As long as there are nervous gymnasts, there will be chalk. Magnesium carbonate for the hands to help you swing on bars again and again. A thin white line on the beam to mark your feet for your dismount. A circle at the end of the runway to wipe your feet and hands before you vault. It absorbs moisture on those sweaty palms. It wastes time. It offers direction. It provides a sense of purpose.
“Savannah, let’s do tap swings, and if you’re up to it, do a few dismounts.”
Landing. On a real floor, bending my knees to absorb the impact.
I was afraid he’d say that.
IN THE FIRST rotation of Regionals, I was the first gymnast up on floor. It’s usually considered a disadvantage to be the first girl competing, as the judges seem less willing to give out high scores right away. That day, I was convinced it wouldn’t matter.
The violin music began. I swept my arm over my head and grinned at the judges, fully aware that my dramatic music didn’t merit cheesiness. I’d place in the top of my age group, wow Coach Englehardt – who was sitting right up front – and go onto Nationals, where even more college coaches would be watching.
I sprinted for my second tumbling pass. Hands to the floor and off again out of the roundoff. I launched into the air and pulled my fists to my left shoulder. Twisted so fast that I couldn’t see the floor or the lights or anything, had no idea how much I’d spun until my feet struck the floor and everything in my right leg shattered.
I screamed.
Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. The burn ripped up and down my leg and into my lungs, and as I’d lain there clutching my knee to my chest, the music played on until someone shut it off.
Strangers had rushed over with ice packs and checked the color of my fingernails and asked inane questions like, “Does it hurt?” and “Rate your pain on a scale of one to ten,” while Matt was above me saying, “Don’t shut your eyes, Savannah. Squeeze my hand if you need to, okay?”
The crowd had applauded as I was carried out. I’d mustered a smile.
I’d wanted to die.
“The good news is that you almost threw a triple full,” Dad had said in the emergency room waiting area. “When did you get that?”
“Are you serious? Cass, did you get that on film?” My knee already felt better, although I couldn’t really move it. I’d placed my foot on the chair next to mine and let the back of my knee extend. A little swollen, sure, but nothing unreasonable.
By the time we’d made it into the examining room, I could walk gingerly. The pain of impact was already fading. Hopefully Matt would be able to petition me into Nationals, wow them with a sob story.
The doctor had nodded politely as I glossed over describing the incident and told him that I felt recovered already. He’d placed one hand above my knee and one under, lifted the lower half of my leg up, then down, and wiggled it from side to side. I had to bite my lips. Not excruciating, though. Not like earlier.
“I have like a billion Ace bandages at home,” I’d said. “I’ll wrap it up and ice it.”
He’d performed the same motions on my left leg.
“Lots of ice,” I’d added, hoping that if I spoke loudly enough, it would drive away whatever he was looking for.
“I’ll write you a prescription for an MRI,” he’d said to me, looking at my parents. “I’m highly suspicious of an anterior cruciate ligament tear.”
No.
“That’s super serious,” I’d said, panic bubbling up my throat. “My knee doesn’t hurt that much.”
The doctor had sat down on a wheely stool and scooted over to the counter, where he wrote on a pad. “It’s most common in activities that involve jumping and twisting. Some patients experience a high degree of pain. Others feel a popping sensation and minor pain, and they can walk after.”
A popping sensation, like champagne uncorked. Nothing like the rip through my entire body.
“I need to go to Nationals.” My lips had trembled.
“Next season,” he’d said.
He’d taken my good leg in his hands and performed the same trick. “This is the Lachman test,” he said. Then he moved to the other leg. “See how this leg feels looser? There’s a good chance that your ACL is no longer attached.”
I hated him. Hated Lachman, too. And my body, which didn’t let me have any say in this. And that my parents were sitting right there and didn’t say anything. Didn’t question the doctor and demand that we see a real one on the spot, not this kid who was barely out of med school and probably quoting WebMD. That the first thing my father had said was not a question, but a statement: “She’ll need surgery.”
