Page 3 of It’s All in How You Fall
I climb onto my regular beam—perpendicular to Sunny and next to Peregrine—and start in on dance skills: leaps and turns of various types. Thirty minutes in and it’s time to begin working on tumbling skills. Back handsprings, whip backs, and tucks to start. And then it’s on to a rotation between the low-to-the-ground baby beams and, if we’re ready for it, the regulation beam with the extra padding to work the skills we’ve targeted to learn for the summer. For me it’s a standing Arabian—a backflip with a half twist so you land facing the opposite direction. It’s a blind landing, which means your feet hit before you can even see the beam.
As a level ten, it’s sort of unusual to include a standing Arabian, as it’s the highest value in our A-to-E skill non-elite value system. Though elite goes from A to I (aka Simone Biles territory) the idea is the same: The upper levels are all about adding together the right skills into an alphabet soup of starting value. Non-elites are still on a ten-point system, which means I don’thaveto do such a difficult skill—I could cobble together the points another way—but after three titles in a row Iwantto up my game. Which means that if my back holds up long enough next year, I’ll be the only one in the state to land it in competition at level ten.
Bonus: It’s super fun.
I do a half dozen on a baby beam, the balls of my feet smacking into the leather as if drawn by magnets each and every time. The adrenaline of the shitty appointment, actually freaking crying in public, and everything just feeling out of sorts has added up to me beingspot onamid the chaos of the last few hours.
“Dude, that’sfire. What back injury?” Peregrine’s dark eyes sweep over me as she steps back into starting position for her connection of a front tuck to a wolf jump for the twelfth time next to me.
“It’s all legs, no back.” Okay, notnoback, butlessback, which is why Olga picked it—much less chance to tweak my sad lower vertebrae. Though, right now, thanks to the local anesthetic Dr. Kennedy gave me, the usual ache is slightly dulled anyway. Hopefully in a few days when the steroid kicks in, it’ll feel that way for several weeks.
“Whatever,” Peregrine says at my compliment dismissal—we’re not exactly good at taking them, even from each other—before leaning in, her voice low. “Not even Sunny comes close to that sort of height. It’s totally epic.”
“Only if I land it.”
Peregrine rolls her eyes. Rule number one in gymnastics: A cool skill is only cool if you can actually pull it off.
Sunny finishes her turn on the padded big beam—working an aerial to a Rulfova, which will be a gorgeous combination once she totally figures it out. And she will. A Rulfova is basically a back layout full twist, but your hands touch and your legs swing down to straddle the beam. Not easy to do on the beam with padding—her knees thunk into the mats the second she hits. Which makes my back tense every single time I witness it.
Still, the padding is definitely necessary because she hasn’t gotten the rotation perfect yet, and her legs miss splitting the beam fifty percent of the time. Something about the aerial entry has her off—she can do a Rulfova just fine from standing, but add a cartwheel with no hands and it becomes a more dicey proposition.
She hops down, and the inside of her right leg is aflame with beam burn, skid marks through a light dusting of chalk. The weave of the top mat is embossed on her knees and she shakes her head. I catch her eyes—when everything comes easy to you, the things that don’t are insufferable. “It looks better than you think, Sun.”
Her nose wrinkles. “I’m pretty sure Jana Rulfova would roll over in her grave if she saw it in its current state.”
“You’ll just have to perfect it before she rises from the dead specifically to judge you,” I deadpan. That earns me a tight-lipped smile as she fixes the curls that have escaped her bun and turns for the baby beams.
I’ve got one foot up on the pillowy blue mat when “Caroline” rings across the gym. Olga is standing in the threshold between the gym and the lobby, Dad at her back. Neither of them looks pleased—not angry or sad but, like, exhausted. All the warmth and distraction I got from time with my besties evaporates as a cool thread of dread pulls over my skin. “A moment.”
They want to discuss Dr. Kennedy’s recommendation.
No. That’s wrong: They want me to take it.
They’ll say they know what’s best. That I have my whole life ahead of me. That I’ll have my body forever, and I should take care of it.
And taking care of it means quitting.
Dad basically confirms that, looking down and away. Olga’s braver, her dark eyes not wavering under bangs that have gotten thicker and blonder over the course of the past decade. Yet still, her neck is flush, discomfort riding her expression.
Time stands still everywhere but inside my churning mind. The other girls freeze too, just as they did on the floor earlier, watching the train wreck that is this showdown for when my career will end. When my life as I know it is over.
My hopes and dreams line up in my heart, piling and piling until the lump in my throat is back. The moment never seems to end as I blink at the two people who probably love me the most—apologies to Nat and Mom but it’s true—their eyes full of pity and heartbreak over the fact that my back, and by extensionI, justcan’tanymore.
But don’t they know what Icando?
I’mthis closeto mastering a standing Arabian on beam—a move not manyelitesdo.
I’ve got both a Gienger and a Tkachev in my back pocket to make a run at the state bars title.
My full-twisting Yurchenko is finally getting some good height to go with a stick.
I’ve mastered three tumbling sequences with a double back and have plans to perform them all together in the same clap-along-worthy routine.
And yet it’s written all over their faces, their body language, the charge in the humid air, that they want me to call it quits. End it. Finish.
It’s silly, but a line fromHamiltonsticks in my brain. Though my floor music has no words, I can still hear George Washington’s voice loud and clear:Not yet.
I’m not ready.
