When we’d finished stretching at the end of practice, our coach Mo called all of us together. Adrenaline made my heart race; I knew what this would be about. The U.S. Junior National Championships were coming up in a few months—so close it was like reaching out to grab the high bar after a big release skill. I only hoped I could catch it.
Mo surveyed the four of us: me, Christina, Britt, and Jessie, who’d returned full-time to practice but wasn’t planning on trying for Nationals. She’d taken some time off to cope with her eating disorder, and was still dealing with it. We had all been walking on eggshells, afraid of saying the wrong thing, but she mostly didn’t talk about it.
Christina was examining her brand-new manicure as though this meeting didn’t have anything to do with the most important event in her career so far. She’d just qualified for Elite competition two weeks ago, and there was no guarantee that she’d be eligible to participate in the qualifying event this early, much less in the Nationals. I could tell she was trying to act like she didn’t care, but how could she not? This was the competition of the year, the one that determined whether or not you made the National team and got to compete internationally. They featured new up-and-comers from that competition in the biggest gymnastics magazines in the world. It was huge.
Even Britt wasn’t pretending it was all a joke, the way she sometimes did. Her blue eyes were sparkling, and she was clenching and unclenching her fists at her side as though she could actually reach out and touch that National Championship gold medal. I felt a spurt of competitiveness. Nothing against Britt, but I’d be more than happy for her to take home the silver and leave the gold for me.
“You know this is important time,” Mo said. Mo wasn’t a talker, either, but compared to Cheng, she might as well have been Oprah. Maybe that was why Cheng was happy to spot us on the floor and help us with vault timers while Mo handled the business side of things.
“U.S. Classic is in one month,” Mo continued, referring to the event that would determine whether Britt and Christina would go to Nationals. I’d already qualified earlier in the year, through a training camp. “Here, you are not against each other. You are together. Understand?”
Britt and Christina exchanged a look, but both nodded. It had been a little tense the past few months, until we decided that Britt could be just as much a friend as a threat, and I knew that Mo didn’t want us to be distracted by that kind of drama as we started training for the Classic.
Only a handful of gymnasts qualified for Nationals through a training camp, and it was a relief to be one of them, since it meant that I could focus completely on that goal without worrying about the Classic. Every year, Coach Piserchia held these training camps where he invited gymnasts from all over the country to participate. This year, I’d been the only representative from Texas Twisters, and it was one of the most nerve-racking experiences of my life. Coach Piserchia was officially retired from individual coaching, but he still played a huge role in deciding who would represent our country at World Championships and at the Olympics, so impressing him was majorly important.
Now, Mo handed each of us a thick envelope. “Make sure parents get this,” she said. “They need to come to meeting at gym, too.”
It was irrational, since everyone had gotten an envelope, and surely everyone couldn’t be in trouble, but like I said, I get paranoid. I hated the thought of people being mad at me, so as I looked down at the sealed envelope filled with papers intended for my parents’ eyes only, all kinds of scenarios started whirling through my head. Maybe it was an assessment of my abilities up to this point, and Mo wanted to break it to them gently that any chance of my making the Olympics someday was very, very slim. Or maybe Cheng had noticed my distraction earlier that day and added it to a list of times when I’d been off my game. I mean, I thought I worked hard and did my best, but I got tired and restless just like anyone else.
“Mo?” I asked, once the other girls had moved toward the lockers.
She looked at me, not blinking as I tried to figure out how to word my question without sounding too insane. What is in the envelope?!?!?
“I’ll probably have to read some of this stuff to my parents, since their English isn’t so good,” I said, and immediately felt guilty. It was true that my parents had defected from Romania before I was born; but they’d taught themselves English by watching daytime television and reading newspapers, and they were proud of the way they’d made a life for themselves here. Sometimes there were still things I needed to explain or help them with, but if it weren’t for their accents they could have passed for having been born in this country.
“Okay,” Mo said. “You can read to them.”
“So it’s not…secret or anything?”
“No, Noelle. It’s not bad.” One corner of her mouth pulled up, and I blushed. Of course she would know exactly what I was trying to get at. “It’s just information about competition—boring, grown-up information, like flight to Philadelphia and leotards and money and itinerary. You don’t need to worry.”
The weight in my chest lifted, but only for a second, as Mo walked away, and then it settled in deeper than before. At least if I had been in trouble, I could have done something to fix it, like work harder, or apologize. But this was something I couldn’t fix. Mo’s words echoed in my brain—flights, leotards, money—and suddenly, my dream of the National Championships seemed impossible.
To go to that training camp with Coach Piserchia, my parents had had to take out a second mortgage on the building that housed both our home and our family’s business. They’d made such an investment already I didn’t know if I could ask them to make another one so soon. Then again, everything we’d put into gymnastics so far wouldn’t have been worth much if I didn’t take it all the way.
I tried to take a deep breath and visualize myself grabbing for that high bar that represented my dreams, feeling the smooth wood as I wrapped my fingers securely around the bar. But for some reason, whenever I got to that part, I could only imagine brushing it with my fingertips, close enough to leave marks in the chalk, but not close enough to stop myself from falling.
The Go-for-Gold Gymnasts: Winning Team (Go-for-Gold Gymnasts, The) Page 15
