The Life of a Gymnast

Chapter 38

The doorbell rings and I run down the stairs to greet my friends. Catt was standing on the door step on her phone, and when I open the door, she looks up at me and smiles. "Hey Mia!"

"Hey!", I smile back. "Come on in", I say as if she was a first time guest. In reality, Catt pretty much lived here on the weekends. We had a pool with a diving board in the back, and for years we taught ourselves new skills off of it until my mom would yell at us not to.

I see Emma's mom pull up to the curb so I hold the door open for her as well. When she comes in we all take our stuff downstairs into the basement.

My basement is painted lime green, which actually looks pretty cool. There's a smart TV and a couch to the left of the stairs, and to the right is my desk. There's also a ping pong table and an air hockey table next to the couch.

Catt and Emma immediately flop onto the couch and before I know it, Grey's Anatomy is playing and we're in full on gossip mode.

"Does Halli actually think she's going to make JO nationals?", Catt asks.

Me and Emma start laughing.

"There's seriously no way".

"Have you even seen her form? I didn't even know legs could bend that much!", and we all start laughing again.

"Girls!", my mom yells down. "Do you want some dinner? I just made some pizza rolls!"

We all took off up the stairs. Sure, we're almost elite gymnasts. But pizza rolls are always worth it.

Before we know it, it's 2 a.m. and an entire season of Grey's Anatomy has been watched and we're all passed out on the couch. When my mom wakes us up at 10, it literally takes us another hour to actually get up. Good thing we don't have practice today.

My mom made chocolate chip muffins for breakfast, and together we eat about a dozen in silence. At around 12, Catt's mom picks both of them up, and that's usually how our weekends go.

-

"Come on girls! JO qualifiers are this weekend! With warmups like this, how can you expect to make it! Sprint, sprint, sprint!" Lizzie screams at us.

Today we do our hardest warmup. We do 20 laps around the floor followed by 10 diagonal sprints, and then we line up in the corner to do basics. By basics, I mean split jumps, kicks, squat jumps, etc. It makes you want to die.

After that we do strength, including 20 pullups, 100 sit ups, 20 leg lifts, and 60 v-ups. We also do some arm strength, usually Lizzie's choice.

Then we stretch for 15 minutes and arrange ourselves into groups according to levels.

"Level 10's, you start on bars. 9's on vault, and the rest of you on beam with me". I smile to myself; I love starting on bars.

I quickly get a drink of water and then start to put on my grips. I'm the first one out there, and Coach Bart is setting the bars to FIG for us.

I ask what our assignment is for today, and he pauses to think.

"Since your qualifier is this week, and JO's are two weeks away...let's just focus on routines. Make 4 in a row or make 6, and you only get two warmup turns. Wait for the other girls to get ready, and I'll time you all together". I nod my head and sit and wait for everybody else to get to bars. When they get there, Bart gives us 8 minutes to get warmed up.

I jump on the bars first, and warmup a hiccup (chinese sit up) to high bar, kip cast pirouette to overshoot handstand, then I do a squat on and a giant giant double back. On my second turn I warm up my blind change to front giant, then blind out of it immediately into my double pike. After everybody is finished warmups, we stand in front of Bart in a line.

"Alright girls, we're going to have you show one. After that, you do 4 in a row or make 6 total. If you make this routine you can count it. Mia, you're up first."

I mock salute and step in front of the bar. I start with a kip cast handstand, toe shoot to handstand, then toe on to chinese sit up. From there, I do a kip cast handstand half pirouette into overshoot handstand, then toe on to monkey circle and jump to high bar. Kip, cast handstand, blind, front giant, blind, double pike. I step out of it, but overall it felt like a clean routine. The girls clap for me as I mock salute, then the rest of them go.

We all watch eachother and after everybody has gone, we go on our own to complete our assignments. I finish my 4 in a row just as we switch rotations, so I don't get a chance to work on anything new.

Again, I'm the first to beam. Lizzie tells me to warmup my skills on the floor while I wait for the rest of the girls. We all do our skills on the floor before standing in front of Lizzie.

"Okay girls, I'm going to time you for 3 minutes each. Make sure you get all your skills warmed up. Your assignment after that is to make 3 in a row or 6 beam routines."

I'm first to warm up. I start with a full turn to get used to the beam, then my leap series. I do switch leap switch half, and wobble a little bit. For my jumps, I do a split jump to standing tuck, then to a wolf jump. Next comes my series, which I'm scared of beyond reason. I warmup with a handspring step out, then a handspring handspring. Finally, I get the nerve to go for the handspring layout, but fall to the right. I don't have time to try again, so I warmup a roundoff rebound for my dismount then climb up to do a roundoff 1.5 twist. I make it just in time.

I fall on my first routine, and groan a little.

"Mia, you need to start being more positive", says Halli. I roll my eyes and climb back up onto the beam to finish my routine. "It's not fair to everybody else that you mope around all the time. You can't have a negative attitude. You only get out of practice what you put into it, and you're not putting very much into it". I try my best to ignore her, because all she's really doing is distracting me. She's the one who cries every practice, so I'm not sure why she's trying to correct me.

I'm the last one to finish my routines today, so I'm a little late to vault. GG is on vault today, so she doesn't really care that I'm late. My vault is a yurchenko layout, so it doesn't take me very long to warmup. I'm nervous, though. These vaults still scare me because of my ACL injury. I try to push the memory to the back of my head, but vault still doesn't go well. It takes me a very long time to finish my vaults too, because I keep over rotating. I'm still on vault when the other girls leave, and I can't help but cry in frustration. I finally finish, and by the time I'm dressed and in my moms car I'm 18 minutes late.

She asks me how practice was and I just start crying again.

"I can't do anything anymore", I sob. "Everything is off! I don't know what my problem is!"

She draws in a long breath. "Mia", she starts. "Your father and I have been talking...we don't think you should do gymnastics anymore".

A/N: Hey guys! Sorry for the 4 month hiatus...the last few weeks of school were incredibly stressful and time consuming plus I had terrible writer's block. I've been working on editing this book, but I figured I would publish a new chapter so you guys wouldn't have to wait too much longer! BTW...I'm almost at 100,000 reads! ILY guys!!!

~ Honalei