Chapter Twenty-One

 

Trixie knew she trained hard, was dedicated and serious, but watching Shaye in the gym made her feel like a kid at recess, merely playing at being a gymnast. Sure, her friend was cordial to the other girls, joked around with the little kids, and pitched in when needed, but none of that could distract Trixie from noticing Shaye was a machine. She did three times as many reps per apparatus than anyone else in the gym. Even when Trixie watched her do a skill and thought it was flawless, she’d turn to Galya and say something like, “I feel like my knee is bending before the landing” or “If I don’t get more air, I’m gonna lose bonus points.”

No wonder no one could beat her. Watching her prepare, Trixie was amazed she’d been able to do it three years ago.

The advantage Trixie had over her friend was durability. For an elite gymnast, she’d been marvelously unscathed by injury. A couple broken fingers, a tweaked ankle a few times, sore neck, but that was about it. While Shaye wasn’t hurt often, the injuries she did sustain were devastating. Watching her work, she could only now see how she was able to come back from an injury and consequent illness that would have sidelined most gymnasts for good.

The only place where Shaye was even the least bit tentative was on the vault, where she’d blown her Achilles. However, Shaye’s tentative was most people’s balls to the wall, and watching her veracity in practice, Trixie was doubtful there was anyone in the world that could come within five points of her.

Changing in the locker room, Trixie saw Shaye wearing her dance belt underwear and sports bra, and she was stunned by how ripped her torso and thighs were. All the girls on the international elite level were strong, but Shaye took fitness to another level. Her abs were so muscular, when she flew through the air, her body was so straight and perfectly positioned she appeared hollow. She didn’t have to fight air and gravity.

Air went through her. Gravity did not apply.

Trixie and Shaye ended up on the balance beam at the same time. There were three regulation height beams as well as two resting only a couple inches off the ground in order to practice new skills.

One of the knocks against Romanian gymnasts of late was the lack of difficulty. Trixie was trying to change that.

“My mount has always been a leap onto the beam,” she explained to Shaye. “From the side. I want to do something different. Something unexpected.”

“Flip onto the beam?”

Trixie grinned. “That would do it.”

“Let’s try.” Shaye walked forward, gripped the springboard, and dragged it to the end of the beam. She spent about a minute placing it, making sure it was the perfect distance from the beam.

Suddenly Trixie was nervous. “Uh, shouldn’t you get a crash mat?” She wanted her to grab a mat that was three and a half feet high, incredibly soft, and could be slid under the beam for when one of them inevitably missed the mount. Neither of them had ever tried it before.

“Screw it. Let’s go.” Shaye turned toward the beam, eyed it with ardent concentration, took a deep breath, and then took off.

Shaye hit the springboard full force with both feet and did a full front flip in the air much higher than necessary to finish the skill. Her feet didn’t completely miss the beam, but they were way too far to the right to catch enough velvety felt to stick. The momentum carried her forward, and she continued careening, catching her arm on the beam and slamming her face against the edge. The force flipped her onto her back, which was how she landed with a thud.

Trixie and the two girls who were on their rotation, all of thirteen and fourteen-years-old, ran to where she was lying on the mat, her hands over her face. “Ugh,” she grunted, sitting up slowly. When she rested the back of her hands against her thighs, they were covered with blood. It gushed from where she split her chin open against her knee and dribbled from her lower lip, which she bit.

“Jesus, Shaye, are you okay?” Trixie exclaimed.

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, sounding more annoyed than anything else. She looked up at one of the girls and said, “Can you bring me some Band-Aids?”

The girl ran off, and the other one handed her a towel. Shaye pressed it to her face and said, “I think I over rotated. I was too high, spun too fast.”

“Not usually the problem with that mount,” Trixie said.

“No, not usually.”

The girl returned with disinfectant and a box of Band-Aids. It took five more minutes for her chin to stop bleeding, but once it did, the girls helped her get it clean and bandaged. They used the spray bottle of water normally used to wipe down the bars to wash the blood off her hands then returned to the spot about ten feet away from the beam.

“What are you doing?” Trixie asked warily.

