The Flip Side (2 page)

As my feet strike the beam, they make a hollow, booming noise. My favorite sound in the whole world, because that means I'm sticking my skills on my favorite apparatus. I'm flying, my blond hair caught up in a ponytail whipping against my neck. Coming up for breath at the other end of the beam, I pull my arms against my ears, chin up, back arched, fingers straight.

“That's it!” Coach Chris claps once, a single, sharp staccato. He has the short stature and firm body of a former Olympic gymnast. Although his hair has turned white, he's still in great shape. I don't think the word “slacker” is in his vocabulary. “Now higher. I want to see more air between you and the beam. I want flight.”

I pivot. No stalling this time. Back in the other direction to do it again.

There's no time to look around, no time to evaluate the other gymnasts and their progress. They have nothing to do with me in this moment. In a different section of my brain, I know another gymnast is practicing a complex back pass on floor, but I don't even glance at her. Behind me the bars creak—probably my best friend, Gwen Edwards—but I block her out too. She has the full attention of the head coach of the U.S. national team, Claudia Inverso. Gwen has had it all day, since she nailed the Kovacs—a release move that involves two flips over the high bar. She's been working on it back at our home gym and has stuck it a few times, but this morning she's making it look easy. She's found her rhythm, and it's amazing. Gwen's Kovacs is the most talked-about skill at camp this week. The big question is, will she be ready to compete with it?

This time I wobble on the landing, fighting to keep my body straight, arms raised up, fingers reaching for the ceiling.

“Precision,” Coach Chris states in a soft, clipped tone that sends a shiver through me. The quieter he gets, the more frightening he becomes. My performance is disappointing him. He yells only when he's happy.

I've got his attention, and I'm not letting that go. He stood on the Olympic podium where I want to stand one day. He knows how to get there, understands completely what it takes. I nod in his direction, wipe the sweat off my hands.

Round-off, back handspring, layout full.
Boom.

“I want you still higher,” Coach insists. “Prove to me that you deserve to be here. Get into the mind-set—best in the world.”

I thought I was in that mind-set. Frustration niggles at me. But I don't let any annoyance show on my face. Coach Chris believes in me, or he wouldn't ride me so hard.

I nod. Close my eyes. Visualize height.

“Faster.” Coach Chris approaches the beam. His steely blue gaze bites into me. “You nail this, Charlie. You're going for gold.”

I pivot, raise my arms.

Gold—it's what I've always wanted. When I was a kid competing at the Junior Olympic meets, it was what I earned all the time. But now that I'm here, competing on the world's stage against the best gymnasts on the planet, gold is more elusive. Winning takes everything I've got. Every fiber of my being has to be committed to it.

Higher. Bigger. Fly.

“That's it!” Coach Chris's voice rings out. “Now do it again.”

•  •  •

“What I wouldn't give right now for one of my dad's pumpkin doughnuts,” Gwen says as she sets her cafeteria tray down across from me and takes a seat.

“Your dad makes doughnuts?” I scoop up a forkful of salad. “That's cool.”

“Yeah. They are the best.” Chalk from the bars dusts Gwen's dark skin. She looks like she's wearing football pads, because her shoulders are bulging with ice packs. She's not injured—those ice packs are to decrease the inevitable soreness after twelve hours locked in the gym. I've got an ice pack bound to my ankle—the ankle I broke when I was eight. The old injury flares up every time I come to camp.

With a weary sigh Gwen digs into her pile of spaghetti.

I understand her lack of energy. She gave everything to pull off those Kovacs today. Just like I gave everything to my routines. The mental and physical exertion is exhausting, which is why we pay attention to what we eat. We need food that gives us energy and repairs and builds muscles. I've already logged my dinner into my fitness app so that I can be sure I'm getting enough fuel and the proper nutrients to keep my body in its best shape. Doughnuts are never on the menu.