In the waiting room, Cassie had put her arm around me. I’d buried my face in her shoulder so that nobody would see me cry.
THE UNEVEN BARS creak as my teammates swing up and over, again and again. The high bar rattles as Nicola releases it and swings toward the low bar. Her hips rise above her head as she twists, catching the low bar in a handstand.
“Awesome, Nic.” I’m genuinely impressed. She was nowhere near that skill in the spring.
“Are you all right, Savannah?” Matt turns to me. “Do you need a spot?”
“No, no. I got this.”
With the steadiness of a toddler, I crawl up on the low bar and push myself so that I’m standing. I teeter back and forth before jumping to the high bar. Chalk flies into my eyes and I blink it out as quickly as I can, eyes tearing up.
Swing forward. Swing back. This is a rhythm I know well: give and take. Out of my periphery, Matt and the girls have paused to watch.
This won’t be pretty.
I let my toes rise in front of me, let go, close my eyes and pray, and flip over to land on my feet. A burst of stars in my eyes, but no pain.
“Savannah, you’re amazing!” Tiana shouts from across the gym, and everyone giggles at her exuberance.
Amazing, no. The flyaway, though, is safe. A second flyaway, stretched out this time–also safe. Excitement rises in my chest like a giggle. I’m upside down again and living to tell the tale. As long as my feet hit the ground first and don’t budge, I am all right.
ON NIGHTS LIKE tonight, after a practice that felt good, I feel like I’m in the process of surviving something. Nothing dramatic, mind you. Not like near-death. Still, a story that’s becoming my own. Depending how this Golden Leaf fiasco goes, one I might be proud of someday.
When you climb into Level 8, 9, 10, you still have the small perky girls scampering up the podium. At the same time, you see the taller girls, a little heavier, moving more slowly. They have braces around their wrists and ankles. The bars bend under their weight. They’re here because they’ve survived. Not everyone can handle the transition from cute and light to awkward and not so light. In the beginning, you burn to run around the gym and flip until your head is dizzier than your tired legs. Then the burning settles into ankles and shoulders and your coach saying, “No, no, that’s not right.” For most girls, it turns to smoke. Carried away by a gust of boyfriends or other sports or the promise of free time.
Not for all of us. We’re still here.
Did you always want to go to Suffolk? I text Marcos when the lights are shut off, my miscellaneous aching joints iced and rubbed and wished upon.
“Stairway to Heaven” starts playing and the screen flashes brightly in the darkness of my room. Incoming call.
It’s Marcos, and he’s laughing. I want to hear it in person, feel his breath against my cheek. “Yes, Savannah. As a young boy in Texas, I dreamed of the day I could attend community college in New York.”
“You lived in Texas?”
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
I want to know more about Texas, but the yeah is clipped. “Did I wake you up?”
“I just showered and still smell like guac, so no, you’re fine.” I bet he smells like coconuts now, not fake and trying-too-hard like the guys at his house on Sunday.
“How was work?”
He groans. “One customer said the other
guy stole from him, push came to shove, cops had to be called. All they did was tell the guys to stop being dicks and left.”
Yikes. As long as he stayed out of it, though–
“So, Suffolk? Thinking about applying?” I can hear his smile.
I take a breath. “I told you about moving to the city with Cassie, right?”
“Yes.”
“I…don’t think I want to do that anymore.”
“Why not?” There’s no shock in the question, or an accusation, or anything that implies You’re making a terrible mistake that you will regret. He’s curious. Open.
“I don’t think I would be happy if I didn’t give gymnastics a shot. I could walk onto a team next year. Or I could sit on the bench for three seasons and compete once as a senior. No matter what, I can’t do any of those things if I’m in the city.” I’m rambling now. “A wise person once said that he thought I was afraid of failure.”
He groans. “I’m sorry about that.”
“No,” I said, “I think I’m more afraid of not trying.”
