Head Over Heels

by Hannah Orenstein

  “Yeah, all the time,” I lie.

  It’s obvious that this date is not off to a strong start. And what’s worse, it’s not a stretch to imagine my future as a string of evenings just like this one, probably at this exact bar, probably while Lucas conducts a similar string of dates a few bar stools down.

  “So, you teach? What are the kids like?” I ask, turning the conversation to him.

  “The kids are fine. Bunch of Goody Two-shoes, a couple of class clowns, mostly smart kids,” he says. “You know how this town is.”

  I do. The suburb’s strong public school system attracts a wildly overachieving, goal-oriented population. When I was in elementary school, nobody thought it was weird that I spent sixteen hours after school every week training in a gym because everyone else spent that amount of time on horseback riding lessons, piano lessons, theater classes, or all three.

  I don’t know what else to say, so I cast around for anything we might have in common.

  “Is, god, what’s her name? Mrs. Marcotti? Is she still teaching math these days?”

  He nods and rolls his eyes. “Yep. With a stick up her ass.”

  “She was a tough teacher,” I say, ignoring the rude comment.

  “You had her?” he asks.

  “Yeah, in seventh grade? Eighth, maybe?”

  “Me, too. What year did you graduate?”

  “Uh, 2010? I mean, technically. I was kind of homeschooled the last few years.”

  He cocks his head and really stares at me. For a few stretched-out seconds, neither of us speak.

  “You’re that girl,” he says, squinting like he’s trying to recall the details. “The gymnast.”

  “Yeah,” I say quickly, sipping my beer in an attempt to shut down this line of conversation.

  “You were that girl in that video!” His voice gets louder.

  My blood runs cold. In my most pathetic moments, I’ve watched the damn video alone. But Lucas is jubilant, leaning in closer but talking louder than ever.

  “I knew you looked familiar!” he says cheerfully.

  I feel cornered. I shrug and try to cast around for another topic of conversation to distract him.

  “So, do you ever—”

  Lucas opens YouTube on his phone and starts to type in “worst gymnastics crashes.” It doesn’t take him long to zero in on the clip he’s searching for. He gleefully hits play, and I hear the familiar roar of an athletic arena cut through the bar’s din. I can hear the faint, singsongy chant of my name—“Let’s go, A-ve-ry, let’s go!” I don’t need to watch; I know it by heart: me, nineteen years old, in a shimmering red leotard and a ponytail, performing the sharply sultry opening dance moves of my floor routine at the 2012 Olympic Trials. Even all these years later, the music stirs my muscles; this is where I pirouette; this is where I roll my hip. I ground myself back into reality on the bar stool, willing myself into stillness.

  But I can’t forget what I know is playing out on-screen: the younger version of me launching into my first tumbling pass. It’s the most impressive one of my routine: round-off, back handspring, whip, back handspring, double-twisting, double back somersault. I had performed it a thousand times before. But this time, I underrotated and came crashing down onto the blue spring floor while I was still spinning. There was a horrific shredding sensation in my knee before my hands even hit the ground.

  “Gnarly,” Lucas says emphatically, shaking his head at the screen. “I used to watch this all the time. Sick.”

  My floor music continues as the audience gasps. I scream. Lucas taps the screen to watch the crash over again, cutting short the moment when Dimitri rushed onto the floor to carry me away in his arms. My stomach lurches as I watch Lucas lean even closer to the video.

  I clear my throat. “Please turn that off,” I say.

  “I can’t believe this is you,” he says, glancing from me to the screen. “You were so tiny back then.”

  He makes no move to stop the video.

  “Can you—?” In a jolt of frustration, I grab the phone out of his hands and shut the video off, leaving the phone facedown on the bar.

  I do my best attempt at a smile, but I can sense it comes out all thin and strained.

  “Whoa,” Lucas says, holding up his hands as if to prove he’s harmless.

  “I don’t like to watch that,” I try to explain as calmly as possible. I swallow. “That right there? That was the end of my gymnastics career. And a lot of stuff changed for me after that. It was hard, okay? So, please, let’s stop watching it.”

