Not all gymnasts had the ability to compartmentalize like that, breaking a meet up into parts and separating them with bolted and locked doors once they were done. One fall on one event couldn’t be the reason you crumbled, just as one success couldn’t be the reason you lost focus.
Her grips came out of the bag along with a roll of pre-wrap and tape. I grabbed it from her hands without saying anything and directed her over to the side and out of the way. I helped her wrap both wrists, enjoying the opportunity to be close to her as I did.
Her score flashed on the LED screen that ran the circumference of the arena just as it blasted over the loud speaker. Her head came up to take a look at the fifteen point eight, but that look was it.
I could feel the camera over my shoulder, zoomed in on her face to get her reaction.
This was a huge event, and every moment of it would be immortalized on TV and internet everywhere. Maybe that was the reason we didn’t say all that much. Neither one of us knew when someone was there or when the camera was on.
Callie didn’t let it bother her though. She moved with the ease of someone watched and filmed twenty four hours a day for a reality show—like the cameras weren’t there.
She had a steady hand and a focused gaze.
It was like she had none of the same monsters bullying their way around my stomach.
The thing I liked to call—
Nerves.
Raw and chewed out and used up, I finally reached the point where they got so active, I went numb.
Kind of like getting to the point where you have to pee so bad it goes away, or starving from a hunger so deep it stops.
That’s what I was feeling for nearly the entire competition last night. I’d done okay.
Actually, I’d done well, but the whole thing felt like a dream. I floated around in my head so much I almost forgot where I was.
Success felt like enjoyment, but only when I saw the way it lit Nik’s eyes and body up like a beacon. He was without a doubt my biggest cheerleader, practically running along the runway of the vault with me, jumping five feet in the air at the end of my routines with a ridiculous fist bump, and always waiting with uplifting and encouraging words for me when I rejoined him.
He didn’t hover and tell me what I should have been doing or what I shouldn’t because he knew I didn’t need it. My mind was already crowded enough, all of the voices of my naysayers, supporters, my self-doubt and opposing drive, and the many hours of advice Nik had managed to cram all the way inside from the time he’d shaken my spit-soaked hand.
Now I was on the final event of the second day of Trials, and by some gift delivered straight from God’s hands, I’d been given the chance to finish on Beam.
I knew most people wouldn’t praise this kind of fate, but for me, it felt like home.
It felt like the best chance I had at finishing on a high note, going out with a bang, and earning a spot on my third Olympic team.
I expected Nik to give me some kind of check-in question to see how I was feeling or a pep talk to make sure I was ready.
But as he smiled at me with genuine warmth, affection, and pride, he only had one thing to say.
“I can’t wait to watch you up there.”
And, after hearing that, I knew I’d do everything I could to make sure I gave him one hell of a show.
Climbing the steps to the elevated performance platform, I looked to the apparatus rather than the crowd, the dull roar of its patrons sounding like the waves of the ocean. Louder it would roll in and softer out, over and over again as gymnasts around me set off their reaction with the biggest performances or mistakes of their lives.
Floor music started up in the background, a melodic beat chosen by someone else to accompany and showcase their gymnastics. But I did as I always did, using it as my own and transforming my body to match its tempo and rhythm. The mood would change mine, but only in the artistic sense of my routine.
Timing of a Beam routine is important, a predetermined length set and policed by the judges at each and every competition. That’s what marveled me about my method, moving at different speeds on every occasion, even from last night to tonight, all based on the background music. And yet, I somehow managed to adjust and recalibrate each move to meld into the other, making my end come at a reliably uniform pace.
I greeted the judges with a salute and smile, stepping directly to the Beam in preparation for my mount and letting my hands hover. Once you touched the Beam your time started, and for me, a deep breath before that came to fruition was all important.
I closed my eyes briefly and shut out everything else, settling both open palms on to the top and simultaneously opening them again.
My feet left the ground courtesy of my arms, my press mount a perfect test of strength and body control in one.
The slightly roughened brown of the Beam stood out between my hands as it was dotted with white, the remnants of chalk from gymnasts past telling a story of its own. Legs and feet and hands all touched that surface at separate times on purpose and by mistake, a grip to avoid a fall and scrunch of an unsure foot’s toe.
With one squeeze of my fingers I lowered back to sitting, swinging one leg through the other and using a one handed back walkover to stand.
Flourish and pizazz ended my movements by a flick of each hand, and my chin pressed high toward the ceiling. It’s one of the hardest things for a new gymnast to learn, not looking down at a narrow piece of footing that all but screams at you to.
But that wasn’t the way to succeed, the way to feel steady and at home. The key was moving on four inches just as you would on the forty foot floor.
I danced my way to the end up the line and pulled my feet together and my arms over my head. With one breath and swing, I set back into my back handspring layout layout series.
Each skill ended with my feet resolutely on the surface, no bobbles or balance checks to speak of. The routine flew by, each moment blurring into the next as if I was performing it in my own gym for Nik’s eyes alone.
With only the dismount left, I tapped a foot to the end of the Beam behind me and gulped one breath. Roughly sixteen feet extended out in front of me, waiting to be eaten up by precision and skill and a blind-eye type of courage.
One foot in front of the other I moved into my round off back handspring combination and sprang off the end, looking to the sky in thanks when both feet landed on the ground and didn’t move.
A sense of accomplishment rained down on me along with the noise of the crowd, but what stood out more than anything was the sound of Nik’s ecstatic voice.
“Yes! Hell yes, Cal!”
I caught the sight of another fist pump as I rounded the Beam to the stairs, launching myself off of them and into his waiting arms. He hugged me big before letting me go and looking excitedly into my eyes.
“You did it,” he said simply.
“We don’t know the score yet,” I reasoned, knowing that anything was possible and that feeling didn’t always translate into score. And the feeling had been nearly legendary. Knowing Nik was watching me, knowing he was invested in my success and happiness and everything that came from the two together, I had totally peacocked the shit out of it.
But Nik was insistent, arguing, “You didn’t see what I just saw, Cal. I know the goddamn score.”
I looked to the score strip as I heard my name called over the loudspeaker, the flash of the fifteen point four nearly bringing me to the floor.
I knew my total score for the two days prior to this event, and I knew the standings of all the other gymnasts around me. A fifteen point four meant I had placed second overall.