Tumbling (6 page)

Thanks to the great skills of her new publicist, these fans liked her story even more than her gymnastics. The story that was plastered on every gymnastics blog
on the Internet, printed in the gymnastics magazines, highlighted on espnW and CBS Sports and even the Jewish Week. Her story was everywhere, even though Camille, until the American Cup six months ago, had been nowhere.

She was living the old fantasy, the dream she had during every gymnastics meet she watched as a little girl: that it would one day be her name squealed from the plastic seats of the stands; that it would be her face on the posters in little girls' bedrooms; that it would be her signature Sharpied across gym bags. That politicians and talk show hosts and even boy band singers like Greg Thompson would write “Good luck out there” on her fan page the day before the Olympic trials. Camille had a second of joy when she saw that “Good luck” from the lead singer of Out of Touch on her fan page this morning. But it fell to pressure quickly.

At the edge of the podium, Camille threw her arms over her head the way she had seen so many gymnasts do before her. She waved both her hands at once and the audience got a little louder, as if they were saying hello back to her.

Camille always thought it would be more fun than this.

She imagined her mother's smile floating somewhere far above her head and made herself keep waving.

“That's my star!” her coach said, giving her a double high five before wrapping her into a hug. Camille hated
that nickname. She hated that he was yet another person depending on her gymnastics. “You couldn't have done that any better. That's exactly what we need.”

He put her down, and she was smiling. Because she liked making him happy. Because she liked making her mom happy. Because the blood pumping through her veins when she landed a vault like that one always felt like exclamation points.

Because they all expected her to smile.

When the cameras turned away and the gym focused on Olivia, the last performer on the bars, Camille seized a private moment to check her phone. No messages. No missed texts. Nothing.

The morning of Classics, Bobby had texted her to say good luck. The morning of Nationals he'd texted. And this morning, he'd texted nothing.

• • •

Camille remembered Bobby's voice coming through her cell phone last night. “Please, baby, don't do it,” he'd begged.

Camille had pushed her frizzy dark brown bun against the tiled wall of the hotel bathroom in frustration. “Can you just come? If you leave Long Island tonight, there won't be any traffic. You can be here in four hours,” she'd whispered, not knowing how to cover up her desperation and stay quiet enough that Wilhelmina wouldn't hear her through the bathroom door. “It won't be the same without you in the stands.”

“You don't want to do this,” Bobby had said, his voice heavy and masculine. Camille could picture him in his kitchen, his curly-haired head resting on the white tablecloth, his blue eyes blinking nonstop as he waited for her answer.

Bobby was so heartbreakingly cute. In the almost three years they'd been together, Camille forgot that sometimes, as if by getting used to his good looks, his dark hair and light eyes, his muscled shoulders and crooked smile, she could start to ignore them. But he always seemed hottest in the moments when it felt like they were ending.

“I need to . . . finish it.”

“You're twenty now. You're still there. What does ‘finish it' even mean?”

“It's my choice, baby,” she'd said.

“No, it isn't.” His voice sounded lethargic, like a barbell hung on each word. It was the conversation they kept having, over and over, for almost a year as Camille fought and strived for a comeback, as her body turned to rock and her brain turned to mush, as her vault got higher and her mood got lower.

After his initial objections when she said she was returning to the sport, Bobby had supported her. He helped her find Coach Andrew, listened to her play-by-play of every workout, massaged her sore legs and arms and back, and showed up to every meet in his lucky green polo.

But he told her to quit. Over and over again he asked
her to quit. And she thought about it, a little bit.

But her mom was depending on her. Her mom was depending on her gymnastics for everything.

Bobby's voice had a new kind of desperation to it the night before the trials began.

The tile floor was cold through Camille's pajama bottoms. She glanced at her watch. It was 10:55; Lights Out had been more than an hour ago.

“I have to go to bed,” Camille had said at the same time Bobby said, “I can't do it.”

“You can come,” Camille said. “You have to.” She hadn't gotten through a meet without him since before they met, since before . . .

“No. . . .” he said. “I mean I can't do this. I can't support you if—”

“I have to go to bed,” she interrupted. “Please come. We can talk about this in person when the meet's over.”

“Camille!” he'd gasped, like it was hard to say her name all of a sudden. “I'm breaking up with you.”

She'd dropped the phone. It clanged off the tile floor in the darkness, and she didn't even care if it woke up Wilhelmina or the entire hotel.