  “No need to be so intense,” Lucas says defensively. He slurps down his beer. “I got it.”

  Somehow, I have a hard time believing he’s “got it.” I had trained for that moment since the time I was four years old, when my ballet instructor complained I had too much energy for dance and suggested I switch to gymnastics instead. By age eight, I was practicing four times a week. At twelve, I sat in a straddle on my living room floor, transfixed as Lindsay Tillerson won the all-around gold—I knew I could follow in her footsteps. Two years later, I convinced my parents to let me drop out of school and study with a tutor so I could train full-time under the legendary coach Dimitri Federov. In this sport, it’s outrageous for anyone to claim an easy path to Olympic glory. But everyone from Dimitri to Jasmine to the girls who sent me fan emails all said the same thing: I had a better chance than any other athlete out there.

  I was furious that I’d just missed the cutoff to be eligible for the 2008 Olympics. Sixteen is the minimum age to compete, and my birthday fell just weeks after the Beijing games at the end of August. So I threw myself into the next four years of training, desperate because I had dreamed of this one moment for nearly my entire life.

  The Olympic Trials for gymnastics are held just seven weeks before the actual Olympic Games. Trials and the Games are held closely together to limit the likelihood of anything disastrous happening in the middle; god forbid a gymnast sprain an ankle, or worse, develop. In 2012, fourteen athletes competed for just five spots on the team, plus three alternates. I performed beautifully all day long, and floor was my final event of the competition. I liked the idea of finishing on a high note.

  And then I crashed. It was over. All of it. Gone. Recovering from surgery was tough because it seemed as if there was nothing to recover for. I was nineteen years old. Even if my knee healed well, I was too old to seriously consider the prospect of training for Rio in four years. The cruel reality of the sport is that you train your entire life for one event, and then the moment disappears in a flash. By twenty-one, twenty-two—forget about twenty-three—your body has taken beatings for too many years.

  So, the same night my career ended, Jasmine’s took off. She didn’t just make the Olympic team—she became the star of it. While she competed in London, I watched the competition on the couch, recovering from knee surgery. In lulls between performances from the American gymnasts, the commentators noted that Avery Abrams, widely considered the front-runner, the shoo-in, hadn’t made the team due to a last-minute injury. They rattled my name off like a fun fact, the same way they commented on the architecture of the stadium and the number of Swarovski crystals sewn onto competition leotards. Jasmine won a gold on bars, a silver on beam, and a gold team medal.

  I had imagined that I’d return home from London as America’s sweetheart. I’d model for Wheaties boxes, chat up talk show hosts, and land Sports Illustrated covers for a few months. Then, once the mainstream interest in my athletic prowess had died down, I’d enjoy a revered career within the world of gymnastics. I’d be a commentator on TV, design a collection of leotards for GK, and give motivational speeches to aspiring athletes across the country. There was no plan B.

  Meanwhile, Jasmine was on the Wheaties box. She was on the cover of not only Sports Illustrated, but People, Seventeen, and Essence, too. She was invited to New York Fashion Week and the Grammys. She won Dancing with the Stars and seemed to be Ellen DeGeneres’s new best friend. Little girls across
the country did cartwheels in leotards she designed. We had been best friends, training side by side for six years. At first, she called often, asking sincere questions about my knee surgery and saying she wished I could be there with her. She even sent me a care package of souvenirs from London—British chocolate bars and a commemorative mug stamped with Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding portrait, taken the year before. I could barely stand to reply, and I let our friendship wither to monthly texts. I saw her in person just once after the Olympics; it was her twentieth birthday dinner, and I couldn’t come up with a plausible excuse to turn down the invitation. It felt like all the comfort had been sucked out of the air between us. She didn’t bother texting at all after that.

  Lucas makes a show of sliding his phone into his pocket. I don’t know what the protocol is for ending a bad date early, but I sense with absolute clarity that I should leave. I saw a woman on TV once slap money on the bar and saunter away, which looked supremely classy, but I’m not carrying any cash. I don’t want to leave Lucas—as awful as he is—with the bill, just on the matter of principle. Instead, before I lose my nerve, I clear my throat and tell Lucas I’m leaving.

