Chapter 9: Competition

“ARE YOU SURE you’d rather be with me?”

“Tara, I don’t know why we’re even talking about this. Is there some way I can be clearer about how I feel about you and about what we’re doing?” I asked.

“I just don’t understand why a guy who is fit and strong and talented would rather be with a crippled girl who won’t put out than take up with an obviously willing and able beautiful girl.”

“I never see you as crippled,” I said. “The throws we were doing today? You were spectacular! I don’t think we’d have to do our bit as an exhibition. We could compete.”

“Thank you, but that just shows your lack of experience with pairs acro-gym. There are too many things I don’t do and can’t do.”

“I thought you wanted to return to competition,” I said.

“I thought I did, too. I need to be honest with myself and with you, though. I’ll make a splash because I dared return to the mat after the disaster almost four years ago. But it wouldn’t qualify in a competition. You’re why I can be out there. There were other potential bases we looked at. They just didn’t stack up. Some were too full of themselves to even consider working with me. Others just weren’t strong enough to do the things you can do with me. Bases have to be strong and well-balanced, but you can surely feel the difference between working with me and working with Madison—or even with her sister cheerleading. I can’t land without your help. I can’t propel myself in tumbling. I only minimally help balance myself. I might as well be a plastic doll.”

“Oh, believe me: I don’t think of you as a plastic doll at all. Sometimes I feel like a juggler a little, but what does a juggler have to do first and foremost? He has to not drop anything. I’m juggling a precious living woman and all I want is to keep her in the air and show people how beautiful she is.”

“Do you want to kiss me right here in the restaurant?” Tara giggled. “That was beautiful. But don’t drop any of your other partners, either. I love the way you make me feel and how you talk. I don’t want to hold you back.”

“If you were holding me back, it sure wouldn’t be from working with Madison or the cheerleaders. For me personally, all I need is a little time to stay in tune on the apparatuses. You’re keeping me strong enough and there’s no real chance I could qualify for individual gymnastics in time to make the trials. That means I’m on a track for next year, not anything that interferes with us and the exhibition.”

“I promise that after the exhibition, I’ll set you free.”

“I don’t really like the sound of that. Um ... You know, if you decide you need to break up with me, I guess I understand, sort of. No other girl would have anything to do with me. I scare them. And Madison doesn’t count. She thinks if she was with me ... you know ... sexually, then I’d have to do whatever she wants. She’s pretty obvious about that. But ... if you do decide ... you know ... to break up, please tell me directly. I’m terrible at reading clues. I didn’t understand you were upset with me until today. I just ... Please don’t just shut me out. I really really like you.”

“I really really like you, too, Paul.”

In fact, I was in love.

I suppose we could have gone to either of our homes and just relaxed and made out as much as we wanted. I think we both knew that after New Year’s Eve, we could get carried away if we did that. And I really didn’t want to get carried away with Tara with either my parents on the next floor or Jennifer in the next room.

I could sure imagine getting carried away with Tara, though. Except, not over the console in her car when the temperature was eighteen degrees.

In all fairness, I had to squeeze out more practice time with Madison in the next week as well as with Tara. I wasn’t happy that Coach Daniels had signed us up to compete in Louisville without asking me. She wasn’t happy that I wasn’t traveling and staying with her and Madison. That’s the way it was.

I have to say we all made a lot of progress that week and we were confident in what we could do in Louisville. My parents decided to travel down for the weekend, too. That was pretty exciting because they didn’t often get to one of my competitions. Mikey decided the event was just two weeks before spring break, so she couldn’t take time off. She promised to watch us in June. Tara, Jennifer, and I flew with my folks, but I’d need to go to the arena as soon as we got to town, while they went to the hotel to relax.

There are five events in acrobatic gymnastics: women’s pairs, men’s pairs, mixed pairs, men’s group, and women’s group. I guess the pairs are self-explanatory, but the women’s group is defined as three women, while the men’s group is defined as four men. A maximum of ten teams are assigned to the US National Team. That’s two from each of the categories. But they don’t have to have that many. I guess there have been years when they only took one team in a category and even a couple of times when no one qualified in a particular event.

The mixed pairs competition in Louisville was so small that it didn’t even appear on the event schedule. Only three mixed pairs competed. If that sounds like it should have been good odds for qualifying, you’re wrong. Each team is held to an independent standard that includes how ready the judges deem the team to be for international competition. The same judges that assessed whether Madison and I qualified for the national team trials in June, would determine if Tara and I merited an exhibition.