His voice was coming at her ear so quickly when she'd picked it up again. “—I love you but gymnastics is killing you and you don't even want to do it anymore. I can't watch you flush more and more of our time down the toilet. I . . . will you stop? For me?”

“Bobby!” she'd said. “You can't ask me that.”

She didn't want to stop, that's what he didn't get.
She didn't want to be here. She didn't want gymnastics to take over every little bit of her life. But she didn't want to
stop
cold turkey again, either.

He spoke quietly. “I feel like if I don't come, maybe I'll finally get you to stop. And then we can be together. Fully committed.”

“That's not fair,” Camille had whisper-screamed.

He'd sighed. “I don't know what fair is anymore,” he'd said.

She was ready to tell him the stuff she hadn't before, ready to bare her soul if it would only mean he'd come to the meet. “My whole life I've followed the rules. When I met you, I was seventeen and I'd never kissed a boy. I'd never even stayed up until midnight.”

“That's my point,” he said.

“But—” she said. She didn't know what followed.

But I like being a girl who follows the rules.

But I don't understand your rules for me.

There was a long pause, and then he said, “I'm sorry. I can't.” And hung up.

Rap rap rap.
The sound was sharp on the door. “We should be sleeping.” Wilhelmina's voice snuck under the wood, each word pointed like a pencil stabbing Camille's thigh. “Go to bed.”

Camille's face had burned. Wilhelmina sounded like a teacher and, even though she was older, Camille felt like a misbehaving child. She couldn't face her friend, so instead she waited until she heard the squeak of Wilhelmina's mattress before promising herself she'd make
it up to Wilhelmina tomorrow, somehow, and climbing into her own bed.

Camille had whimpered herself to sleep, half hoping that she'd be so tired she'd miss her vaults and not make the team so she could limit the gymnastics in her life without her mom blaming Bobby for it.

• • •

So, of course he didn't text. Of course he wasn't in the stands.

And of course Wilhelmina was still acting cold and distant.

All of that hadn't stopped her at all. Vault was the shortest event, so it was possible to get very few deductions on it. The best vaults earned more points than the best scores on any other event. The Olympic Committee would always choose the best vaulter for the team because the best vaulter added the most points to the team score, and the committee was always after team gold.

The best vaulter was Comeback Cammie.

Camille was two vaults closer to her second first Olympics.

STANDINGS
AFTER THE FIRST ROTATION

Second Rotation

LEIGH

Leigh stood next to the uneven bars podium, face-to-face with Monica. Monica's mousy eyes were wide, the pale pink lipstick unevenly applied on her little mouth shaped in a small O.

This stupid little girl just beat me.
Leigh could barely believe it.

“I—I'm . . .” Monica stumbled.

“God, don't say you're sorry,” Leigh interrupted her.

“I wasn't going to,” Monica said quietly, but Leigh rolled her eyes. Of course Monica was about to say she was sorry. Seriously, what kind of competitor apologizes for doing well? Once again, Leigh found herself wishing for Grace's focus. Grace would never let something as bland as friendliness get her into this kind of a mess. Maybe if she were allowed to devote herself to the gym the way Grace and Monica and everyone else was, she'd learn how to focus like that.

But Leigh wasn't that lucky. Her parents insisted that she attend high school, that she go on family vacations, that she have a backup plan. All their rules and
philosophies confused Leigh. Like:
Always be nice, even to your competition.
Like:
A balanced life is a better life.
Like:
Of course we'll keep your secrets until you're ready to let them go. That's your business.

Leigh didn't understand why they decided some things (her sexuality) were her business and others (her gymnastics) were theirs.

They totally accepted Leigh as a lesbian. As a gymnast? Not so much.

• • •

It was only a little more than two years ago that Leigh had finally won that one argument with her parents. She'd lost all the other ones, before and after. But this one time, she won.

Leigh's mom and dad were both in the airport when she and her old coach, Julie, had arrived home from Gym Camp. She was trying to make the national JO team for at least one year before she became a senior. The decision would be made soon, Leigh knew. And Leigh couldn't get there with Julie.

Julie had never had a gymnast on the national team. Julie's goal—stated on all the material she sent for elite gymnasts and their families—was to send gymnasts to college, not the Olympics or Worlds or any of the National meets. But Leigh was the best gymnast Julie had ever coached, she thought. Leigh had a shot at a national team. She needed a coach who believed in her, and in Katja Minkovski.

At the baggage claim, Leigh's mom spread her arms open while Leigh was still ten feet away. Her dad smiled and called out, “Leigh-bee!” his embarrassing nickname for her. For a second, Leigh was happy to see them. But then her heart fell to her feet.

