Read Tumbling Online

Authors: Caela Carter

Tumbling (9 page)

Now she was the Wedgie Queen.

Her body was all angles. She tried to focus on her upcoming routine. She tried to push the clicking sound of Grace and Leigh gossiping about her out of her brain and, instead, imagine her long lines, her graceful transitions, her powerful tumbling. But there were too many nerves shooting back and forth between her ears.

Monica marched herself into the locker room for the millionth time since she'd heard Grace and Leigh's biting gossip and locked herself in a stall. She pressed the blue fabric into the glue on her right butt cheek, and
it yanked at the raw, freshly bare skin of her crotch. She resisted the urge to yell out in pain, to rub her fist over the itchy-burny skin at the base of her leotard where the wax job from a few days ago had replaced her pubic hair with angry red welts.

“Fifteen is too young to be getting waxed
down there
,” the woman at the salon had said. “Especially to be waxing away
all of it
.”

Monica was lying half-naked on the table, a curtain hanging at her waistline so she couldn't see her own bottom half. She'd squeezed her mom's hand. She was scared. All the girls at the gym said this was going to hurt.

They laughed, though. Like it was funny they had to brand themselves to stay in the sport.

“It's okay,” her mother said. “It's different for my daughter. Tell her, Monica.”

Monica's mother was always pushing her to tell people she was a gymnast. She said the word so much at her mother's prompting, she almost forgot what it was like to claim it on her own. Monica was glad her mother was proud of her, she guessed, but she wanted a chance to be humble. She felt humble.

“I'm a gymnast,” Monica had said.

“On the US national team,” her mother added, too loudly. “She's competing with the best girls in the country. She's a gymnast.”

The woman nodded and started stirring the wax. It was a magical word that made Monica older. She only kind of understood why.

She was an elite athlete. But her crotch burned like any other fifteen-year-old's.

Now, in the darkness of the bathroom stall, Monica lit up the screen of her iPhone and stared at the empty spaces of her fan page. Sure there were a few
good luck
s from cousins and a stranger or two, but that was it. Nothing from her classmates. Only one message from one teacher. The rest of the school probably didn't even know why she was absent. She was there so rarely—only attending half days and missing one week almost every month for Gym Camp—they probably didn't even notice when she was gone anymore. She'd looked at the other fan pages this morning—Grace's and Leigh's and Camille's and Georgette's—and they'd been full of messages. Grace and Camille even had some from the boys in Out of Touch.

Monica had sort of hoped that a few hours into the meet her own page would start filling up. That some people would recognize her name on television and . . .

But it was like she wasn't even here.

Grace and Leigh said she didn't deserve to be here. And it seemed like no one outside the gym, except for her family, even knew where Monica was.

Why was Monica always invisible?

Monica checked Wilhelmina's page quickly. It was just as empty as her own, and that gave her courage. Wilhelmina had always been Monica's favorite (though she'd missed so many camps and meets, she didn't even know who Monica was, probably). Maybe she could be a gymnast just like
Wilhelmina.

Monica darkened her phone, pressed her palms into the flesh of her butt to solidify the fabric one last time, and made herself move back into the light and the crowd.

The minute she was within throwing distance of so many hundreds of eyes, Monica felt itchy again.

Yes, Monica was spazzy all the time and it was one reason she'd never be a Leigh or a Georgette or a Grace. But she wouldn't have felt quite this spazzy if she were currently wearing more than this skintight, revealing leo. It was so annoying how, in order to compete in this sport, you had to be basically naked. Monica knew it was necessary, but it still made her feel squeamish. Every line of her body was on display. Anyone who looked at her could see the dip where her quadriceps met her hamstring, the jutting out of her collarbone above the silver hem of her leo. The lines of her abdominal muscles and the edge of her sports bra were visible through the shimmery fabric.

