Finding Our Balance Page 9

  “You’d rather be training, I’d rather be living,” Max laughs. “I’m probably gonna blow off this crap later, honestly. What a waste of time.”

  I don’t know how to respond. The only thing that comes to my mind is “but you’ll get in so much trouble,” though I keep from blurting it out. Instead, I force a horribly fake laugh and glance out the window, waiting for him to say something else. After the longest ten seconds of my life, he does.

  “So, New York, huh? First time?” He pops open a bottle of champagne and pours two glasses. “Bubbly to celebrate?”

  “Sure.” I grab the glass and sip as though I’ve done it a billion times, though in real life not a single drop of alcohol has ever touched my tongue. At first taste, I think, “this is terrible,” and try not to make a face. I’m so nervous about the drink, this hotel room, everything, I forget he asked me a question.

  “This is your first time in New York?” he asks again.

  “Oh, yeah. First time.” For some reason I blush at this as well, and remember an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where some girl had surgery to stop blushing. I need that. Stat. “Um…I mean, it’s not like I get to see anything when I’m here but like…we were in Times Square? I’ve only seen it on TV before. It was really cool.”

  “Times Square is the worst place in this city, and probably even the world, bro. If you loved it there, wait until I show you the real New York.”

  Ouch. Nerdy tourist 1, cool Amalia 0. “I mean, I didn’t love it. I just thought it was cool to see it up close, like, after watching New Year’s Eve stuff every year, the ball dropping, I don’t know.”

  “Nah, I get it. I was just being a dick.” He lounges back on the couch, sinking into the plush cushions. “I know your time is probably tight but after you win every gold medal in Rio, I’ll show you around.”

  Again with my face and the blushing. He can probably see heat lines radiating off of me like a cartoon. “I’m…I don’t think I’ll win any golds. I don’t even know if I’ll make the team.”

  “You will. Maddy was whining about you after the last camp. That means you scare the crap out of her.”

  “Really?” I try not to smile. “That’s a surprise.”

  “Well, yeah, like, you’re better than her on beam. You’re a natural and she works her ass off and is nowhere near as good as you. That kills her.”

  “Unfair. I’m nowhere near a natural,” I argue playfully. “I also worked my ass off. I’m just good at making it look simple. So is Maddy, like, your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, ‘girlfriend,’” Max laughs. “She wishes, bro. We hooked up once last summer after she bombed nationals and now she thinks we’re married. She’s obsessed with me.”

  Ew. I don’t even like Maddy, but I feel duty-bound under some code of girl honor to defend her. “Obsessed with you?” I roll my eyes. “Maybe she just likes you, bro?” I feel bolder than usual and thank my few sips of champagne, its bubbles scrubbing off my outer layer of tension and anxiety, making me assertive and feisty. I sound like Ruby.

  “She’s annoying. All of the elite girls are. You care more about what Vera thinks of you than what guys…” He stops, but the hideousness of what was about to come out from his mouth is already in the air.

  I don’t know whether to laugh or riot. “Than what guys think of us? You really think we care about what you think?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean like, at worlds, you guys win gold medals and then you go and lock yourselves in your hotel room until it’s time to fly home, and you just go right back to training even though you have two months before you have to be at the farm again. You don’t celebrate anything. Everything’s all work all the time. There’s more to life than gymnastics.”

  “Says someone with no chance at actually making the Olympic team.”

  “You don’t have to be a bitch, okay? Jesus. I’m not saying go out and party or get drunk every night, but there’s this thing called balance. Don’t you remember The Shining?”

  I haven’t even heard of The Shining. “No?”

  “Jack Nicholson typing away day after day? ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?’ He went nuts and tried to murder his family with an axe and then froze to death. Just saying.”

  “None of us are going to murder our families just because we train hard. And I know I’m just another ‘crazy elite’ girl who doesn’t care about fun, but if the upside to hard work means getting to go to the Olympics, I think it’s a pretty fair payoff.”

  “It doesn’t have to be one or the other, though!” He looks exasperated and I’m just smirking. “All I’m saying is that it’s annoying to hang out with girls who talk about nothing but rips and leg workouts and beam upgrades. You can be a good gymnast and have a personality. Maybe then I’d give frigid little Maddy the time of day.”

  “Okay, I get that your whole ‘thing’ is being an asshole, but newsflash, not everyone has parents who make a billion dollars a year and can therefore throw money at the best coaches in the world for their son who only wants to waste everyone’s time. My daddy isn’t going to buy my way onto an Olympic team, and neither is Maddy’s or any of the other girls’. None of our spots are a given. We need to put every molecule of energy into our training plans. If we don’t, we don’t make the team because the girl who is focusing 24/7 will make it instead. It’s cool that you don’t have to care about these things, but I do, and Maddy does, so you can call us frigid or bitches or whatever demeaning adjectives you pick up from your He-Man Woman Hater’s club meetings, but at the end of the day, no one has to apologize to you for working hard.”

