The Go-for-Gold Gymnasts Read online

  A map had come with my schedule, and it showed a main hallway that ran the length of the building, with wings jutting out from that on both the first and second floors. When I glanced again at the packet, I saw that Birchbark High had over a thousand students. I wondered how people avoided getting lost.

  It seemed as if there were a thousand people in the cafeteria, even though I knew it would only be the other incoming freshmen and their parents. They had tables set up by last name, and I waited in the G–J line for my name tag and the sheet that would tell me where I needed to go.

  My name tag said JESSICA IVY on it in big, bubbly letters, even though practically no one called me Jessica. I glanced around, trying to see if I should stick the tag on my shirt or on some nonconformist place like the bottom of my jean skirt or if I should ball it up and throw it in the trash. I didn’t want to seem like a complete dweeb before I even started school. Plus, I knew half of these kids from middle school; why would we need name tags?

  “Put your name tag on,” my mother said, taking it from me and unpeeling it from its back. Luckily, I intercepted her before she could actually stick it on my chest. In no universe would that be cool.

  “Mom,” I hissed. In the end, I pressed the name tag to my chest anyway. I knew she’d insist on it.

  “Now everyone knows who you are,” she said, smiling. “I can’t believe my baby’s in high school already.”

  “Please, Mom, not another anecdote about me dancing around the living room or something. Let’s just see where we need to go first.”

  Technically, I was due in my Biology classroom to catch the last five minutes of a meet-and-greet with the teacher, but I still needed to work out the issue of having P.E. at the end of the day, even though my mother had called the school about it several times already. So my mother went to talk to the guidance counselor about switching my schedule, and I decided to check out my American Government class a little early.

  The room was on the second floor, and the halls were mostly empty, as everyone had gone to their first-period classrooms. I found the door with the nameplate that read MR. FREEMAN and peered in through the narrow glass window. The teacher was standing at the front of the room; at least, I assumed he was the teacher, given that he was wearing a tie and writing something on the board. He was supertall.

  I was still staring through the window, trying to figure out if he looked like his class would be easy or hard, interesting or dull, when he caught sight of me. I slid to the right, hoping that he wouldn’t investigate, but then the door opened.

  “Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”

  “Um, no,” I said. “That’s okay. I was just…looking around.”

  Up close, he was like that giant in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” I’m used to people towering over me, but this teacher was like a basketball player. If I had to sit in class and listen to him lecture, I’d probably have a stiff neck by the end of the day.

  “Are you in first-period American Government?” he asked.

  This was not how I wanted to meet one of my teachers. “Second-period,” I said.

  “Well, you’re a little early,” he said. “But come on in. We can’t have you lurking in hallways.”

  I edged into the room, smiling sheepishly in the direction of the other students and their parents sitting at the desks. I didn’t actually make eye contact, because I was hoping that no one would remember this embarrassing interruption once school started. Keeping my eyes lowered, I banged my hip against a desk as I passed. So much for playing it cool.

  “Watch it,” the girl sitting at the desk said.

  I murmured an apology but didn’t look up until I was safely seated at one of the back desks. I almost expected Watch-It Girl to have turned around and glared at me, but when I glanced up, she was flicking her long blond hair, her attention back on Mr. Freeman.

  “And so that’s how grading will work in this class,” Mr. Freeman said, finishing a discussion he’d obviously started before my appearance. “Any questions?”

  A guy with glasses and light hair that flipped up around his ears raised his hand.

  “Yes, Norman?” Mr. Freeman said.

  “Do you grade on a curve?” Norman asked. The way he asked the question made it clear he did not approve of that kind of grading. Definitely a suck-up.

  Mr. Freeman smiled. “No, Norman, I don’t grade on a curve.”

  Watch-It Girl leaned across the aisle and whispered something to a girl I recognized from last year; her name was Ashley, I remembered. She’d been one of the popular kids, someone I had seen across the lunchroom but never this close up. Her hair was shinier than I remembered it, and so straight it looked like it could have been made of plastic.

  “All right, then. Class dismissed,” Mr. Freeman said. “If anyone needs help finding their next room, let me know.”

  As everyone else filed out of the room, including Norman, Watch-It Girl, and Ashley, Mr. Freeman approached my desk. “I can see that you don’t need any assistance with that,” he said. “Jessica, is it?”

  “Jessie,” I said, correcting him, wishing again that I wasn’t wearing such a stupid name tag.

  “Jessie Ivy,” he said. “I read about you in the sports section a couple of weeks ago. You’re the gymnast, right?”

  It was one of the first times I’d ever been recognized in public as a gymnast, almost like I was a celebrity. I felt the heat rising in my cheeks; one of the worst things about being a redhead was the constant threat that your feelings would show all over your face and you’d look like a lobster.

  “Yeah,” I said. I hoped he wouldn’t confuse me with one of the other girls and ask me what medal I’d won.

  Other people were starting to trickle into the room. I glanced around, trying to see if I recognized anyone from middle school. I was relieved that Watch-It Girl and Ashley weren’t in my class, or Norman, if he was as smart as he seemed to be.

