Tumbling (20 page)

It was awful that Wilhelmina was mad at her now. The list of people who hated her always seemed like it was growing.

Camille shot Wilhelmina a weak smile, then plopped on the floor in front of Samantha and Maria. “Hey, fogey,” Samantha said, nudging Camille with a knee.

She shouldn't be here, in this room. Katja loved her. Her vaults were quick and easy and fun and probably enough to get her into the Olympics. And she didn't want to go. She should not be here surrounded by these hopeful gymnasts. She could be killing one of their
dreams and making herself miserable in the process. Everyone in this happy room should be as mad at her as Wilhelmina was right now. But, the wrath of a gaggle of gymnasts seemed easier to take than the incessant silence of her boyfriend/ex/whatever-he-was-now.

Still, maybe she should leave. Maybe she should stop trying to pretend to be one of these girls, to want what they wanted, to think how they thought. Sixteen-year-old Camille belonged in this room, but that girl was gone. Camille moved toward the door.

Then, suddenly, the crowd hushed. They all seemed to sit straighter. Some even folded their hands.

“It's good to be here, Jim,” Katja Minkovski said. “Thank you for taking the time to pay attention to our little sport of gymnastics.”

Jim giggled. Several of the girls giggled.

Camille almost retched.

Katja was going on national TV or whatever this was to call gymnastics
little
?

Somehow they were all supposed to believe it was
little
? Like just because the athletes were young and small, the sport was insignificant?

Why had they—why had she—given up their whole life for a sport if the figurehead was going to call it little?

And then, even though she knew it might make some more people hate her, Camille stormed out.

MONICA

Does Katja ever even think of me?
Monica wondered as the wrinkly face filled the screen and she explained her role as Olympic team coordinator.

“Each year the rules are different. They are set by the USAG, the committee that determines the rules for American gymnastics in particular. Not the Olympics. Or the FIG, the international organization. So different countries do it differently. This year there is the guaranteed spot and the trials televised from beginning to end. When the selections must be made, it will be quite, quite difficult. I am used to putting the puzzle together with more time . . . and freedom . . .”

Everyone in this room seemed to have an opinion about Katja. Or a relationship with Katja. Or a theory about how Katja felt about her.

Of course Katja knew Monica. She'd known her forever. Monica was on the national team and went to all the camps. She followed all of Katja's rules about food (the right amount, the right kinds) and sleep (eight hours every night) and workouts (seven hours, six days a week, rest on the rest day) and life (only short family vacations, no other sports, no dangerous leisure activities like skiing or horseback riding, plan your calendar around the gym
season).

But Monica had never wondered what Katja might think of her.

Jim laughed, like Katja was being charming, while she talked about having her pick and how it was difficult to choose the perfect Olympic team without Olympic selection camp. Monica knew what Katja liked about camp. All the gymnasts knew what Katja liked about camp. But Katja didn't say it. She didn't say that camp allowed her to make her choices in private. She didn't say that it allowed her to play favorites without the rest of the country catching on.

“Wouldn't you pick the top girls anyway?” Jim asked.

“Usually yes, of course. But sometimes . . . the meet goes differently.”

Monica didn't know what Katja was trying to say this time, but it was something. Something real. A hidden meaning hung on her words.

Jim didn't see it.

“Well, how do you think our girls did today?” he chirped.

“The meet, so far, is going well,” Katja said.

The girls around Monica were still, so still, not even breathing.

“When you see a girl perform to the level that is expected, that is what makes my job the easiest.”

“Aha,” Jim said, like he understood what she was saying. But he didn't. There's no way. Monica barely understood. And it wasn't the accent.

“She's speaking in code,” Wilhelmina whispered under her breath. Monica had to agree.

“And can you give us a sense of who that was?” Jim asked.

“Grace Cooper did quite well today,” Katja said. “And Georgette Paulson.”

Of course
, Monica thought.
And Leigh.

But Katja didn't say Leigh.