  Max stares at me with a stunned grin as Ruby steps out of the bathroom in clean clothes, towel on her head. “What’s the matter with you?” she asks Max. “Mal charming your pants off?”

  He picks up our champagne glasses, mine still half-full, and dumps them into the sink. “Oh yeah,” he responds, avoiding her stare. “She’s a barrel of laughs. Enjoy your food, ladies. Should be here soon. I have to get ready for a date.”

  “What a douche,” Ruby says after he closes himself into the bedroom. “What did you guys talk about?”

  There’s a knock on the door before I can answer. Lunch. Perfect timing, universe.

  ***

  The rest of New York is a blur. A cab ride back to Times Square, a black SUV to the airport, and before I know it, I’m back in Lynnwood, exhausted but too worked up to sleep.

  I still can’t believe how pissed off I got at Max. The more I think about what I screamed into his stupid beautiful face, the angrier I get at what a selfish dick he is, and at myself for finding him remotely attractive.

  As I crawl into bed, my phone suddenly dings with a text notification. Jack. We grew up together, born only two months apart, and now he’s like the only friend I have outside of gymnastics. He’s one of the smartest people I know, nerdy cute in a John Green anti-hero kind of way, but completely oblivious to the fact that this is something girls are now into. He hates sports, preferring to spend time on the laptop he built from scratch, writing code and playing video games. He also possesses the ability to think reasonably and logically about things instead of letting his brain explode into an emotional fireball the way I do, so we’re a hundred percent different in every possible way, and yet somehow, we’re a good fit. Yin yang and all that.

  “Lights on? Back from NY? Famous yet?” I smile and swipe to reply, but before I do I glance outside and see him making faces from behind the small rectangular window that looks into his basement, where he spends every waking hour. I motion for him to come over, up onto the roof of the porch overhang and then in through my window so we don’t disturb my parents.

  “Am I annoying?” I blurt when he gets inside. Might as well get to the point.

  “What? Hi, by the way.”

  “Hi. Do you think I’m annoying? Like if you wanna hang out but I have to train or whatever, is it annoying? Would you be mad if I chose training over partying with you?”<
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  “Um.” Jack pauses for a second, pushing his too-long brown hair aside. He won’t lie to me, but he always phrases his responses in the most diplomatic way possible so they don’t sound so bad. “I mean…well, first of all, we don’t ‘party.’ And no offense, but when you can’t hang out, I survive. There are other things in my life.”

  I sigh, and relay the Max debacle to him, starting from our first meeting at the farm and taking him on a joyride through my vapid verbal assault at the Palace. I leave out the part about me being totally in love with him for the better part of an afternoon because really, who needs to know?

  “What a dick,” Jack says once I’m done.

  “I know, right? I can’t even articulate why I’m mad about what he said, but I don’t think I’ve ever been this angry.”

  “Well, he’s belittling your sport, so there’s that. Oh, and there’s also the fact that he’s taking feminism back to the 1950s by expecting women to throw out everything they love and work hard for when a man shows interest.”

  “All I could think of was like, elites only have a couple of years in the sport before they’re done, and you have to work your ass of just to get to that level. But making it to the Olympics is like…you go even beyond that. You give every little part of yourself to your sport and it still might not happen. Or it does happen, but one thing goes wrong and it’s over.”

  “Like Ruby?”

  “Yes, exactly. One microscopic miscalculation while tumbling and everything ends in an instant.”

  No wonder I’m so mad. Ruby. I still remember the sound of her Achilles rupturing over the beat of her floor music back in 2012. I was there for it all; the recovery, the depression, hitting her lowest low, and moving back home to Iowa. That’s why she trained for her entire life? And then she said screw it, and decided to come back knowing she’d have to go through it all over again because that little bug was still inside her. There’s something that pushes you from deep down that tells you no matter what the outcome, the worst thing you can do is not try, and that’s why we do it. Because we have to. That’s who we are. The goal is the Olympics, but the pushing yourself to do what 99% of humans can’t is why we keep at it even knowing how impossible it might be.

  “It’s just offensive that some guy thinks he’s more important than something we kill ourselves trying to achieve.”

  “He sounds like he has no direction in his life, and he’s jealous of those who do,” Jack shrugs. “Don’t even give him the satisfaction of knowing he got to you.”

  “Too late for that,” I grin. “Whatever. Thanks Jacks. I’m around gym nonsense all the time…I get so trapped in that bubble I forget how normal people think. I was so embarrassed after I freaked out…it felt like I was overreacting.”

