Traci hurried into the locker room and changed into street clothes. It seemed to take forever, but she finished as quickly as she could and ran to join her mother. There was little talk between them as they drove to the hospital.
“Pete was wearing his helmet, wasn’t he?” Traci asked.
“He always wears it,” said Mrs. Winchell. “I’m sure he was.”
When they walked quickly into the ER waiting room, Mr. Winchell stood up and hugged Traci. He looked pale and shaken. Before Traci could ask, he spoke.
“He’s still unconscious. The doctor says that there may be nerve damage, but it’s impossible say how severe it is, or even if there is any at all. And there’s still no way of knowing how full a recovery he’ll make. But there’s a very good chance he’ll be fine. They did some kind of reflex test and the results were encouraging, they say.”
The three Winchells sat down to wait. Around them, other people came and went. Babies howled, people walked or limped in and walked out with bandaged arms. Across the room, Traci saw a young couple talking quietly to each other, looking as if they, too, were waiting for news about a loved one. A television set was on in the corner of the waiting room, but nobody seemed to be watching it.
Traci picked up a magazine and put it down again without opening it. A doctor in a blue surgical gown came through a door, went over to the young couple, and spoke to them. The young woman gasped, and the young man hugged her tightly. Had they gotten bad news? There was no way to tell. The doctor left and the couple sat down again.
“I think he’ll be fine,” said Mr. Winchell after what seemed like an endless silence. “Pete’s tough. He’ll come through.”
“Sure he will, Daddy,” Traci said, more out of a need to say something positive than because she believed it.
Traci looked at the clock on the wall and realized that they had been waiting for an hour. It seemed like much more time had passed.
The door to the waiting room was under the clock. It opened just as Traci was checking the time. To her amazement, Traci saw Margo come into the room. Margo headed straight for her.
“How is your brother? Have you had any news?”
“Uh… no, nothing. The last we heard, he was still unconscious, and they don’t know anything yet for sure,” Traci stammered. She hadn’t recovered from the surprise of seeing the coach.
Margo greeted Traci’s mother, who introduced the coach to Mr. Winchell. Sitting down between Traci and Mrs. Winchell, she asked, “Can I be of help in any way? Is there anyone I could call? Would you like anything to eat or drink? I can go to the cafeteria while you wait here.”
Nobody wanted anything, so Margo stayed put. Mr. Winchell leaned across his wife and said, “Margo, we’re very grateful to you for coming by, but there’s no need for you to stay. We can manage here.”
Margo smiled. “I’ll sit for a little while, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course we don’t,” said Traci’s mother. “And thank you.”
Margo turned and said, “Your daughter is a gifted athlete. It’s been a pleasure having her in my classes. I only wish I could have told you under happier circumstances.”
Margo talked about Traci’s progress for a little while and then said, “I remember when my younger sister had an accident, years ago. She was a little daredevil and she fell out of a tree. She, too, was unconscious for quite some time. But she recovered fully—as I’m sure Pete will, too. I remember how worried my family was, and how upset I was. I blamed myself for not having kept a closer watch on her. But it all turned out well.”
Margo’s quiet, pleasant conversation helped to keep the Winchell family’s mind off the subject of Pete, whose condition they still did not know. Another half hour went by, and a different doctor appeared in the waiting room. He saw the Winchells and walked over. He looked very tired.
“How is Pete?” asked Traci. “Is he awake?”
“He regained consciousness a few minutes ago,” the doctor said. “I’m not absolutely certain yet, but all the signs are encouraging. We’d like to keep him here for another day for a few tests and to keep him under observation, but it doesn’t seem that he suffered any permanent nerve damage.”
Mr. Winchell put his arm around his wife, who asked, “Can we see him?”
“For a few minutes,” said the doctor. “He’s tired and needs his sleep. You can certainly spend more time with him tomorrow, and the next day, barring complications, he can go home.”
Margo stood up and put on her coat, preparing to leave. Traci put a hand on the coach’s arm.
“Thank you. It was really great of you to come and stay with us.”
Margo smiled. “It was the least I could do. Don’t forget, you’re one of my girls, now.” Margo turned to Traci’s parents. “I’m delighted that your son is doing well. And now I’d better be leaving. Traci, don’t come in tomorrow if you don’t feel up to it.”
“Thanks, coach,” Traci said. “I guess I’ll see how it goes.”
Mrs. Winchell held Margo’s hand for a moment. “We’re very grateful, not only for you coming tonight, but for your work with Traci.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Winchell, “and good night.”
As Margo left the waiting room, Traci watched her go. She remembered Carly saying that there was more to the coach than Traci could see.
Now Traci was beginning to understand what Carly had meant.
13
The next afternoon, Traci went to visit Pete in the hospital. He had been moved to a regular room and, aside from some scrapes and bruises, was in pretty good shape.
“They’re sending me home tomorrow,” he said. “I think I’ll be able to see your diving exhibition. I’ll sure try, anyway.”
“Great!” Traci said. “Did you hear about Margo?”
“Your coach? What about her?”
Traci sat on the edge of her brother’s bed. “Did you know she came here last night to find out how you were doing?”
