The Gymnast

Part 6

"Your beam routines were amazing today Ana!" Sharon exclaims as she takes a bite out of her sandwich.

"Thanks! Your dismounts were amazing!" I reply. Sharon does a full twisting layout flyaway as her dismount, which is really hard.

I'm about to take a bite out of my apple when I see Hazel walk over to the table I'm sitting at. There are 5 other girls at the table, the rest of the level 8 girls, but I'm still nervous.

Please don't say my name, please don't say my name...

"Ana, please come to the office. The other coaches and I have to speak to you about something," Hazel says.

I nod and stand up. As I follow her to the office, I look over at Sophie. She smiles and gives me a small thumbs up, and I take a deep breath. I have a bad feeling about this meeting, I don't want to be kicked off of the team, and I don't know what they want to talk to me about.

Jill, Brody, and another coach named Brianna are waiting in the office already. Oh no, this can't be good.

"Take a seat," Brody says and gestures to a chair. The four coaches sit on one side of the room and I sit before them.

"We wanted to talk to you about your recent performance," Hazel says. 

I gulp, and Jill laughs.

I look at her, confused.

"Sorry, its' just that you look so nervous, like you think we're going to kick you off of the team or something," Jill says.

I blush. "That's kinda exactly what I thought would happen," I admit.

The four of them laugh, even Hazel.

"Well, we aren't kicking you off the team," Brianna says. "In fact, we're doing quite the opposite."

My heart leaps. No. Way.

"We were thinking about it, and your routines have been amazing this year. Sectionals is this weekend, so you can qualify for states, but after sectionals, we thought that you could start training to be a level 9," Brody explains.

I stare at them, silent, waiting for them to take it back, say that they actually regret their decision, but they don't.

"What do you say?" Jill asks.

"Yes, definitely, 100 percent!" I exclaim, practically bursting with joy and excitement.

They laugh again. "Great, I'm glad you're so excited," Jill says. "And, before you ask, you're allowed to tell the others about it."

"Thank you so much!" I say and run out of the room to tell my friends.

When I get back to my table, I still have a huge smile plastered on my face. 

"Well? What happened?" Sophie asked. She tried to sound casual, but I could tell she was excited and nervous to know.

"They said that I'm going to start training level 9 next week!" I exclaim.

Everyone at the table cheers, even Gabby. When Sophie hugs me, I can feel the tension in her body, and I'm a little confused. It takes me a second to understand. Sophie is jealous of me. The attention is always only on her. She's always better than everyone else, but here I was, beating her. Everything came naturally to her, but I always had to work really hard. I guess it's finally paying off. Now she knows how I always feel.

Although I want to talk to Sophie about this, I let myself be carried away by the joy of the moment and the 6 of us hug and jump around excitedly.