They were her parents and she loved them. But she was so sick of fighting.

The family greeted and then said good-bye to Julie in the parking lot. As soon as Leigh was strapped into the backseat of her parents' car, she breathed a huge sigh and said, “I need to move to Virginia with Aunt Carol.”

“What?” Leigh's mom had said. “What are you talking about?”

Her dad laughed.

This is always how it started when she wanted to be taken seriously. When she wanted her gymnastics to be taken seriously.

“I need to train with Phil McMann. He pulled me aside at dinner last night at camp. He told me he could get me to the Olympics, and he can. He can, Mom. And he's nice. He's a good coach. He never yells and he had banned weigh-ins before the coaches even had to. He cares about his athletes as people, too. That's what he told me. He's a really good option. And he's right in Virginia, right outside DC. So I could just live with Aunt Carol. And Dad works there one week every month anyway, so I'll see him then. And I can come back on Sundays. It's only a few hours from Philly.”

Leigh's dad was laughing like she was hysterical
now. Like she was a little kid who thought singing “I'm a Little Teapot” meant she could win
American Idol
.

Leigh was so angry, she was shaking.

“Dad!” she yelled.

“Sorry,” he said, flicking the blinker and switching lanes. But he was still laughing.

“Leigh, come on,” her mother said. “You're only fourteen. We aren't ready for you to move away from us.”

“The Olympics, Mom,” Leigh said.

“What about school?” her mother asked. “You already missed a week for camp, and you'll miss another in two months. What would happen if you moved to Virginia?”

“I didn't miss anything,” Leigh said. “I did every bit of homework. I always keep my promises, and you guys never ever do.”

“There's more to school than homework, Leigh,” her dad said.

“There doesn't have to be!” Leigh wailed. She hated that she was too loud. She knew she had good and important things to say, but she always wound up sounding like that little kid singing about teapots. She could never make her arguments sound right to her parents. They were always so much better in her head. “If I move in with Aunt Carol, I can just be homeschooled. Lots of other elites do it. I'll go to school on my computer like a normal girl.”

Her dad laughed again and Leigh almost growled, so he said, “Sorry.”

She shook her head.

“But seriously, Leigh,” he went on, “we want you to have the other parts of high school. What about school sports and going to football games? And making friends?”

“And going on dates?” her mom added.

Leigh's face burned. She hadn't told them yet that she wasn't sure who she would be dating once she started. But she knew she didn't want to start until after her first Olympics.

“Those things don't matter to me,” Leigh said. “Gymnastics matters to me.”

“You only get to go to high school once,” her mother had said.

“I only get to be young once,” Leigh said. “That's when I'm going to be the best at gymnastics. Sixteen is the average age for a gymnastics peak, and the Olympics will be when I'm sixteen. A coach like Phil McMann could take me there. But Julie is planning for me to peak when I go to college, years after the Olympics. I need a new coach.”

Then Leigh swallowed. She was about to play her gold card. If this next statement didn't win the argument for her, nothing would.

“Why should I have to spend the next few years the way
you
would be happy and not the way
I
would be? I want to be homeschooled. I want a new coach. I want to commit fully to my dream. Why should I have to waste my time on football games when what I want is to be a gymnast?”

Her parents looked at each other. They said nothing. They were totally, frustratingly silent.

Leigh knew they were inching closer to her. But she couldn't take the silence. Finally she said, “Just call him, okay? Just call Phil.”

And they nodded.

In the end, her parents had come up with a “compromise.” That's what they'd called it. Her dad had requested a transfer to the DC office, and they'd all moved to Virginia. Leigh started training with Phil. She got that part. Her parents got everything else. She enrolled in public high school. She maintained friendships with normal girls because that's what her parents had insisted on. She went to the occasional movie and football game. She pretended to be a regular girl when she wasn't in the gym, because that was the deal.

She'd gotten Phil, and that's what she needed to get here.

But still
, Leigh always thought,
imagine how great I would be if I were allowed to commit to gymnastics the way Grace did.

• • •

Monica was still staring at Leigh. Leigh wanted to shove her.

Instead, she gathered her stuff so they could commence their ridiculously feminine march to the balance beam.

Leigh led the six gymnasts around the uneven bars
podium to the folding chairs next to the balance beam. She felt Monica's breath on her neck.

That pip-squeak just beat me on bars.

Sometimes Leigh hated her body. Not her whole body: just the mountains and globs of muscle.

