But I’ve lost my appetite.
APRIL 2020
• CHAPTER 23 •
I’m in a terrible mood. I’m fifteen minutes late to practice because I couldn’t overcome the overwhelming dread of getting out of bed. The sight of Ryan’s spare blue toothbrush in my bathroom made me crumple. I don’t want to face him, but calling in sick would be worse.
I stride across the lobby, past the life-sized cutout of Hallie, beyond the poster with my face hanging dustily from a forgotten spot on the rafters, onto the floor. Ryan is chatting with another coach. His shoulders are hunched, and he leans his chin onto his fist as he talks; from the awkwardly self-conscious way he speaks, I’d bet anything that he’s discussing Nationals, even though I’m out of earshot. Once he notices me approaching, he shifts ever so subtly. He straightens up and clears his throat. He gives a small nod of recognition in my direction but doesn’t pause to say hello. The way he brushes me off looks so subtle to an outsider, but it stings because it’s light-years away from his attitude toward me even just a few days ago. I can’t believe I said that I was falling in love with him and was met with silence.
Hallie’s not here yet. I cruise to the water fountain just to have something to do. I lean against a low practice bar and look at my phone to kill time, but I can’t fully relax. The energy in the gym is all wrong. I can feel Ryan not even halfway across the room. Most of the kid gymnasts are too young or too casual about the sport to have understood the full ramifications of Hallie’s performance at Nationals—if they’re even aware a competition took place, they probably think it’s cool that she went at all—but the older, elite-track girls understand. So do their parents. Especially their parents, the ones who watch Hallie as if she’s a weather vane that can evaluate the gym’s worthiness and predict their own daughters’ success.
Hallie slinks into the gym ten minutes later with her tracksuit hood shielding half her face and quietly settles down in an empty corner of the floor to warm up. I head over to greet her, but she barely looks at me. Ryan joins us, squatting down to Hallie’s level on the floor and giving me a respectable amount of space. Luckily, Hallie is so caught up in her own morose world that I doubt she’ll even notice the tension between me and him.
“Actually, I’m just gonna warm up by myself, if you don’t mind,” Hallie says, slipping her AirPods into her ears and shutting us out.
This isn’t like her. She hasn’t been her typically energetic, goofy, fun-loving self since before Nationals. This isn’t good.
“Okay,” I say uncertainly.
“Just let me know when you’re ready for conditioning, okay?” Ryan asks.
She gives a curt nod, slides into a wide straddle, and slumps forward so her cheek rests against the floor. Sometimes, coaches will sit behind a gymnast in a straddle and press her down flatter into the floor for a better stretch; all I want to do is give her a hug. I hate seeing her so sad like this.
Normally, if Hallie were working on her own, Ryan and I would hang out. But I have nothing to say to him—not anything appropriate that I could say here, anyway. From the way he avoids me, I don’t get the sense he’s interested in speaking to me, either. So, instead, I do a little ab work until I panic that it makes me look like I’m peacocking for him. I get up and straighten up the supply closet, even though nothing is really out of place. I bounce lazily on the trampoline, turning back tuck after back tuck just because they’re simple and fun. I go to the bathroom and run my hands under the faucet for three times as long as I need to, just because I feel lonely and out of place in the one spot that’s always felt like home. I loathe everything about today. Nothing about this entire disastrous situation feels right—nothing.
Eventually, I wander back into the gym and perch on one of the beams to watch Hallie condition with Ryan from a safe distance. After her shaky performance at Worlds last fall, Hallie returned to the gym with a powerful vengeance. She threw herself into her practice with dynamite energy, ready to shape herself into a better athlete. But this time, returning from Nationals, her spirit couldn’t be any different. Across the gym, she’s supposed to be drilling sets of reps on bars: chin-ups, pull-ups, and leg lifts. She dangles loosely from the high bar and works with sloppy form. If she cared about the outcome, she’d work better. Work harder. She’s throwing today’s practice away.
I don’t know the specifics of the ups and downs of Hallie’s athletic career as well as, say, Ryan would, but I know enough: she was a supernaturally talented kid, and when her coaches said she had a real shot at an elite gymnastics career if she took training seriously, her parents made sure she had every advantage: a private coach at Summit, summers at training camps, a tutor so school would be more flexible. She always performed well enough in competitions to nab medals and level up. For Hallie, the Olympics probably never felt like a long shot. And now, to come so close and still worry you’re not quite good enough? That can’t be easy.
I feel for her. I wish circumstances were different—it’s only human to need some time to rebound, recharge, and return with a better attitude. But time isn’t on her side, and if she wastes the next few weeks or months by sulking, she’s letting a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice wither and die. It sounds dramatic and unfair, but so is this sport.
Hallie trudges my way, clutching her side and breathing hard from the workout Ryan just gave her.
“Ryan says we should start with floor today,” she says.
So, apparently, he won’t even speak to me unless it’s through her.
“Sure, let’s go,” I say brightly, trying to lift her mood.
“You want me to warm up tumbling first?” she asks.
That’s our usual routine, but today, I want to try something different.
“Actually, let’s hold off on that for now,” I say. “I want to go over the video of your Nationals routine together.”
She groans. “Do we have to?”
“Yes, we do, because that’s how we’ll know what to target over the next few weeks,” I insist, using my most authoritative voice.
It’s often all too easy to feel transported back in time at Summit, and to lose sight of the fact that I’m actually a decade older than Hallie, but it serves me well to remember I’m in charge sometimes.
“Let’s go, I have it on my phone,” I say.
“I hate this,” she mutters. “You’re the worst.”
“You’ll thank me when you win a medal on floor at the Olympics, okay?” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
We sit with our backs to the cool concrete wall and watch the routine on my phone screen. If it’s cringeworthy for me to watch her stumbles and mistakes again, this time with Jasmine and Barry’s sharp commentary playing in the background, I can only imagine how she feels.
“Ignore the commentary,” I say, turning my phone on silent.
To a casual viewer, Hallie’s routine gleams. She looks like a superstar dream. But to me, the mistakes are obvious: her leap series doesn’t hit the requisite 180-degree splits; there’s just a hair too much power on one tumbling pass; her poise drops as she loses energy toward the end of her routine. The second the video is over, Hallie pushes away the screen.