The Go-for-Gold Gymnasts

by Dominique Moceanu

  I considered telling Dr. Fisher about the way my dad had shown up at the parade, done a news story about us, and then left, but I decided not to. I didn’t know what she’d say about it.

  “School starts up soon,” I said instead.

  “That must be exciting for you,” Dr. Fisher said. “Or perhaps not, with all the homework.”

  She smiled again at me, and I could see a spot of lipstick where her top teeth met her gums. I knew that she was trying to relate to me, trying to let me know that she understood how hard it must be to be a teenage girl and have hours of homework. What she didn’t get was that homework was the least of my worries.

  “Yeah” was all I said.

  “Are any of your friends in your classes?” she asked; I took this as a victory. An actual question!

  “No.” I frowned. “Actually, this is my first year of high school. Noelle and Christina will be in eighth grade, and Britt is a year behind them. She’s home-schooled, anyway.”

  “Those are your gym friends,” Dr. Fisher said, to clarify things, although I doubted she needed to by now. I’d talked about them enough, and even if she hadn’t gone to the parade, she might’ve read the write-up in the paper about the three girls who went to the Junior National Championships. “But what about your school friends?”

  For a second I just blinked at her, literally speechless. She might as well have been my Spanish teacher, asking me if Juan would like an orange or a yellow hat. I had no idea what she was talking about. I didn’t think I’d ever had any school friends, since…well, since I could remember.

  I knew better than to say that to Dr. Fisher, though. She’d have started making some of her comments about how tough that would be, or how lonely I must be, and I didn’t know what I’d say in response.

  “I’ve never needed anyone else,” I blurted out. “Christina and Noelle have been my best friends since forever, and even though Britt just moved here earlier this year, we’re really close. She’s the one who…” I flushed. “Well, you remember.”

  “Mmm, I do remember,” Dr. Fisher said. And then, because I knew she wouldn’t let me get away with not explaining it, she said, “She was the one who turned you in to your coach, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I’m not mad about that anymore. I mean, I would’ve loved to have competed at the Elite qualifier, and then maybe at the Junior National Championships…but I know that she did what she thought she had to do.”

  “She sounds like a good friend,” Dr. Fisher said softly. “I’m not suggesting you get rid of Britt, or any of the girls. But Britt is in seventh grade. Perhaps it would be nice to have other friends—girls your own age, girls with interests outside of gymnastics.”

  I tried to imagine what I would talk about with girls like that. I couldn’t talk about makeup, because I only knew about the kind of lipstick that would give some definition to your face without appearing garish to the judges, but not about the lip gloss that might attract boys. I definitely couldn’t talk about boys. There were some guys who trained at our gym, the kind of muscular, floppy-haired guys I figured the average girl would find cute. But to me, they were immature kids who were still in the lowest levels, barely competing routines where they got to pick their own music or moves. It was hard for me to picture myself having a crush on any of them.

  “Think about it,” Dr. Fisher said.

  The envelope came on a Tuesday afternoon. I was home for my two-hour lunch break from gym before I had to go back for nighttime practice.

  Technically, it was addressed “To the parents of Jessica Marie Ivy,” but I opened it anyway.

  Open house at Birchbark High School was in less than a week, and my class schedule was enclosed. I had Biology first period, followed by homeroom, then American Government, Algebra II, English I, and finally, P.E., for my last period.

  Having P.E. at the very end of the day was highly desirable for several reasons, not the least of which was that then you didn’t have to stink like sweaty socks for the rest of your classes, but I’d specifically requested P.E. as my first morning class. Ever since I’d started training seriously in gymnastics, I’d had P.E. in the morning, so that I could wake up at five o’clock, be at the gym by six, and have three hours to work out before I had to go to my first real class. I got a workout that was better than playing flag football, and I didn’t have to wear the ugly gym uniform. Somehow, my schedule this year had gotten messed up.

