Letters to Nowhere

Letters to Nowhere by Julie Cross


CHAPTER ONE



January 18

Mom and Dad,




We’re meeting with a lawyer today. Grandma’s not telling me what this means, but I’m not stupid. I’m seventeen. Still a minor. My house is in St. Louis with no adults to live in it. Grandma’s house is in New York and something big is going to have to change in my life. I like logic. I like lists of pros and cons, but I can’t decide if it’s right for me to shift into that mode or if I’m too distracted missing you to think clearly. The house already feels cold and dusty. I don’t want to stay here, but I don’t want to move to New York either. Grandma doesn’t even know me. We have no idea what to say to each other. Our conversations over the past week have all revolved around funeral arrangements, schedules and meetings, and gymnastics practice. She hasn’t asked me if I’m okay. I lost my parents and she hasn’t asked me a damn thing. But she lost her son and I haven’t asked her a damn thing either.




I think I’m stuck. I think we’re all stuck. How do I get over being grateful that I wasn’t in the car with you that night?




Love, Karen



***

When Coach Bentley dropped me off at home after morning practice, an Audi that didn’t belong to my parents was already in the driveway. I figured he’d let me out and leave, but he parked the car in front of the mailbox and walked with me to the door. I was too distracted by the impending lawyer meeting and Grandma’s tense face to take much notice of Bentley shaking hands with Mr. Johnson, one of Dad’s law firm partners, and taking a seat in the living room with Grandma.

I wandered over to the love seat and sat down while Mr. Johnson spouted off the entire law school dictionary, filling his sentences with words like living will, estate, legal minor, and power of attorney. Two minutes into the speech, I tuned out. Until my coach dropped an unexpected proposition, surprising everyone in the room.

“I’d like Karen to stay with me, or at least I’d like to offer her that option.”

My attention snapped from gazing out the living room window to watching Coach Bentley rub his bald head, showing clear signs of nerves. Something my gymnastics coach hadn’t shown in the seven months I’d worked with him. To be honest, I didn’t know much at all about Bentley outside of gymnastics. He wasn’t one to get personal. Another reason this proposition had shocked me.

Grandma’s eyebrows rose, but she maintained her polite and proper nature.

Mr. Johnson obviously had a script to follow and this interpersonal stuff was making him squirm. “Now I understand why Mr. Bentley asked to be present.”

Live with Coach Bentley? How weird would that be? He wasn’t exactly a gifted conversationalist and I wasn’t either—with my teammates, yeah, but not adults. Would we sit in silence all the time?

I turned my gaze to the mantel above the fireplace. The picture of my parents and me sat perfectly centered. I couldn’t stop replaying the back and forth bickering between Mom and Dad over Thanksgiving weekend. She kept making Dad reposition the nail over and over until it looked perfect. He’d let out a frustrated sigh every few minutes, Mom would snap at him, offer to use the drill herself, and he’d do what she asked right away, hating to hand over a power tool.

I need to get out of this house.

A lump formed in my throat. I swallowed it back and turned my attention to Coach Bentley.

“Let me get this straight,” Mr. Johnson said. “You want to be Karen’s caretaker until she graduates high school? She won’t turn eighteen for another year, correct?”

Bentley opened his mouth to answer, but Grandma interrupted. “She’s a year ahead. Karen has a gymnastics scholarship for college. She’s supposed to move to California in June.”

“I signed a letter of intent to compete for UCLA next season,” I explained.

A letter that I signed more for my parents and my old coach than for me. A letter that was meant to buy me some time to prove myself to the National Team Committee and my parents (well, mostly my mom), who wanted me to adopt the NCAA rules of limited training hours as soon as possible. I couldn’t be a contender for World and Olympic competitions training only four hours a day. I’d be laughed out of the competition arena. I think my mom worried that I’d get my heart broken if I put everything into a goal that was so impossible to achieve, though she never explained in those words exactly.

“So what you really need is a temporary place to stay and maintain your skills for college–level competition?” Mr. Johnson asked.

Since he was looking to me for an answer, I decided it was easier to nod and mumble yes and not explain the secret dream I’d been harboring against my parents’ wishes. Against the plan the three of us had agreed on.

“She’s been at the same gym her whole life,” Bentley said. “Her teammates are there. I think moving somewhere new with National training camp next month and the upcoming meet season could be detrimental to her training.”

He was right about being at the same gym my whole life, but until last summer, Jim Cordes had been my coach, not Bentley. My parents and I had known for a couple years now that Coach Cordes would replace the UCLA coach when she decided to retire. That happened last summer and right before he left, he brought me and my parents into his office at the gym, said he was going to miss coaching me, and since I did all my schoolwork online and could technically be finished this year, would I consider signing with him a year early. NCAA competition for women’s gymnastics is more of a bowing–out phase. It’s something many gymnasts do after competing in Worlds or the Olympics. Which was exactly why I wanted my shot before bowing out. I’d worn the Team USA leotard before in Junior international competitions and it wouldn’t be easy trading that in for UCLA colors.