She paced back to the other end of the podium just as Kristin did her leap mount.
Put the warm-ups back on
, Monica told herself. She usually spent the entire meet in her pants except when she was on the apparatus. Most of the girls did not. The average elite gymnast stayed almost naked for the duration of a two-hour meet, marching around the gym like she never thought twice to be self-conscious about her exact shape being on display for the whole arena.

Monica had pulled off her warm-ups too early this rotation, accidentally misreading Maria's name as her
own. She thought she'd be up right after Leigh. But she wasn't until second to last, and now she was pacing like a leopard in a cage and completely failing at her mission to appear confident, because she didn't have her pants on and she didn't want anyone to notice that she put them on and took them off then put them on and took them off all between only her first two routines.

Not that anyone was paying that much attention to her.

Then again, that's what she'd thought before when she'd tried to readjust her own leo over her own butt, and clearly the Royal Duo had noticed that. Monica shook her head to try to chase their giggles from her memory.

She kept her pants off.

She paced back toward the front of the beam and
wham!
Leigh Becker walked right into her. They froze and stared at each other, and the memory of Monica's name in Leigh's disgusted voice echoed through her ears.
Monica Chase, Monica Chase, Monica Chase . . .

“Excuse me,” Leigh said, staring down at her like she was a rodent. And Monica moved around the star to prop her leg up on the podium. She bent to roll out her toes.

It had been surprising to Monica when her score trumped the national champion's, but it turned out she had a higher degree of difficulty, so that's what happens. When you added up the score potential for each of Monica's tricks on bars, it was higher than Leigh's. They both did most of their tricks well, so Monica's score
stayed higher than Leigh's. So who cared? It's not like Monica would beat Leigh in the all-around.

But Leigh had been so bratty about it. “Don't apologize.”

Like Monica
should
apologize or something.

It was trippy, though—she
had
almost apologized.

It was a wake-up call. Monica could be friends with the other gymnasts here, but she couldn't be a fan. She had to be a fan of herself alone.

If she wasn't her own fan, no one would be.

Monica switched legs and rolled out her left toes. Her body felt more like her own when she was stretching and doing gymnastics. When she was walking around for millions to see all her muscles and organs, she almost felt like her body wasn't hers anymore. Like it was a cage everyone else owned and she was trapped inside of it.

Monica kicked into a handstand to stretch her abs and finally started to visualize her routine.

“Just have a good day, right?”

Ted's voice came from high above her head. She nodded, her chin moving up toward her feet, and she dropped out of the handstand.

“That's the goal, right?”

No.
Monica nodded even as she argued with her coach in her brain.
Don't fall. My goal is to do eight routines with no falls.

“Good girl.” Ted patted the top of her head like she was a dog playing fetch. “Go chalk up.”

A few minutes later, Monica's hands grasped the four-inch beam, and her butt and abdomen pulled her
legs up over her head into a handstand. She split into a full upside-down straddle. Then she walked on her hands so that she was on the edge of the beam and bent her back until her feet were on the beam behind her head.

Monica might be skinny and tiny. Her body might be all angles and her hair might not be shiny. She might sometimes have trouble getting distance on her vault and height between her tumbling body and the beam. But she was one of the most flexible gymnasts in the country. Her beam routine was designed to demonstrate that.

It worked.

For the next ninety seconds, Monica saw nothing but the beam. She did walkovers and handsprings and roundoffs. She did her double full turn, which got an
ooh
, so at least a few little girls in the audience were watching her. Her eyes stayed on the slightly fuzzy cream surface of the beam. She did an aerial cartwheel into a walkover that landed her seated on the beam, her legs hanging over it, her stinging crotch being flattened against the hard surface.

She laid her body across the beam, grasped it with her forearms, her chin pressed into the side of it, and kicked her legs over her into a beam-hugging handstand. Another
ooh
. She lifted herself onto her hands, did a back walkover, and landed at the end of the beam just in time to hear the warning beep. She had ten seconds.

Perfect.

She pointed her toe in front of her, took a deep breath, and dismounted: cartwheel (
upside down, right-side up
), aerial cartwheel (
upside down, right-side up
), double back tuck (
upside down, right-side up, upside down, right-side up
).