The sound of creaking in the background. I wonder if he’s lying back on his bed, looking at the pale-blue walls. “It sounds like your decision is made, then,” he says, but I can’t stop there. I tell him about Richard, Ponquogue’s soccer golden boy, who managed to chase both of his dreams, one of which was one we knew he wanted and the other was one he’d never told us.
There’s more that I don’t say, like how seeing Juliana react to her brothers calling her name made me realize how lucky I am that I don’t have anything to hold me back. Except myself, and the body that’s determined to make me question this every step of the way.
“I’m inspired by you,” he says, and I laugh. “Seriously! The thing is…”
We’re quiet. This is vulnerable territory. With the lights out and a few miles between us, it feels safe.
Finally, he says, “I’m real good at talking myself out of things. Like trying out for the soccer team. I’ve always been better at being a spectator.”
“Why?” I think of what Andreas told me. I think he’s afraid to belong to something. The last thing he wants to hear about is his best friend and me discussing his psyche, though. I have to hear it from him.
“I give myself a million excuses. I have to work, I’m too tired, there are jerks like Tommy Brown.” I nod although he can’t see me. “I think about college and I wonder if I’m too poor or if some guy is going to tell me one day that I only got a scholarship because I’m Mexican, not because I worked my ass off. Then I see you going after what you want, and it makes me want to do it, too.”
“You can still try out for track,” I say, and now it’s his turn to laugh.
“Only if it’s in the spring,” he teases. “Juliana wasn’t lying–I need to get my ass in gear so you’re not ashamed of me.”
That ass looks plenty fine to me.
“What’s stopping you?” he says. “You sound worried.”
There’s the tiny matter of my best friend, who’s hanging onto the slippery ledge. “Cassie,” I say. “There are no schools with gymnastics teams near the city. If I do this, I can’t live with her.”
He’s silent for a moment. “If you can tell off that drunk douche from Galway Beach, you can be honest with Cassie. What if you suggest somewhere else?” There’s shifting in the background, followed by an electronic ping. “Name me a US city, and I’ll see if I can find a gymnastics team.”
I stare at my phone as though I can see him on his laptop. “By the time we’re done,” he says, completely serious, “I’ll know more about collegiate gymnastics than anyone.”
My grin is so wide that my cheeks hurt. He believes in me. He really thinks I can do this, regardless of the huge disadvantage I’m at. “When did you get so wise, Marcos Castillo?”
“I was taught well in the halls of Rivendell.”
I snort so loudly that I immediately bury my face in my pillow. The last thing I need is to attract my father’s attention.
“Let’s go,” he says. “Fairbanks? Los Angeles? Little Rock?”
No, yes, maybe. I imagine Cassie’s reaction to me saying, “Let’s move to Arkansas,” and by the time Marcos hits Nebraska, I’m cracking up because it’s so not New York City that Cass might actually spring for it.
The phone burns hot against my cheek, beeping at me that the battery is running low. Hush, you thing. I don’t know how long we’ve been talking, but I do know that I don’t want to stop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AS RICHARD GREGORY, Sr., once told me on the cusp of failing my first road test, “You can flip over a four-inch-wide beam. Any idiot can drive.”
If I can get my ass back in the gym, I can be upfront with Cassie. I’ve avoided the topic for the past couple of days, but now that the calluses on my hands are hardening, so is my resolve. I’m armed with a Marcos-inspired list of college teams across America that has been Emery-approved. You’re taking the nation by storm! she’d texted me.
What about all of the fetuses who verbally committed when they were 12? I’d replied.
In a sport where girls typically peak in their teens, I’ve heard of gymnasts making verbal commitments at age thirteen or fourteen. Even Emery, as good as she is, is in limbo waiting for an official offer. As I know too well, anything can happen between then and senior year.
They’ve got nothing on you, she’d written back.
On the car ride this morning, Cassie was distracted by our impending AP Chem quiz. “I memorized the entire periodic table thanks to this stupid song I found on the Internet,” she’d said, and then proceeded to sing it before I could protest. Now that the quiz is done, she waits for me by her locker with relief on her face.