We got to Louisville on Thursday afternoon. I was cutting two days of classes to travel to this event. We had a practice time set Thursday night with Madison and early Friday morning with Tara. As soon as I turned my phone on after my plane landed, I got a text message from Madison that she was waiting at the arena for our practice time. I took off for the arena directly from the airport. Mom and Dad said they’d check me into the hotel and took my luggage.

Each team had only forty-five minutes of practice time to run their three programs. The competition included three events, judged on different scales. The first was the balance event. It was all about the poses and positions we could get in and hold where I was supporting Madison above me. She was pretty good at those. All I had to do was hold her steady. The second event was the dynamic event. That emphasized our synchronized tumbling, throws, and swings. It was considerably harder because Madison was so tall. We both had to keep our elbows bent on the between the legs swing, the cannonball, so she didn’t drag her butt on the floor. If her partner had been six feet tall instead of five-five, it would have been easier. On the other hand, we didn’t look ridiculously mismatched like some of the pairs where the top didn’t even come up to the shoulders of her base. Finally, there was the combined routine which was the most artistic.

I think Coach Daniels started yelling at us the minute we stepped onto the mats and didn’t stop until we were out of the arena. Nothing seemed to please her, even though I thought it was the best we’d ever performed our routines. We were off-beat on the music, we weren’t perfectly vertical in a pose, we were out of sync in our tumbling run. We worked hard and fast for the full forty-five minutes and I was glad to get off the mat and into a shower in my hotel room. Dad gave me my key when I got there and told me they’d meet me in half an hour for dinner.

As soon as I was in my room, I called Tara and asked if she’d join us for dinner. She said Jennifer had already made the reservation for the five of us and that they’d meet us in the restaurant at seven.

Of course, once I was out of the shower, there was a message on my phone from Madison telling me where to meet her and Coach Daniels for dinner. I just sent her a text that said ‘Already committed. CU at breakfast.’

You can imagine how well that went over. Her response made me shiver.

Part of having grown up small was learning not to talk back. My parents were fine about it and administered appropriate discipline. But at school, saying no to someone could get a guy a bloody nose. As a result, I still found it kind of gut-wrenching to say no to someone. And someone like Madison was going to make it even harder. I turned my phone off when I met Mom, Dad, Jennifer, and Tara.

Breakfast with Madison and Coach Daniels would be at nine. Tara and I had our practice time at five. It was like we didn’t really merit the time because we weren’t competing. In fact, we were only doing one combined routine rather than the separate balance and dynamic programs. We had two minutes and thirty seconds for the exhibition, just like the combined competition.

“Are you ready for this?” I asked when we got to the arena.

“I’m nervous. I know I’m not the same as the other athletes. When I was on the national team four years ago, I didn’t even need to qualify. Our coach just petitioned the selection committee with a video and they sent an invitation to the trials,” Tara said.

“Jennifer?”

“No. Jennifer became my coach and caretaker after the accident. My coach down in Texas was actually on the selection committee, so he had an inside track. Then the next year, we were qualified by virtue of having been on the under-sixteen national team the previous year.”

“We’re going to do great,” I said. I sounded more confident than I was, but once I was on the mat with Tara, everything seemed to be right. I had to work harder to balance Tara than to balance Madison, but Tara’s lines and movement flowed with artistry that Madison lacked.

We had our thirty minutes—less time than the competitors because we were only rehearsing one program instead of three. Then I had a light breakfast with Tara and Jennifer before joining Madison and Coach Daniels for my second breakfast. I still ate sparingly. The mixed pairs would perform balance and dynamic routines on Friday and then do their combined routines on Saturday morning. Tara and I would have our demonstration after the last group competitors Saturday at noon.

The convention center where the events were held was basically a bunch of big empty spaces that could be configured any way they wanted. I snagged a brochure that said it held 7,000 spectators for a college basketball game. I figured it was set up for maybe a couple thousand at the gymnastics convention. The rest of the hall was divided into sections for different events and practice. By the time we got to our first performance about noon on Friday, other gymnastic events were already underway in the rest of the space. That’s another thing about gymnastics in general; each event is on its own schedule. No one waits for other events to finish.

I wasn’t sure how many teams were competing in acrobatic gymnastics. I understood some of them were junior elite and some were senior elite. All I knew was that when Madison and I stepped on the mat for our balance routine at 11:45, it was showtime. Two minutes and thirty seconds later, there was polite applause from the few spectators who were there for our event—mostly parents and teammates of the competitors.