She landed on her feet with a tiny hop.

Something somewhere in her gut made Monica's head lurch up, and her eyes landed on Katja Minkovski. She was leaning toward an ex-Olympic gymnast and laughing. She wasn't even paying attention.

Oh well. That much Monica expected.

She was on her way to her goal. She didn't fall.

STANDINGS
AFTER THE SECOND ROTATION

1.

Georgette Paulson

30.725

2.

Grace Cooper

30.650

3.

Wilhelmina Parker

29.650

4.

Maria Vasquez

29.540

5.

Monica Chase

29.350

6.

Samantha Soloman

28.980

7.

Leigh Becker

28.450

8.

Annie Simms

28.200

9.

Kristin Jackson

27.750

10.

Natalie Rice

27.000

11.

Camille Abrams

15.350

12.

Olivia Corsica

14.850

Third Rotation

CAMILLE

Worms of guilt crawled through Camille's heart as she watched Wilhelmina warm up for the second of the two rotations Camille would be skipping due to her specialist status. Her friend was shooting her confused and dirty looks that made her want to shrink. She should apologize, but how?

Her phone buzzed in her hand and Camille flipped it to study the screen. Finally! Her heart leaped to her throat. Bobby wasn't there, but he was watching from home, she figured. He was finally texting her that good-luck message.

But no. It wasn't a text or a phone call or anything. It was just another message on her fan page. This one from male gymnastics superstar Mario Alvarez.

Good luck, Comeback Cammie! Hoping we'll be heading to Italy together in a few days!

Camille sighed. She wanted to throw the phone into the stands and run away from this gym forever. But—
bing—
a little, tiny thumbs-up appeared beneath Mario's message. Her mom had liked his post. Her mom had liked Greg Thompson's post and the mayor's post and her old high-school principal's post. Stuff like this was keeping her mom going.

Camille had no choice but to be the top scorer on vault today.
Sorry, Wilhelmina.

Sixteen-year-old Camille would never have sat on the sidelines like this, worrying about boyfriends or parents or trying to determine another girl's chances because she recognized the fire in her eyes. Sixteen-year-old Camille's fire was too bright to see past it.

What had happened to that girl from four years ago? What had happened to the singularity of her mind, to the gumption of her dreams, to the joy in her competition?

• • •

Her mother had been there that day, of course. That single day when she was an Olympian. All the parents were asked to pay their way to New Mexico to sit on a set of bleachers and listen as their daughters' dreams were either confirmed or squashed.

The relief in Camille's chest had solidified into joy by the time she'd found her mother. Then, Helen was huge compared to Camille's tiny frame, a woman of more than two hundred pounds, all soft tissue and slow movement. At almost seventeen, Camille looked like she could be eleven—four foot ten and string-bean skinny
with unruly brown hair and no hint of hips or breasts. Helen picked up tiny Camille and swung her around as Camille whispered in her ear, “Come on, Mommy. Let's go.” Camille wanted to rush out of there, away from Gym Camp, where the busted dreams and tears of so many of her fellow gymnasts threatened to dilute her joy.

She would fly back to Long Island with her mother for a quick three days of family time (and training, of course) before she was required to return to the camp for a few weeks, and then ultimately board the plane to the Mexico City Olympics.

Camille and Helen were the first out the gym doors after a quick thank-you to her coaches and Katja. They burst into giggles as they made a break for the parking lot, and together they dove into her mother's rented Ford Taurus. While Helen backed out of the parking space and barreled down the winding camp driveway, Camille strapped herself into the front seat and hooked up her iPod to the car stereo. She blared “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!—the song they both loved to sing whenever Camille had a successful meet.

And Camille was happy. Camille was so happy, it was almost surreal. She was going to the Olympics. She was one of the best gymnasts in the country, in the world, even. She was with her mother.