“We're almost done,” she says. “Although, I wish I were going to my real home tomorrow. I miss more than the doughnuts. I miss my parents.” When we're finished here, she'll return to her host family, the Gundersens. A nice family, but still . . . not the same as home. Gwen's family lives in Georgia. She lives with the Gundersens in Columbus so that she can train with Coach Chris, who has a track record for training Olympic champions. She's nearly a year older than I am, which means her competitive clock is ticking. (A female gymnast's career ends when she is relatively young.) We instantly connected the first day she showed up at Gold Star gym.

“Come over when we get back,” I tell her. “My mom promised to make no-bake cookies.”

Gwen pokes at her food. “Those yummy things with the peanut butter, right?”

“Yep. We'll celebrate wrapping our last camp before trials.”

Gwen twirls spaghetti onto her fork. “Sounds like a plan.”

She says it with as much enthusiasm as someone saying,
I have a dentist appointment
. I know it's really hard for her to be away from her family. I need to get her mind on something else. Something to remind her that the sacrifice she's making to be trained by one of the best coaches in the country is worth it. “Your Kovacs looked amazing today. You're really nailing it.”

Gwen nods. A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Thanks. Yeah, I'm feeling pretty good about it.” She pops a cherry tomato from her salad into her mouth, studies me. “Coach was getting after you today.”

I was really hoping no one had noticed. “I should have been pushing harder. He knows it. I know it.”

“You've won two golds on beam at the World Championships. He should trust you to push when it counts.”

“We can't slack off. Not for a second. Besides,
you
got gold in the all-around at the World Championships, and you were rocking it during the last set.”

She grins. “We really need to get T-shirts that read, ‘Mutual Admiration Society.' ”

“I'm glad we can compete and still be friends,” I tell her.

“Hey, who else is going to understand the demands and stresses of this life?”

That's too true, and it's part of the reason why I don't tell anyone at school about my aspirations to make the Olympic team.

“How are things at school?” Gwen asks, as though she read my mind. She's always been homeschooled, so Jefferson High is a mystery to her.

“My government class is giving me fits,” I admit. “I brought the study sheet—”

“I don't know why you don't homeschool so you can have a more lenient study schedule.”

“I don't want my life to be only gymnastics.” Which I've already told her a zillion times.

Her brow furrows, and she gives me a serious stare. “But we have such a narrow competitive window, Charlie. If we don't make the Olympic team this time, that could be it for us. We'll be at retirement age before the next Olympics roll around.”

I want to laugh at the absurdity of retirement at sixteen or seventeen. Unfortunately, she's not exaggerating by much. During the 2012 Olympics, the girls on the U.S. team ranged in age from fifteen to eighteen. That means that when the next Olympics roll around in four years, we might be too old. It sounds crazy, but it's true.

I don't want to think about everything that is riding on the next few weeks, or all the sacrifices that our families and we have made to get here. I decide to return to an earlier subject. “I wish you hadn't mentioned doughnuts. Now I can't stop thinking about them.”

Gwen laughs. “I'll have my dad bring us some when they come to Detroit for trials.” Her parents never miss a competition.

“When do you get to go home next?” I ask.

Gwen gives me a hopeful smile. “If everything goes as planned, it'll be a while.”

Grinning, I give her a fist bump. “It's going to be a while, then.”

Because if everything goes as planned, we'll be heading to the Olympics.

Rain drives down and runs in mini rivers along the sides of the ranch's dirt roads. The rivulets glisten in the light of the single streetlamp. I'm squatting outside the gym, under a tiny awning, my back pressed against the glass doors. This is the only place I can find at the entire ranch where my phone gets okay reception.

I had five missed calls from Zoe and three texts that read
Call Me!!!!!
I couldn't ignore that many exclamation points.

“You are so hard to get ahold of!” she says when she answers her phone.

“Sporadic reception at the ranch. So, what's up?”

“Michael Hartman.”

She says it like he's famous—a movie star or some celebrity—but I'm drawing a blank. “Who?”

I hear her exasperated puff of air. “He's on the wrestling team, and he's a
junior
. Anyway, there was an event at the park today to raise money for the animal shelter. Bubbles and Barks. You could get your dog washed, and the money went to the shelter. People were standing around with little bottles of soap, blowing bubbles. There were food trucks. It was like a carnival. So I took Minnie.”