Shaye responded by taking a few running steps forward, leaping onto the springboard, and flipping through the air. This time, she didn’t over rotate and her feet landed squarely on the beam, but she still had too much impetus. She leaned precariously forward, took nine quick tiptoes, and eventually rode if off the rails to the right. This time, she landed lightly on both feet.

“I was off to the right both times,” she said as she took a slow lap around the beam, flapping her arms to stretch out her back muscles and loosen up.

“You were dropping your shoulder,” Trixie agreed. She moved the springboard a few inches to the left and gave her the thumbs up sign.

“Third time’s the charm,” Shaye said brightly. She lined herself up with the beam, squared her shoulders, and repeated a tic a few times, mimicking the skill while keeping her shoulder raised. Then fearlessly, she once again jammed her feet against the springboard, hurtled into the air, and did a full front flip. Her feet landed on the center of the beam, and she squatted slightly but did not falter. There was no balance check. With her shoulders straight, as soon as her feet hit, she stood up straight.

The three gymnasts watching her broke into manic applause, and Trixie whistled through her teeth. Shaye took a bow and performed a gainer backflip off the side of the beam.

Galya had been in the office, discussing over the phone what he called “administrative issues” with Olek and Daryna Tudoran, the USA team coordinators in Houston. He walked to the beam and looked Shaye up and down, his arms crossed over his chest. “Interesting new look for your face.”

“Yeah, see, I have a zit, and a few of the little girls gave me some fake first aid.”

Galya nodded along as she spoke. “Mmm hmm,” he hummed agreeably. “Sure, sure. Makes sense.”

“So, um, that’s what happened,” Shaye said, turning to leave.

“Just one quick question,” he said to her back, stopping her escape. “A minor thing really.”

“What?” she said without turning around.

“How did the little girls fake bandaging your chin cause you to get blood all over the front of your leotard?”

Shaye turned around slowly, her eyes to the ground. “Oh, that, well, you see, when the girls taped up my chin, the zit popped.”

“Must’ve been a hell of a zit.”

“It was a monster.”

He pointed at her, his finger nearly touching her nose. “Do not try new skills without a spot. Am I making myself clear?”

“Absolutely. If I try a new skill, I’ll come find you first. But this was just, you know, a zit.”

“A monster zit,” he said, doing his best not to smile even as his eyes betrayed laughter. “With an explosion so impressive everyone around you whistled and clapped.”

“I wish you could have seen it.”

Galya put his hands on her cheeks and rested his forehead against hers. “Are you okay?”

Shaye nodded, and Trixie saw her almost sag against him. At the final moment, she straightened up, a valiant regrouping of strength. She knew her chin, jaw, and most likely whole face must be throbbing. In times like that, Trixie wanted nothing more than to be reassured by her coach. There was Shaye, with the most understanding, supportive, accommodating gymnastics coach in the world, and his simply asking if she was okay was enough of a buttress to allow her to stand tall and continue training.

She was about to start feeling sorry for herself when she remembered she had Shaye. That’s why she had come here. Plus, all she had to do was glance at Galya, and he would be there for her, just as he was for her friend.

Shaye walked away from Galya with a smile on her face despite the pain and gave Trixie a pat on the back. “Your turn.”

“My turn what?” she asked nervously.

“Front flip mount. Let’s do it.”

“I don’t think I’m ready.”

“Sure you are. It’s easy.” She turned toward the beam and barely took a breath before she repeated the skill, this time landing on the beam with such precision and coolness she immediately launched into a connecting skill of a stag leap, then a roundoff back layout. If that was her opening sequence at the Olympics, she’d score huge points, and here she was, just throwing it together on a whim.

Trixie was sunk.

When Shaye jumped off the beam, Galya was shaking his head with a huge grin on his face. “When did you learn that?”

“Trixie taught me.”

“No, I didn’t. I definitely did not.”

“Yes, you did,” Shaye replied just as stubbornly. “You told me you wanted to learn it, so we’re learning it.”

“I don’t think I can,” Trixie said, embarrassed by her fear.

“Just do it. It’s easy.”

