Tumbling (32 page)

“Or even if they put me on the roster because Leigh won't be on it. Or you. Or whatever . . . I'm . . . I can't do that to myself. I deserve to go honestly.”

“Honestly?” Camille asked. What did that even mean? “I—” Camille started. Then she shook her head. She couldn't get into a long conversation right now. She had to get out of there. “Okay. Look. Text me from that locker room. Or call me? Before you announce that decision, talk to me.”

“Why?” Wilhelmina asked.

“I—I'm sorry. I—I have to . . . go.”

“What's the rush?” Wilhelmina said.

“I have to get to Leigh,” Camille said. “I can . . . I can help.”

“Oh,” Wilhelmina said. “Then you can tell me if she's okay?”

Camille nodded. “So . . . I guess . . .” Camille shrugged. “I guess . . . I'll call Bobby. I don't want to, but . . . He's here. He'll take me.”

“No!” Wilhelmina shouted.

Camille's head shot up.

Wilhelmina was smiling. “Don't call him. Don't give him the satisfaction,” she said. “I have a plan.”

Camille nodded. Somehow she wasn't surprised that Wilhelmina could figure this out.

“But,” Wilhelmina said, “don't you want to go over the vault one more time before you disqualify yourself?”

“Yes,” said Camille. “Yes, I do.”

Five minutes later, she stood at the end of the vault runway.

I'll stand here again
, she told herself.
There will be
a school that forgives me for quitting this meet to check on a teammate. College gymnastics is all about teams.
I'll stand here for University of Florida or Alabama or UCLA or Stanford. I'll be an NCAA vaulter.

It wouldn't be the same, and that was good thing. But she wanted to remember it like this.

Camille closed her eyes to soak in the “Comeback Cammie” chant that was pulsing through the stadium. She let the sixteen-year-old inside her enjoy it for a moment. Then, the twenty-year-old Camille took off on the last elite runway sprint of her life, her hands hit the mat, her feet bounced off the springboard, her elbows launched her higher than ever off the vault, and she spun. She spun in the applause that echoed from the stadium walls. She spun above the ground, both her young self and her older self full of the joy that comes with weightlessness.

And after she landed, she didn't stop walking until she was in the parking lot.

FINAL RESULTS

The Verdict

WILHELMINA

Wilhelmina's phone buzzed in the pocket of her warm-up pants as she followed the rest of the gymnasts into the locker room. She lowered herself onto the bench in the back, next to Monica, and snuck her phone into her hand.

Davion:
The eagle has landed.

Wilhelmina smiled. She clutched tighter at the happiness she'd felt during that floor routine. She had to keep it. At least until she was alone with her family and the neighbor boys and Kerry. Safe. She'd done the best she could do to be both a good person and a great gymnast. She'd helped the stadium see the joy in gymnastics for Leigh and she'd gotten Camille to Leigh's side. She'd met her 9.5 goal on each apparatus. And she hadn't looked at the score once. Not even now that the meet was over.

Wilhelmina was pretty sure Georgette had won the meet. Georgette had started in third place and had a solid day. But on the off-chance Wilhelmina had won, she wanted to hear it from her enemy herself. She wanted to
hear her name come out of Katja's mouth, to see the hatred on her face one last time, to face it down before she said no thanks and left the gym forever.

Wilhelmina was calm in this tense locker room. Wilhelmina was minutes away from retiring, hours away from her first kiss. But she was calm.

Tonight she'd cry into the privacy of her pillow. Oh, she'd cry. She'd cry because her career was over. She'd cry because any dream worth having would be painful to lose. But that was later.

Now, she had one thing left to do.

“Hey,” she whispered to Monica, “you need a new coach. You know that, right?”

Monica nodded. “Yeah,” she said.

“You don't need to be treated like that. There are nice coaches out there,” Wilhelmina said.

Monica nodded. She looked nervous. Everyone in the room was nervous, probably, expect for Wilhelmina.

“You should talk to Kerry,” she said.

Now Monica smiled, surprised. Wilhelmina smiled, too. She was glad Monica was happy, but she wasn't doing this for her new friend. She was doing it for her coach.

“You'd want me as a teammate?” Monica asked.

Oh.
Why hadn't she prepared for this question?

She turned to whisper into Monica's ear. “I'm done, Monica. I'm done. And Kerry needs a new star. She could make you one. You have time. But I . . . I can't.”

