Thanks to my reviewers! Wow, I think this might have more reviews than any other story in the fandom. Of course, I'm pretty sure there aren't more than three or four stories with as many chapters as this one.
Ariex: Oh, dear. That would be a whole new set of stories. A good idea, though – why don't you do it?
I'm in a bit of a gymnastics craze. The original fiction story I've been spending all my time on is about gymnastics, and half my YouTube account is about it. So I wondered how I could put it in… and came up with this idea. To be fair to gyms, who are constantly maligned in the media and movies, I don't believe any team would do this to a girl. It's cruel and rather pointless. But it's possible, and age is a definite issue in gymnastics.
Lost Girl
I wasn't good enough.
The thought lingered in Elissa's mind all the time, surfacing occasionally to remind her why her life felt so purposeless.
She went to school and came home and talked to her friends, but she could never figure out what it was all for. Not anymore.
Half a year ago, it had never crossed her mind to wonder. She had junior high school, her friends there, gymnastics, her friends on the team, her parents, and her sister in college. She had known where she was.
But then, her coaches had decided she wasn't good enough to continue to level nine – not good enough for their highly competitive team.
Not good enough.
"We'll still see you," promised her team friends. But it wasn't the same, and when school had started, they had disappeared.
"You'll have more time for us," pointed out her school friends. But they couldn't fill her time like gymnastics had.
"Find something else to dedicate yourself to," her sister had told her.
But what?
"Elissa, stop it," complained Sheena. "We're supposed to be hanging out together. Not sulking about… whatever."
"She used to have gymnastics Saturday afternoon," pointed out Nikki.
"That was months ago. That was spring. You have to get over things, you know."
"Sheena, come on," Emma scolded. "Give her time. It was four years she was on the team. Five years she did gymnastics. And she only just quit entirely."
The coaches had found the kindness to offer Elissa low prices for hour-long recreational classes four times a week, but that was far from the three-hour classes with girls at her level. Even the best of the recreational girls could hardly push themselves to a handstand on the bar, and Elissa could swing herself around the high bar from handstand to handstand. What place did she have with them when she could do front and back flips, her body tucked or straight, and a cartwheel without hands?
She had quit her classes that month. It was January, the beginning of competitive season, and she didn't want to be near the gym with the team going to competitions.
Sheena answered Emma, and Elissa's friends argued around her.
If she closed her eyes, she thought the mall would disappear and her friends would be a circle, holding together around her, while she floated in the middle, not touching any of them.
In the midst of that thought, she blinked by chance or subconscious will, and she felt it for the moment of darkness – floating, nothing to hold onto.
This is what they mean when they say someone is lost, she thought as she followed her distant, grounded friends.
Since she had been ten years old, since level four, gymnastics had been her ground. She had been good then – though her age had helped back then – moving from nowhere to level four in one year and to level six by the next.
Age worked against a gymnast in the end, and she had grown tall and lost her childish fearlessness.
And so lost her ability to win.
And so lost her place on the team and in the world.
"But please try to be more cheerful," Emma whispered in her ear, touching her and offering her a handhold – for the moment. "We're friends, you know, and we don't like to see you moping."
"I'm sorry," Elissa stated.
She was. She wanted to be with them, but she didn't know how to find them.
She knew the problem. Since age ten, since before she had done much more than going to one friend's house, just her, to play games and share secrets, gym had been part of her life.
So getting together with a group on Friday or Saturday, at someone's house or a park or the mall, had been defined by that. She had thought of it as escape, almost misbehavior. It had been a treat something special and exciting.
She could have it any time now.
So what did it mean now?
"Elissa," Sheena complained again.
What can I do? she wondered.
The backyard was bumpy and rough and carried hidden dangers, nothing like the floor at the gym, which you could glance at and jump on a couple of times and know all of. Gym shorts and a t-shirt were loose and baggy, not like the skintight, well-known, safe leotard. And shoes… well, that was like nothing in the gym.
Still. Floor was the last even Elissa could do.
She still remembered every routine she had done form level three to eight, the required ones in levels three to six and unique ones choreographed for her only in levels seven and eight.
But she couldn't enjoy them anymore. They reminded her of winning – and losing.
She preferred to improvise. She knew her parents could see, that they would disapprove, but she wanted to – had to – fly.