“Easy. You split your chin.”

“But wait, I thought that was a result of a giant zit,” Galya said.

“Cram it, would you?” Shaye said.

“Look, we’ll grab the crash mat—”

“No!” Shaye interrupted her coach. “She doesn’t need a crash mat. No safety net. It’s not hard. She can do it.”

“Not hard for you,” Trixie protested. She was beginning to feel very frustrated and more than a little bit angry. Was Shaye trying to kill her?

“Look at my chin. Does it seem like it was all that easy for me?”

By this point, most of the people in the gym were watching them but pretending to go about their business. It only heightened Trixie’s anxiety. She hated being the center of attention, especially if that attention was negative. Unfortunately, her friend did not care who was looking. Nothing would stop her from speaking her mind.

“Shaye, I’ll try it, but I really think I need the mat.”

“You don’t,” she insisted.

“Calm down,” Galya said in a low, soothing voice. Normally it did the trick, but today it only served to rile her up.

“Stop it. She can do this.”

“I’m not you,” Trixie said, looking down at the ground. “I can’t just try something crazy and expect that I’m good enough to pull it off.”

“I’m not asking you to be me,” Shaye said, disgusted. “I’m just asking you to start being a little more like you.”

“Not everything is as easy as you make it out to be. Not everyone can just decide to go and train in a different country. Not everyone can bust their chin open and try the trick five minutes later like nothing happened.”

“I know you must be afraid, I understand, but what happened to Ileana is not going to happen to you.”

Now the entire gym was silent, every atom holding still. Since the funeral, no one in Constanţa had uttered Ileana’s name to Trixie, and only once had anyone in the gym so much as alluded to the tragedy.

Up to this point, Shaye had been nothing but supportive, and what she just said was equivalent to a sock in the gut. Trixie felt like she couldn’t breathe. “Leave Ileana out of this.”

“I’d like to, Trixie, I really would, but I can’t. Because this has everything to do with her. If you’re afraid to try new tricks, if you’re afraid of injury, then you need to stop doing gymnastics. Because it’ll be terrible. And you will fail.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Yes, you are.”

Shaye was right. She was more than afraid. She was absolutely terrified. If it happened to Ileana, it could happen to her. It could happen to anyone. Of course, she was also right about her future in gymnastics if she continued to fear doing the skills that were necessary. There was no future.

She was beginning to think she might need this. Shaye was the only one who didn’t tiptoe around her, who wasn’t so worried about upsetting her she was unwilling to tell the truth. Honestly, it felt good.

It felt normal.

She was a world class athlete and should not be coddled.

Over the past couple months, Shaye had been both her best friend and her only friend. Now, she was the only one treating her like a regular gymnast who refused to do a skill she was perfectly capable of. Maybe she needed a kick in the ass.

But she still didn’t want to do it.

“Come on,” Shaye shouted in her face. She turned around and performed the mount one more time. Perfectly. She hopped off the beam and stared at her. Trixie felt like she was squirming in her own skin. Her best friend walked forward and put her face so close their noses almost touched. She said in a low, menacing voice, “Do it, or get out of the gym.”

Trixie was scared of the beam, but she was completely panicked that Shaye would make good on her threat and literally drag her out of the gym if she didn’t try.

So Trixie squared her shoulders, closed her eyes briefly to visualize the move, mentally counted down, and went for it.

It wasn’t pretty. Unlike her friend, she had neither enough spin nor height, and only one foot came near the beam. Her left heel hit the edge of the beam, and though her arms windmilled, there was no hope of holding onto her balance. She careened to the side and thudded against the mat, four feet below the beam.

It was a disaster, a horrible failure not worthy of a second glance. The air was knocked out of her lungs, but behind her Shaye cheered loudly and begin to clap. Others joined her, and after a few seconds, her friend was beside her on the mat.

Trixie looked up to see Shaye kneeling beside her, smiling like a banshee. “How do you feel?”

“Pretty good.” Surprisingly, it was true. More than true. She felt great.

“Good.” Trixie laughed when Shaye patted her back and demanded, “Try it again.”