Letters to Nowhere(10)

I stood up and followed her into her office. I did take note of the fact that she didn’t wear the dead parents face. Maybe you get desensitized to stuff like that when you have to hear sad stories all the time? “Dr. Carson, right?”

“Technically, yes.” She sat behind the desk and pointed to a large armchair for me to occupy. “But you can call me Jackie.”

Okay, I totally called this one. Jackie and Karen: best friends for life.

“And don’t let me keep you from eating lunch. In fact, if you don’t mind, I might eat my sandwich, too.” She opened a drawer and removed a reusable lunch sack, pulling out a pita sandwich and a container of fruit. I took her cue and resumed eating my bagel, but decided against the peanut butter for now because it would make speaking impossible. “I talked with your grandmother last week. Very nice lady. She told me a little about you and what kinds of things you were hoping to talk about with me, but not much. I’d love to hear your version.”

“I’m sure she got it right.” I wasn’t sure why we needed to rehash what she already knew.

Jackie nodded and took a swig from her Diet Coke. “Fair enough. So, you’re not in school? You’re homeschooled?”

School…I can talk about school. “I take virtual classes online.”

She scribbled lazily in her notebook, waving her other hand as if it was a silent question. “Subjects?”

I rattled off a list of subjects between bites of my bagel.

“Senior classes, right? But you just turned seventeen, which would make you,” she said, studying something on a different page, “a year ahead?”

“With online classes you can go faster. When I started three years ago, I did the first year of courses in one semester. Then I did another semester in the summer.” So far, easy as pie. I could do this all day.

“Is it required for elite gymnasts to stop going to regular school?”

I shook my head. Media training at National Team Camp had prepared me for all of these questions. “A lot of elites go to regular school. But at my gym, this is what everyone does. My other teammates, too. Something my old coach started a few years ago, before he left. He wants us to be able to have a life outside gymnastics and if you’re in school all day and then practicing until nine or ten at night, it doesn’t allow time for normal teenage activities.”

Jackie’s eyes beamed into me, like she could x–ray my thoughts or like she somehow knew that the answer was very scripted, though it was mostly true. “Tell me about your teammates.”

Still easy. I had finished the bagel and started on the banana. “There’s four of us right now. In a way, we’re a lot like sisters.”

Jackie’s eyebrows lifted. “Sisters? You mean you’re close like sisters?”

That would be the media answer, but I thought about what I meant more carefully and decided it would be safe to explain it to a shrink. She wasn’t NBC or anything. “Yes, we’re close, but I think ‘sisters’ describes it better than best friends, because secretly we want to beat the other three. Sisters are always compared to each other. It’s like that. But we have a bond that’s pretty unbreakable.”

Jackie didn’t write anything down, but nodded again. “Are you all the same age, grade…?”

I shook my head. “Ellen’s the youngest. She’s thirteen. She won Junior Nationals last summer.” I paused for a second, thinking of the best way to describe her to a stranger. “She’s the cute one. You know, still one hundred percent little girl as far as her physical appearance.”

“I think I’ve got a good mental picture,” Jackie said, smiling. “Who else?”

“Blair is fifteen and she’s the one I’m most likely to hang out with after practice.” I swallowed hard, knowing how little I’d done that in the past few weeks. “And she’s really talented but going through a growth spurt right now—”

“So, growing is bad? It’s better to have the little girl body, like Ellen?”

“No, not really.” Stacey had always explained this to us very frankly, so I said, “Gymnasts come in all shapes and sizes. Especially now that we can’t compete in the Olympics until we’re sixteen. So, growing is fine. It’s going to happen to all of us, but if you have a big change in height or weight over a short amount of time, it throws off your center of gravity and you have to relearn a lot of your skills. It’s not impossible by any means, just sets you back a little bit, like injuries do.”

“And the fourth teammate?” Jackie leaned forward in her chair as if anticipating my answer like I was telling the most interesting story ever.

I removed the yogurt container, placed it on Jackie’s desk, and crumbled up the empty bag, tossing it in the garbage. Jackie opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic spoon, setting it on top of my strawberry yogurt. I stared at it, the lump from earlier returning to my throat. “Stevie is the other one. She’s nineteen. She’s the most experienced gymnast. She’s been all over the world.”

“How do you like staying with Coach Bentley?”

My mouth opened and then closed again. Jackie laughed at my reaction and added, “Your grandmother explained the living situation, but just so you know, I only spoke with her to get an idea about whether I’d be the best match for you. She and I won’t discuss you further or even speak one–on–one again. Everything you say here is just between you and me.”