Winning Team Read online

  “I know you’re mad at me,” I said. “You think I told Mo about your, uh, balance problems to be mean. Or, I don’t know, maybe you thought I was hoping to move in on your friends and take your place in the gym by forcing you out. Is that it? Is that why you’re angry?”

  “You know why,” Jessie said through the door, but this time her voice was a lot closer; I could tell she was standing on the other side of the door.

  “But that’s not why I did it,” I said. “I want you in the gym. I want to train with you. I want to be your friend. And friends can’t let friends throw everything away, which is what I was afraid you were doing.”

  “Friends”—the emphasis Jessie put on the word made it sound almost like a curse—“don’t go behind their friends’ backs and spill all their secrets.”

  “They do if those secrets are dangerous,” I said quietly. “They do if they’re worried about their friends.”

  Tiffany was starting to look interested in this whole exchange, and I gave her a wobbly smile to let her know that everything was good, this was just two gym buddies talking shop. I repeated my plea for Jessie to open the door, and finally it cracked open an inch. I saw a sliver of her bloodshot eyes, and I knew she’d been crying.

  “Go away,” Jessie said. “We’re not friends anymore. I don’t know if we ever were.”

  “But—”

  “No. Leave me alone, Britt. I don’t have anything more to say to you.” And with that, she slammed the door in my face.

  Tiffany let out a long breath, as though she’d been watching an intense reality show and it was finally the commercial break. “Wow, she is mad,” she said. “What was that all about?”

  I tried to remember the lie I’d come up with earlier—something about balance problems. “Jessie’s having trouble on the beam,” I mumbled. “And she doesn’t think I should’ve gone to the coach about it.”

  “God, you gymnasts argue about the stupidest stuff.” Tiffany started to show me to the door, but I shook my head. I already knew the way.

  The worst part was that I couldn’t blame Jessie at all. It would have been so much easier if I could’ve just pretended that she was being unreasonable, that it wasn’t worth it to be her friend anyway, and that eventually she’d realize how ridiculous she was being. But when I put myself in her shoes, I knew exactly why she was so mad. I’d be angry and hurt and unforgiving, too.

  This was the part that my grandmother hadn’t talked about, that Atticus hadn’t told Scout. If I were Jessie, I’d have hated me. So then, did empathizing with Jessie mean that I should hate myself? I turned the question over and over in my head, until I felt like my brain might explode. Maybe this was how Boo Radley had become such a recluse—he empathized so much with other people’s feelings that he started having trouble sorting out his own. There it had been only a few days of this mess for me, and already I was thinking that holing up somewhere else for a while didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

  Without Jessie at the gym, I found myself eating snack alone at the table where we’d once sat together. Who was I kidding? Even if she were still at the gym, it wasn’t like she would’ve chosen to sit with me. Nobody sits with Boo Radley.

  I’d seen the names of the competitors at the upcoming qualifier, and now it was official: Jessie wasn’t in it. Apparently, Mo had left the possibility open that Jessie could still come back and try out, but Jessie’s mom thought it best if they focused on her health first. At that rate, Jessie wouldn’t have been able to try out for the Elite team until fall.

  Christina and Noelle gave me dirty looks as they passed. They were eating their snacks by the pro shop again, where Mrs. Flores was working the desk. Before I could give in to second thoughts, I tossed my apple core into the trash and strode over to where they were sitting.

  “Can I talk to both of you?” I asked. The people whose opinions I cared about, in order of importance, were Mom, Mo, and Jessie, my only true friend. I’d already tackled all three of those confrontations, with mixed results; now I was ready to take on Christina and Noelle. Considering that we’d never really been friends in the first place, I didn’t have much to lose.

  “I know you’re both mad at me.” I noticed that Mrs. Flores seemed to be watching the whole exchange with interest, and I dropped my voice. “Look, maybe we can go somewhere else?”

  Christina gave me a haughty look over her cup of yogurt. “Anything you have to say, you can say right here.”

  “Okay,” I said, although I darted one more glance at Mrs. Flores. God only knew what Christina had told her already. “I just wanted to let you know that I understand, and it’s okay.”

  Noelle looked perplexed. “Understand what?”

  “Why you didn’t say anything about Jessie earlier,” I said. “You’re not bad friends at all—you were just too close to see it.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Christina said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have your approval.”

  I was doing my patented foot-in-mouth thing again, but this time I was able to recognize and try to correct it. “No—that’s not what I mean. I just don’t think you should feel guilty. Christina, you have a ton of pressure on you with this qualifier coming up, and with—” I almost said, with your mom—who I knew could be a bit overbearing—but I stopped myself just in time. Although Mrs. Flores had gone back to sorting incoming mail, I knew she could still hear us.

  “And Noelle, your parents own a store, right?” I tried to remember what Jessie had told me about Noelle’s home life. “I know they need you to help out a lot. And even though you’re not competing at the qualifier, you’re the only gymnast in the state who got invited to the Nationals, at the training camp. I mean, wow. I can’t imagine how awesome that must be, but I know it must be stressful.”