  “I’m going to head out, but have a good night,” I say.

  I signal the bartender. As I wait for her to come my way, I stare straight ahead, not brave enough to even glance at Lucas.

  He sputters, “You’re leaving? Now?”

  I hand my credit card to the bartender. “Just for the one drink, please,” I tell her. Then I turn to my date. “I’m sorry, yes, I’m leaving. It’s been a long night.”

  I grab my purse and jacket and stride through Jade Castle to get to the parking lot. I’ve only had a few sips of beer; I should be fine to drive home. Before I back the car out of the spot, my fingers find the preset for the angriest indie rock channel on the radio. The presets haven’t changed since I was in high school. I take the familiar turns through the town center, replaying Lucas’s moronically cruel behavior on a loop in my head. If I had to venture a guess, this is not how Tyler felt after his first night out with Brianna.

  When I reach my driveway a few minutes later, I’m still too angry to get out of the car. I know that when I walk into the house, Mom and Dad will probably pepper me with questions about how the night went, and I’m not ready to face that.

  I look up Ryan’s phone number in my contacts. The unfamiliar area code is proof that he’s an outsider—a fresh start. He saw me in the context of the sport, where career-ending falls are unfortunately more common than you might think. They’re par for the course, not a local tragedy. Unlike Lucas, Ryan—hopefully—doesn’t look at me and think, train wreck. He’s seen me draped in gold medals. And it’s not like I have anything else going on. I dial his number.

  “Avery?” he asks, sounding confused.

  “I’ve thought about your offer,” I say, voice shaking with remnants of anger. “I’d like to take you up on it.”

  • CHAPTER 3 •

  Arriving at Summit hurls me back in time. On Thursday afternoon, I swing open the front door in a daze, but no one else seems fazed by my entrance. Moms congregate in the windowed lobby, watching their children’s practice. The office is still home to racks of leotards with matching scrunchies and warm-up shorts available for purchase. The entire building has the mingled scents of chalk and sweat. The only clues to the passage of time are the selection of photos hung in the front hall. There used to be a larger-than-life print of me at a competition with my signature in black Sharpie. It’s gone now, and in its stead are a series of framed team portraits. I recognize a few of the faces—the younger siblings of the girls in my age group. The last time I saw these kids, they were seven or eight years old. Now they’re teenagers.

  When I enter the locker room, I feel the acute sense of no longer belonging. The narrow space is crawling with skinny kids who don’t yet know that the scrunched cotton underwear hanging out the sides of their leotards makes them look like amateurs. The middle of the room is occupied by stacks of cubbies stuffed with gym bags, grips, sweatpants, and Uggs. My usual one is occupied, so I find an empty spot to store my socks and sneakers. I tighten my ponytail and steel myself to find Ryan in the main training area.

  I open the glass door that separates waiting parents from the gymnasts and coaches and scan the gym for Ryan. The room is thick with memories. Everywhere I look, I flash back to younger versions of myself: six and crying because I just straddled the beam when I was supposed to land a cartwheel; twelve and high on the adrenaline rush of my first giant on bars; eighteen and prepping my floor routine for Nationals. I spot Ryan and a girl I assume to be Hallie sequestered on a stretch of mats by a mirror. They’re conditioning—the full-body workout designed to build the strength necessary to perform. I used to do an hour a day of crunches, push-ups, squats, rope climbs, and more, just to stay in competitive shape. Ryan’s in track pants and a T-shirt, holding a stopwatch as Hallie does V-ups with weights strapped to each ankle.

  I call his name as I approach. He glances at me, then down at the stopwatch.

  “Thirty more seconds, Hal,” he says. She grunts in recognition and keeps working. “Welcome back, Avery,” he says, giving a firm handshake.

  “Thanks for having me,” I say.

