Tumbling (3 page)

Grace nodded. “I know.”

“But don't worry about that. Camille's a specialist.
She's not even competing beam and bars anymore. All we need to worry about is Leigh Becker.”

At that same moment, Leigh's name boomed through the air around them, and their two heads—his a blond crew cut, Grace's a smooth, black ponytail—turned to watch her mounting the uneven bars across the gym. Grace looked away as soon as Leigh caught her first release move.

She swigged her water.

“You can get Leigh,” her dad whispered. Grace hated it. As much as she wanted to win, she wished her basically guaranteed spot on the Olympic team would be enough for her father and coach.

He kept talking. “She's not better than you. You have to stop choking and get out of your own head. The only way she wins is if you have falls all over the place like you did on the second day at Nationals.”

Grace shook her head, but she didn't say anything.
Gymnasts are made to be seen, not heard.
That's what her father said. But his analysis was never fair. Those meets hadn't been about choking.

He shoved his phone back into his pocket, and Grace managed to swallow the next sip of water. She was safe. For now.

“Even if she beats you today, she won't have a chance against you in the Olympic all-around. She's a crude gymnast. All about power and wow factor, but she doesn't have
it
the way you do. You have the long lines. You have the international look. You have it all, Gracie. You have
grace.”

Grace stared at her white father. It was the blood of her absent Chinese mother running through her veins that allowed Grace to embrace that “international look” in the first place. In today's day and age—when everyone was more concerned with nutrition than calorie counting, and weigh-ins had been banned by the USAG—if she were a white girl, a black girl, anything but an Asian girl, this “international look” she was sporting would have spawned suspicious theories from sports commentators and gym bloggers and possibly even USA Gymnastics. If the Chinese gymnasts from actual China weren't just as skinny, if she didn't look like them thanks to Nowhere Mom, she would never get away with it.

Grace couldn't believe her father used those words, like she didn't know exactly what they meant when you broke them down.
International look. Long lines.

The rules would change for the Olympics because some judges outside the United States tended to be less concerned with the gymnasts' health. Because some of the other countries praised long, straight legs over complicated, daring tricks. Beating Leigh on an international stage would not have the same meaning.

She had to beat Leigh, and in order for it to count, she had to beat Leigh
today
.

Grace wanted to beat Leigh because she was the better gymnast. Grace did not want to beat Leigh because she was skinnier.

Although she was.

LEIGH

Leigh felt like her blood was pumping pure adrenaline, like her heart would leap out of her throat any minute. She took a deep breath where she sat on the folding chairs watching Kristin do giants around the high bar.

“Can you believe we're here?” Leigh whispered to the tiny girl sitting next to her.

The girl almost snorted. She kept her eyes on the floor.

Leigh turned to look at her. It was Monica, the mousy gymnast with huge brown eyes who also trained with Grace's dad.

“It's totally unbelievable, right?” Leigh kept talking. “Like, people are actually paying attention to this meet! I mean, the mayor of DC even wrote on my fan page this morning! OMG, and did you see that Dylan Patrick wrote on Grace's fan page? Dylan Patrick, from Out of Touch! I wish he'd written on mine. Don't you?”

That was dumb
, Leigh thought.
Why'd I lie like that?

Monica shook her head and looked down. She was short, even shorter when they were sitting because, unlike Leigh, she was built like a gymnast: tiny, but with legs so long they seemed taller than her total height. She was flat-chested and baby-faced. Leigh, on the other hand, was the tallest gymnast in the competition, with unruly blonde hair that shot off her head in a
chaotic ponytail. Her body was all muscle except for her actual breasts, which were big enough to ache when she dismounted any apparatus with a thud.
Sports Illustrated
had recently called her the “linebacker of the US National Gymnastics Team.” It was supposed to be a compliment, they'd told her publicist. Whatever.

“I guess it makes sense. People are paying attention. We're at the freaking
Olympic trials
.”