This was before Bobby and regular high school. This was before she even had the fan page for Greg Thompson or Mario Alvarez to find her on. This was when all the
people Camille knew could be divided into three categories: gymnasts, coaches, and family. So her mother was her best friend. And the only thing that could possibly feel as good as hearing her name as part of the Olympic team was seeing her mother's smile.

They careened through the New Mexican country roads, screaming the song out the open windows, smiling and bouncing in their seats. This hoped-for, prayed-for moment was almost otherworldly, almost like she wasn't in the car but was instead floating above it, watching and saving the joy for later.

And it was good she wasn't in her body at that moment. Because that's probably why she didn't feel her head go through the windshield.

• • •

When Camille woke up, she wasn't on Long Island. She was still in New Mexico. She knew that right away from the air-conditioning—in New York's July, it would be blasting all the time, but it was barely purring on her skin. In New Mexico, you could turn down your air-conditioning at night. The state cooled off without the burn of the sun.

Camille's eyes shot open. Where was she? It was pitch-dark.

She pulled her elbows to her sides, trying to prop herself up, but pain rang through her scalp and her lower back like black flames. She crashed the two inches
back to her pillow, and that's when she realized it. The tight way the sheet was folded. The beeping of a machine by her head. Her mother's heavy breathing somewhere to her right.

She was in a hospital.

“Mom?” Camille managed to push the one word through the fire.

Her mom was immediately awake, her eyes glowing in the darkness. “I'm so sorry, Cam-Cam. I'm so sorry.”

Camille didn't ask where she was. She asked the only question that mattered.

“Am I still going to the Olympics?”

Her mother had stroked her cheek with a fleshy palm. “Of course. We'll get you back in the gym. We've come this far.”

Camille leaned her cheek further into her mother's touch. She let herself calm down.

“We'll talk to the doctor tomorrow,” Helen concluded.

• • •

“It's gymnastics that almost killed you.”

That's what the doctor said the next day. He looked from Camille's face to Helen's, searching for a reaction, but they were both still. Gymnastics had almost killed her before. It almost killed everyone she knew at least once. Everyone had some sort of scare when she fell headfirst off the bars or whacked her back into the balance beam from three feet in the air.

He repeated it. “It's gymnastics that almost killed you. I would advise you never to return.”

“No,” her mother corrected him. “It was a car accident.”

“Mrs. Abrams.” The doctor said her name like Camille's mother was the child. He turned to face Helen where she sat next to the bed, clutching Camille's hand. “What was this young girl doing in the front seat of the car?”

Camille's face pinched into a tight expression; her heart sped up in her rib cage.

Helen faltered. “She's . . . almost . . . seventeen. . . .” she said.

“She's only seventy-eight pounds,” the doctor replied. “In New Mexico, it's illegal for any individual who is under eighty pounds to ride in the front seat of a car, and, quite frankly, it's inadvisable for anyone under ninety. In fact, they still make booster seats for children her size.”

“But . . . she's sixteen. . . .” Helen tried again.

The doctor shook his head. “Her body doesn't know that,” he said. He turned and faced Camille. “Do you menstruate?”

Camille blushed. She'd never heard a man talk about periods before. She shook her head.

“I didn't think so.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, with that doll factory right up the road that y'all call Gym Camp, I've seen too many gymnasts to hope that these words will have any effect. But I'll say them
anyway: you need to rethink how much your sport is worth. If you were not an elite gymnast, you would have gotten in a fender bender, and you'd be on your way home, no more banged up than your mother, who is only suffering from a bruise on her arm. You would be taller and heavier, so you would not have to risk your life sitting in the front seat of your mother's car at sixteen years old, and you wouldn't have slipped out of your seat belt and crashed your skull into the windshield. Furthermore, if you weren't constantly beating your body with overtraining, you would not have the stress fractures in your back that caused it to break in three places during the crash. It's gymnastics that almost killed you,” he concluded. “The crash just helped.”

By now Camille's heart was beating in her throat. Sure, she'd seen nutritionists. She'd been told by regular doctors that she was too frail and small to be training as much as she did. She'd been warned that if she didn't start her period before her eighteenth birthday, that could mean something terrible about her health.

