Finding Our Balance Read online

  “A little friendly competition never hurt anyone!” Danielle says gleefully into the camera, after which Ruby quickly blurts out, “It’s not that friendly.”

  Everyone in the crowd laughs. Danielle ignores the comment, grimacing underneath her grin. “Finally, Amalia, you’re the baby of the team. What is it like training with superstars?”

  I brighten my eyes and smile before answering. “Are you kidding me? It’s amazing!” I gush, my voice sounding more bubbly and upbeat than normal. “This is really nerdy, but up until last year, I had pictures of Emerson on my wall! It’s like a dream come true to get to train with her. Ruby, we’ve been training together for a long time, and I was in the gym when she got injured. It’s an inspiration seeing her work every day after what she’s been through. She’s my best friend and the person I want to be when I grow up.”

  “You’ve only been training at this level for two years, you didn’t qualify to nationals last summer, and you have no international experience. Do you think the Olympics are a possibility for you?

  I swallow while carefully forming an answer. I am the all-American girl-next-door underdog and have to sound grateful for the opportunity, but confident enough in myself to prove I belong.

  “I credit who I am as a gymnast to my coach, Natasha,” I start. “Before I began elite gymnastics, I was still training at my highest physical capacity because she didn’t want to limit me, even though back then my biggest goal was getting a college scholarship. Natasha treated me like I was on the same level as Ruby, which made my transition into elite training pretty seamless because I already had the strength, the endurance, the mental toughness…she used that foundation to help me reach the highest level of U.S. competition in a short time, and now she’s gonna coach me all the way to the Olympic Games.”

  The crowd roars as I smile shyly.

  “Thank you very much, ladies, and good luck this summer!” Danielle says before turning to face the camera for a close-up. “Tune in tonight to see highlights from today’s Road to Rio Celebration, including demo performances from sports like fencing, volleyball, archery, taekwondo, and of course, gymnastics.”

  We freeze in place, smiling as the camera pans out to get a view of Times Square behind us, and then finally exhale when the director gives us the cue.

  “Nice meeting you, ladies,” Danielle says, sounding a bit colder than her on-air personality. Before we can answer, she is rushed away by a small entourage.

  I spot yet another assistant speed-walking toward our group. Like the reporter, we’re about to be whisked away to our next stop on the itinerary, back to the hotel to train our routines quickly in the conference center.

  Ruby nudges me, directing my gaze to Emerson, who is taking selfies in front of the staging area. Selfies she’ll send out to her hundred thousand followers through Twitter and Instagram with a caption like “Can’t believe I’m only #100days from making my dreams come true!”

  I laugh, but I want selfies of my own. I drag Ruby over and we take a bunch of snaps, first just the two of us but then surprisingly, Emerson joins us and for a second it feels like we’re all best friends.

  Until the assistant, mid-panic attack, spots us. “I’m going to have a heart attack and I’m only 27!” is his frustrated shriek. “You’re throwing us off-schedule! Hurry up!”

  “It was their idea!” Emerson. Of course.

  ***

  “At least you’re not boring,” Polina quips, closing the door to the conference center doubling as a practice gym. “No stock answers here!”

  “I don’t even remember a word I said,” I mumble, out of breath from the mad dash back to the hotel. “I was so nervous.”

  “You were actually great. Articulate. You looked at ease. The crowd loved you, and you came off confident but down-to-earth,” Natasha remarks. “It’s the other two who need to start begging for Vera’s forgiveness. Emerson doesn’t need a coach? Ruby wants to stab Emerson? There goes our whole ‘we’re all great friends in addition to teammates!’ vibe.”

  I jog around the perimeter of the room to start warming up and don’t notice until the middle of my second lap that both Ruby and Emerson are slumped in the corner of the blue floor mat, snacking on granola bars and bananas.

  “Dude, we have, like, two hours,” Ruby laughs. “This is literally our only free time until after the Olympics.”

  I change my route and run over to my teammates, grabbing a banana on the way as Natasha checks her watch. “You can start warming up at 10,” she says. “Thirty minutes for general stretch, ten minutes of basics on your demo events, ten minutes of full routines…just hit three demo routines each and we’ll head back down.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m doing for my demo,” Emerson whispers, moving into an over-split as naturally as most normal humans breathe.

  Of course, Natasha overhears. “Sergei went over it with you before you left,” she scolds. “Glide kip mount, toe-on to handstand, or a toe-on half if you’re feeling up to it, pike circle around, jump to the high bar, giant full, layout flyaway dismount. No releases. No transitions. Easy and clean.”

  “I’ve done demos with releases before,” Emerson tests the waters.

  “No. Don’t even try me. Absolutely not. The last thing we need is you falling at a demo to get the press talking about the gym change being a bad decision, you not being mentally ready, you peaking at worlds…just no.”