  “Coming from an outsider, your anger is well-placed. Seriously, if I could do anything even half as well as you do gymnastics, I wouldn’t spend a second thinking about anything but how to make myself the best. If anyone gave me crap about it, they wouldn’t be worth having in my life.”

  I’m about to emphatically agree, thrilled that someone understands where I’m coming from, but before I can speak, my dad does a slow clap from the arch of my bedroom door.

  “Hi Mr. Blanchard,” Jack says cheerfully.

  “Hi Jack. It’s after midnight, Jack. Go home, Jack.”

  Jack grins sheepishly and disappears through the window. I watch him run across the lawn and slip through his own window, and then say goodnight to my dad before climbing into bed. Even after Jack’s visit, I can’t stop thinking about Max and my justified outburst, and I spend a good amount of time replaying it in my head as I try to fall asleep.

  The good thing is that if I wasn’t over my little crush before, I’m pretty sure this seals the deal. If nothing else, my priorities are back on track. And I won’t lose sight of them again. I am so done with boys.

  Monday, May 9, 2016

  88 Days Left

  Practice, school, practice, sleep. Practice, school, practice, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. The past two weeks have been like living the movie Groundhog Day.

  “You have two days until we leave for the Open,” Natasha drills into us at today’s morning practice, as if we haven’t been thinking about this season our entire lives. “We’re officially in crunch time. For the next three practices, we’re going into competition mode. Three vaults, three bar sets, six beams, one full floor routine. I need you to attack the equipment and work to stick dismounts. But don’t push too hard…I don’t want any messed up feet, ankles, or knees until after the Olympics this time, okay?”

  I sneak a glance at Ruby, who actually smiles at this. It’s been four years, so she’s definitely had “closure” or whatever but I never got there. I still want to cry for her.

  “Because we want to save your lower extremities from untimely collapse, we’ll work problem tumbling passes and dismounts into the pit until we’re happy with how they look in the air, and then try one or two on a hard surface,” Sergei adds before giving the floor back to Natasha.

  “Amalia, you’re doing the all-around, so start on vault…you’ll be with Polina today. Ruby, you’re starting on bars with me. Emerson, I believe Sergei will start you on floor.”

  Our mouths say okay, but all three of us are starting to mentally check out. We’ve all been putting in way more effort than usual, going on team jogs before practice in the mornings, doing no-impact pool conditioning at night, and even trying hot yoga on the weekends at Emerson’s suggestion.

  “That’s exactly what you need to relax, clear your mind, and get centered,” Emerson had said after I almost burned down the uneven bars out of frustration one afternoon. Every day it’s something new on bars, and at this point I’m just hoping things will all fall into place when they need to.

  It’s been nonstop routine repetition at MGMA. Multiple full routines each session, hard landings, pressure sets…but the second any of us shows signs of burnout, we’re immediately pulled and sent away to regroup.

  “Training routines when you’re mentally at your limit leads to injury more than anything,” Sergei had lectured. He won the Olympic all-around gold when he was 19, two quads ago in 2008, and after his victory immediately went to the press with a story of the extreme pressure he was under at the hands of the men’s program. He almost walked away from the sport several times, so while he may be a no-nonsense drill sergeant as a coach, he also totally understands what it’s like to reach your breaking point.

  Though Emerson wasn’t fully on board.

  “If you can’t train under pressure, how do you expect to win medals?” she scoffed, noting that Sergei’s own story ended in a win. “This isn’t some spiritual retreat where we all hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ after discussing our feelings.”

  They’re both right in a way, though I’m with the coaches on this one. In the gym, the more frustrated I get with a routine, the more likely I am to go into complete disaster mode. I have a better handle on things in competition, but training is a different story, so I’m grateful for the mental vacations.

  We are eating, sleeping, and breathing gymnastics. When I’m at school, I’m going over routines and corrections in my head instead of doing any work, and when I’m home all my parents talk about is the gym.

  My one reprieve has been Jack, who comes over at night to literally Netflix and chill, no double entendre necessary. He asks me how training was each day, I say “fine,” and that’s it. It’s the perfect symbiotic relationship, with Jack the host and me the parasite, grateful to have someone who doesn’t care at all about gymnastics, though I honestly don’t know what he’s getting out of our friendship. I’m asleep 20 minutes into whatever movie he chooses, and have pretty much never asked him about how his computery things are going. I’m the worst.

  I jump in place to wake myself up a bit before jogging over to the vault table. By the time I start my sprint down the track, I feel my body respond, my muscles finally waking up and ready to get to
work. But I doubt they’re ready to get me through a vault warm-up and three stuck Amanars.