“Still, they'll both need to do as well or better tomorrow to impress me. You see, Jim, we look for consistency. We don't look for who is doing well in one meet only. We look for who is getting better every day. Who is on the up instead of the down. The Olympics are a two-week process. If you are already tired at the trials, you will never make it through the ultimate test. This is why I prefer to have a selection camp after the official trials. It will be much harder to choose girls with stamina when we have only one meet to go off of.”

Jim didn't seem to be paying much attention, but the girls in the room were so silent, so alert, like they were eating Katja's words for dessert.

“I see,” Jim said. “So you don't want any bad surprises.”

“Yes,” Katja said. “We don't want those. But if they are going to happen, we want them to happen now. We'd rather weed out a bad surprise at this point than be faced with it in the middle of the Olympics.”

Some of the girls sucked in a breath. Monica could feel her shoulders tense. “Weeding out a bad surprise”
meant weeding out a gymnast. A person. Katja and Jim both seemed to forget that.

“Also,” Katja was saying, “we don't always want good surprises.”

“Huh?” Jim said. He tilted his head at Katja. But he was still smiling.

“You see, a good surprise to you is someone like young Monica Chase.”

Monica felt all eyes go to her suddenly. She was itchy. Her bones might have torn out of her skin, she was so uncomfortable.

“A good surprise to
you
, I say, because I am not surprised by Miss Chase today. I follow her. She does what she is supposed to. I have seen her get better at one camp and one meet and one camp and one meet until today when she looks like a true elite. Like a star.”

Monica's face was on fire. Her throat was twisting in two. She couldn't get a breath down.

Katja was saying good things about her. Good things!

Why did this feel so awful?

“But other girls, they do surprisingly well, and I have not seen them along the way. I have not seen the slow progression of developing the skills. How do I know it's not a fluke? If she has been hiding, how do I know I can trust that one to get us the Olympic gold? How do I know if she's tired? How do I know if she's peaking at trials? When a girl shows up like this at trials with tricks and routines we did not know were coming, it feels like a slap in the face to my process.”

“Aha,” Jim said. “And are you talking about someone in particular now?”

Katja nodded slowly. “There is one athlete I am the most concerned about on this topic,” she said.

“Any chance you'll tell us who?”

Monica's jaw dropped as she watched Katja pat the reporter on the arm and fake a giggle. “Oh, Jim,” she said. “You are bad. You know I can't do that.”

But Monica knew.

Her eyes traveled across the hotel room until they landed on Wilhelmina's sunken face.

And her heart broke for her old hero, her new friend. She had seemed so down and bitter in the icing room today. Enough that it was almost annoying to Monica. But that bitterness came from somewhere real.

Wilhelmina's fear had come true: tomorrow would be her last day as a gymnast.

GRACE

The girls sat in silence for several minutes after Katja's interview concluded.

Finally Maria said, “Well, that was bullshit,” and a few gymnasts chuckled nervously.

They all seemed angry. Why did Grace feel proud?

“That wasn't about us, guys,” Samantha said, standing up and stretching her hands over her head. “Take it from the fogies. That was some effed-up stuff, but that
wasn't about us. That was Katja fighting with the USAG. Playing tug-of-war over the rules.”

“And using us as the rope,” Maria added. “Of course.”

There were some
uh-huh
s and some
of course
s and some more curses, and then the girls were gone.

Leigh flipped the TV to an old rerun of SNL and vanished into the bathroom without saying anything. Grace chewed her cheek. There was something wrong with her. There was something broken about the way her brain worked, she decided. Why was Grace the only one on her phone searching old e-mails for the lists of camp attendees over the past few years while the rest of the girls seemed to get angry and/or heartbroken that one of them—any of them—had been singled out like that? Of the three gymnasts who had been mentioned by name, why was Grace the one no one even glanced at? Why did she seem to be the only one who was happy to be called out like that instead of mortified? What was Grace missing?