Stop talking!
Leigh's brain screamed. Her mouth never listened.

The girl, Monica, was still studying her broken, mangled gymnast toenails.

“Are you okay?” Leigh asked. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No. It's just—” Monica looked up at her, the flash of joy dancing in her brown eyes matching the feeling in Leigh's heart. “Well, I can believe
you're
here,” she said. “You're the national champion.”

Leigh laughed.

She'd forgotten.

It was the best moment of her life, yet she forgot about it all the time. Yes, she was the national champion. Yes, she remembered a month ago when she'd finally worked the beam well, when she'd hit eight routines in a row, racked up high score after high score, and climbed onto the top place on that podium in the middle of the floor. But it was like a dream. It was foggy and full of magic. It was a happy memory, but it felt like it belonged to someone else.

The real Leigh was the one sitting on this folding chair, trembling at the hugeness of the moment. The real Leigh felt too small for her body, marveled at the muscles that were layered on her bones when she was watching her routines on DVR. The real Leigh was a little mad at her parents for parceling her life into a million pieces and then calling it normal. Inside, she was not the national champion. Inside, she was scared.

“I can understand why you're here, too,” Leigh told Monica. “Your floor routine at Nationals was incredible. Seriously, the whole place was standing, like on their toes, trying to see every tiny move you made. You're a really good dancer, too. I could never dance like that.”

Monica smiled. “Thanks.”

She almost whispered it. Like they were in church and not the Baltimore Metroplex. It made Leigh feel tipsy, the way people had started talking to her. The way the little girls squealed when she'd stopped to sign a few gym bags in the stands today. The gymnastics goddess they saw in her—Leigh didn't know who that girl was.

“Did you know—” Monica said, then the gym erupted into applause. “Yeah, Kristin!” Monica cheered. Then, “Hey, Leigh.” Monica said her name like she was nervous, like she didn't deserve to utter the single syllable.

Leigh smiled at Monica again, trying to help her feel comfortable.

“Aren't you up next?”

Shoot!
Leigh hopped to her feet. Why was she always like this? She got pulled into conversations,
distracted by signs in the stands, lost in watching other gymnasts' routines. She was always wishing she had another minute to stretch before mounting an apparatus. “A teaspoon of Grace's focus could go a long way for a gymnast like you,” her coach, Phil, kept saying.

Now Phil stayed on the arena floor as she hopped up the steps to the podium and began chalking her grips.

Leigh heard Monica call “good luck” to her, and she smiled.

Leigh spat in her chalky hands and tried to imagine her routine, tried to see herself making her first release, tried to see the crystal-embroidered mesh sleeves of today's maroon leo stretch forward as she caught the high bar. She ran her right finger over her left palm, smoothing out the pasty combination of water and chalk. Leigh heard Grace's name ring through the gym.

She looked up to see her best friend shaking her legs at the end of the vault runway.

Come on, Grace-machine
, Leigh said in her head. She wished she wasn't on the podium so she could yell it out loud. She continued chalking, but she watched out of the top of her eyes as Grace nailed her vault.

Yeah!
Leigh thought. They were one step closer to being Olympic roommates.

• • •

That had been their plan ever since they first became buds at USA Gym Camp three years ago. Back then, Grace was fourteen and already the junior national
champion, already being called a great hope for American artistic gymnastics. At the same age, Leigh had barely qualified as an elite. She wasn't even on the national junior Olympic team yet. But, for some reason, Grace had chosen her.

Leigh had been on the back beam at the camp gym, running though her routine, the same element catching her off guard every time. She'd go through a tumbling pass, nailing a roundoff back handspring with no problem, but then she'd lose it on the wolf jump. Over and over when she landed, her back foot would either miss the beam or she'd barely be able to grasp it with her toes. Her old coach had gotten so frustrated with her, she'd stormed away. Back then, Leigh didn't get much of any coach's attention. She wasn't anyone's best hope yet.