She faced the longest stretch of grass in her yard and imagined the floor and the gym…
She jumped with her arms out to the sides and legs split, one in front and one in back. She liked jumps. She jumped again, this time in a straddle split, her legs to the sides. Then, she lifted her arms over her head and pointed one sneaker-encased foot to her other knee and tried to do a full turn.
She found that it was hard enough to do a half turn, so she put her foot down and jumped again. This time, she bent both legs behind her and threw her head back to touch her shoes. Then, she jumped in a half turn to face her stretch of lawn.
She decided to dare her first tumbling pass in her level seven routine: round-off, back handspring, back layout.
She didn't pause long to think – hesitation meant points off in competition. She ran until a good spot, hurdled into a powerful kind of cartwheel, landed with her feet together, jumped backwards to her hands, then pushed off to her feet, and then jumped in a straight-bodied backflip…
She landed properly, but her shoes surprised her, and she stumbled to her knees. Points off. Lots.
"Elissa!" called her father sternly from the back door.
"What?" she answered innocently as she brushed off the dirt.
"You know what. Come on."
Don't, she wanted to beg. Don't make me stop unless you can give me something better.
She ran, but instead of simply returning to her house, she ran into an aerial cartwheel.
She landed and stuck this one.
"Elissa." Her father's voice cut off her pride at the good landing.
She followed him inside.
"Elissa, baby," said her mother, who was waiting in the kitchen. "You can't do that. You can't think of it forever."
Elissa looked at the floor.
Mom pulled her into a hug. "It wasn't your fault," she said as she had done many times before. "It's not because you started too late, or because you're black, or because they don't like you. It's just some girls were better than you were."
But it was probably because she was fourteen instead of eight or ten. And even if they had left girls who were blacker than she was on the team, but how did she know that it wasn't subconscious racism? Everyone was racist. And if they really liked her, would they have made her leave? No.
"You got to stop blaming yourself. Just let it go."
Elissa wandered through the tables set up in their church for their annual used-book sale. She knew that some people let books, fantasy, be their anchor in real life, something she had always found strange. But her own sister had been like that as a teenager, when she hadn't had many friends, and Emma and other people she loved were readers. There must, she thought, be something in that.
Elissa looked at the rows and rows of books, hardly organized. She shuddered at the overwhelming amount, closed her eyes, and put her arms out.
Two books. She put them in her basket and reached out again.
She opened her eyes and looked at the four books.
Okay…
The first book was so boring that she stopped after three chapters. It was about a girl whining about a boy who was out of her reach. There were more important things in life, and this was just tiring. The second book was interesting, if weird. It was about magic, but not stupid magic that made no sense. It wasn't just waving a wand in a certain way, saying certain words, and probably meaning them – how some people could do spells and others couldn't in certain books was beyond Elissa.
This made sense. She liked it.
What creeped her out was that it seemed to be taking itself seriously.
She didn't know if that was normal. It wasn't a novel. Maybe some books were just written like this.
It was too weird for her to admit that she wanted it to be real. If it were, she could give her life to it and stop feeling lost.
Elissa was desperate. She knew she could get nothing from it but false hope, but she couldn't stop hoping. She had to try. She needed something, and this was all she could find.
At last, she jumped.
"In Life's name…"
No. I won't hope…
"And for life's sake…"
Please, God. Please.
Something was different when Elissa brought her book to school the next day. She didn't feel so empty anymore.
It didn't help her with her friends. They seemed to be living far apart from her now. She could not join in with them at all.
Is this what I wanted? she wondered.
They started a project that day in English. Sheena chose someone else as her partner. Elissa didn't know who she could ask. She always paired with her friends.
Is this what I asked for? It was not what she wanted.
Finally, she looked around. The only person standing was Sky. She was very quiet and the type to lose herself in books. Elissa had always wanted to find a good style for her hair, good clothes, and a smile for her, but Elissa only knew how to make over black girls, and Sky was Asian.
Sky looked her way. Their eyes met…
And Elissa knew that it was all real and she was not alone.
Elissa's sister called that night and instantly burst into tears. She couldn't speak, but Elissa understood, suddenly, why she was upset, and realized that she had chosen a difficult path – but had a guide.
She hoped she would never be lost again.
I know it's kind of short at the end. Maybe I should have written more, but I couldn't think of anything. I wrote the second half of this story, and all of the last one, in a notebook before or between classes when I didn't have anything better to do.
I don't expect to have any chapters ready for a while, but I have four more ideas. I know I've said this before, but I think after that, the series will end. Now, how many years it will take for me to get through them...