Monica's eyebrows lowered into the most confused
look and Wilhelmina panicked. She'd said too much. Before she could backpedal, before she could ask Monica to keep it quiet until she had a chance to tell Kerry herself, the selection committee came through the locker room door.

“Quiet, quiet!” Katja shouted, even though it was already silent as a grave in the room.

“First, we all need to congratulate the athlete who has placed automatically onto the team,” she said, stone-faced. “And she is Wilhelmina Parker.”

Mina's jaw dropped and the locker room filled with a smattering of applause. Her brain rewound through the day, through every thought she'd had, through everything she'd felt, and tried to make it all make sense.

I won
, she told herself.
I actually won.

“Come stand by me,” Katja said.

“I—” Wilhelmina stood. “I—” She was trying to speak but no one was listening. She was trying to say, “That's it. I'm done. I retire.”

But Wilhelmina was surrounded by naked hope. Now there were gymnasts looking at her, wishing they were her, the same way she had looked for years at Camille and others. Wilhelmina couldn't quit in this moment, in this locker room. These girls would start to hate her the way she hated them.

It was confusing. Everything in her life had been unfair until this moment. And everything would be unfair from this moment forward. This was the one moment she should be enjoying. And Katja was making that
impossible. Or the hope radiating from these other girls was making it impossible. Or something. Something was making this moment different from what it should be.

Mina should be allowed to be happy. But she was confused.

Monica was hugging Wilhelmina. Wilhelmina was frozen.

“Get up there,” Monica said.

But as Wilhelmina walked toward Katja, the locker room swung dangerously in her vision. Georgette had to reach out and catch her.

“Overwhelmed?” Georgette whispered with the joyful tone of someone who was sure she was about to be chosen for the Olympic team and treated fairly once she got there.

Wilhelmina managed to make it to the front of the room and stood next to Katja. She focused on kissing Davion. She couldn't begin to think of the enormous task she had ahead of her now: quitting even when she'd won the trials and made the team. She was an Olympic athlete and her life still wasn't fair.

“And now,” Katja said, “will each of today's athletes please come forward?”

Wilhelmina watched as the girls slowly rose from the bleachers or the floor or the walls they were leaning against. She watched Maria step carefully over a bench and stand, facing Wilhelmina. She watched Grace fall in line next to Maria, Monica next to Grace, Kristin next to Monica. Annie. Natalie, Samantha, Olivia. Their eyes
bore into Wilhelmina's heart and she was almost knocked over by the solid wall of hope standing in front of her.

Each girl here wanted what Wilhelmina had just gotten. What Wilhelmina was about to give up.

Because she
was
about to give it up. She deserved something better than this. Right?

Then she saw it. It was Grace who started it. Grace, the broken girl.

Grace raised her arms so they were at ninety-degree angles, flipped over her hands, and offered up her palms to Monica and Maria. Within seconds they were a line of gymnasts clinging together, bound by a tangle of fingers and their insurmountable shared hope.

“Alphabetical order. If you hear your name, come stand by me,” Katja was saying.

But Wilhelmina didn't want to be on this side anymore. She didn't want to be facing Grace or Monica or Samantha or any of the others when their hearts got broken. She wanted to be with them. She wanted Grace on her team, Monica on her team, Georgette on her team, Kristin on her team, Annie on her team, Samantha on her team, Maria on her team: all of them. She wanted Leigh on her team. It was awful that they had to be divided. They had all worked so hard, all given up so much.

Maybe they all deserved it, or they all deserved better than they were going to get. Maybe that's what made this moment so confusing.

Just as Katja opened her mouth to say the first name,
Wilhelmina broke from her side. She backed into the line of gymnasts and it opened to accept her. She squeezed Grace's hand in her left palm, Monica's in her right, and she sent hopeful vibes to all of them. For a second they were all connected.

Wilhelmina realized they always would be. She would quit the sport. She'd talk to her publicist after this meet and she would make an announcement that she could no longer comply with Katja's rules. She'd be out. But even then, she would still be connected to these girls. She would not be a gymnast anymore, but she would forever be an ex-gymnast. She would always carry the girl gymnast in her bones. And only this chain of girls would ever really understand that.

“The first gymnast selected is . . .” Katja paused for dramatic effect. ”Camille Abrams.”

Oh yeah.

The locker room was silent and still. Then everyone's heads started whipping back and forth. Wilhelmina looked at the floor and bit her lips to keep herself from grinning. At least Camille had gotten what she deserved. That was one person.

“Where's Camille?” Katja asked the crowd.

Only Wilhelmina knew the answer.