  That shouldn’t be hard to fix, though, I thought. At that point, I was more concerned about whether I’d gotten good teachers or drawn the ones who were known to be strict or boring or crazy.

  I went into the den, where Tiffany was draped over the leather couch, watching some reality TV show. I waited until there was a commercial break, so she wouldn’t be mad at me for making her miss anything—even though, in my opinion, there wasn’t much to miss. So far, the program seemed to be about a bunch of girls who all had the same bleached-blond hair competing for some guy who was famous twenty years ago.

  “Hey, Tiff?” I said, perching on the edge of the couch. Tiffany was fifteen and about to be a sophomore, so she would know all about my teachers. She was also my incredibly moody stepsister, who’d bitten my head off before for asking her whether she wanted me to pass the mashed potatoes at dinner. It had been something about the tone of my voice, apparently.

  “What?” she asked laconically. The TV was still tuned to the same channel, but she had pulled up the cable guide and was scrolling through it, probably looking for another crappy reality show.

  “I got my schedule for next year, and I was wondering—”

  Tiffany’s eyes lit up as if someone had turned on a switch, and she jumped to her feet. “Where’s the mail?” she asked. “Did mine come? Why didn’t you bring it to me?”

  “It’s on the counter,” I said. “You were busy. I was wondering—”

  Tiffany brushed past me, and I followed her into the kitchen, where she began sorting through the mail strewn across the granite kitchen island. She ripped into her envelope, letting its shreds fall to the floor as she eagerly scanned the contents.

  I glanced down at my own letter. “I have Smith for Biology,” I said, reading off the first name on the schedule. “Do you know if she’s nice? Or is it a he?”

  “How would I know?” Tiffany sneered, even though she’d just finished her freshman year at the very same high school.

  “So, that’s a new teacher?” I asked. “What about Freeman for American Government, then?”

  Tiffany had slid her cell phone out of her pocket and was punching in numbers, still clutching her class schedule in one hand. “He’s good,” she said, but in a dismissive way, as though she hadn’t actually been listening.

  “Is his class interesting?”

  She rolled her eyes at me as she held her phone to her ear. “What does it matter? You’ll take home all the work and spend your days in the gym instead.” She brightened once someone on the other end picked up. “Oh, my God, did your schedule come in the mail? Who’d you get?” Then she disappeared into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  I stared down at the sheet of paper in my hand. I guess I should’ve been relieved—Tiffany had a point. Given all of the hours I’d be training in the fall to prepare for competition season, and then the Elite qualifier just before Thanksgiving, I’d probably miss a lot of school. I’d get a distant, mildly impressed smile from the teacher and a pile of assignments to take home and do at my own pace, and I’d be ignored by the other students just like I was now.

  But I couldn’t help remembering Dr. Fisher’s words to me: Think about it. And I couldn’t help thinking that right about now was when it would have been nice to have someone to call, someone who would be excited to hear if we had lunch together or if we had gotten the easy teacher for Biology.

  Three

  I brought my class schedule to gym to show everyone, even though Noelle and Christina would have had envelopes from the middle schoo
l about starting eighth grade, and Britt wouldn’t have had any envelope at all. Sometimes I envied her for being homeschooled. She had said it could get kind of lonely, but I felt just as alone in public school.

  Noelle and Christina were huddled on a bench in the locker room, their heads together as they spoke in quiet murmurs. Noelle’s brown hair was in a bouncy ponytail, and Christina’s darker hair was pulled back in an elegant bun, and they both looked totally absorbed in whatever they were discussing.

  “Do you guys have classes together?” I asked casually. I hoped they didn’t, and then I immediately felt guilty for being so uncharitable.

  Noelle slid a piece of paper under her thigh in such a fluid motion I almost wouldn’t have known but for the triangle of white that was still visible. “Um, yeah,” she said.

  I didn’t know why she was acting so weird. It was a little awkward that we weren’t going to the same school anymore, but that was just the way it was. It wasn’t like I didn’t see a ton of Noelle, Christina, and Britt at the gym.