  “It’s a tough sport,” Mr. Freeman said, sitting on the edge of one of the desks next to me.

  In my book, it was the toughest, and it often didn’t get the respect it deserved. To be a great gymnast, you had to be strong but flexible, athletic but graceful. I was always happy to hear someone acknowledge that it was more than dancing around and doing somersaults, but I wondered why Mr. Freeman was still talking to me. Shouldn’t he have been up at the front of the room, welcoming people coming in?

  “High school is difficult, too,” Mr. Freeman said. I just looked at him, trying to figure out where he was going with this.

  His dark brown eyes were kind as he looked down at me, so much so that his next words almost didn’t register. “I’d hate for anyone to think they were getting a free pass on school, just because they had made a choice to focus their energies on something else. This is American Government, a class about democracy. And here, everyone is held to the same standards. Do you understand?”

  He tapped my desk, as if to say, we’re done here, and left me gaping after him. I got his message, loud and clear, but I didn’t get why he was saying it to me. All of those times that my mom had called the school about switching my schedule, had she ever said anything that would have led teachers to believe I expected special treatment? It was true that in the past, teachers had often given me extensions on my homework or allowed me to take exams home, to accommodate my busy training schedule, but I had never been called on it before, especially when school hadn’t even started yet.

  I dimly heard Mr. Freeman giving his welcoming spiel, but I wasn’t paying much attention, still too lost in my own thoughts. I didn’t even notice my mother slip into the classroom until she had slid into the seat next to mine, leaning in to whisper, “It’s all worked out. You’ll have P.E. first period, so that you won’t miss any morning practice.”

  I nodded, hoping she would take that as response enough. The last thing I wanted was for Mr. Freeman to assume I thought I could talk through his class, since he obviously already assumed I thought I was entitled
to a lot.

  “I was able to keep the rest of your schedule the same,” my mother said, beaming at me. “This teacher seems nice.”

  I looked down at my hands, clasped on top of the desk, and wondered how I was going to keep up with the workload Mr. Freeman expected of me, deal with the other pressures of high school, and still stay on top of my gymnastics, all at the same time.

  “How was the open house?” my stepdad, Rick, asked that night at dinner. “Did you feel a draft come through?”

  I’d been passing the peas to Josh, but stopped to try to decipher Rick’s question. “What?”

  “It was open, right? So the wind must’ve gone right through the building.”

  I should’ve known it was one of Rick’s cheesy jokes.

  Still, I made a halfhearted attempt to laugh, just to let him know that I appreciated the effort. Josh rolled his eyes, Tiffany was too busy painting her nails at the dinner table to even notice, and my mother muttered, “Dear Lord,” under her breath, as though praying to be saved from Rick’s corny humor.

  “I can’t text my friends during dinner, but Tiffany can have her own salon and spa operating at the table?” Josh said.

  My mother drew her eyebrows together to let Josh know she didn’t appreciate the tone, but she tapped the table in front of Tiffany’s plate. “Put the nail polish away,” she said. “It’s giving us all a headache.”

  Now it was Tiffany’s turn to roll her eyes, but she obeyed. She was always painting her nails, like there was a rule that they couldn’t be the same color for a whole week.

  “Is high school much harder than middle school?” I asked. It must’ve seemed like an abrupt question to the rest of my family, because everyone turned to look at me. But it was something I’d been thinking about ever since my experience with Mr. Freeman earlier that afternoon.

  “Is being an Elite gymnast harder than being Level Eight?” Josh asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not technically an Elite gymnast yet.”

  “Josh,” my mother admonished him under her breath.

  He waved his fork in a gesture that sent a noodle from his pasta salad flying back onto his plate. “What? I can’t keep up with these things. It was a legitimate question. Forgive me for trying to put it in terms I thought she would understand.”

  I resented the implication that I only spoke in gymnastics lingo, although it was a little bit fair. “Of course it’s harder,” I said. “It’s a higher level. There are bigger skills you need to learn, your technique is graded tougher, and you are competing against the best gymnasts in the world.”

  Josh jabbed at the air with his fork, although luckily, this time there were no noodles on it. “Well, then. There you go.”

  Although he came across as a slacker who cared more about hanging out with his friends and playing video games than about school, Josh was really smart. He’d scored only a few hundred points away from perfect on the SATs. So if he said that high school was going to be more of a challenge than middle school, then I should definitely be worried.

  As if I hadn’t been already.

  At gym, we fell back into a routine, after all the hoopla surrounding the parade and Nationals. Our coaches, Mo and Cheng, made us do the same moves over and over until we got them perfect. For me, it felt like a relief. It had been distracting to have all of that other stuff going on; my mother had taped the brief news segment with my dad, although I hadn’t watched it yet. I was anxious just to get back to work.

  I landed my double front tuck on the floor a little short, which sent me falling backward on my butt. I was slow to get up, not because I was really hurt, but because this wasn’t the first time I’d landed the pass that way, and I was getting sore.

  “You’re short,” Cheng said, waving the next girl on. Noelle flew across the floor, completing her round-off to back handspring to two-and-a-half twist perfectly. It was possibly her simplest pass, but still, it was frustrating to see it coming so easily to her while I was struggling.

