The Gym by night Day 5

That night, Alex took me aside to her new bedroom. We had only recently been given our own rooms, for our 12^th birthday. As I walked and Alex walked in a backbend position, I thought about tonight. We were going to meet in front of my house at 10:00 and then we would walk to the gym.

“Kerry!” This was Alex, speaking urgently. She kicked over, landing perfectly.

“KERRY! EARTH TO KERRY!” I came to with a start.

“What?”

“You can’t go out tonight! You’d get in big trouble if you were caught. Believe me, I know Coach Chip. Also, you don’t have a key to the gym.”

“Well-“

“Kerry!”

I sighed. “I guess you’re right, Alex.” She almost always is.

After dinner, I called Ana. I told what Alex had said.

She totally understood.

“Actually, I just thought of that myself. I was about to call you. I wasn’t too sure about that plan, anyway,” She said, “So I thought of a better plan. Every other Wednesday is Mrs. Kingsley’s, the lady who works in the office, day off. So maybe after Wednesday Workout, we can sneak in there and look through the office. “

“Great idea. I can come then. What time?”

“Well, Summer Wednesday Workout goes from 7:30 in the morning to 10:00. You might want to come around 9:15, ‘cause my 8:45 Beam coach lets me go early a lot.” I heard someone calling Ana’s name in the background.

“Gotta go. See you on Wednesday?

“Right. Bye!”

“Bye!”

                                                                                        ***

That night in bed, I was thinking about what sport I should try to replace ballet. I’d already tried basketball, and decided it wasn’t for me, being really bad at it. Swimming? No, I’d never been a super strong swimmer. Softball and soccer were out of the question, I couldn’t really think of any other types of dance I wanted to do, and definitely NOT handball. What then? I had a growing idea inside me.

The next morning, I woke up at 5: 00 A.M. I went across the hallway to the computer, went on YouTube, and searched Rhythmic Gymnastics. I had heard Ana and Alex talking about it, and it sounded fascinating to me. A whole bunch of videos of Worlds and Nationals popped up and I clicked on one that said “Team Russia Hoops and Ribbons 2010 Worlds”. I waited breathlessly for the ad to finish, and then gasped as I saw 5 teenage girls in super fancy leotards walk on to the podium, each carrying either a purple ribbon on a stick or an ivory colored hoop. Some music started, and they started half dancing, half gymnastics, to the music. I was transfixed from the moment it started to the last moment of the video. I watched it 3 more times, and each time I sat spellbound watching them. ‘I could totally rock this’, I thought, and I knew this was what I wanted to do. After the 5^th time, I googled ‘famous rhythmic gymnasts’. While it was loading, I thought about how I sometimes felt left out, because my best friend and my twin sister both at the gym every day. A bunch of articles came up about famous Russian rhythmic gymnasts, all in Russian. I retyped and added ‘American’. Here were some articles about Mary Sanders and Julie Zetlin. Hmmm… they were the only American ones who had gone to the Olympics in a long time. Well, I would change that. I would go in 2016! I resolved to talk to my mom about it, and go to the gym with Alex as soon as she got up to go, in more or less 1 hour, and have a conversation with the teacher. But maybe I should retry Artistic Gymnastics first. I decided to ask Ana to show me some skills; perhaps some bars jump, or something.

                                                                                           ***

That morning at the gym, I asked Ana to show me some skills. She told me to go to one of the elite gymnasts because they were more experienced than her and Alex.  She pointed to a teenage girl with dark brown hair and braces. “That’s Sabrina. She did the Olympic trials in June, but missed by this much.”

“Okay!

“But you need to warm up and stretch, first. That’s really important, ‘cause if you don’t, you can get seriously injured.

“OF COURSE! I was only in ballet for 10 years!”

I jogged around the gym with her 4 or 5 times, and then she showed me some basic gymnastics stretches for your wrists, ankles, neck, feet, and arms.

“Next you have to do muscle-building exercises.” She grasped a thick rope. “See if you can climb this rope. Race you to the top!!!” And with that, she jumped onto the rope, and started to shin up it towards the green bell. I lightly touched the cord and tried to hold myself up on it. I did it! I started pulling myself upwards just as Ana rang the bell. Oh, well. Climbing a rope is harder than it looks. You must first hold yourself up with your legs straddled around it.  Then you must let go with one hand, in order to reach higher. You have to do the same thing over and over and over and over until you get to the top.

“YAY!” I thought, as I reached the top. Then the thought struck me: How was I going to get down?

By then, Alex had reached the ground. “What’s taking you so long?” She called up to me.

“I can’t get down!” My muscles started burning, because I had been holding myself up with them for so long.

“Just try to take it one step at a time.”

I tried. FAIL! Ana looked desperately up at me. I could tell she was nervous that her coach would come over.

“Maybe I could just jump. I’m not that high up anymore…”

“I guess. But be careful!”

I took a deep breath, and flew down. I landed perfectly. A stick! I held up my arms, saluting. TA-DA!

“Great. But now you need to go talk to Sabrina.”

“Okay!”

I approached the teenaged girl in a pink tank leotard. She was talking to another girl, an Asian girl who looked to be about 14.

“Excuse me, I said, “My friend Ana said you would help me learn some new skills.”

“Oh! Your name is…”

“Kerry.”

“All right, what kind of stuff do you want to learn?”