“You're not getting full extension,” she had heard a soft voice say.

It was the amazing Grace Cooper. She was looking up at Leigh as if Leigh were the superstar and she were the nobody.

“It seems harder to go for the full extension,” she was saying, “but it's not. You'll keep your body more aligned with the beam that way, so it's easier for your feet to find it when you land.”

Leigh tried the wolf jump on its own and landed it easily. But she was often able to land it without all the elements ahead of it throwing her off.

“Yeah, you know,” Grace was saying. “This time, when you do it, talk to yourself in your head. You've
got the roundoff back handspring down, so the whole time you're doing it, say
full extension, full extension
in your brain. Then look for the beam.”

Leigh followed Grace's directions, and she landed the element with only the slightest wobble. She hopped off the beam.

“Thanks!” she said. Even then Grace was almost a head shorter than Leigh and inches smaller in all directions. “Do you always talk in your head?”

“Not always!” Grace squealed. “Only when I do gymnastics.”

They both gave a shy giggle and the giggling hadn't stopped in the almost three years since.

It was Grace who had taught Leigh the true meaning of focus and commitment. It was Grace who had convinced Leigh that her coach wasn't good enough and made her seek out Phil. It was Grace's career that allowed Leigh to win one argument with her family. Her parents always wanted her to be “well-rounded” instead of “exceptional,” but they moved from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, so that Leigh could train with a coach who was the right fit for her. Grace was the only person in her life who understood Leigh's determination, her need to be special. And Grace—Grace, the gymnast who would do anything to win—had held on to Leigh's secret instead of throwing her vulnerabilities to the wolves, even the two times in their lives, both over this same summer, when Leigh had beaten her.

• • •

Leigh glanced into the crowd and found Katja staring at her. Katja believed in Leigh. Leigh had to find that belief in herself.

She had to focus.

She spat into the palm of each hand one last time, swung her arms in front of her chest, and walked behind the high bar.

As usual, a torrent of crippling fears ran through her bones like bolts of lightning as she watched the red flag, stone-faced, waiting for it to turn green.

I forget my whole routine.

I'm going to fall on my dismount.

I'm the Linebacker of Gymnastics: way too big to swing around these bars like a petite nothing, like Grace.

Focus!
she reprimanded herself.

She felt like her whole life, every Leigh in every day of her past, was lined up behind her. Every missed sleepover. Every potential friend or girlfriend whom she didn't have time for. Every lie. Every time she chose to be exceptional instead of normal. It was a series of crushing choices that shoved her up to the space where she stood right now, on the blue mat, under the uneven bars, at the Olympic trials. And it would all be pointless if she fell.

Then the flag turned green, and the storm inside her
poof
ed away. A smile lit up her face, and she threw her hands over her head to salute the judges before popping immediately onto the high bar.

Her brain turned off. It was only her body on
the bars. Through every giant, every release, every transition, she was That Girl. The Other Leigh. The one who was national champion. The one who could fall every day in practice but would never let the bar slip out of her grasp in a meet. The one who smiled even as she held her breath through handstands and pirouettes atop the high bar, whose toes pointed without her telling them to, whose knees would never bend, the one who would never break.

Ninety seconds later, with a double twisting backward layout, her feet were on the mat, her hands over her head. She was That Girl again.

MONICA

There were cameras everywhere. Every red-carpeted pathway between every white-draped podium was swarming with reporters and camerapeople circling the gymnasts the way a vulture circles its next meal before sinking its beak into the rotting flesh.

There had been cameras at Classics and Nationals but they hadn't come anywhere near Monica. She was a nobody. But now there was a camera sticking its lens practically up her nostril as her coach, Ted, gave her a pep talk before her first event.

Did this mean she was on TV right now? Were the announcers talking about her?

She hadn't ever noticed cameras on her at other
meets, not even in that moment after floor at Nationals, the moment that had been the height of her career so far.