  “Are you in Advanced English with Ms. King?” I asked.

  Christina’s eyes darted to Noelle’s. “Yes,” she said. It sounded more like a question.

  I rested one hand on my hip. “Well, look at your schedule,” I said impatiently, gesturing toward the piece of paper I knew Noelle was hiding. “What does it say?”

  Noelle pulled the paper out and unfolded it in front of her; I didn’t have to squint to see the huge, colorful heading at the top.

  The letters were printed in bright red and navy blue: USAG. USA Gymnastics.

  “What’s that about?” I asked. I didn’t remember seeing anything in the mail from USAG. If I had, it would’ve definitely been on my radar, but then again, I’d been distracted by the letter from my school.

  “It’s about the National team,” Christina said apologetically.

  Of course. I should’ve realized—both Noelle and Christina were on the National team now, which meant they’d be getting all kinds of stuff from USAG that Britt and I wouldn’t even know about. I made my voice casual, so they would think I didn’t care. “What’s it say?”

  “It’s about the stipend,” Noelle said. “We need to decide soon if we’re going to accept it or not.”

  I only vaguely knew that gymnasts who were part of the National team were eligible to receive a monthly stipend, to help pay for training. Money or no money—it seemed obvious. Why wouldn’t you take the extra assistance?

  But I didn’t have time to ask before Britt burst into the locker room. “What are you guys still doing in here? Practice is about to start.”

  “We were talking about our school schedules,” Christina said quickly. I wondered again why they were being so weird about it. I mean, yeah, they’d made the National team and Britt and I hadn’t— Britt because she’d bombed out at the last minute, me because I hadn’t even competed in the first place. But there was no need to be so shifty about the whole thing.

  I might’ve called Christina out if Britt hadn’t gotten that mischievous smile on her face. It was one way to tell that she had something up her sleeve, although it wasn’t the only sign. Britt was up to something anytime she was awake and breathing.

  “Did you arrange your first-period P.E.?” she asked. “I did.”

  I was glad Britt was reminding me. I needed to ask my mom to call the school before I got stuck in a class. “Very funny,” I said. “That’s the benefit of homeschooling, I guess: nothing to arrange.”

  “No, I’m being serious,” Britt said.

  I gave her a doubtful look. Britt joked for fifty-nine minutes of every hour of every day, even if she insisted she was being straight up. Then, when you believed her, ha! She’d have been messing with you the entire time.

  “As of a week from Monday,” Britt said, “I will be an eighth grade student in the public school system of Travis County, Texas. They’re even letting me skip a grade ’cause I’m so darned smart.”

  “Whoa!” Christina’s eyes widened. “That’s a big change.”

  “It’ll be cool to have classes with you,” Noelle said with a smile.

  “So, wait,” I said. “You chose to go to school with the random weirdos in this city, rather than stay at home doing whatever you want with your grandmother?”

  “First of all, I didn’t get to do whatever I wanted,” Britt said. This was a sore point with her. Half the time, she wanted to complain about how her grandmother had such high standards and made her do work that was way harder than anything we had to put up with in public school, and the other half, she wanted to brag about how sweet it was to get to be home all day, making her own schedule, taking field trips wherever she wanted to go.

  “Second of all,” she continued, “I always got jealous listening to you guys talk about dances and lunches and homework. I think I’m ready to hang out with people other than my grandmother.” She smiled ruefully. “And you guys, of course.”

  As Dr. Fisher had so kindly pointed out, I’d been in the public school system for years and still didn’t have any friends outside the gym. Come to think of it, I wasn’t particularly close with either of my grandmothers, either. I saw my biological father once a year if I was lucky, saw my stepmonster less often than that; and my stepsiblings might as well have been strangers living in my house for all the attention they paid me.

  “For real, though,” Britt said, pulling Noelle up off the bench. I saw Noelle shove the folded sheet of paper into her locker, but Britt didn’t seem to notice or care. “Time for practice. You know, if Mo has to come in here, she’ll give us the death glare.”