  Noelle chewed on her bottom lip, as though she was actually thinking about what I was saying, and I felt encouraged. “All I’m trying to say is that of course you guys know each other better than I know you. You’ve been a team for years. But sometimes it takes a person on the outside to see what’s going on, and that’s what happened with me and Jessie.”

  I took a deep breath. The last part would be the hardest. “It’s not because I don’t care about her, or you guys. If anything, it’s the opposite. I care so much about being a part of this team that I would hate to see anything bring it down.”

  It was totally true. It had only been a few short weeks, but more than anything in the world I wanted to feel as if I truly belonged with these three girls. I wanted to be a Texas Twister, through the good and the bad.

  Noelle looked at her hands, pulling at a cuticle as she avoided my gaze. Christina stared at me silently, and for a moment I allowed myself to hope. But then her black eyes turned steely, and I knew my entire speech had been useless, even before she opened her mouth.

  “At this point,” she said, “the only thing bringing this team down is you.”

  I wondered why I was the villain in her scenario, when I was at least making an attempt to get into their skins and understand how they were feeling. If Christina had taken even a second to put herself in my position, she wouldn’t have bothered being mean to me anymore, because she’d have seen that I was already feeling completely defeated.

  I tried to convince my grandmother that she should go easy on the homeschooling, considering that the competition season was starting, but she wasn’t having it. “You need to exercise your mind as well as your body,” she said.

  It felt like all I’d been doing for the past few weeks was exercising my mind—mostly, trying to figure out how to get out of all the messes I had gotten myself into. But to Grandma, that wasn’t the same as writing an essay about To Kill a Mockingbird, so I guessed that was what I had to do.

  I was trying to craft a thesis statement about the meaning of the book’s title, but I couldn’t concentrate. “Grandma, what if you do what you know is the right thing, but it blows up in your face?”


  One thing my grandmother was very good at was knowing when I was just malingering (one of her favorite words to describe me) and when something was seriously going on. She seemed to sense that this question was important to me, because she didn’t even try to get me back on task.

  “Define ‘blows up in your face,’” she said.

  “Well, like if you lost a friend over it.”

  She thought about this for a moment. “Are you positive you did the right thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then there are two possibilities,” she said. “Your friend will realize that, and come back to you, or else, maybe she’s not as good a friend as you thought—if she can’t see that you acted in the only way you could’ve.”

  Adults always said things like that, about how you were better off, blah-blah-blah. But I missed Jessie. She was the only person who’d made me feel welcome when I came to Texas. And sometimes being right didn’t feel quite as good as having your friend back.

  Before Grandma was forced to prod me, I went back to writing my essay. The title of To Kill a Mockingbird, I wrote, referred to a saying that Atticus used, about how it was a sin to kill a mockingbird, because all they did was provide beautiful music, without hurting anyone. Was I the mockingbird in this case? But as much as I hated to admit it, I had hurt people—from Christina, when I rubbed it in her face about the full-in, to Noelle, when I took Sparky, to Jessie, when I betrayed her trust.

  So then, was Jessie the mockingbird? Had it been a sin to reveal her secret the way I did, when she’d done nothing to me?

  I didn’t think so. It might have been cheesy, what my grandmother had said about true friends realizing you were acting in their best interests. But it was true. I’d seen a mockingbird with a broken wing, and I had to stop it from trying to fly, in case it got hurt.

  A mockingbird couldn’t thank me for my help, of course. And maybe that wasn’t the point. Maybe the only thing that mattered was that the mockingbird was able to fly away someday, healthy and happy.

  Suddenly, analyzing To Kill a Mockingbird seemed a lot less complicated than all the stuff swirling in my head.

  Cheng had the three of us—minus Jessie now—work out on the floor. We would line up at one corner and, at Cheng’s signal, flip and tumble our way to the opposite corner. Then we would start the whole process over, going back and forth with our passes until he determined we’d practiced enough.

  For me, it felt like one of those classic word problems: a farmer needs to get his chicken, fox, and grain over to the other side of the river, but the fox can never be alone with the chicken, and the chicken can never be alone with the grain. In this case, I was the chicken. If I was left with the fox (Christina), she’d eat me alive. If I was left with the grain (Noelle)…Well, it wasn’t really like I would eat her. So maybe it was more like I was left with two foxes.

  Christina landed her double twist and went to take her place in line behind me, nudging my shoulder as she passed. I knew it was on purpose. There was only an entire gym full of space for her to walk around me, so there was no reason to come that close. I tried to ignore her, but I couldn’t help taking a small step forward to put more space between us. I watched Noelle land her tumbling run (feet perfectly planted on the mat, waist not piked too far down, of course) before preparing to take my turn again.

  At least the girls were now just cold and quiet. A few days before, when the incident with Jessie was still fresh, Christina would whisper nasty things if we happened to be standing near each other at the chalk bowl or something. She whispered to me about how it was all my fault, about how much better off the Texas Twisters had been without me, and about how I should go back to Ohio.

