ON A SCALE of one to ten, how pumped are you for today?” Emery says as we pull into South Ocean’s lot.
“Eh, a solid two,” I say. “Three points for seeing you, three points for the twins, and minus four points for the ache in my back.” By “back,” I mean “everywhere.”
“Excellent.” She offers me a whack on the shoulder, which helps nothing, and tosses me a protein bar. “See you out there, champ.”
“She’s back! She’s back!” Tiana leaps into my arms as soon as we enter the gym. She can’t weigh more than forty pounds, and it’s definitely all muscle.
“Told you I would be,” I groan.
“Tee! Look at my new socks!” another tiny Level 3 calls, and Tiana jumps off me and goes running.
“Thank God you’re here,” Emery says. “It’s tough being their one-woman jungle gym.”
As the Level 3s sprint into the gym and cartwheel onto the floor exercise (“Girls!” Vanessa shouts, and that’s enough to make them fall into an obedient line and start jogging), I think about the kids riding their bikes in and out of Pine Needle Street. My limited time in El Pueblo is enough for me to know that it’s not the kind of place where parents have the money for their kids to do competitive gymnastics. Don’t get me wrong; if I get into NYU, my dad sure isn’t writing me a check and saying, “Have fun, sweetheart.” However, the hundreds of dollars a month toward training–gym tuition, competition entry fees, coaching fees for said competitions–isn’t petty change.
My parents are never going to get that investment back with a full ride, either. Not like they’ve said anything–sure, Dad tried to run analytics on my YouTube channel to see if he could tell which schools had viewed my routines (“You’re getting hits from Alabama–Roll Tide!”)–but neither he nor Mom made me feel that if I didn’t get a scholarship, I’d be a black sheep.
God, I ache. Everywhere. If I say I have to go to the bathroom, I can hide out until this soreness passes.
“Savannah and Emery, you’re leading stretches,” Vanessa calls.
Great.
DURING OUR WATER break, while Erica and Nicola argue over who took whose ankle brace (“You guys are the same size!” Emery intervenes, but to no avail), I surreptitiously pull out my cell phone.
NEWS! Cassie writes, and the subsequent texts appear like a news ticker across a TV. Coming home tomorrow + no school just yet = life is better.
“Oh, my God,” I say.
“Savannah agrees, and she’s nicer than me,” Emery says to the twins. “You guys need to get a grip.”
Nicola glares. “Gymnastics puns aren’t going to fix this.”
When can I come over? I text Cassie, then perch the phone on the edge of my bag as I drink my entire water bottle in one gulp. My heart’s pounding faster than it did during the tiny bits of tumbling earlier. She’s okay enough to be sent home. Halfway to recovery. There’s so much to catch up on, like how she spent her days in the hospital and what her life will be like now. How I’ve not only stepped back in the gym but agreed to compete again, and that there’s one college coach who hasn’t forgotten my name.
“Savannah, come here,” Matt calls from where he’s keeping one eye on the Level 3s. They’re taking turns flipping into the foam pit, which means they’re one second away from landing on each other.
He saw me texting. Busted. Last year, he took Jess’s cell phone (she who quit gymnastics for her unattractive boyfriend) and tossed it into the dredges of the pit. Lesson learned.
I stand next to him contritely.
“I wanted to make sure that we’re on the same page,” he begins, cringing as one of the girls dives headfirst into the pit. “Lexi, this isn’t a swimming pool. Anyway, I don’t want you to feel pressured. If you don’t want to compete, that’s fine. You’re a senior; I’m sure you have plenty of stress already, and this can just be a fun place for you.”
It’d be easier that way. I could tumble into the foam just like the little ones, leap on balance beam, and swing on bars without judgment. No chance of having another very public disaster. Ease my way out of gymnastics, since cold turkey hasn’t gone so well.
Yet there’s so much that I’ve missed. The “I’m going to pee myself” feeling of waiting for the judges to raise their hands so I can begin, the feeling of drilling a vault landing into the mat and hearing the crowd applaud, even wiping out in warm-ups and knowing that it doesn’t count, that I’m still in this. To me, that was the fun.
I’m afraid of breaking myself again, absolutely. But I’ve never feared competition.
“I don’t want Regionals to be my last meet,” I say.
“Neither do I.”
My teammates do deer runs down the vault runway–front leg bent, back leg straight. Erica plows into Nicola and they start laughing, the ankle brace situation forgotten.
“The thing is, if it seemed like you were genuinely done with gymnastics, that’s fine,” Matt continues. “Plenty of athletes don’t make it to their senior year. They get injured, they move on, whatever.” Like the rest of my teammates–new gyms, new boyfriends, new lives. “You? I’m not buying it.”
He’s right. Standing here is giving me the old antsy feeling, just like Baby Savannah jumping up and down on the springboard, waiting for her turn to mount bars. I want to follow the girls on the runway, then find my measured spot (72 feet, five inches) so I can vault next.
There’s still something to address, though, and as the Level 3s scamper away for water, I take my chance. “About paying for practice and meets.”
Matt’s already grinning–meets, plural–but I bypass it. Freudian slip. “I was wondering if I could work here and count it toward my tuition.”
“Mom and Dad cutting you off?”
My parents know I’m practicing. Competing again–that’s a whole other beast. More money down the drain if I get hurt again. At least this time, it’ll be mine. Couple that with the fact that if I’m footing the bill, Dad can’t hold whether or not I return over me. I might not have a car (or hell, a license), but this is the tiniest sliver of independence that I can claim.
