Page 4 of It’s All in How You Fall
Olga and Dad need to see what I can do. What they’re asking me to step away from. “Just one more,” I say with a stubborn smile as I haul myself up from the mat to the familiar chalked leather of the beam. It’s not a request—it’s a statement. That cool dread has burnt off and all I feel is heat—frustration, urgency, anger.
When I was a little kid, Nat’s best friend, Alex, nicknamed me “Flip” because I’d constantly yell “Watch this!” and toss myself into a new trick that always involved going ass over eyebrows. But now I don’t need to command attention, because their eyes are already on me. And I’m ready to show off. To prove I can do it.
I set my stance. I don’t need to check my spot. I don’t need to peek behind me. I just need to do it. While they’re watching. Because they’re watching.
Watch this.
It takes less than a second to execute a standing Arabian.
Up. Backflip. Half twist at the crest. Feet hit blind.
I’m up, flipping and twisting, riding on confidence as the world spins in a washing machine rotation—the blue of the mats, stippled beige insulation of the ceiling, and pinpricks of other human beings surrounding me blurring together into a familiar kaleidoscope.
But then something’s off.
My hips aren’t square as I rotate toward the beam.
Or maybe I didn’t get enough height.
Or I got too much.
In that fraction of a second all I can do is try to save it. My back tenses before the rest of me. My feet reach for the beam, but I can’t see anything except the ceiling.
One foot finds the edge of the apparatus, the ball of my foot splitting the curve from the top of the beam to the side. My other foot, though, is completely off and into the dead air over the mat. All of that is the least of my worries, because I’ve over-rotated the flip part, which means the upper half of my body is too far forward and I’m falling face-first toward the beam, the mat, and the unprotected space where the mat isn’t quite long enough to be flush with the metal leg supports.
My hands are out, but there’s only so much my reflexes can do in the edge of a second. My knee hits first, jarring my back before my stomach can belly flop against the rigid body of the apparatus. My sternum hits the opposite edge, banging, sending more nasty reverberations up my torso as my hands scrabble for purchase against the beam. The side of my face skids with a burn across the chalked leather from jawline to temple.
And then it’s over.
I’m lying there in a heap, with everything aflame—my face, my knees, my back.
Oh, my back.
The usual cranky ache has been ripped open—no longer dull, everything sharp and shooting from the scoop of my back outward. It’s streaming over my skin, heavy enough that my lungs struggle under the weight of it.
If my lungs expand, so does the pain.
Dark spots float through my vision and there’s blood in my mouth, my jaw snapping shut on impact and taking some of my inner cheek with it.
Everyone is in motion.
Sunny, the closest, lunging.
Peregrine hot-footing over and under obstacles from the baby beam side, a purple-tinged blur.
Avalon and Jada barreling in from the water fountains.
Olga. Dad.
So much of gymnastics is in the landing, which means so much of gymnastics is in falling. But why did I have to fall like this here and now? I literally face-planted on my chance to prove them wrong and that hurts more than, well, my entire body right now.
Sunny arrives at my side first, narrowly beating Peregrine. They both help me roll with a muffled flop onto the big mat, which takes some of the pressure off my back as the mat’s inner foam contours to my body. Peregrine squeezes my hand as I try to blink my vision clear of those swarming purple spots, and the ceiling, the lazy industrial fan, and my teammates’ faces come into view.
“You were right, Peregrine, my Arabianisfire. It just burned me hard.”
“It’s still epic,” Peregrine insists.
“What hurts?” Sunny asks, cutting to the chase, never one to give my self-deprecation the time of day.