  “Not even, like, my shaposh? I have literally never fallen on a shaposh in my life. Sergei would let me do the shaposh.”

  “Sergei isn’t here, so you answer to me. I don’t want your hands leaving the bars except for your kindergarten-level transition.” Natasha gives Polina a look of exasperation. She usually keeps her cool with Ruby’s attitude, but Emerson is a whole new level of hell. When Natasha reaches her limits, one glance at Polina puts the strict former ballerina in charge.

  “If you do anything outside of the routine Sergei gave you, even in training, you’re on mommy and me duty for the next month,” Polina threatens.

  “If you ever make me go near a toddler, I’ll have Vera on the phone so fast…I’m sure she’d love to hear that the best gymnast in the country is thinking of early retirement.”

  “Please,” Natasha laughs. “You’re good, Emerson, but everyone’s replaceable.”

  “She got that from Dance Moms,” Ruby whispers to me, and I stifle a laugh. I can tell Emerson and Natasha are still testing things out, but I can’t imagine ever talking to an adult – especially my coach – the way Emerson does. My feelings for my coaches have always been a bizarre mix of tension, fear, respect, admiration, and trust with only a tiny bit of friendly rebellion thrown in once I hit 14. I always get so close to my coaches, and feel like I can tell them things I can’t even tell my parents. With Natasha especially, there’s a good balance of business in the gym and friendship outside of it.

  Coaches are the big decision-makers in a gymnast’s career, but there’s always teamwork in the best relationships, especially as a gymnast gets older. But Emerson sees herself as an equal, or even like the coach is only there as her personal assistant, managing the schedule and moving mats but not actually an authority figure.

  Emerson is independent and doesn’t seem to need or want anyone, a self-made champion who always fends for herself. At nationals two years ago, she didn’t hit her super difficult double arabian beam dismount even once in training. Her coach at the time said she should go back to a double pike, her dismount from the year before, even though it wasn’t worth as much in difficulty points. Emerson refused.

  She stumbled out of it in the first day of competition, but still wouldn’t relent. When she finally landed it on the second day, it was flawless and has been ever since.

  “If I did what he said, if I downgraded, I wouldn’t have won my first title at worlds,” she’d told me one morning before practice. “It came down to practically hundredths of a point between me and the girl who got silver. If I changed my d
ismount to play it safe, I wouldn’t have won, period. Coaches don’t always know what’s best.”

  And because Natasha isn’t even really her coach, Emerson trusts her even less.

  “I’ll try not to do anything crazy in the demo,” Emerson finally concedes, though she always had to have the last word. “But you can never know what might happen in the moment.”

  ***

  After a seamless training session in the makeshift gym, another faceless, nameless production assistant collects us and herds us back to the white tent. We’re beginning to lose steam from crappy airplane sleep, and I can only pay a tiny bit of attention to a fencing demo on the monitor while trying to keep my muscles warm.

  Finally, right on schedule, someone shoves us over to the main stage and we’re introduced to the crowd.

  “Give a big welcome to three of the 2016 Olympic gymnasts, Ruby Spencer, Emerson Bedford, and Amalia Blanchard!”

  I gulp, nerves hitting me the second I hear my name. Plus, I’m feeling the superstitious side of me flare up when the announcer calls me a member of the Olympic team. I don’t really believe in jinxing things, but with something this big I also don’t want to take any chances.

  We march out in front of the crowd, walking with straight backs and chins up. I picture us as the Von Trapp children marching out in front of their whistling father before they learned how to sing and for a second it makes me smile.

  When we reach the middle of the floor, the announcer asks us to introduce ourselves, something I wasn’t prepared for. Compete death-defying skills under intense pressure to win gold with millions of people around the world watching at the Olympic Games? No big deal. Say my name in front of a couple hundred people only barely watching? Terror.

  “I’m Ruby Spencer, I’m 19, I’m from Clear Lake, Iowa, I train in Seattle, and I’ll be showing off some tumbling from my floor routine. Anything else?”

  “No, you’re good,” the announcer smiles.

  “My name is Emerson Bedford, I’m 18, I’m from Chicago, Illinois, and I just moved to Seattle to train at the best gym in the country.” She adds a sweet smile for good measure. “Today, I’ll be performing on the uneven bars.”

  I wait a couple of seconds to make sure Emerson’s done talking before I start speaking. “Um, I’m Amalia Rose Blanchard, I’m 15, and I was born and raised in Seattle, where I train…oh, and I’m doing a beam routine.”

  Ruby gives me a grin that says, “See? Talking is easy.”