You work hard, Marcos told me. It’s time to do so now, even if walking is a little too uncomfortable for my liking.
What’s worse: being in pain for something that I love, or being sore from standing for hours on end at Pav’s Place, whipping up burrito after burrito?
“Not exactly,” I say now. “I just…I feel like I need to do this on my own.”
“Well, consider yourself hired.” He nudges me toward the runway. “Friday, 3:30. Four- and five-year-olds. Be ready to get sneezed on.”
“HOW WAS PRACTICE?” Mom asks in her I’m-trying-not-to-sound-excited-but-I’m-really-excited voice, picking up the leftover newspapers on the coffee table. She knows I’m skittish.
I’m sprawled on the couch, head sinking into the pillows and bag of ice secured to my knee. It’s been a while–the initial contact of cold plastic against my skin makes me grit my teeth and hold my breath. A few minutes later, I can fully exhale. “Not too bad.”
I catch the most recent headline: FBI Rules that County Agency Mishandled Investigation in Immigrant Death. No mention of activity overseas, though, so I suppose that’s something.
My phone pings and I sit up so quickly that the ice slides down to my ankle, leaving a chilly trail in its wake. Most likely it’s Cassie, and I hope it’s all still good news.
My wolf jumps have surpassed my memory for trigonometric functions. Math for real tomorrow at lunch?
I fall back against the pillows with a smile. My mother goes to the computer, humming under her breath as she clicks around. The steady tapping on the keyboard, not rushed, means that all is well. Richard must have e-mailed her.
The stairs creak as my father maneuvers his way downstairs. School concluded hours ago, but he’s still wearing pressed khakis. He takes in the ice on my knee, the phone in my hand, and perhaps the red shade of my ears.
Then he utters two words. “Marcos Castillo.”
Mom’s hands are still on the keyboard. If she was excited about me returning to gymnastics, then the mere insinuation that I might have a boyfriend will thrill her for days.
How much does my father know? Did Max Pfeiffer, a student in AP Calc, make a comment to him? Goddamn Dad’s excellent poker face. He settles in across from me on the ottoman, stands back up, and then sits down again. Good. Someone else feels awkward here.
Mom breaks the silence first. “Who’s Marcos?” She’s trying not to sound eager. “Do you have a prom date you didn’t tell us about?”
Prom’s only a million months away.
“I’m tutoring him for math,” I say evenly.
“Is that right?” Dad’s already smirking. He knows. I’m screwed.
“All I know about the boy,” he continues, “is that he’s in Paul Andreotti’s class.” Right. Trigonometry. “I believe he’s retaking the course.”
In my father’s eyes, retaking a course is positively criminal.
“He works a lot,” I reply. “At Pav’s Place. He’s there twenty-five hours a week. So maybe math isn’t on his priority list.”
The smirk slips. “Hmm. That’s proactive; I’ll give him that.”
“Also”–why am I defending Marcos? We’ve shared one (pretty excellent) kiss. It’s not like we’re life partners– “his brother wants to join the military.” The perfect response that causes Dad to shake his head and Mom to say, “Wow, how about that?” No doubt it’ll cause them to murmur tonight in low voices, not quite arguing but neither conceding, hoping I confuse the sound with the distant waves.
“It sounds like you know him pretty well.” Of course my father manages to make an innocuous statement sound ominous. “Just…” His eyes shift left and then right. Oh, this is not good. Something super uncomfortable is about to be unleashed, like when he walked into my physics class last April to tell me my MRI results.
A cough, one ink-stained fist to his chest. “I know how kids these days think they know all about each other because of social media. Please don’t make bad decisions.”
So he heard about El Pueblo, too? Well, I’ve obviously lived to tell the tale. “Like what, Dad? Please elaborate.” If the man thinks he can smirk, then as version 2.0, I’ve perfected it.
For perhaps the first and only time in history, my dad’s cheeks flush. That doesn’t stop his eyes from latching onto mine with the steely resolve he reserves for kids that he’s about to send to Mr. Riley’s office. “Surely you remember health class?”
Oh, shit.
That’s what this is about.
My dry lips part and then close because what the hell do you say to that?
“Rich, I think you’re tired,” Mom interrupts. Bless her. Bless her so much. “You’ve graded too many exams today.”
Dad rises from the ottoman, ankles cracking the way mine do. “Be careful,” he says like it’s a mandate, his eyes carefully skirting away from me.
When I make it up to my room on creaking legs, I call Cassie. There’s no way I can miss hearing her reaction to this.
Hey, mates, you’ve reached Cass’s phone. Her recorded voice giggles. We were in her room when she recorded the message, experimenting with fake British accents. It was during our British-boy-bands-are-way-better-than-American-ones phase. Looks like I’ve got something better to do. Leave a message.
I call again. Hey, mates–
Four calls later, I bury the phone in a mound of pillows.
She’s asleep, she has poor service, she needs her rest so she can come home tomorrow; I know all of this, yet as soon as I turn off the lights, I can’t shut my eyes.
What if she changed her mind tonight?
She seemed happy enough, at least through her typed words, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I can’t read Cassie the way I thought.
I watch each digit on my clock glow. 1:01. 1:02.
It’s the way we wait for Richard when a week passes without a word. Mom tries to examine every possible angle, printing out maps and smoothing them on the coffee table to mark what she’s inferred from news stories, while Dad and I have always retreated. A need-to-know policy only.
Otherwise, there’s too much awful possibility in every moment of silence.