  There had been a time when Britt would’ve been the last person to be pushing us out the door. When she first came to the gym, she had gotten in trouble for goofing off too much. But that was what I liked about her: she didn’t take herself too seriously. Sometimes I got stuck in my own head, and it was nice to have a friend who could pull me out.

  We headed out to the floor just in time to start our stretches; I could have done mine in my sleep.

  Sometimes at night, if I was having a hard time drifting off, I would do the stretches in bed, bringing my knees up to my nose and back down until I was tired enough to roll over and go to sleep.

  Yet another effect of being a gymnast: I couldn’t even go to sleep properly. I should have been counting sheep or staring up at a poster of Justin Bieber, but instead I was stretching, always stretching, worrying that if I rested for even a minute I would let all the potential gold medals pass me by.

  After a long day at practice, I was heading out of the gym when Britt grabbed me by the sleeve. “Hey,” she said. “You got a minute?”

  A minute was probably all I had, since my mother would be there to pick me up soon. Britt’s mother was notoriously late, so I knew she’d be hanging out for a little while.

  “Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

  I thought maybe she’d ask me why Noelle and Christina had been acting so weird in the locker room, or that maybe she’d noticed how quiet I had been through most of practice. But instead she took a crumpled piece of paper out of her duffel bag, smoothing it out to read to me.

  “You have to tell me what I’m in for with these teachers,” she said. “I mean, are they hazing me, or what?”

  “Hazing?”

  She thrust the sheet of paper into my hand impatiently. “Yeah, you know, let’s show the home-schooled kid how tough it is on the inside—that sort of thing.” I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “It’s not prison, Britt.”

  “I know,” she said, “but maybe they’re giving me a superhard schedule just to break me. As long as I’m prepared, I won’t crack.”

  I glanced down at her schedule and felt a wave of nostalgia seeing some of my old teachers’ names—even the names of the mean ones, and the boring ones—which meant I must have been a real mess. “It does look tough,” I admitted.

  “I knew it,” she said, clenching her fists at her side. “I haven’t even started yet and
they’re messing with me. I figured—”

  “Britt.” I interrupted her before she could get all worked up. “Did it ever occur to you that they’re putting you in hard classes because you’re—you know—smart? If you’re going to blame anyone, it should be your grandmother, for teaching you so much stuff.”

  “My grandmother’s a saint,” Britt said, but she was grinning. “Thanks, Jess. I would’ve asked Noelle and Christina, since they might be in some of my classes, but they were acting all squirrelly about something in the locker room. What’s that about?”

  Earlier, I had resolved that I would tell Britt what I’d seen. It wasn’t that big a secret anyway, since Britt probably knew that gymnasts on the National team got offered a stipend, and she knew that Noelle and Christina were on the National team now. She was good at math; she’d put two and two together.

  But for some reason, now I just shrugged. “Who knows?” I said. “It’s always crazy when school starts back up. Things will go back to normal.”

  Britt rolled her eyes. “I hope so, because they were acting weird with a capital W. Hey, do you maybe want to get together that first Friday after school? We could compare notes or whatever.”

  Every now and then Britt showed a small crack in her armor, a tiny sign that, though she might have been fearless when it came to doing a backflip on the balance beam, she had her insecurities just like anyone else. No matter what Dr. Fisher seemed to think about my needing other friends, I figured I had at least one pretty good one already.

  “Sure,” I said, just as my mom pulled up. “I’ll ask if you can spend the night at my house. We can talk about how much we miss summer already.”

  Four

  I’d been to Birchbark High School several times before, a couple of times for my stepsister Tiffany’s flag-girl practice, and then once when we’d waited outside it, when my stepbrother Josh had to take the SATs. So all I’d really seen was the parking lot and the football field. I’d never been inside. The open house was my chance to see it up close and personal before school actually started.