  Emerson and I step off to the side while Ruby gets ready for floor. She does a couple of round-off back handsprings before nodding to the sound engineer, who gets her music ready. Not Ruby’s real floor music, but something the crowd here could clap along to while she did tumbling she learned when she was eight.

  Though Ruby has one of the most difficult floor routines in the world, her performance today includes nothing more than a back tuck, a front tuck, and a layout. She tosses in some leaps and turns to go with her last-minute choreography, but it doesn’t matter what a sad, thrown-together routine it is. The crowd loves it.

  She waves to everyone before jogging off, laughing when she sees me politely clapping. “You like that? Where’s my gold medal?”

  Emerson snorts, tapping her foot impatiently while she waits for the crew to anchor the uneven bars to the floor. When she gets the green light, she marches out, waving, and begins performing the routine she was told to perform.

  But instead of dismounting after her full pirouette on the high bar, she takes a couple of extra swings, building her momentum around the bar before throwing her signature skill, the one she had named after her in the official Code of Points at worlds the year before. The Bedford is a tricky skill, combining a piked stalder with a release move called a Tkachev, during which she lets go of the bar, soars over backwards to the other side, and catches it again as gravity brings her down. She does the Tkachev with her body piked, a bit more difficult than the typical straddle position, making it a pretty big risk.

  She catches it with no problems, however. Those watching gasp as she lets go of the bar, thinking it’s a mistake, but then they cheer wildly when she wraps her hands safely back around again. I watch her smile to herself as she dismounts with the planned layout flyaway, and she walks off the stage without even acknowledging the crowd.

  “I’d watch my ass if I were you,” Ruby warns, arms crossed.

  “Natasha isn’t my coach. She can’t do anything. I’m not teaching babies how to roll down triangle mats and she knows it. Besides, I did Natasha a favor…the crowd was bored to tears. I got them interested.”

  I nibble the corner of my thumbnail, watching the seamless transition as one set of stagehands drags the bars away while another pushes the beam out. I figure Emerson is right, but can’t believe she actually did it…especially since it was such a dangerous skill; she didn’t warm it up earlier, and she didn’t have someone spotting her. Girls have broken their legs and necks on Tkachevs before. Stupid.

  My own routine is simple…a couple of easy leaps and turns, front and back walkovers, a back tuck if I felt like it (which I did), and a layout dismount. Easy. But nothing thrilling. I move through it with no problems, receiving a polite smattering of applause from the crowd. A smile, a wave, and I’m off. Anticlimactic.

  We march back out to take a press photo in front of the Team USA banner, and then are dismissed back to Natasha, who has a pasted-on smile. She doesn’t say a word about Emerson’s routine, which I know from experience is worse than getting yelled at.

  But I’m pretty sure Emerson’s right. Natasha’s not her coach. There’s nothing she can do.

  Wednesday, April 27, 2016

  100 Days Left

  “Why are you even here?” Ruby asks Max as she barrels into his hotel room-slash-apartment. “You’re like, the worst guy on the team.”

  “I know, right? I’m pretty sure that’s the point. The good ones keep training while the suckers get sent to do the dirty work,” he snorts. “Opposite from the women’s team strategy, obviously. Hey Amalia.”

  He remembered my name?! I smile, and think about how awkward my face is while I’m doing it. It’s definitely too cheesy, like an elementary school photo. I take it down a notch and respond smoothly. “Hey.”

  While Natasha and Emerson spend an hour signing autographs in aggressive hostility after what Emerson pulled on bars, Ruby and I have free reign in New York City. The thing is, we’re so exhausted, after ten minutes of walking around Times Square, we’re ready to crash. Neither of us knows anyone in New York, but then Ruby remembers Max’s parents have an executive suite at the Palace.

  It’s a super fancy hotel, and while his parents are off traveling the world for work (his dad) and shopping (his mom), Max is the king of their little urban castle. I didn’t want to come, I swear, but we don’t know the city and have nothing else to do.

  “Nice digs,” Ruby says, throwing her backpack on an armchair. “You mind if I shower? I’m covered in makeup and sweat.”

  “Go for it. I’ll order room service. Salmon and veggies?”

  “Always.”

  “I’ll make it three.” Ruby gives him a double thumbs up before sprinting to the bathroom.

  Max dials the restaurant, winking at me like a real-life Prince Charming. I sit on the couch, feeling more like an ugly stepsister than Cinderella. Come on, Mal. It took you five minutes to develop a crush on this guy and an entire afternoon to get over it. Let’s not go through that again.

  He hangs up and gives me a quick smile. His eyes seriously look like they’re twinkling.

  “Have fun today?” he asks, moving into the kitchen.

  “Um, yeah, kind of. I’d rather be training?” I immediately blush. I sound like a freak. “I mean, like, I just hate interviews so much,” I add, rolling my eyes as if I do interviews on the regular.