Brie’s eyes bored into me.
“Got it?”
“Yes sir,” they answered.
Brie pushed up off the couch. “Is that all?”
“Be ready to work out in twenty minutes. We’ll meet at the hangar.”
Before the second sentence had left my lips, she was brushing past the couch and heading up the stairs. The other girls stared back and forth between us, studying my reaction.
“I think she’s really tired,” Molly said with a tight smile. “She had a super early flight.”
Brie wasn’t tired, she was indignant. I’d dealt with plenty of gymnasts like her in my years of coaching. In my experience, there were two ways to get a gymnast’s respect: earn it or demand it. Brie’s temperament proved she would resent me if I continued to force it, so I made a mental note to ease up on her during the workout.
Twenty minutes later, the five of them strolled in wearing tank tops and yoga pants. Brie was the last one to walk in, eyeing the place tentatively and keeping her distance from the other girls. I’d embarrassed her earlier in front of them and she was still brooding.
I stood back and watched her as the girls started stretching on the mat. She was thin, delicate. Other gymnasts wore their muscle like a badge of honor, but Brie didn’t have that type of body. She looked more like a doll, soft and feminine. Maybe that’s why her fire continued to surprise me. I kept assuming she would fall into place, take her spot in line, keep her head down and work, but as I showed the girls around the facility, pointing out the ropes and weight sets, she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“You’ll do five circuits,” I said, walking them through the obstacle course-style workout I’d set up. “You’ll start by going up and down the rope twice without using your legs or feet to help. After that you’ll move to the high bar and then to the floor.”
I’d done the circuit earlier, testing it out. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but there was no sense in babying them. The next month wouldn’t be easy and the sooner they realized that, the better.
Brie was the first one to line up for the circuit and I almost worried she wouldn’t be able to handle it, but the second she took the rope, I saw a glimpse of the strength her body kept hidden away. Those slender arms were stronger than they looked. She didn’t flinch going up and down the rope and I watched, waiting to nail her for using her feet to assist her, but she had her legs straight out in a V the entire way up and down.
“Nice work, Brie,” I said once her feet hit the mat.
She brushed past me with her chin raised just enough to set my olive branch aflame. Her silence told me I hadn’t earned her respect.
Not yet.
Chapter Five
Brie
Gymnastics, like polo, tends to be a sport for the rich. My mom’s job as a social worker hardly brought home enough money to cover food, clothes, and rent. With no way to afford the thousands of dollars a month for gym dues and training, I knew she must have negotiated a special rate for me with the owners.
She always kept a smile on her face and tried hard to give me the same rose-colored memories as other kids—but I wasn’t deaf to her hushed phone calls with collection agencies, nor blind to the stress lines that appeared at the end of every month as the bills started to roll in.
I remembered being on a first-name basis with Chuck, the greasy, balding EZ Pawn owner that always remembered my favorite Dum Dum flavor was blue raspberry. At the beginning of every month, I’d watch my mom pass her late mother’s diamond pendant necklace over the counter, and I would giggle as the man looked at it closely with funny lighted eyeglasses. It had seemed like a game, part of our monthly routine, until the December our car broke down on the side of the highway a few miles from our house. After towing it to a nearby mechanic and hearing the diagnosis, we took a cold bus to see Chuck for the last time. Out of habit, he took the necklace out of a drawer and placed it on the counter when he saw us coming. But, rather than passing over the bank envelope like normal, my mom shook her head and put her old wedding ring down beside it. After a few whispered words, we left without either, and the bus ride home was one of the first times I’d seen my mom cry.
I used to wonder sadly where the jewelry that should have been my inheritance ended up, but as I grew up I would hear stories about people greedily fighting over the remnants of their parents’ estate, and I realized I was actually lucky. When the day would come that my mother died and there were no cherished heirlooms or family riches to pass down, I’d know it was because she’d already given me everything of herself that she had to give.
My father had left before I was born, never part of our dynamic duo, and truthfully, he was hardly missed through my childhood. My mom and I were a team. She arranged her days, her life, around me. She went into work at 5:00 AM every day so she could finish up in time to pick me up from school and quiz me about vocabulary words on the way to the gym. Five days a week, she sat with the other parents, watching me practice for hours on end with a forgotten paperback sitting on her lap. Every skill I mastered, from a back walkover to a double layout, my mom was there to see it. I’d stick it, smile, and glance up to see her flash me a thumbs up.
While she was committed to my gymnastics, she never pressured me to stay in it for the long haul. Nearly every week, she’d ask if I was still enjoying myself, if my heart was still in it. I knew she was scared of becoming a stage mom, of pushing me to do something I hated. I always reassured her that I loved it, and it was the truth. Gymnastics was in my heart. Competing gave me a rush of endorphins like nothing had before.