  I knew I’d been short. He didn’t need to tell me that; of course I knew it. My tailbone knew it, and by the time I went to bed that night, I’d have an angry bruise on one butt cheek that would know it, too.

  As Christina got set to tumble across the floor, Britt leaned over to whisper, “Duh. Of course you’re short.”

  “Excuse me?” I said, without any thought to controlling the volume of my voice. Cheng glanced over disapprovingly.

  Britt didn’t have time to respond before it was her turn, and then Cheng was motioning me to follow. I took a deep breath, trying to clear my mind before I took off running, but the only thing swirling around in my head was: You’re short; of course you’re short; you’re short; of course you’re short. I launched into my front handspring, but I knew I wasn’t going to have enough power for the double front, and so I rolled out of the first somersault instead, channeling all of that momentum into a gymnastics move that a three-year-old could do.

  Cheng shook his head at me. “Follow through!” he snapped. He was angry, although it was really because he was concerned, since balking on a skill like that could be really dangerous. That was how head and neck injuries happened. I felt shaky even thinking about the possible consequences of such a huge mistake.

  I knew I needed to get higher in the air to land the double front properly, but when my feet left the ground, I felt like an anvil. Instead of flying, all I could do was fall.

  “Hey,” Britt said, jabbing me in the back with her elbow as I took my place at one corner of the floor. “Your height.”

  I really didn’t want to get into any more trouble with Cheng, but I couldn’t help myself. “What?”

  “It was a joke, get it? He said you were short, and I said of course you are, because of your height.”

  When I made a move to turn back around, she jabbed me again.

  “Ow!” I said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Noelle land her double twist solidly, and I heard the satisfying thunk of the springboard beneath the floor mat as she planted both her feet. I made a show of rubbing the spot on my back where Britt had elbowed me. “Right now, my only problem is you,” I muttered. “We’re supposed to be practicing.”

  “Is it school on Monday?” Britt whispered. But, since Britt’s normal volume was decibels above everyone else’s, it was more like a loud stage whisper. I shook my head quickly, gesturing for her to be quiet.

  “I’m nervous, too,” she continued, ignoring me. Cheng was adjusting Christina’s position, making his hands into a flat plane to show how her body should look in the air. “But excited. Aren’t you excited? I mean, this is our chance.”

  “Our chance to what?” I asked despite myself. Christina was rubbing her toes in the chalk on the floor, gaining some last-minute traction before she started her tumbling pass.

  “Our chance to reinvent ourselves,” Britt said, her eyes shining. “Nobody knows me at this school—except for Noelle and Christina, of course. And this is your first year of high school. We could talk in British accents or wear fedoras.…We could be whoever we wanted to be.”

  Christina landed her double twist cleanly, with just a small step backward. In a competition, she could have “danced” that step by throwing her hands up in a salute and making it look intentional, and she probably wouldn’t even have lost a tenth of a point. Whereas, if I kept landing on my butt or not landing at all, I’d be completely out of the running for any medal.

  It was Britt’s turn. She gave me a little salute. “Cheerio!” she said, and then she was off, her arms pumping, throwing herself into her round-off to back handspring to whip back to piked full-in. She had a problem opposite from the one I’d been having: she sometimes had too much energy and ended up bounding almost off the floor mat entirely with the force of her landing.

  Cheng shouted, “Control!”

  It seemed to me like Britt’s issues were a lot more fixable than mine. She had al
l of the power she needed, and all of the confidence; all she had to learn was how to refine it a bit. She’d be brave enough to go into a new school and fake a British accent, but she wouldn’t need to do it in the first place. She didn’t need to reinvent herself, because she already knew who she was.

  Whereas I was starting to feel like I was always coming up short—on my landings, with my friends, with school. If there was anyone who needed reinvention, it was me, but I didn’t know if I had what it would take to pull it off.

  Cheng nodded for me to go. I stood up on the balls of my feet, preparing to spring into my tumbling pass. This was the moment I always dreaded and looked forward to the most: the moment when I hadn’t yet committed to anything, when there were all the possibilities in the world ahead of me. As long as I stayed in this corner, getting ready for my next pass, I hadn’t failed yet. I could still tell myself that this time it could be different, that my body could be a feather instead of an anvil, and I just might fly.

  The weekend before school started, my mom took me shopping. First, we had to find all of the supplies on the list I’d received in the mail. This year, they wanted me to have a graphing calculator, which cost eighty dollars, and a very specific type of agenda planner, which wasn’t easy to find. I thought back to times when my supplies list had consisted of things like Magic Markers and extra tissues for the classroom, but when I pointed that out to my mother, she just waved her hand.

  “What was that, elementary school?” she asked. “Although I’ll grant you it was cheaper.”

  Once we were finished with all the supplies, she wanted to take me to the mall for clothes. I tried to convince her that she should just give me some money and I could go with Britt or Christina or Noelle, but she wasn’t having it.

  “You’ll come home with three belts and no pants,” she said. “Now, let’s hurry, before everything’s picked clean.”