But she'd shrugged all that off. It sounded crazy. How could she be unhealthy when she was able to make her body move in ways most people couldn't even think about?

Plus, for every doctor and trainer who warned her, her coach seemed to be able to find another who wasn't too concerned.

But now she'd almost died. She knew it.

“But she was just named to the Olympic team!” her mother had yelled.

Camille's eyes ached, they went so wide. That felt like a year ago, a lifetime ago. Her mind was anchored in her broken back.

The doctor looked right at her. “You're not paralyzed. If we get you the right doctors back home, this situation won't be permanent. On your body, anyway. Your mind's another story.”

“So she can try again?” her mother said. Then she seemed to decide it. “So next Olympics she'll try again.”

The doctor still didn't take his eyes off Camille's bony frame.

“You shouldn't. But if you do . . .” He sighed. “And I know enough by now—you'll keep at it no matter what I say. So if you start training again, please put on at least twenty-two pounds, okay?”

GRACE

Grace clasped her hands over her breastbone. She was standing on the beam podium, waiting for the green flag.

Stay there
, she said silently.
Stay still. I mean, keep beating, but don't fall apart.

It would look like she was praying, but Grace didn't pray. She spoke directly to her inner organs. It was her own body she counted on, not some Great Unknown Creature in the
Sky.

And today, it felt like her heart was listening.

You can't give out on me now, okay?
she asked her heart.
I need you. I'm winning.

Because Grace had done what she'd promised herself she wouldn't: she'd snuck a peek at the scoreboard. And even though her dad always warned her against comparing scores too early in the meet, Grace was shocked to see that Leigh's name was nowhere near her own. Her own name was almost on top. That was not surprising. Georgette was technically winning, but that's only because she got a lot more points on vault than Grace did. Grace's degrees of difficulty and maximum score were higher for every other apparatus, so Grace would catch her quickly. But both Grace and Georgette were beating Leigh. Wilhelmina was several slots in front of Leigh. And—this gave Grace the most confidence in her eventual domination—Monica was
still
beating Leigh. Monica was in Leigh's rotation, which meant their scores were comparable. And it was basically agreed upon that Monica didn't even deserve to be present that day. The gap between Grace and Leigh was not simply because they'd competed different events so far: it meant Leigh was having a terrible day. And Grace was having a good one.

Grace was supposed to be scared for Leigh. She was supposed to be her friend and feel her losses. But Grace wasn't. She couldn't be.

It was perfect.

The only thing that could stop Grace was encased
within her own skin.
Just do what you're supposed to
.

The green flag waved in the corner of her vision, and Grace dropped her hands and squinted at the beam. Her beam coach always told her “focus can make the beam grow.”

And she was right. When Grace's insides were still and her mind was laser sharp, she could make the four-inch surface of the beam spread to six or eight. And on the rare day that Grace was off, the beam got skinnier. Sometimes, mid-routine, when she stood with her ten toes lined up for her single standing back tuck, her pinkie toes hung off the edges. Other times, the creamy cloth that covered it seemed to go on for inches on either side of her feet.

Today, she would turn this beam into a sidewalk.

She signaled the judges, stormed toward the springboard, and leaped onto the beam, the soles of her feet landing squarely with a
bang.
Her heart beat solidly in the pit of her chest. Everything was as it should be.

For the next ninety seconds, the gym disappeared and she saw only the glowing sidewalk-beam. Ninety seconds of only her limbs and her hands and her muscles. Then, with a roundoff double back layout, it was over.

Grace threw her hands over her head as she faced the judges, then brought them immediately to her heart.
Thank you, thank you
, she told it.
Only one rotation left. We can do it.

Her father patted her sleek ponytail once she was
off the platform. “Not quite as good as bars,” he whispered through his fake smile. “You can get more height on that dismount. You swung your arms before your switch leap, so you missed that connection. And you weren't solid on your full turn.”

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