Pete raised his eyebrows. “She did? No kidding?”
“No kidding. She stayed here for about an hour, until we heard that you were going to be all right.”
“Wow. That’s really cool. Tell her ‘thank you’ from me, okay?”
“Sure. I have to say, I was totally wrong about her. She’s amazing.”
Pete had a smirk on his face. “I hate to say “I told you so,’ but…”
“Okay,” Traci said. “You were right about her, and I was wrong. You happy now?”
“Very happy,” Pete said, leaning back against his pillows.
Traci stood up. “I’d better go to practice. Take it easy.”
Pete laughed. “As if I had a choice here. Bye.”
When Traci arrived at practice, Margo was waiting for her. “How is your brother?”
“He’s doing fine,” Traci replied. “He’s coming home tomorrow, and he asked me to thank you for being there last night.”
“I’m happy to hear he will recover fully. Now, I believe you have a lot of work to do to get ready for the exhibition. I’ll talk to you about the dives you plan to do after you warm up. Be sure you do all your leg exercises.”
And, just like that, Margo was back to being all business again. Traci smiled as she went into the locker room to change. Not long ago, this apparent lack of warmth on Margo’s part would have made Traci furious. Now she knew better.
The group of divers with whom Traci worked did their stretching and exercising together, but each girl had an individually designed exercise routine aimed at dealing with her specific needs. Traci, for instance, needed to build up her leg strength. Carly spent more time on abdominal exercises, doing hundreds of stomach crunches a day.
After finishing her exercises, Traci got into her swimsuit and went to work on her dives. Margo watched each diver as she performed a dive and then took a few minutes to explain what the girl needed to do to improve. Traci began with a backward one-and-a-half somersault with one and a half twists in the tuck position
. She knew that she had mistimed it even before she entered the water with a big splash, caused mostly by the backs of her legs.
Margo frowned as Traci climbed out of the pool.
“My come-out was too early,” Traci said.
Margo nodded. “You need to work on your spotting and your head position. The two problems are related. When you left the board, your body was not in the right arch and you tried to correct it and overcompensated. You’ve done this better before. Let your body remember for you. Trust your body. This time, try a different entry, with your hands clasped. I think it looks better to some judges.”
Traci listened and took it in. She waited for her next try, thinking about Margo’s comments and about what had gone wrong the first time. When she repeated the dive, she got the right arch in her back and remembered to change her entry as Margo had suggested. She felt in control and knew when to straighten out of the tuck. Her entry was much smoother.
Margo gave her a stiff nod of approval. “Remember to flex your feet in your come-out. I think this dive should be on your list—the degree of difficulty is not very high, but you usually do it well. You might want to start with it to build your self-assurance and create a good first impression.”
Traci said, “I was thinking of putting the inward one-and-a-half somersault with a twist on the list, too. How does that sound?”
Margo thought for a moment. “The degree of difficulty for that is 2.8. It’s a hard dive. It’s also a free-position dive—you can do it in the tuck, pike, or straight position. Which would you use?”
After a brief pause, Traci said, “Pike, I think. I’ve been doing it well.”
“If you feel comfortable about it, it would be very impressive,” Margo said. “Let me see you do it later.”
“Okay,” Traci said. She went to wait for her chance at the three-meter board and found herself next to Carly.
“I heard about your brother’s accident,” Carly said. “How is he doing?”
Traci filled Carly in on Pete’s condition and added, “Margo showed up at the hospital and stayed until we knew that Pete was out of danger. I see what you mean about her.”
“She’s done that for other girls when they were in jams,” said Carly, smiling. “But she’s uncomfortable when people talk about it. She doesn’t even know how to handle it when someone thanks her. The main thing is that, once she takes you into her world, she’ll do whatever she can to help you out.”
When Traci climbed up to the three-meter board to try the inward one-and-a-half somersault with a twist, she went to the end of the board and stood with her back to the pool. Her heels hung off the board’s edge. She closed her eyes and took a little extra time to visualize the dive. The key thing to remember, she felt, was to get a good jump. It was also crucial to really flex her abdominal muscles to get into the pike position and to give herself momentum for the somersault. Once she was rolling, Traci could then push forward with her right shoulder to start the twist. She should then be able to take her time in straightening her body into a line—the come-out—and to extend her arms for the entry.
But it was time to go. During a competition, even an exhibition like this, a diver was allowed only a limited time after getting on the board to complete a dive. If you went over the time limit, your score was a big, fat zero. Traci took a deep breath, bent her knees, swung her arms up, and jumped.
As she started the somersault, she looked for the clock that she used to spot herself and began to twist to her left. Her legs remained straight and her forehead touched her shins as she tumbled through the air and let her body stretch into a straight line. She tensed her muscles to hold that line and stretched her arms out to the side and then down. As Traci hit the water, she felt that she had done well.
Margo met her as she pulled herself out of the pool. “Be sure to flex your toes more and, whatever you do, don’t wait too long before diving. You came close to the time limit on that attempt.”
Traci sighed to herself.