No better time than the present.
“What do you think about Rhode Island?” I say.
“Chilly.” She picks a piece of lint off of my sweater. “Lots of wind.”
“How about Rhode Island School of Design?”
She shrugs. “I’ve checked it out.”
Not a flat-out rejection. “Would you want to maybe move to Providence?”
Her locker shuts. Our smiling summer photos vanish. “Did the coach call you?”
“No,” I admit. “I e-mailed him.”
She clucks her tongue like I’ve admitted to returning to an ex-boyfriend. “And?”
“And…nothing. Yet!” I say as she shakes her head, willing me to stop. “He might be more interested after I compete.”
She tilts her head and considers me. “You were so excited when we went to Regionals.” It was a “we”– she took the trip, too–but the way she says it makes it sound like we had both put in the work to qualify. “Then that jackass couldn’t be bothered to send you a ‘get well soon’ card. Don’t give me that nonsense about NCAA recruiting rules. He could have said something by now, right?”
“Yeah.” I avoid looking into her eyes, because if I do, I’ll see that she thinks my hope is foolish. That I’m working up my body and soul just to crumble to the ground again.
I want to feel as invincible as I did when I stepped onto the floor at Regionals, knowing that I couldn’t have been more prepared. On that day, I knew that I was good enough, that all of those inspirational posters at the gym about hard work and opportunity weren’t a ruse to make us stop complaining during conditioning. Although I’ve been surgically repaired, I want to feel like that girl again.
And I want Cassie to believe that I can be.
She hesitates, and then pulls me in for a hug. “Stop looking so sad, Savs.” She smells different today– laundry fresh, but lacking the lavender. It doesn’t feel quite Cassie. “I’ll do a little research on the art scene there, okay? You want to go for the gold. I get it.”
I return the hug for real, and she laughs. “Okay, how about letting me breathe?”
I can’t wait to tell Marcos he was right. Cassie gets it. While it’s evident that she doesn’t love the idea, she supports me. I’ll be able to have bot
h a college with a team and an apartment with my best friend.
When I see him at his locker, my heart skips as I take in his faded jeans and the way his green shirt clings to his shoulders. I’m already smiling as I approach him. “Good morning, sunshine,” I call.
He keeps his eyes forward until the last possible second. When he finally faces me, I gasp. His bottom lip is cracked. Deep blue and purple bruises swell under his right eye. “What happened?” My heart hammers. “Did you get in an accident?”
Marcos shuts his locker instead of answering. Okay.
“You look like shit,” says Juliana from the other side. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Andreas skids to a stop as he approaches. “Crapballs, did Victor use you as a punching bag?”
“What did you do?” Rena squawks. Her ringlets swing furiously as she shakes her head. “If your mama was here, she’d whoop your ass. I’m tempted to do it myself.”
“It does look pretty bad,” I say.
His back retreats down the hallway. “Really, guys? I had no idea. Thanks.”
Juliana rolls her eyes. “Good luck with that stubborn ass,” she says to me. She means it.
He slows down just enough for me to walk beside him. “You want to talk about it?” I say.
“Not really,” he grunts. “I’m gonna be answering questions about this all day.”
“You could start with me.”
That stops him. He leans against the glass Homecoming Court showcase, arms crossed. Reluctance and pain radiate off of him. “You’re not going to like it,” he warns without meeting my eyes. “Cassie’s gonna jump all over it.”
A fight.
I swallow back the worry. Marcos only fights when he thinks there’s a good reason. He’s not afraid to get physical when other people do. He’s loyal. He doesn’t trust most people, according to Andreas. He thinks Galadriel could beat Elrond in a showdown, he eats cereal for lunch because he can’t stand the smell of cold cuts, and he can argue endlessly with Andreas about the merits of Real Madrid versus FC Barcelona.
Lessons in Falling Page 16
