squeal when she transitioned from bar to bar. Instead the stadium held a collective breath in devotion to the beauty before them: a beauty that exists only when a small and perfect body does impossible things.

Inside, Grace felt peace. She felt zen. She felt what she used to when her mother would put her to sleep as a little girl after telling her the tale of the spider and the silkworm. “
Wo ai ni
,” she would say, and Grace would feel so loved. She'd kiss Grace on the forehead, and Grace would drop to sleep.

There was no adrenaline on her breath like there had been an hour or so ago when she was lined up on the vaulting runway. Vault was about being impressive. Bars was about being beautiful. Bars was hers.

Grace did a one-handed straddle giant, named a Cooper because she'd been the first to perfect it in international competition, and then re-grasped the bar with her left hand to begin her dismount series.

Her muscles were screaming, her breath was strained, her palms were burning despite her grips, but Grace didn't feel any of that. Her heart was pumping sunshine and fresh running water. She was alone, practicing bars in a cave next to a babbling brook. She felt like her mother was there, somewhere, watching her and helping her breathe. Once she landed her Mustafina, Grace would be back in the gym. She'd be back to the cameras and the numbers and Leigh and, worst, her dad.

But for now it was Grace and the bars.

Then, as she piked to start her dismount, she felt that flutter in her chest: her heart divided like a swarm of moths in her rib cage, and she was back in the gym sooner than she planned. Her entire body flinched and Grace hoped the judges didn't notice. It was so scary when her organs split like that.

Still, she released the bar and threw her legs over her head, twisting her body to the left, then finding the floor and thrusting her arms into the air. The gym swung dangerously, the judges a pendulum in her vision, but she managed to keep her body anchored and upright.

She was sucking down oxygen. It felt like she couldn't get any past her throat and into her lungs.

All gymnasts breathe hard after bars routines
, she reminded herself.
No one will notice.

To prove her right, her father lifted her off the podium and immediately broke into analysis of her routine, saying nothing about her labored breathing or the fact that Grace was sure he could see her pulse punching through the skin beneath her jaw.

“Good,” he concluded with a nod.

Grace tried to smile, wishing her body would calm down enough for her to enjoy the rare compliment.

He handed her a water bottle and she sucked some down, her nerves finally slowing, her heart finally solidifying.

“Just watch the transition into the dismount.”

Grace nodded.

He didn't understand. He didn't know. It wasn't
her gymnastics breaking down in that moment; it was her entire body.

It was good he didn't know.

Grace took shaky steps back to her gym bag. She tried not to collapse into her chair. She pulled out her phone so that she would look busy and avoid some of the hugs. She didn't want anyone to feel how she was shaking.

Even though it was normal. Everyone was shaky after bars.

There was a notification on her phone.

Bet you thought that message last night was a one-and-only, Grace Cooper, but I'm actually watching and cheering for you! That uneven bars routine was HOT! <3 Dylan

Hot.
He'd called her
hot.
Her still-not-back-together heart did little dances all over her body.

She bit her lip to keep from smiling.

Dylan Patrick had written to her again. He was actually watching. And he'd called her
hot
.

“Put it away.” Her dad was towering over her suddenly.

She threw the phone in her bag quickly. Too quickly? Did she do it too quickly? Was he going to guess there was something bad on there?

“You have to focus,” he said.

Grace couldn't stop her cheeks from turning pink. It was the first time she'd ever been called hot. Why did her dad have to shove himself into the middle of it?

Grace leaned into her bag, pretending to go for her ChapStick, but really pushing the phone deeper into it, below her pants and jacket, to a place far from her dad's demands for focus.

It was just one little thing for her to have to herself today. Just one little thing that wasn't 100 percent about gymnastics. It was dangerous, but Grace wanted to hold on to it for as long as she could.

MONICA

Monica was awkward in her body as she paced back and forth beside the beam, waiting for her turn. Minutes ago she'd been a puffed-up member of the US National Gymnastics team. She'd been a legitimate competitor on the uneven bars, beating the national champion in her opening event.