“I . . . I'll go find her!” she said. And she darted out the door before anyone could stop
her.

CAMILLE

The smell. It hit her like a wall when she sprinted through the automatic glass doors in the front of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She wasn't expecting the smell. Of sterilizer and lemon cleaner. Of nursing scrubs washed too many times in discount detergent and of upholstery cleaned so often it was mildewy anyway. Of tile and bright ceiling lights and pure white sneakers.

It was the smell four years ago, the smell of lost dreams.

Camille almost gagged. She ran back out the door and watched as Davion's navy Camry drove up the hospital driveway. She could run after him or call Wilhelmina and tell her to tell him to come back. It wasn't like Leigh was expecting her.

But where would she go? Not to the Olympics; she'd slammed that door shut, thank God. Not to NYU with Bobby.

Camille had nowhere to go. Maybe she had to be back in this smell in order to truly come out of it.

She called her mom. “Camille!” Her mother's voice came through clear and excited. “Camille!”

“Yes, Mom—”

She cut her off. “Did you get it? That vault was the best I've ever seen, did you get it? Are you in the locker
room? Did they name the team yet? Oh, I wish I could be with you.”

“Mom,” Camille said. Her voice was small.

“Oh, honey,” Camille could hear her mother's broken heart in her words, in her tone. “Oh no. Oh, no. You did everything you could, right? You vaulted like a champ. I can't believe they wouldn't take you! What does that mean—is Leigh Becker all right after all? We should have known she had the triple-twister. That was sort of dirty of her, don't you think?”

Camille took a deep breath. “Mom, I left. I'm at the hospital.”

“What?” Her voice was shocked and worried, more worried than disappointed. Camille felt her heart warming. Maybe her mother did care more about her well-being than her gymnastics.

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I'm okay. I'm just . . . I came to see Leigh. I disqualified myself. I . . . I don't think I ever really left that last hospital.”

“What?” her mom said.

“I came because I thought Leigh would need me. I thought I'd be the only person who could possibly understand her. And I think she might be the only one who can understand what happened to me, too.”

“What?” her mom said again.

She expected her mother to yell. To tell her to get her butt back to the Metroplex and beg forgiveness.

Camille couldn't let Bobby run her life, so she
had dumped him. It wasn't easy, but it was possible. She couldn't dump her own mother. But she couldn't let her run her life, either.

Helen said, “I really wanted you to go to the Olympics.” She didn't sound angry. She sounded depressed. That was worse.

“I know, Mom,” Camille said. “But I didn't want to go anymore.”

“Why? Why couldn't you do this one thing for me?”

Camille didn't want to have to explain this when the smell was everywhere, when she was rushing to get to Leigh, when she was so close to tears. “I want to go to college, Mom,” she said. “I want to go now. Or soon. When I'm still sort of the same age as the other people on my team. I want to be a part of something: classes and gymnastics teams and all of that. I want a chance at the parts of school I missed before it's too late.”

Helen didn't say anything. Camille could hear her breathing heavily through the phone.

“Is that okay, Mom?”

“It's your life, honey,” her mom said flatly.

“Is it?” Camille asked. “Is it my life? Are you going to forgive me for making this call?”

Her mom was speaking so slowly, Camille had the image of her from two years ago. Emaciated. Depressed. “I wanted you . . . I wanted to be . . .” She trailed off.

“I know,” Camille said. “But . . . I'm not.”

Camille didn't know what to do. She couldn't abandon
her mother. But she couldn't live for her, either.

“Will you come, Mom? Will you meet me at the hospital? It's . . . it smells the same. I need you.”

“Okay,” Helen said.

“Really?” Camille said.

“If you need me, I'm there. All I want is for you to need me. . . . And without gymnastics . . . you won't need me anymore.”

“I need you now, Mom,” Camille said.

“Then I'm on my way.”

She knew that it wouldn't be easy. That she and her mother would need help turning their relationship into a productive one. That there would be bad days when her mother was bitter and Camille would miss Bobby. But she still breathed a sigh of relief. She'd never known she could ask her mother for anything. Yet her mom was on the way.

Camille held her breath when she went back through the doors. A nurse appeared in front of her. She was young, with violet scrubs and smooth brown hair pulled back with a part down the middle. She looked Camille up and down, and Camille knew. This was a fan. She could spot them from a mile away, the fans that were more than once-every-four-year fans, that recognized her in airports and supermarkets. The nurse walked right up to Camille and said, “I'll take you to Leigh.”