“No need to be so intense,” Lucas says defensively. He slurps down his beer. “I got it.”
Somehow, I have a hard time believing he’s “got it.” I had trained for that moment since the time I was four years old, when my ballet instructor complained I had too much energy for dance and suggested I switch to gymnastics instead. By age eight, I was practicing four times a week. At twelve, I sat in a straddle on my living room floor, transfixed as Lindsay Tillerson won the all-around gold—I knew I could follow in her footsteps. Two years later, I convinced my parents to let me drop out of school and study with a tutor so I could train full-time under the legendary coach Dimitri Federov. In this sport, it’s outrageous for anyone to claim an easy path to Olympic glory. But everyone from Dimitri to Jasmine to the girls who sent me fan emails all said the same thing: I had a better chance than any other athlete out there.
I was furious that I’d just missed the cutoff to be eligible for the 2008 Olympics. Sixteen is the minimum age to compete, and my birthday fell just weeks after the Beijing games at the end of August. So I threw myself into the next four years of training, desperate because I had dreamed of this one moment for nearly my entire life.
The Olympic Trials for gymnastics are held just seven weeks before the actual Olympic Games. Trials and the Games are held closely together to limit the likelihood of anything disastrous happening in the middle; god forbid a gymnast sprain an ankle, or worse, develop. In 2012, fourteen athletes competed for just five spots on the team, plus three alternates. I performed beautifully all day long, and floor was my final event of the competition. I liked the idea of finishing on a high note.
And then I crashed. It was over. All of it. Gone. Recovering from surgery was tough because it seemed as if there was nothing to recover for. I was nineteen years old. Even if my knee healed well, I was too old to seriously consider the prospect of training for Rio in four years. The cruel reality of the sport is that you train your entire life for one event, and then the moment disappears in a flash. By twenty-one, twenty-two—forget about twenty-three—your body has taken beatings for too many years.
So, the same night my career ended, Jasmine’s took off. She didn’t just make the Olympic team—she became the star of it. While she competed in London, I watched the competition on the couch, recovering from knee surgery. In lulls between performances from the American gymnasts, the commentators noted that Avery Abrams, widely considered the front-runner, the shoo-in, hadn’t made the team due to a last-minute injury. They rattled my name off like a fun fact, the same way they commented on the architecture of the stadium and the number of Swarovski crystals sewn onto competition leotards. Jasmine won a gold on bars, a silver on beam, and a gold team medal.
I had imagined that I’d return home from London as America’s sweetheart. I’d model for Wheaties boxes, chat up talk show hosts, and land Sports Illustrated covers for a few months. Then, once the mainstream interest in my athletic prowess had died down, I’d enjoy a revered career within the world of gymnastics. I’d be a commentator on TV, design a collection of leotards for GK, and give motivational speeches to aspiring athletes across the country. There was no plan B.
Meanwhile, Jasmine was on the Wheaties box. She was on the cover of not only Sports Illustrated, but People, Seventeen, and Essence, too. She was invited to New York Fashion Week and the Grammys. She won Dancing with the Stars and seemed to be Ellen DeGeneres’s new best friend. Little girls across the country did cartwheels in leotards she designed. We had been best friends, training side by side for six years. At first, she called often, asking sincere questions about my knee surgery and saying she wished I could be there with her. She even sent me a care package of souvenirs from London—British chocolate bars and a commemorative mug stamped with Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding portrait, taken the year before. I could barely stand to reply, and I let our friendship wither to monthly texts. I saw her in person just once after the Olympics; it was her twentieth birthday dinner, and I couldn’t come up with a plausible excuse to turn down the invitation. It felt like all the comfort had been sucked out of the air between us. She didn’t bother texting at all after that.
Lucas makes a show of sliding his phone into his pocket. I don’t know what the protocol is for ending a bad date early, but I sense with absolute clarity that I should leave. I saw a woman on TV once slap money on the bar and saunter away, which looked supremely classy, but I’m not carrying any cash. I don’t want to leave Lucas—as awful as he is—with the bill, just on the matter of principle. Instead, before I lose my nerve, I clear my throat and tell Lucas I’m leaving.
“I’m going to head out, but have a good night,” I say.
I signal the bartender. As I wait for her to come my way, I stare straight ahead, not brave enough to even glance at Lucas.
He sputters, “You’re leaving? Now?”
I hand my credit card to the bartender. “Just for the one drink, please,” I tell her. Then I turn to my date. “I’m sorry, yes, I’m leaving. It’s been a long night.”
I grab my purse and jacket and stride through Jade Castle to get to the parking lot. I’ve only had a few sips of beer; I should be fine to drive home. Before I back the car out of the spot, my fingers find the preset for the angriest indie rock channel on the radio. The presets haven’t changed since I was in high school. I take the familiar turns through the town center, replaying Lucas’s moronically cruel behavior on a loop in my head. If I had to venture a guess, this is not how Tyler felt after his first night out with Brianna.
When I reach my driveway a few minutes later, I’m still too angry to get out of the car. I know that when I walk into the house, Mom and Dad will probably pepper me with questions about how the night went, and I’m not ready to face that.
I look up Ryan’s phone number in my contacts. The unfamiliar area code is proof that he’s an outsider—a fresh start. He saw me in the context of the sport, where career-ending falls are unfortunately more common than you might think. They’re par for the course, not a local tragedy. Unlike Lucas, Ryan—hopefully—doesn’t look at me and think, train wreck. He’s seen me draped in gold medals. And it’s not like I have anything else going on. I dial his number.
“Avery?” he asks, sounding confused.
“I’ve thought about your offer,” I say, voice shaking with remnants of anger. “I’d like to take you up on it.”
• CHAPTER 3 •
Arriving at Summit hurls me back in time. On Thursday afternoon, I swing open the front door in a daze, but no one else seems fazed by my entrance. Moms congregate in the windowed lobby, watching their children’s practice. The office is still home to racks of leotards with matching scrunchies and warm-up shorts available for purchase. The entire building has the mingled scents of chalk and sweat. The only clues to the passage of time are the selection of photos hung in the front hall. There used to be a larger-than-life print of me at a competition with my signature in black Sharpie. It’s gone now, and in its stead are a series of framed team portraits. I recognize a few of the faces—the younger siblings of the girls in my age group. The last time I saw these kids, they were seven or eight years old. Now they’re teenagers.