Minnie, her Yorkie, is a precious little thing that always makes me smile.

“I'm standing in line to get a snow cone, and I suddenly hear, ‘Cute dog.' I turn around, and it's Michael. Talking. To. Me!”

“She is pretty cute.”

“I know, right? Plus I had her decked out in her pink polka-dot bows. Michael says, ‘Bet she hates the bows, though.' I assure him that she does not. Then he says, ‘My dog would kill me in my sleep if I did that to him.' I look down. He has a bulldog on a leash sitting there. I say, ‘Of course he would. He'd want to wear a football jersey.' And he laughed.”

“The dog?”

“No! Michael!”

I'm smiling, imagining the exchange, wishing I'd been there. Zoe is so comfortable around people, even those she barely knows or just met. Sometimes I envy the ease with which she can move through social situations. I always worry that I'll give too much away, that people will figure out who I am. A measure of fame comes with being an Olympian, and I'm not quite ready to embrace a total lack of privacy. Coach Rachel was seventeen and at the Olympic trials when someone posted a picture of her at a party, in the pool, topless. Some say it was the resulting publicity of her scandalous behavior that caused her to be so distracted that her routines were judged below par and she missed a chance to go to the Olympics. Not that I would ever go topless. Still, I'm not ready to have every aspect of my life scrutinized.

“So then what happened?” I ask, anxious to get to the juicy tidbit that was worthy of five exclamation points.

“That's pretty much it. The snow cone guy interrupted us by asking for my order, so I gave it to him, and he fixed my snow cone way too fast.”

“Oh. I thought maybe there was more.”

“Michael did say ‘See you around' as I was walking off. That could mean something.”

“Do you like him?” I ask.

“I think so. Yeah. I mean, we have study hall together. Not that he's ever really noticed me. Today was the first time he's ever talked to me.” She pauses, then asks, “You think it was the Minnie factor? That he was just taken with my dog?”

I hear the disappointment in her voice, like the reality has hit her that maybe the guy was just making conversation to avoid boredom while waiting in line. “No. You have a class together. He knows who you are, and obviously he wanted to talk to you.”

“I think I got excited for nothing. I do that, don't I? Read too much into things. He was just being nice.”

“Maybe tomorrow you could just say hi to him in class. See how it goes.”

She groans. “I wish you'd been there. Then you could have judged the situation. Confirm whether I overreacted.”

“If I'd been there, he might not have talked to you.”

“There is that. So . . . any hot cowboys? I'm still waiting for my picture.”

“It's not a working ranch.” Another lie. There is way too much work going on at this ranch, just not the cowboy kind. Gwen and I spent time in an ice-filled tub after our last workout, in order to increase our blood flow and help our muscles recover from the strain we'd put on them during our grueling practice. Plus the cooldown helps trigger a deeper sleep. It's not my favorite treatment, but the benefits are worth it. “No cowboys.”

“Bummer.”

“Well, listen. I should probably go. We'll figure it all out when I get back.”

“There's nothing to figure out. You were right. It was nothing.”

“I didn't say it was nothing.”

“It's just that it would be so nice to have a boyfriend, especially one who could take me to prom. Don't you want a boyfriend?”

“I don't know,” I say. But I do want a boyfriend. It would certainly fall into line with the normal life I want. “We'll talk.”

“Okay. See you Tuesday.”

I say good-bye but linger for a moment after I hang up, analyzing the sudden ache in my chest, because Zoe was sharing her weekend with me and I wasn't sharing mine with her. But she doesn't need to know about my gymnastics. Not yet, anyway. At least not until the Olympics are a sure thing. There will be no keeping gymnastics a secret anymore . . .
if
that happens.

I tuck my phone under my arm and sprint toward my cabin, trying to dodge raindrops. But by the time I make it to the doorway of the room I'm sharing with Gwen, I'm drenched.