  I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. When I thought back to my first day at the gym, how nervous I’d been, how much I’d wanted these girls to like me, I felt this pain in my chest that was something like the burn I got after eating Grandma’s spicy chili, but different. It was deeper. When I’d first moved to Austin, I had thought that these girls were all sticks in the mud who could use some lightening up, and that I was just the girl to help them do it. Now it seemed as if all my attempts at fun had been misguided, and when it came time to deal with something really serious, I’d messed it up.

  Before Christina set off on her next tumbling run, Cheng told her to try the tucked full-in she’d been struggling with.

  “You’ll spot me, right?” she asked, and her voice shook slightly. So the Great Christina was human, after all.

  “I’ll be right here,” Cheng said, but he didn’t agree to spot her, exactly. He obviously wanted her to try it without his help, although he’d be there in case she needed him.

  Christina’s back was to me, so I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell by the way she clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides that she was nervous. Even though we were far from being friends, I found myself cheering her on—in my head, of course; I didn’t want to get her Glare of Death again.

  “Come on, Christina,” Noelle said. “You can do this.”

  “Just on the floor?” Christina asked.

  Cheng nodded. “You ready,” he said.

  Her shoulders moved up and down in an exaggerated motion, as if she were taking a deep breath, and then she stretched her fingers reflexively before straightening her arms at her sides, with one foot flat on the ground and the other pointed in front of her.

  Once she took off, it was like everything happened in slow motion. She was running, springing into her round-off back handspring, and then she was in the air, her body flipping and twisting. I knew when she was still in midair that she wasn’t going to make it, and in those stretched-out moments it felt almost as if I should say something, do something to help her. I saw Cheng moving toward her, but everything felt impossibly delayed.

  In reality, it was only a millisecond before Christina crashed onto the floor, her feet touching the mat an instant before her head did, her body folding at the waist. The only thing that stopped her from face-planting was Cheng’s intervention; he took hold of her arm and pulled her upper body away from the floor.

  That was why it could be nerve-racking to do a skill for the first time without a spot. Your trainer might have been there, but you had to be realistic. He was not always going to be able to get there in time to save you.

  Noelle and I rushed over to Christina. At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about Jessie or the fact that Christina hated me. I just wanted to make sure she was okay.

  Mrs. Flores also came running over from the parents’ viewing section, and she bent over Christina. I heard her exclaiming over her daughter. As soon as she realized that it had looked scarier than it actually was, her tone changed and she stood up.

  “The qualifier is in a week,” she hissed at Christina. “If you can’t get this, you won’t make Elite. Do you want that? To watch everyone leave you behind?”

  Whoa. I hadn’t transitioned yet from my concern about Christina, but apparently her mother had. Christina was rising to her feet now, and her mom towered over her in her alligator-skin heels, lecturing her about the importance of doing something over and over again until you got it right.

  “The new girl can do this move,” Christina’s mom was saying as she led a stunned Christina off to the side. I didn’t know if the dazed look was the aftereffect of the fall, or if it was surprise at her mother’s attack. “When are you going to?”

  I couldn’t believe that, at one point, I’d actually been jealous of Christina’s relationship with her mother. I’d envied the fact that her mom was always at the gym and seemed to care about her daughter’s gymnastics, unlike my mom, who was caught up in her own work. But I realized that my mother didn’t really care whether I moved up a level or not, as long as I was happy and I tried my best. I don’t know if I could have handled her breathing down my neck all the time.

  I turned to Noelle. “Man,” I said loudly, “I wish I had half of Christina’s grace.”

  She wrinkled he
r forehead in confusion. “What?”

  “Have you seen her full turn on beam? It’s, like, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The judges love that kind of stuff, but I suck at it.”

  “Um…okay.”

  I continued undaunted. “I mean, you can learn how to do tumbling passes, you know? Anyone can do a piked full-in after a bit of practice. But if you’re not a good dancer, forget it. It’s so much harder to work on that.”

  Noelle glanced over at Mrs. Flores and Christina, who weren’t bothering to disguise the fact that they were listening. Finally, she seemed to get it. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Christina’s always been awesome at the artistic part of gymnastics.”

  “So lucky,” I said. “She’ll get that piked full-in by next week; but me? I don’t think I’ll ever learn how to do a perfect arabesque.”

  Mrs. Flores had her hand on Christina’s shoulder. She gave it a squeeze. “Let me buy you a Gatorade at the concession,” she said. “I’m sure Cheng would understand if you took a five-minute break.”

  Christina turned to leave with her mom, but she shot me a look over her shoulder. I couldn’t tell if she was grateful for my intervention, but it didn’t matter. I’d just done what I hoped someone else might do for me—been a friend.

  Cheng gave us all a short break, and I headed in to the locker room. I don’t know how long I sat on the bench, lost in my own thoughts, before Christina and Noelle came in. Christina was holding her Gatorade, and I watched them approach like those slow zombies in the movies. I knew they were going to tear the flesh from my limbs and snack on my intestines, but I was glued to the spot. I couldn’t do anything but stare as they stopped right in front of me.

  “We—” Noelle began.

  “Listen—” Christina said.

  They glanced at each other. “Let me go first,” Christina said. “I’m the one who’s been such a heinous jerk. Britt, we want to apologize.”