Leigh watched as the other line of gymnasts approached on their march toward the bars. Really, Leigh was watching only one of them. She was about to walk right past! As much as Leigh hated her own muscles and curves, she loved Camille's. The girl's eyes were dark, dark midnight blue, as if they were masking her own secrets. She looked right at Leigh when they passed.

Leigh hoped Monica wouldn't see the goose bumps that suddenly dotted her shoulders.

She looked at me! She looked at me!
Before she could help it, Leigh was smiling like a crazy person.

She shook her head. All crushes had to be turned off, shut down. They were only distractions. Especially when the object of her crush was a girl with a boyfriend.

Leigh ran through her warm-up, then paced the floor with her water bottle, keeping her legs warm and visualizing her routine. But mostly she was screaming at herself inside her brain:
Focus, focus, focus!

She couldn't afford to think about Monica's score or Camille's cushy lips when she was up on the four-foot-high, four-inch-wide beam. Beam was the event that terrified Leigh the most. She had to be calm and steady up there—two traits that didn't come naturally.

And Leigh needed to hit on beam. Leigh knew she'd
make the team. She was the national champion, after all. But her beam work was lacking. Leigh wanted more than to make the team: she wanted to be selected as one of the two gymnasts who would compete in the individual all-around during the Olympics. In order to get that spot, she had to hit on beam today and tomorrow. At camp last month, Katja had noticed that her beam work had gotten worse instead of better since Nationals. Katja had made it clear that she'd better hit on beam today if she wanted a chance to compete in the individual all-around.

Leigh put down her water bottle and kicked into a handstand. It was easiest for Leigh to focus when she was upside down.

Stay on the beam. Stay on the beam.

“Hey!” Leigh heard. She saw Grace's pink toenails underneath her nose. “I'm last up on bars, so I thought I'd come cheer you on.”

Leigh dropped out of her handstand and embraced her friend. “You were so good!” she squealed. “We're doing it! We're getting to the Olympics.”

Grace smiled at her, but her brown eyes stayed steady. Later tonight, in their hotel room, they would bounce and yelp and gossip and plan out the rest of their summer together. But not yet.

“How'd you do?” Grace asked Leigh. “Sorry, I missed it.”

Leigh knew what she meant:
I'm beating you, aren't I?

Grace was competitive. She was even competitive with Leigh. And Leigh accepted that. Part of being
Grace's best friend was loving all of her, even the parts that were sort of ugly. But Leigh didn't answer. She said, “How's it going for you?”

Grace shrugged. “Safe for now,” she said.

Leigh lowered her eyebrows, confused for a second. “Safe?” she said. Then, “Oh! You mean your dad didn't look at your fan page?”

Grace let out a hushed breath between lips that were almost pressed together. “Not yet. I should just delete it.”

“No!” Leigh said. “Don't do that. Dylan would probably be so insulted. Besides, your dad is not going to care.”

Grace bit her lip and Leigh sighed. Grace was always worrying about nothing.

“How'd you do?” Grace said again.

Leigh knew that Grace wouldn't want to talk about publicity or privacy or any of the layers behind what she was going to say, but she had to say it. Besides Phil, Grace was the only person in the arena who knew about Leigh.

“So . . . I mentioned to Monica that I wished Dylan had written on my fan page. . . . Well, it's not true, obviously, but I made it seem like . . . but only because I don't want anyone to think . . .”

Grace wrinkled her nose like Leigh was the one being crazy.

“What?” Leigh said.

“No one knows,” Grace said, more annoyed than soothing. “No one suspects anything.”

Leigh had seen that look every time she had
worried out loud that there might be some hidden meaning to the word
linebacker.
(As if the straightforward meaning wasn't hurtful enough.) Grace had always been the safest person to know about Leigh because Grace didn't care. If it wasn't about gymnastics, it was nothing to Grace. It was stupid that Leigh had to keep this secret locked up so tight anyway—it's not like most gymnasts had time for girlfriends or boyfriends, so what did it matter which one they'd eventually prefer? But there'd never been an out-and-proud gymnast before. Leigh didn't need to be the Michael Sam of the gym.

Her mother always said that the world could be a terrible place, but that wasn't even Leigh's first concern.

She was scared about more people writing enthusiastic articles about her in
Sports Illustrated
and
International Gymnast.
She was afraid her first mention on ESPN would be about her sexuality instead of her vault. She was worried that if she came out as a lesbian she'd become the Lesbian Gymnast.