Grace had found the name easily. The gymnast Katja was talking about. The one she'd just told the whole world she didn't want on the team. Grace knew who it was. The last camp had been mandatory, so they'd all been there, but one of the athletes in today's all-around had only trained on vault at camp. And that same athlete had missed the two camps before that. And that same athlete had only competed on vault at Nationals.

So, Katja was rooting against Wilhelmina. And Katja hated the USAG. Grace didn't mind her name being used
to send them a message. She wanted to be the first gymnast mentioned in any conversation ever.

(Though she did catch Katja's warning that she'd better do as well tomorrow as she had today. Grace knew that warning was for her and not Georgette, who had been consistent all season. But that was okay. It was only a warning telling her to do what she already planned to do.)

“Are you happy?” Leigh demanded when she came back into the room in her shorts and T-shirt.

“No,” Grace lied. She was back to herself, which felt close to happy. Back to being sure she could win, even if Leigh had other secret tricks up the sleeve of her USA leotard.

“She didn't even mention me. After that vault she didn't mention me. You give that weird interview, and then she didn't mention me. So the last thing that will be said about me all night long is how you and I are
only
friends, how we aren't
close
-close, how you aren't
like that
. So there you go. You win, Grace. Good job.”

Then Grace remembered what she'd done.

• • •

A year-and-a-half earlier, at the February camp, Leigh and Grace were alone in their cabin after the afternoon workout and before dinner. They were both still in shorts and leos, hunting through duffel bags searching for matching shirts to wear to dinner. It was
Grace's favorite part of the day, though she knew it shouldn't be. The time of the day that had nothing to do with gymnastics. The time of day that she got to put friendship, Leigh, first.

Leigh tossed a bright pink shirt with blue writing onto the bottom bunk. “What about this one?” she'd said.

“Okay!” Grace said. It was a shirt from camp the year before. They both had it.

She was sitting on the bottom bunk, leaning into the duffel bag, scanning for flashes of pink.

“I have to tell you something,” Leigh said.

Grace looked up, but Leigh said, “No, keep looking for your shirt. I . . . it'll be easier if I'm not looking at you.”

“Okay . . . ?” Grace said. She pulled her bag onto her lap and found her shirt right away. But she pretended not to. She kept her eyes in her bag, like Leigh asked.

“I have a crush,” Leigh said.

Then Grace couldn't help but look up. “Oh no!” she said.

Crushes were not good. Crushes were distraction. Not every coach said that, but her dad did, all the time.

“No, no, it's okay,” Leigh said. “I'm not going to do anything about it.”

And Grace remembered to look back at her bag. Leigh's face was almost as pink as the T-shirt.

“Look, it's not a big deal. I've had crushes before, too, okay? Lots of crushes. At least, I hope it's not a big deal to you because it shouldn't be, but it's a secret,
okay? And I'm trusting you because you're my best friend and—you just can't tell anyone ever, ever, ever.”

“About the crush?” Grace said. She kept her eyes in her bag. She didn't dare move. Leigh had never told her a secret before. No one had ever told her a secret before.

“About what I'm about to say next. Promise, Grace. You have to promise.”

“I promise,” Grace said.

“Look at me now,” Leigh said. “Look at me and promise.”

Leigh was being weird, Grace thought. But she looked up. She said, “I promise,” as sincerely as she could. This moment was about Leigh. It was not about Grace. And that was okay, because this moment was about a crush and not about gymnastics.

“Look away again, okay?” Leigh said. She was standing over Grace, fidgeting with her fingers, tapping her toe. She looked more nervous than she did during any meet. “So . . .” she said. “When I have a crush . . . it's . . . on a girl.”

“Oh,” Grace said. Her eyebrows raised. Her eyes stayed glued to the inside of her bag.

“Yeah . . .” Leigh said. “That's it. I like girls.”

“Oh,” Grace said.

Leigh sat next to Grace on the bunk and Grace took this as permission to look at her friend.

“Do you care?” Leigh asked.