  It’s odd to see him all grown-up now, and I wonder if he feels the same way about me. In some ways, of course, he looks exactly the same: chocolate-brown eyes, high cheekbones, a dimple in his left cheek, a thin scar over his right eyebrow, an impressively strong physique. But his thick, dark hair is longer on top—I guess he can wear it like that, now that he’s no longer competing—and there’s a smattering of stubble on his sharp jaw. Up close, I can see a colorful sliver of a tattoo peeking out from the sleeve of his T-shirt. Of course. He has the Olympic rings, just like his teammates do. Just like I would have, if things had gone differently.

  “What do you think of being back here again?” he asks.

  I take in the view of the gym, catching sight of coaches I recognize from way back when. “It’s weird,” I admit. “But this place feels like home.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I thought you’d be perfect for the job,” he says, clearly pleased that I feel the same way. “I want to take today slowly. Get to know each other. Have you meet Hallie. See how it goes.”

  “You know, I don’t know if you and I have ever really hung out,” I say. I feel like one of us has to note that this is our first proper conversation—we’ve always been in each other’s orbit, but that doesn’t mean we actually know each other.

  “I’m pretty sure I asked you for directions to the vending machine at some competition once,” he says, shrugging like he’s just taking a vague stab at a memory.

  But he’s not. Because I remember it, too.

  He’s talking about Nationals the year I was sixteen, when the competition was held at an arena in Houston, Texas. The space was large and confusingly laid out; I must have walked in circles for five minutes on my way to finding the bathroom. I was returning from the women’s restroom when I spotted Ryan—or Cute Ryan, as Jasmine and I called him. We had seen each other around at other competitions before, but hadn’t ever spoken. Still, I was pretty confident that he recognized me.

  “Hey, Avery—it’s Avery, right?” he had asked.

  I was secretly thrilled that he knew my name.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying not to blush.

  I wanted to project the façade that hot guys spoke to me all the time. Totally normal. Yawn.

  “Any chance you know which way the vending machines are? This place is like a maze,” he said.

  Luckily, I had just walked past them. I pointed him in the right direction. I won the gold all-around medal later that day, cementing my status as a gymnast to watch. But when I think back to that competition, what stands out is the twinkling, giddy adrenaline rush from Cute Ryan knowing my name.

  All these years later, I feel vindicated, knowing that I’m not the only one who remembers th
e interaction.

  “You know there’s a machine in the lobby here, right?” I tease.

  “Yeah, this one, I got covered,” he shoots back.

  The stopwatch beeps. “Done!” he calls to Hallie. She collapses on the mat. “Come over, I’ll introduce you,” Ryan says.

  Hallie sits up, clutches her stomach for a moment, and undoes the Velcro straps securing her ankle weights. I’m sure that whatever set of reps she just completed was no joke, but she leaps to her feet. Her auburn ponytail swings over her broad shoulders. She’s muscular and compact; the rippled outline of a six-pack is visible through the fuchsia Lycra of her leotard.

  “Hallie, this is Avery. She’s going to be coaching with me today,” he explains. “Avery, Hallie.”

  She gives me a shy smile. “Hi. I’m sure you don’t remember me, but I was a level four when you were training here. I remember you.” She must have been one of the skinny kids running around in the locker room years ago.

  “Oh, really? Wow,” I say, unsure what else to add. Back then, I was so focused on my own training, I barely noticed the kids.

  “Your poster was in the lobby,” she recalls. “I wanted to be just like you someday.” Instantly, her cheeks—already pink from exertion—flush red.

  “Well, I’m sure you can aspire to loftier goals,” I say.

  “No, you were great,” Ryan says confidently.

  I don’t want to tarnish his perception of my life since then, so I let the subject drop. “What are you working on?” I ask brightly.

  “Finishing up conditioning,” Ryan says. “We have fifteen minutes left. Then we’ll move onto floor, cool?”

  “Cool,” Hallie and I say in unison.

  Ryan alternates between leading Hallie through her remaining reps and filling me in on the situation. Hallie is sixteen now; he moved here to coach her three years ago, not long after he competed in Rio. The Olympics are the long-term goal, of course, but the next hurdle is the World Championships, held later this month in Stuttgart, Germany. She’s very strong on bars and vault, and pretty solid on beam. But she’s feeling less confident when it comes to floor. He wants me to watch her routine and see how I can help her polish it.