“However,” Margo went on, “this will be a good dive for the exhibition. You can score well on it. Now do a few more of them, to be more certain of it.”
Traci knew from the coach’s words, rather than from the expression on her face or any enthusiasm in her voice, that Margo was satisfied with her work. This meant that Traci herself had to feel very good about it, too.
Traci realized with a flutter of anticipation that she felt pretty ready to compete. She was eager for the day of the exhibition to arrive.
14
The day had come. Traci sat in the locker room reading her list of dives over and over. Her nerves were jangling and it was hard to sit still. Competition was nothing new to Traci—she’d been in lots of gymnastic meets—but that didn’t mean she was any more relaxed than the other divers. There were eleven other girls who would be diving, some from Margo’s class and some from the classes of two other coaches who had come to the center where Margo worked. All twelve were quiet.
Carly sat across from Traci, flexing and straightening her fingers. She stared at her hands as if she wasn’t sure they’d do what she wanted them to. Carly had asked Margo if she could be in the exhibition although she had competed before, and Margo had agreed.
“I feel like a wreck,” Traci whispered.
It seemed that Carly hadn’t heard her. But finally the other girl looked up and managed a weak grin. “Welcome to the club.”
“You too?” asked Traci. “I’m like, ‘What if I fall off the board, what if I hurt myself, what if I’m so horrible I embarrass myself, my family, and the whole city.’ Is that normal?”
“Pretty much,” Carly said. “As far as I know, nobody has actually fallen off a board, but that won’t stop you from worrying about it.”
Traci was relieved to hear that she wasn’t the only nervous diver. As she looked around at the other girls, they all appeared tense. One lay on the floor with her eyes closed. Another suddenly stood up and ran down the hall to where the bathroom was located.
Traci concentrated on breathing slowly and regularly. She focused on how she would do each dive. Unlike the daily routine of class, she’d have one shot at each; if she messed it up, the score she received would stand and there wouldn’t be a chance to try again. Diving, Traci decided, was a very unforgiving sport.
Margo came into the locker room with a man Traci didn’t recognize.
“Can I have your attention, please?” asked the coach.
The girls all looked up at her.
“First, welcome to all of you who are our guests today. Second, I would like to introduce Mr. Claude Duchair of the State Diving Association. He will run this exhibition and he wants to say a few words.”
Mr. Duchair was an older man with gray, curly hair, whose posture and physique suggested that he might once have been a diver.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “In a few minutes, we’ll ask you to come out into the pool area and line up to be introduced. We’ll also introduce our judges, all of whom have judged in many official competitions over the years.”
Traci knew that there were five judges in most official competitions, except for national ones, where there were seven.
“Some official rules will be used today,” Mr. Duchair went on. “Divers will be responsible for performing their dives in the order given on their lists. A diver performing the wrong dive will get a score of zero. Divers must perform a dive within a reasonable time after their names are announced. If necessary, a diver will receive a one-minute warning and must complete her dive during that time.
“Here is the order in which you will dive today. The order was chosen randomly.”
He read off the names. Traci was eighth, and Carly was sixth.
“You have an eager audience waiting to cheer you on,” said the official. “Take a minute to get ready, and then we’ll ask you to line up in the order in which you’ll be diving. Good luck!”
Traci’s parents and Pete were in the audience with Valerie. Pete had be
en released from the hospital with a clean bill of health and had insisted that he was well enough to come. He had said, “I promise not to jump up and down and yell… too much.”
The girls walked out and formed a line alongside the pool, to the applause and cheers of the people in the stands. Traci spotted her family and pointed them out to Carly, who showed Traci where her parents and sister sat.
“This is weird,” Traci whispered as the girls were being introduced. “In gymnastics, you can make a little mistake without destroying your chances of winning. But here, a tiny little problem, and that’s that.”
Carly grinned. “Right! That’s the challenge of diving! Isn’t it great?”
She stepped forward and waved as her name was announced. A moment later, Traci did the same.
The first diver started up the three-meter board. She was going to try a back double somersault in the pike position. Traci watched the girl climb, position herself at the end of the board, pause, and hurtle into the air. She wasn’t one of Margo’s divers, and Traci thought she did pretty well, although her pike wasn’t as good as some others Traci had seen. The judges awarded her scores of 6.8, 7.0, and 7.2. Traci joined everyone else in applauding. The diver’s total score was determined by adding the three scores and multiplying the sum by the degree of difficulty: 2.3, resulting in a total of 48.3.
As other competitors did their dives, Traci moved closer to her turn, feeling more and more tense. The fifth diver did a forward double somersault in the tuck position and got very good scores: 7.6, 8.0, and 8.0. But the degree of difficulty was lower—2.0— so her total score was lower than the first diver’s had been: 47.2.
Now it was Carly’s turn. Carly had chosen to start with a reverse double somersault, which meant that she would enter the water feetfirst. The degree of difficulty was 2.1. Traci thought that Carly had nailed it, entering the water like an arrow, with very little splash. The judges liked it, too; she got a 7.6, an 8.0, and an 8.2, for a total score of 49.98. Carly led all the competitors who had dived. But it was early.
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