“Not bad,” I smiled.
He hid his smirk as he turned and walked away.
I joined the other girls at the bars. They were ahead of me, standing around the chalk bucket and fixing their grips—well, everyone but June. She was on the other side of the mat, chalking her grips at a separate bucket.
“How’s the ankle?” Lexi asked with a knowing smile.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”
“You know, I had to wrap my ankle this morning as well and Coach Winter didn’t bother helping me.”
I kept my focus on my grips. “You should ask him to help next time, maybe he thinks you’re better at it than I am.”
Molly snorted. “You’re delusional.”
She and Rosie walked off to take the bars first and I hung back with Lexi. She nudged my shoulder and tilted her head to where Erik was working with June at another set of bars. He held her arms above her head and swept them down, showing her what form to take her for dismount. “You know he used to compete.”
I nodded. “Most coaches were gymnasts at one point.”
She shook her head. “He didn’t just compete, he made it all the way to the Olympics and quit just after trials.”
“Really?” I watched him step back from the mat and wave June onto the bars. He was focused on her, his eyes narrowed, his coaching face in place. “Was he injured or something?”
She shrugged. “No one knows for sure. He never did an interview about it or anything. He’s pretty much stayed out of the spotlight ever since.”
Weird.
“After he quit, he disappeared for a while and then popped up in Seattle to open this gym. He was only nineteen at the time. Crazy, right?”
I nodded, mesmerized by the missing parts of Lexi’s story. Why would he quit right before the Olympics? How could a nineteen-year-old afford to start his own business?
June dismounted from the high bar, stuck her landing, and squealed.
Erik clapped. “Great, June. Did you feel how fast that last twist was? It needs be like that every time.”
June nodded gleefully before turning to us. Her expression changed quickly, turning supercilious. She sauntered off the mat and walked right up to me, clapping her grips so chalk particles spiraled through the air, nearly choking me.
“You’re up, Brie.”
I called my mom later that night when Molly and the other girls were downstairs finishing up dinner. She’d been trying to get ahold of me since I’d arrived, but I’d been busy, not to mention a part of me wanted to put distance between my life in Seattle and my life back home. I could almost feel normal here, light, free from the pressures mounting in Austin.
“I checked your bank account today.”
I cursed under my breath, annoyed with myself for giving her access to it in the first place.
“Oh?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant about it.
“You promised me you had enough money to get through until Rio.”
I could feel my throat closing up. I hadn’t thought about the balance in two days, but I knew it was still as abysmal as when I’d left it. I’d counted the drinks at the bar the night before, tallying up what it had cost Lexi to pay for them. She didn’t ask us to reimburse her, but I’d been nervous the whole night that she would.
“And I do,” I replied, pulling confidence out of thin air.
My mom sighed, and the weight of it nearly broke my heart in two.
“Mom, I swear. I still have some cash on me and besides, everything here is pretty much paid for.”
The cash was a lie, but the rest wasn’t.
“They’ve got food and everything for you?”
I smiled, because for once I wasn’t lying. “Yes. Tons of healthy stuff that tastes like high-protein cardboard, and they aren’t charging me for rent, obviously. The airfare to Rio has already been covered, so don’t worry. I don’t need much money while I’m here, I swear.”
This time when she spoke again, I could sense a lightness in her tone. I figured she was relieved to know I wouldn’t be asking for any money.
“And you know what?” I continued. “When I get back from Rio, we’re going to celebrate on me,” I said, smiling at the image of my mother and me dressed up at a fancy restaurant. We never ate out while I was growing up. I hadn’t even been to a real restaurant until I went with a friend’s family when I was thirteen. I’d been embarrassed to admit that fact at the time, so I sat in silence, marveling at how the price of just one meal would buy us groceries for a week. I’d feigned a lack of appetite and ordered a small salad that I was embarrassed to learn only came as a side to an entree. I shook the memory from my head and turned to look out the window.
“I don’t want you worrying about any of that while you’re there, Brie. Just focus on gymnastics. I’ve been picking up a lot of extra hours while you’ve been gone.”
I ground my teeth together. My mom deserved more than this life. She deserved more than bland food and long, thankless hours. She was the most selfless person I knew and it wasn’t fair that life had dealt her such a shitty hand.
The USOC rewards $25,000, $15,000, and $10,000 for each gold, silver, and bronze medal earned at the Olympics—hardly life-changing money for most professional athletes, but any one of those sums would make an immediate impact on my life, let alone more than one. Plus, if I was smart about it, I could easily spin my success into sponsorships and endorsement deals. I had no limits. If they wanted to slap my photo onto cereal boxes? Perfect. Leotards? Makes sense. Tampons? Sure, I’d go with the flow. (Ha.) I would shill for whatever I had to to turn our lives around, but first I had to win. First, I had to become a household name worth mentioning.